Paging Nige

Bomber Boys.

Ta! And it is *so* poignant.

 

It is, my wifes Grandad was a rear gunner & my old Grandad was an Blenhiem
bomber pilot. 'The bomber will always get through' christ alive.....


I have a superb book called 'so few' the real one too, my grandad's mate is
mentioned in it. Dowding was an utter **** to be fair. I love my
RAF/Luftwaffe type shit.

Have fun!

--


Nige,

Honda VTR1000 SOLD!
BMW K1200S
Range Rover Vogue
Aprilia RSV Mille

 

I think you may be confusing him with Bomber Harris.

 

No, i switched my subject mid sentance

--


Nige,

Honda VTR1000 SOLD!
BMW K1200S
Range Rover Vogue
Aprilia RSV Mille

 

Did your book come with money inside it? $$$!

Thanks Nige!

 

You'll have to spend a few grand to be able to spend your Bajan dollars
matey

--


Nige,

Honda VTR1000 SOLD!
BMW K1200S
Range Rover Vogue
Aprilia RSV Mille

 

Dowding was anything but a ****.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Grimly Curmudgeon

It's only a Nige, don't expect coherence.

I suspect he meant Harris. And I, for one, am not prepared to judge
"Bomber" Harris with the benefit of seventy years of hindsight.

I also think it's a fucking disgrace that the men who went out night
after night and put their lives at huge risk in their country's service
were never recognised with a campaign medal.

Had I been alive in 1940 I would have been applauding the efforts of
Bomber Command to hit back at the enemy in the only way possible at the
time. Had I been alive in 1945 I would have been applauding their
efforts to shorten the war.

Had I been alive on both those years, I hope I would have had the
backbone to continue the applause to this day.

I feel little but contempt for those who demanded the ultimate sacrifice
from those men then, and turn their backs now. I thank $DEITY that those
who sneer from the position of never having had to face what they faced,
are able to do so from their ivory towers.

Sermon ends.

--
Wicked Uncle Nigel - "He's hopeless, but he's honest"

I have already made the greatest contribution to the fight against climate
change that I can make: I have decided not to breed. Now quit bugging me and
go and talk to the Catholics.

 

Hear hear.

 

Exactly. People just did what they had to do. And do you know the worst
of it? A helluva high percentage of those who survived their tours [1]
had a mental breakdown thereafter and were never normal for the rest of
their lives. Totally unrecognised for the most part, and unhelped.

[1]The killer of aircrew was the repeated tours of duty, which in Bomber
Command were so long the chances of death were very high. Unlike in the
USAAF, where twenty five missions (still dodgy to achieve) got a
homeward ticket, the way it should have been for the RAF imo, but the
Americans had the available manpower to do that.

"In 1941 the RAF introduced the idea of a tour of duty. Each tour being
thirty sorties or 200 flying hours. After each tour of duty air crew
were given a six-month rest from operations at a flying training
establishment. By 1942 less than half of all bomber crews survived their
first tour. These figures got worse in 1943 when only one in six were
expected to survive their first tour, while only one in forty would
survive two tours."

Jesus H. Christ.

 

Nor I. I think we was a total bastard, but that's independent of how he
waged war.

Agreed 100%. Quite apart from anything else, it ignores their
contribution to saving the country in 1940 when they went out bombing
the invasion barges in aircraft so poorly power and armed that some
missions were damn nearly suicidal.

Most people I've met of that generation do just that. They point out
that there *was no other way* of hiting Germany.

Even Albert Speer, whose views are a bit partisan, acknowledged the
effect of the bombing ofensive, thogh he took the viewpoint that its
importance was not in the damage done to the war effort (which wasn't
significant) nor morale (ditto), nor production (ditto), but that it
kept huge quantities of guns, men, aircraft and effort occupied in
Germany when it could have been used on the Eastern Front.

Just think what all those 88mm guns could have done, for a start.

Very well put.

 

The thing is that crews in *some* aircraft had a pretty good survival
rate.

Loss rates of the Mosquito were a fraction of those of the four-engined
heavies, and the Mosquito had the same bombload as a B17. And it only
carried two people, so if one did go down the casualty list was shorter.

And the aircraft consumed much less in terms of raw material and
resources to build. Only two Merlins instead of four, for one thing.

OK, so it couldn't carry the large Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs, but
that didn't really matter because they were only used in the very late
stages of the war when the RAF had developed the techniques to deliver
them accurately (and when the Luftwaffe's fighter strength had been
largely nullified).

I've never understood why they didn't churn out Mosquitoes rather than
Stirlings, Halifaxes and Lancasters. The lesson was obvious.

 

That would have been an irrelevance, really. If the Germans wanted to
make something bomb-proof, they just used thicker concrete. Think of the
U-Boat pens.

Yes, that's true. On the other hand, the Mosquito was a far more
accurate bomber, so less of the bombload would be 'wasted'. Greater
efficiency. And if fewer aircraft are being shot down on the way to the
target, then he 'bomb efficiency gap' gets even narrower.

Ah, yes, I hadn't thought of that.

 

Haven't got the relevant book to hand but I read that, for the longer
trips like Berlin, the Mosquito could make two trips in the same time
that a Lancaster made one [1] so it'd be 1.5 ( or 2 or 2.5) times as
many, twice as often.

Cheers,

John


[1] A straight compare of the Mosquitos speed to the Lancaster's speed
doesn't seem to support that idea so I'm guessing the Lancaster's
cruising speed at it's max(?) altitude was about half a Mosquito at
that sort of altitude.

 

Have you got a reference for that?

I'd have to agree (but only in a limited sense), from my reading, but
remember that Mosquitos were used as 1) Low-level /precision/ bombers on
many occasions and 2) as Lead Pathfinders, where they'd drop the markers
for the heavy Pathfinders to unload on, marking the point for the rest
of the stream.

Mossie PF crews were hand-picked, the best of the best and that's why
they got consistently good results - especially as thay were first on
target, presenting a more difficult target for flak, radar and night
fighters, due to their speed, smaller size and smaller radar signature
(plywood doesn't reflect all that well) - and had clear sight of the
target before smoke and haze obscured it. The double hard bastard PF
leaders would stooge around just off plot, ready to come in and re-mark,
too, as 'creepback' became a factor. They didn't get off after two
tours, either - they went back, and back ...

 

In light of the casualty rates, the stunning thing is just how many
blokes refused to go back - very, very few. I doubt that the RAF
informed the crews of the actual figures, but everybody there knew the
score.

**** that, I'd have faked a spazzy or been down the Labour Exchange,
saying I'd resigned. Unsocial hours, hazardous environment, noise,
stress, lack of PPE, any old excuse.

 

This is my point - precision bombing instead of scattering bombs all
over everywhere.

And this is the other point - area bombing didn't really do much damage
to military targets. Mossies would have been able to attack pinpoint an
significant targets. Whch they did, but not on any great scale.

What you say is quite true, mind.

 

Yes, but my point is that you're comparing apples with oranges: stick an
eqivalent number of Mosquitos in a stream at Lanc height and they'd
likely get similarly crap results - or stick a few Lancs with hand-
picked and specially-trained crews down at low level and they'd drop the
egg on target much more frequently.

The heavy bomber 'offensive', as seen in retrospect, achieved its aims
(as the only method at hand to 'strike back'): morale booster for the
folks at home, weapon of alarm and despondency against the opposition.
Carpet bombing, certainly in retrospect, was less than effective against
the primarily industrial targets intended - but it made a real mess of
city centres and kept a lot of people awake all night when they'd have
been much more effective the following day after a good kip. Having
said that, the hugely popular 'Dambusters' attack, a fine example of
ingenious precision bombing, was singularly ineffective at taking the
Ruhr offline - but it strengthened the 'Blitz spirit' considerably.

 

That's fair comment.

That was another oddity. As Speer noted, the Dambusters raid caused
massive damage, but the Germans were permitted to repair the dams
completely unmolested by the RAF. He found that odd, and so do I.

OK, so the defences were strengthened around them, but just lobbing
bombs at the repair works, even carpet bombing from altitude, would
have massively disrupted and delayed repair work and would *really*
have given the Ruhr problems. And the RAF didn't do it. They just
wrote off the dams as 'destroyed' and didn't go back there. Strange.

The USAF realised that repeated raids on some targets were necessary -
the Schweinfurt ball-bearing raids were one example. The assault on
the oil industry was another. As Speer noted, oil pipes and so forth
would be repaired, but the repairs were weak and bombs bursting nearby
caused hassle because all the leaks sprung open again, etc etc.

 

<Concedes point>

Ferkin' pedant.