Tribute to the vrews of the Lancasters

[Ken The Kanuck]

As some of you might remember I have an Uncle who served in the Lanc's. For those of you with an interest in WWII aviation here is a video which you might like. Let it download a bit and they go back and let it play, much smoother that way.

KTK

http://vimeo.com/13430247

[John Sukey]

I did notice one quick clip in the bombing sequence where, unlike the Lancaster, there were no spinners on the props. A different Aircraft?

[Pete]

Years ago I read a biography of "Bomber" Harris who commanded the RAF Bomber Command. It said that when he invited junior aides over for dinner he liked to place a "whoopie cushion" on one of the chairs in the dining room for a laugh. The writer quoted one of his aides, who said when he sat down there was a "rude noise."

[Art]

I did notice one quick clip in the bombing sequence where, unlike the Lancaster, there were no spinners on the props. A different Aircraft?

I think that bomber is a Handley-Page Halifax another of the Brit. night bombing "heavies" and a fine aircraft in its own right.

[Jeremy]

I did notice one quick clip in the bombing sequence where, unlike the Lancaster, there were no spinners on the props. A different Aircraft?
Lancaster II had radials....only 300 were built.

[Ken The Kanuck]

Years ago I read a biography of "Bomber" Harris who commanded the RAF Bomber Command. It said that when he invited junior aides over for dinner he liked to place a "whoopie cushion" on one of the chairs in the dining room for a laugh. The writer quoted one of his aides, who said when he sat down there was a "rude noise."

I have been reading a little about "Bomber Harris" it seems that quite a few people feel that he should be named "Butcher Harris" for continuing to bomb German cities (civilian populations using carpet bombing techniques) as late as Feb. 1945 when it was obvious that that these bombing missions had no effect upon the outcome of the war.

KTK

[Art]

I have been reading a little about "Bomber Harris" it seems that quite a few people feel that he should be named "Butcher Harris" for continuing to bomb German cities (civilian populations using carpet bombing techniques) as late as Feb. 1945 when it was obvious that that these bombing missions had no effect upon the outcome of the war.

KTK

Harris was not a popular man for a lot of reasons.

He was percieved as unfeeling and uncaring towards the men of bomber command, and he seemed to take glee in the carpet bombing of German cities which resulted in massive civilian casualties. There was a feeling in the UK especially after the war that death and destruction may be a necessary part of warfare but that Harris enjoyed it far too much. the term "Butcher Harris" was, I believe bestowed on him by his own aircrews because of what they looked on as his callous indifference to them.

[Pete]

World War II was a rough war, but the bombing of civilian populations by the Germans, British, and Americans was wrong. The Brits got into it when they thought it was the only way to get back at Germany after Dunkirk.

One of the things that has hardly been commented upon lately is how GPS has made bombing much more accurate than it was before. It's been a very quiet revolution that will save a lot of lives. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan haven't been all-out wars for survival for our nations, so there hasn't been a "murder them all' mentality.

[Karl]

I have been reading a little about "Bomber Harris" it seems that quite a few people feel that he should be named "Butcher Harris" for continuing to bomb German cities (civilian populations using carpet bombing techniques) as late as Feb. 1945 when it was obvious that that these bombing missions had no effect upon the outcome of the war.

KTK

Ken, the last German V-2 rocket was launched on 27 March 1945 (killed two British subjects), and the last V-1 Buzz Bomb was launched on 29 March 1945, and neither of these attacks would have any effect on the duration of the war, or who would win it. I think that Sir Arthur and Hap Arnold had every right to continue bombing Germany, right until the Nazi's surrendered. German leadership knew exactly how to stop allied bombing, and they continued to order hostile actions by any loyal elements that were still functional. Similarly, are you of the opinion that we Americans shouldn't have dropped the Atomic bombs on Japan? Their use didn't change the outcome of the war, they only hastened it, thus saving countless American and Japanese lives. He'll be "Bomber" Harris in my book, forever.

Best regards, Karl

[Pete]

Karl, say again last message. Post again in a larger font so we can read it. End of Message, out here.

[Dan in NY]

Here in southern NY, I have come to find out the original owners of our home (built around 1900) had a son born in 1918 that grew up to join the RAF and was subsequently shot down on his 13th mission over Cologne in Aug, 1943....The Lancaster made it about 100 miles off the Holland coast and thats where the last transmission was.....Plane & crew never recovered...As I walk around this house, I often think of him, as a young man living here, and going off to war..never to return..

found the info on lostbombers site

[Bill]

Harris wrote what is essentially an autobiography, especially covering the wartime years. Many of his views make more sense after reading the book.

He was also very stubborn. He opposed the pathfinder force, the target bombing of the oil industry, and many other ideas, including the use of the bombers to soften up in preparation for D day. It was necessary to temporarily place the RAF bomber command under the command of Eisenhower before that issue was resolved.

Interestingly, once he was ordered to undertake something which he opposed, he went to work on it with full vigor.

It appears that there were two main reasons why he undertook "area bombing", one he believed in it, and two, he had no resources to do anything else until much later in the war.

The 8th Air Force made much of bombing Berlin, but does one suppose the targets were purely stragetic?

[John Kepler]

I did notice one quick clip in the bombing sequence where, unlike the Lancaster, there were no spinners on the props. A different Aircraft?

It was a "Wimpy".....a Vickers Wellington, Britain's main bomber into 1943.

[John Kepler]

You folks are blaming the wrong guy...Harris was the pupil (so was Curtis LeMay), Adm. Giulio Douhet was the teacher! It was Douhet that advocated breaking "The Will of the People" with the bombing (incendiary) and gassing of civilian populations from the air. In another sense, it was the US Army itself that proved Harris's case for night area bombing. Early in the war, Bomber Command attempted more or less precision strategic bombing of industrial sites....sent the planes to bomb a specific factory, with crews that strove manfully to prosecute the targets with "navigational aides" that you wouldn't trust your kid to find the nearest Walmart with, fought valiantly, and died heroically. They would report the "devastation" that they had metted out to the Hun, and US Army observers in Germany (we weren't in the war yet) would hop in a car and drive to find the allegedly "destroyed" factory completely undamaged and men working at their jobs none the worse for wear! The "mean" miss-rate was measured in MILES! Harris, like "Hap" Arnold, read these reports and came up with a better solution.

[Art]

It was a "Wimpy".....a Vickers Wellington, Britain's main bomber into 1943.

Nope, it's definately a four engine bomber. The Wellington was a twin engine long range medium bomber. Looking at the picture again though I think the fuselage might be too slender for it to be a Halifax. The tail surfaces don't show up which would be a dead giveaway. All things considered I think there's a real good chance that the heavy bomber in question is a Short Sterling, an earlier aircraft of Britains trio of four engine heavy bombers.

[John Kepler]

I didn't see 4 engines, but then again, I didn't get all that good a look at it. A Stirling had a fuselage that looks more like a Wimpy than a Halifax does, so I'll buy that. I was also playing the percentages....there were a LOT more Wimpy's than either Stirlings or Halifaxes. Also, more Halifaxes had Rolls-Royce Merlins than the Bristol Hercules (2091 out of a total of 6170).

[John Sukey]

Note that what really crippled the german war effort was hitting their oil fields. No gas, for the tanks, trucks, or Luftwaffe.

There is a story that Harris protested stopping the bombing of cities and hitting the invasion area instead and had to be ORDERED to do so.

Now the treatment of Dowding later on was a disgrace since he stopped the luftwaffe at the battle of Britain.

[Art]

John

I think you are absolutely right on the bombing of oil fields, synthetic petroleum plants and refineries. These were the only indispensible assets the Germans couldn't move or hide. I also believe that the American long range escort fighters forced the Luftwaffe fighters into combat on disavantageous terms resulting in the destruction of the bulk of the Nazi fighter forces thus ensuring allied air superiority after the spring of 1944. I think that these two factors shortened the war, I think it is highly debatable that any other aspect of the Anglo-American strategic bombing offensive shortened the war by a day.

Nazi war production actually increased throught 1944 and the effect on civilian morale was minimal just as the effect on civilian morale was minimal when the Nazi's were bombing the UK in 1940-41.

[John Kepler]

Without straying too far off-topic, I have to at least partially disargee with both of you. The effects of the bombing campaign were as subtle as they were profound and began reshaping the conflict almost from the beginning of the war. The German Army used "Combined Arms Mobile Doctrine" as a massive force-multiplier. The damage, real or imagined, being caused by the bombing forced the Luftwaffe into having more jobs than it had assets. Both pilot training and aircraft production radically shifted out of supporting the Heer to protecting Hun airspace. Given that both Goering and Udet were fighter jocks and leaned that way without being terribly forced, and German close air-support all but vanished by the end of 1942. Germany didn't introduce one successful bomber during the war (the HE-177 don't count since it was actually a flying prototype in 1939, and as it's protracted development suggests, was never successful!)there was no 2nd Generation dive-bomber. Alloy steel necessary to build tanks and U-Boats was instead diverted to making FLAK guns. As for oil. In many ways, Arthur Harris was more sinned against than sinning. The synthetic oil and benzol plants were absolutely "b!tchy" targets. Small (particularly the benzol plants), and yet heavily defended...they never were completely eliminated. Harris labling them "panacea targets" was largely correct. What hamstrung the Huns was transportation...they were making oil, but eventually couldn't move it. They had a potential "war-winner" in the Type XXI "Electro-Boats", but the overwhelming bulk of them were never completed due to an inability to move the completed sub-sections to the assembly yard (due in no small measure to the RAF's 617 Squadron Lancasters destroying the Dortmund-Ems Canal with "Tall-Boy" and "Grand-Slam"). Rail networks and cities tend to grow together...destroy the city and the rail network collapses with it...and vice versa!. So area bombing DID work, and DID give the Huns more jobs than they had assets to handle...and that gents, is a formula that has but one outcome!

[John Kepler]

John

INazi war production actually increased throught 1944 and the effect on civilian morale was minimal just as the effect on civilian morale was minimal when the Nazi's were bombing the UK in 1940-41.

True, but HIGHLY misleading....read Albert Speer's book! Hun war-production peaked in early 1944....that is true as a "stand-alone" factoid. It does NOT indicate that the Allied bombing campaign "didn't shorten the war by a day", but is an indicator of just how well it worked and how much damage was being caused. Hun war-production increased because of draconian shifts in manufacturing from fighting a war AND maintaining a civilian society, to one devoting the entire remaining industrial infrastructure to war-production at the expense of the civil society. It was like giving a guy dying of cancer a massive shot of meth....he's "up and running" for a time, but dies just that much faster. The Huns could not sustain the effort long enough in that mode to win the war, and that's how the game is played to win.

[John Sukey]

Another thing to blame Douhet for. "The bomber will always get through" Took us a while to learn that lesson the HARD way and the P51 to make it happen.
That was also the reason the British switched to night bombing.
If we had gone along with Billy Mitchell we would only have built bombers.

[Kirk]

World War II was a rough war, but the bombing of civilian populations by the Germans, British, and Americans was wrong. The Brits got into it when they thought it was the only way to get back at Germany after Dunkirk.

One of the things that has hardly been commented upon lately is how GPS has made bombing much more accurate than it was before. It's been a very quiet revolution that will save a lot of lives. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan haven't been all-out wars for survival for our nations, so there hasn't been a "murder them all' mentality.

Harris had few options. Prior to the D-Day invasion, the only real way to damage Germany on the Western front was through the air. Should the Brits sit on their hands and let the Germans continue to bomb British cities & forces? Bombing did divert German resources into defenses that could have been used for offense. Should the Allies have supplied the Soviets and let them take all of Europe from the East? The Soviets were screaming for a second front & belittled the air campaign - until they got into Germany and saw the destruction. Early in the war, the Brits tried daylight bombing but abandoned it as too costly; RAF bombers were no match for German fighters (and continued to be lightly/inadequately armed through the entire war). Night bombing was tried; losses were less but navigation was poor; weather was mostly bad & it was common for bombs to fall miles off target. Navigation schemes like Oboe & Gee got pilots closer but still nowhere as close as the US daylight precision bombing. The US bombing campaign did not begin in earnest until early 1943, some 3 years after the Brits started their air campaign. That's a long time to sit on one's hands when the Germans were strangling the UK with U boats.

Curtis LeMay, adapting what he'd learned over Germany, fire bombed Japan, killing far more people than died under the A-bombs. Was that necessary? How long would have WWII continued with out the A-bombs? How many millions would have died had the US invaded (the Brits were spent & sent no land forces)?

GPS? Smart bombs? I'm sure you are aware GPS is a satellite based nav system not developed until two decades after 1945. Smart bombs were developed & used by both Germany & the US. The US version used a "miniature" TV camera & transceiver housed in the nose of the Bat, a glide bomb. It became operational late in the war & the US used it in the Pacific against Japanese ships - actually sank at least two. The German version used radio guidance, was fielded, I believe in 1943 and they sank several Allied ships. Both were easy to defeat - jam the transmission signals and the weapon became a dumb bomb. After a few sinkings, the Allies knew the command frequency of the German weapon & when attacked by the guided bombs, simply broadcast "left; left; left, etc." to spoil the bombardier's aim. The US TV-guided glide bomb was very expensive due to the electronics and it never became a general purpose weapon. The glide bomb was carried under the wing of a large aircraft like a B-24 so only two could be carried at one time.

How "innocent" were the German civilians? If you talk about women, many are totally innocent as were all young children. Men above age 16 - if they supported Hitler or the NAZIs in any way, they suffered the consequences of their decisions. Many Germans were not blind to what Hitler envisioned when they elected or supported him in the early 30s. Mass demonstrations (let alone ballot box decisions) against Hitler could have stopped him in the earliest years. But they did not oppose him, except for a very few, and they suffered for it. Ditto for the Japanese. Japanese society had nearly total dedication to the Emperor & his Prime Minister's "Greater South East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". The Japanese wanted total domination of SE Asia. By 1945, Japanese were preparing for total defense - every able bodied man, woman and child - for the invasion they knew was coming. Photos of one burned out Japanese city showed rows of what looked like milling machines that had been in the living room of every house on a street. After the fires, the machines were the only things left. Each family had contributed to the war by making one part for some weapon. Not much different than the German civilian who contributed in some small way to Hitler's war effort. The Japanese too suffered for their choices.

Yes, Harris was unpopular and was shunned after the war by nearly everyone. Many of those who shunned him - and everyone else - owe him a debt of gratitude because he effectively blunted the German offensive in the West. They may think him uncivilized & inhumane but no one else came up with anything better or had the guts to carry it out. As harsh as it sounds, he and others like him such as LeMay and Tibbets ended the war quicker & with far fewer casualties than if they had not done what they did.

I think one should be real careful about second guessing someone like Harris, especially at the comfortable distance of 50+ years. Give us a better alternative.

[Sunray]

"...Lancasters..." Amazes me how small they were for having such a big bomb load. Far more than a B-17. Ever seen the Warplane Heritage Lanc?
Told a buddy's da, who had been a CTP instructor, about dive bombing with a Lanc in the flight simulator I have. "Why would you want to do that?", he says. "Because I can.", says me. Got the look.

[John Kepler]

The Lanc paid some heavy penalties for that huge bomb load, beginning with service ceiling...functionally, 15,000 feet versus 28,000 for the B-17. Defensive armament was light (.30 cals), and somewhat scanty (3 gun emplacements). The Merlins were simply wonderful engines, but as a liquid-cooled design were more fragile and susceptible to combat-damage than an air-cooled radial. LOTS of things can shoot at you at 15,000 feet that can't shoot at you at 25,000! Not a knock....Roy Chadwick's design reflected the application the RAF called for.

FWIW, 617 Squadron of dam-buster fame (and known as the Lincolnshire Poachers according to the regular Pathfinder Force) and it's innovative and legendary commander, Guy Gibson, used the Lanc virtually as a dive-bomber for highly precise target-marking for 5 Group. It worked VERY well in that role, but the Mossey worked better. Before being KIA, Gibson, 617 Squadron, and 5 Group in general developed a number of highly successful tactics with one goal in mind.....to start quite deliberately and methodically what occured mainly by accident at Hamburg in 1943...a firestorm. 5 Group got quite good at it, culminating at Dresden, Feb. 13-14, 1945 where 5 Group started an enormous firestorm in the Dresden "Altstadt" area before the main attack hit the city 3 hours later (that scheduled time gap was to allow the fire-fighters enough time to get mobilized and on-site from the surrounding area...and then kill them all.....it worked, very few fire-fighters that arrived at Dresden during that gap survived the second attack!). Curtis LeMay took every lesson learned by 5 Group, sans the painful "trial and error" development period and applied it to Japan fully grown with an even more potent weapon-system, generating a firestorm that burned for 3 days (the city itself burned for more than a week) destroying 15 square MILES of Tokyo in a single night!

Side-bar....Guy Gibson was just 26 years old when he was killed in Holland in 1944.