Anybody else watch the BBC 2 Tuesday programme on the problems faced by Barnes Wallace leading up to the Dam Buster raid? Great factual reporting with some interesting film. Nicely done.
It's Wallis not Wallace. Years ago, I was proud to provide a radar service to a Vulcan fron 617 Sqdn (what else) doing a flypast at the great man's home for his birthday. Years earlier (about 1965) I went on a school trip to Weybridge/Brooklands where we were shown into his work area in the racing circuit control tower (which is now part of the museum) and they showed us models of his VG designs and told us he still came into work occasionally.
I really should have remembered how to spell his name. I had the honour of meeting him on several occasions while working at Wisley. A delightful character.
Anyone know whats happened with the 'new' dambusters movie that Steven Fry is supposedly been making for the last umpteen years ? Is it another one of those phantom movies that is just a load of hot air at the end of the day ?
Apart from the early "none of this was known till now" (which was clearly cobblers, anybody with much interest in aviation history was well aware), I thought it was an excellent, thorough and thoughtful bit of programming. Very enjoyable as well.
cyflyer: Steven Fry is not making the Dam Busters film, he is writing the script.
The film is being made by Peter Jackson, but he is heavily involved with making the Hobbit at present, so it would seem the Dam Busters has been put on the back burner.
The Swannery at Abbotsbury in Dorset has (or had) one the orginal prototypes of the bomb on display and a audio-visual presentation about the trials, some of which were conducted off Chesil Beach nearby. It's a very pleasant place to visit ...
Whilst last weeks BBC2 programme was quite good and enthusiastically presented, I still feel the best documentary on this subject was the Channel 4 Secret History episode originally shown back in early 1994. I recollect then seeing footage for the first time of Lancasters being hit by water splash also, an explosion off Reculver of a live Upkeep mine.
Some excellent test footage here including the one of a Douglas Invader dropping its bomb way too low with horrific consequences. And yes, Crisso is right, water can be seen streaming off the tail of a Lanc in one test.
Music is actually 633 squadron, but works well IMHO.
Anybody else watch the BBC 2 Tuesday programme on the problems faced by Barnes Wallace leading up to the Dam Buster raid? Great factual reporting with some interesting film. Nicely done.
Didn't the chap on the telly say 'Orgsburg'? Where's that?
Whilst last weeks BBC2 programme was quite good and enthusiastically presented, I still feel the best documentary on this subject was the Channel 4 Secret History episode originally shown back in early 1994. I recollect then seeing footage for the first time of Lancasters being hit by water splash also, an explosion off Reculver of a live Upkeep mine.
I was involved for the 60th anniversary in a later C4 project.
The plan for a while was to use a light/microlight aeroplane with substantial modifications to drop a scaled down bouncing bomb. We got very enthusiastic about this, and had various boffins involved doing a lot of maths.
It turned out that the size and speed of the splash-plume creation was such that basically anything slower than a Lanc couldn't do it. Either you were so high that the bomb wouldn't bounce, or you were so low that the plume would strike and probably damage / destroy the aeroplane.
Which was very dissapointing, and that bit of the project got knocked on the head.
One interesting lesson from that - working with the boffins at Qinetiq, was that much of BNW's calculations had been destroyed at the end of the war, the assumption being at the time that this knowledge was too dangerous to leave in the archives. So a lot of his maths on how the bouncing bomb worked had to be derived again from scratch. Much faster second time around - we had Microsoft Excel - which nicely replaced a whole team of assistants that BNW would have had.
The rest of it however, clearly went well and it was a great programme. I'm just very sorry I wan't involved after we dropped the scale-bouncing-bomb bit.
I thought the program was excellent, only problem was the narrator who's delivery could have been an awful lot better. Dan Snow would have done a better job I think. I too, in the sixties, had the very great pleasure of meeting Barnes Wallis, he was at that time still working for BAC, as it then was. I went to the Museum at Weybridge a while ago and when I walked into his office it was just as I remebered it. Only things missing were the Tallboy & Grandslam bombs either side of the entrance to the "tower"
That's an interesting clip. I didn't know Invaders had been used in the trials. And why was the Lancaster chosen over the Mosquito? I would have thought the Mossie would have been a bit more nimble for the approach to the dams.
And why was the Lancaster chosen over the Mosquito? I would have thought the Mossie would have been a bit more nimble for the approach to the dams.
The weight of the Upkeep bomb was too much for a Mosquito by about a factor of 2 - also, to spin the Upkeep bomb, an additional petrol engine was mounted in the Lancaster.
The Invader was trialling Highball for use by the American air force. The fatal release is insanely low. I don't know if it has ever been established why the pilot was so low, as British practice (which he must surely have known about) was to release much higher, after the early incidents with Upkeep damaging Lancaster's tails.
