Gaining An R.A.F Pilots Brevet In WW II

[regle]

A thought on the appearance of the Bomber streams over Germany

I suddenly realised that the use of the "Bomber Stream" that superseded the original practice of sending aircraft over a target for as long a period as possible so that the defences were constantly in action and the workers were kept sleepless; a tactic that led to far too many losses and was then completely reversed to saturate the defences. was comparable with the wonderful Television scenes that have recently been shown of Flocks of Starlings and other birds, wheeling and manoueuvering in their hundreds and thousands. Even more apt are the scenes of fish, once again, in what must approach a million, being attacked by predators and the comparison becomes very real to the line of boxes that the Luftwaffe installed from Norway to the French frontier with Spain , each box with it's complement of radar bearing and radar controlled nightfighters. As is clearly shown on these scenes, the unfortunate stragglers and outside edgers are the ones that are picked off and piercing of the entire mass becomes well nigh impossible, so closely packed are they. Unfortunately we did not possess the innate ability to wheel and make the instant reflex avoiding action that these creatures seem to possess so that the whole mass changed direction and speed without even thinking or so it would seem. Nevertheless, that is the nearest that you will get to a simile as to what the bomber stream became. The Americans adopted the stream tactics and , with the appearance of the Packard Merlin Mustang, added fighters to the daylight stream. This effectively paved the way to the complete air superiority that the Allies eventually achieved and the Germans found that their troops and their civilians were being slaughtered as had the inhabitants of Poland. Rotterdam and the many victims of the initial "blitzkrieg". The sowing of the wind had reaped the whirlwind.