O Table ad nauseum !
I too, had Latin at the Liverpool Institute and hated it. I was very interested in the "Britannic" episode and saw that I would have been eight years old and so in the prep school for the "Inny" when I saw her set off on her maiden voyage so it would be just ten years later when I set sail in her in 1941 from Greenock in company with the "Rodney" and three or four Destroyers to help us evade the "Bismarck". in which the "Rodney", who had left us to administer the "coup de grace", in that epic Sea Battle and we were ,unwittingly, involved.
The use of the "Schrage Music" , four upward firing, fixed angle guns mounted on the top front of the fuselage of the night fighter ME110, became one of the most lethal weapons of the Luftwaffe and almost impossible to evade as the 110 would "stalk" the unfortunate victim from many miles back at a much lower altitude and then keep pace but climb steadily always underneath and well nigh impossible to see until it was near enough to unleash the lethal fusillade that would invariably hit the main mid section fuel tank. It is true that we had an aircraft proximity device (Monica) that "squeaked" when picking up an aircraft close to you but as we were six or seven hundred in a small stream the darned thing would be going from start to finish of the operation so it was usually switched off. I had already adopted the dreadfully tiring but invaluable practice of a constant "Corkscrew" of the Halifax that I was flying from the moment that we crossed the enemy coast until we recrossed it on the way out. This left us the vulnerability of the "straight and level" neccessity of the bombing run over the target and was , probaly the most dangerous few minutes of the whole seven to nine hours of the normal raids. It was then that your gunners could and , in my case, did save all our lives by their vigilance and tactics of turret rotation in semi synchronisation with each other as they searched the skies below and behind us as we crossed the target like "sitting ducks". In a sense the success of "Window " was a double edged weapon that rebounded upon Bomber Command and saw the adoption , by the Luftwaffe, of a completely new means of combating the Night Bomber. I was in the attack on Hamburg on the night of July 23rd. 1943 that saw the first use of "window". The dropping of thousands of tinfoil strips by each Bomber as it approached the target completely swamped the German Radar as each strip gave the same "blip" as an aeroplane. Fighters were being guided to "hundreds of" Englanders"
and reporting none to be seen and even, in some extreme cases, being ordered to land back to their bases and report to the Commanding Officer, suspected of being Cowards. Our losses were much lower from then on but the Luftwaffe soon adopted the tactics of flooding the targets with searchlights , focussing them so that they made a carpet of light at a medium altitude. They then threw in all their day fighter force who patrolled at an altitude above the Bombing Force and then tore into them with devastating results as the bombers were silhouetted against the searchlights and fires blazing below. The ME110 night fighters would have been engaging the "stream" before and after the target with their tactics as described before and the combined efforts soon brought the losses back to the pre-Window level.
I was fascinated with the Lampedusa episode and knew nothing of the "Musical" that was made. It must have made the headlines of the Press if it had been allowed in those days. Thanks for all the "Gen", Speke and Union .... It is , as you so rightly say, what is so good about the Forum. You can ask and , in my case, certainly learn so much that you did'nt know before. Keep it up. Keep those bits of "useless information", comments and questions rolling in. Apropos this. What do you think about the proposal that all Doctors will have to pass a five yearly examination on their knowledge in order to keep on practising. ? When I was Airline flying I always used to gripe about the difference in the two professions inasmuch as I had to pass a six monthly medical with the Airline (Sabena's normal practice) , a yearly National medical , a yearly proficiency Check and at least one yearly "line" check. Once a Dr. has his initial "licence" to practice.......! We don't say that we "practice" flying, we assume that we know how without practising. Think about it ! Regle