Bouncing Bomb
Some of you may recall the C4 Documentary by Dr Hugh Hunt of Cambridge University when they went off to Canada and dropped one.
We had Hugh and his students deliver a lecture to the RAeS. Odd really as it was his lecture theatre. He spoke of how Churchill had ordered that all the drawings and calculations be destroyed. Hugh and his team had to derive same from first principles. He showed a drawing they had generated from what photos remained and memories of some involved.
I had worked on these three strange aircraft we had at a facility in Cambridgeshire that moved to another facility not far from Lincoln in 1995 and was a frequent visitor to the factory that made them not far from Manchester. The same factory that designed the Bombers during the war. the military business moved to another factory in Manchester at around the same time we moved to Waddington. They were having a clear up and came across microfiche copies of the Lancaster Modification drawings listing all the part numbers contract numbers of the constituent parts (lots of bicycle chain was involved) the drawing was Classified "Most Secret" it had been declassified to Restricted as late as 1968!
I was able to pass copies of these drawings to Dr Hugh. I am not sure if he and his team were able to get hold of the other drawings referenced on the GA.
The guys up at Woodford rescued quite a bit from the skip. Well done them.
Regarding mention of block 7 and some of the C130 SF kit migrating onto the J. One of the jobs I did in 1981 was put ex Vulcan RWR (ARI 18228/1) onto the Chinook. Nothing changes.
Funny how the purpose of all these lumps and bumps can remain classified. We had two little fairings under the 4a tanks on this aircraft I worked on. I was able to convince people that they were super secret equipment I could not talk about. In fact they were covers over some little wheels that would have come into effect in the event of a wheels up landing. It was a good story we kept up for a while. Our unit motto was "Lead and Mislead"