Battle of Britain BBC2 last night

1940’s Dig

Cheers Tangmere! 😉

“Dig 1940” has still not been scheduled but I am told news is expected “soon”.

It was orginally scheduled as a three-parter to be included in the ‘Battle of Britian Season’ but evidently BBC1 had difficulty finding slots in its scheduling to include it over that period.

I hear regularly from the producer so will post news as soon as I have it.

The Dig

Has the WW2 dig been on TV yet??

I think Spitfires / Hurricanes did fire ‘explosive’ 303 (7.7mm) ammunition during the Battle-of-Britain but I’m not sure if it was common.

Was it not the de wilde ammunition that gave a flash on impact? I’d be surprised if there was explosive .303 ammunition…

RAF podcast tells tale of Polish pilots

RAF podcast tells tale of Polish pilots

——————————————————————————–

A new set of podcasts produced by the RAF Museum in the United Kingdom reveals
the bravery of Polish pilots during the Battle of Britain, whose 70th
anniversary falls this year.

Today’s date, 11 October, has been specifically selected to commemorate the 70th
anniversary of the withdrawal of 303 (Polish) Squadron from the front line after
a successful tour of duty which recorded the destruction of 126 enemy aircraft
in 42 days.

The record made `303′ the most successful of all the RAF Squadrons that defended
Great Britain and its peoples during the Battle of Britain.

The recognition of the Polish pilots is described in the podcast. “In all, 145
Polish pilots fought in the Battle of Britain. For 29 of their number killed,
they shot down 203 German aircraft,” assistant curator of the RAF Museum Peter Devitt told Polish Radio

http://www.thenews.pl/international/?id=141322

Any chance of a free magazine? 😉 Kidding! 😀

I thought an explosive-filled bullet was by definition a cannon shell…

Broadly speaking (don’t shoot me :rolleyes:) up to 8mm it’s a machine-gun, up to 13mm (12.7mm / 50cal) it’s a heavy-machine-gun, from 15mm to 35mm it’s a cannon…

…and 40mm is for shooting at aircraft! :diablo:

I think Spitfires / Hurricanes did fire ‘explosive’ 303 (7.7mm) ammunition during the Battle-of-Britain but I’m not sure if it was common.

I thought an explosive-filled bullet was by definition a cannon shell 🙂

Thanks for the welcome, Creaking Door: I posted my view on the ammo debate as an individual enthusiast, but I should perhaps introduce myself the Associate Editor of Today’s Pilot (the monkey, if you like, to Dave Unwin’s organ grinder).

Isn’t this simple weight of ammunition – more accurately projectiles – all wrong?

Yes…..but not all cannon shells carry explosive and some bullets carry explosive too. I like your idea of ‘destructive power’ but I’d say there are two more important factors yet; skill (hitting the target) and luck!

Welcome to the forum. 🙂

Isn’t this simple weight of ammunition – more accurately projectiles – all wrong? The point is that cannon fire exploding shells rather than bullets. With the latter, weight and velocity – the components of kinetic energy – are the factors that determine the energy and thus destructive power. Part of a cannon shell’s destructive effect will be kinetic energy, but it is the explosive power that does the damage…

So, who has the figures (round weights, muzzle velocities and combustion energy) to calculate the gross ‘destructive power’ of the ammunition used in Spit, Hurricane (easy) and Messerschmitt 109?

So, different or not, they were tasked to fight each other so comparisons are inevitable.

Inevitable but a dead-end when discussed in terms of ‘better’ or ‘worse’. It’s a playground argument – that’s why I reckon it’s an odd affliction for such a grown-up historian as Mr Holland.

The implication that the switch from airfield attacks was not actually as crucial as generally accepted – now for me, that’s something worthy of debate!

Would the Luftwaffe have been able to destroy the RAF even if it kept bombing the airfields in the south?

The Luftwaffe weren’t trying to destroy the RAF; they were trying to destroy Fighter Command.

One of the problems the Luftwaffe had was that they didn’t know exactly where to bomb; there were plenty of airfields in Britain but most of them had little to do with Fighter Command. For example on 18th August (the so-called ‘hardest day’) the Luftwaffe made some very damaging attacks on airfields, unfortunately the most damaging attack was to the airfield at Ford which wasn’t even run by the RAF, it was a Fleet Air Arm training airfield for torpedo-carrying aircraft, so the total harm to Fighter Command was nil!

Also, had the Luftwaffe managed to seriously damage any Fighter Command airfield, squadrons and ground crew could have been relocated almost overnight and the Luftwaffe wouldn’t necessarily have been aware of the change, wasting bombs on the empty airfield. It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that with a few decoy aircraft and genuine repair work the airfield would prove a tempting target and if not regularly bombed would soon return to operational status.

Fair enough – I take your point.

Agree with all that Sky High, it’s the one-sided comparisons that conclude that one is better than the other that disappoint me. By all means compare them but highlight the advantages of each and let the reader/viewer decide!

Peter

Maybe, but it certainly won’t stop the debate which has been raging for decades…………;) And in any case they were, together with the Hurricane, the three aircraft involved in fighting each other during the Summer of 1940. So, different or not, they were tasked to fight each other so comparisons are inevitable.

I really don’t know why historians insist on comparing the Spitfire and 109 in any case as they were totally different aircraft.

They may have been about the same size and a few mph away from each other in top speed, but you only have to look at the differing wing designs to see that the Spitfire preferred to go round and round in circles and that the 109 liked to go up and down in the vertical plane.

Any comparison which sets out to prove that one is better than the other in my view is meaningless, and other than mentioning some of the attributes of ‘the chosen one’, it’s a complete waste of time.

Peter

Re bombing of civilians. Go back to WW1 and the Zeppelin and Gotha raids on UK.

But that’s a debate that goes round and round and round. In any case he was drawing conclusions from a number of 1st hand sources, not they form an objective assessment of the pros and cons – only how the pilots recall what happened to them.

It wasn’t just Hajo Herrmann being selective either, some of James Holland’s arguments were very one-sided, especially his assessment of the Spitfire against the 109.

Peter

it was RAF Bomber Command that started boming cities for no reason

And old Picasso even painted Guernica which I’m reasonably confident Bomber Command weren’t involved in

Good to see Hajo Herrman on fine form, complaining that it was RAF Bomber Command that started boming cities for no reason (and set the pattern for that type of warfare) and Germany just responded. He seems to have forgotten about Warsaw, Rotterdam etc. A brave man, no doubt, but a bit selective with his memory. This really should have been challenged.