wellingtons

i tried watching this prog last night ….. but i was most frustrated by the presenter and that woman doing the voice over – particularly the reading of the poem at the end . more like a good 10 minutes’ worth of interest and too much repetition ! if he is a serious investiagtor why not actually start with the CHORLEY losses – he got there in the end almost by accident . how often were we told about the 13 airmen who died ?

surprising lack of recognition of this date in the media – it wasn’t even the first item on BBC’s site ON THIS DAY

NX664
no wartime operational history

delivered to 30 & 32 MU

wrong film clips – poor editing – etc etc

it was ok for the general public i suppose

not for people who belong to this site i think !

at one stage in the programme sargeant’s script writers had him claim that the Peenemunde op was mainly a Lancaster operation …. there were certainly more Lancasters involved – but not many more than the Halifax and Stirling contribution – a quick totting up of numbers Group by Group indicates thus –
1 Gp 115 Lancasters
3 Gp 54 Stirlings 12 Lancasters
4 Gp145 Halifaxes
5 Gp 117 Lancasters
6 Gp (RCAF) 52 Halifaxes 9 Lancasters
8 Gp (PFF) 73 Lancasters 21 Halifaxes

i conclude that 326 Lancasters , 218 Halifaxes and 54 Stirlings were involved – i suppose semantically it was true that it was a mainly Lancaster operation – but the overall figures demonstrate how close the margin was between ‘mainly’ Lancasters and ‘the rest’

cy grant -from wikipedia

In 1941, Grant joined the Royal Air Force, which had extended recruitment to non-white candidates following heavy losses in the early years of the Second World War. One of approximately 500 young men recruited from the Caribbean as aircrew, he was commissioned as an officer after training in England as a navigator. He joined 103 Squadron, based at RAF Elsham Wolds in Lincolnshire, becoming one of a seven-man crew of a Lancaster Bomber. In 1943, on his third mission, Flight Lieutenant Grant was shot down over the Netherlands during the Battle of the Ruhr. He parachuted to safety into a field but was captured by German forces and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III camp, 160 kilometres (99 mi) east of Berlin. He was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1945.[8] In 2007, Grant participated in the filming of the documentary Into the Wind (2011), in which he discusses his experiences as an RAF navigator.

anonymous T2 illustrating generic hangar types in UK

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g…0202.pdf#page1

is the T2 at keevil ? and why are all the hangar types anonymous