All village girls in the 18th or 19th Century have heaving bosoms and are generally Satan’s willing lapdogs…

Actually, that pretty-much still applies around my village! :diablo:

This extract from the February 1944 Report is interesting:-

“The proportion of attacks made from some position below the bomber remains the same as in previous months (35% as reported by surviving crews), but the detailed damage returns have shown a noticeable number of cases in which strikes were scored from steeply below.

….A number of surprise attacks in which the attacking fighter was not seen at any stage – 16 in all – also points to fairly frequent use of some tactic by which the attack is delivered from steeply below.

….Very few cases are reported, however, in which the enemy aircraft is actually seen attacking from such a position – only 3 in the current month – so that it is not possible to discover from the combat reports the method by which such attacks are made, i.e. whether by a special manoeuvre or by use of a free gun.”

Just after quoting the same report there is an interesting passage in ‘Men of Air’ (which is better than I first thought) by Kevin Wilson:

“The Air Ministry even put out a press statement a few weeks later insisting under headlines such as ‘The Scarecrow Flare Is A German Bluff’ (Daily Express 14th April 1944) that crews had nothing to worry about.”

The same newspaper article gave an interesting description of what a ‘scarecrow’ looked like:

“When these scarecrows burst there is a sheet of orange flame for about half a minute, followed by oily black smoke. A shower of coloured fragments shoots outwards and drops slowly. The whole show lasts for about three quarters of a minute.”

So it’s Wyvvern?

That’s what it said on the label. :diablo:

Susan (Shawn and Bill) welcome to the forum.

What a remarkable coincidence that you son is now living in Italy.

For anybody new to this thread Bill’s wartime service is the subject of this article from the January 2008 edition of the ‘Clarion Newsletter’:

Here is an account from 205 Group navigator Flight Lieutenant William (Bill) Turner RCAF that I found on the web:

Raid on Turin Ball Bearing Factory 24th November 1943:

“A pronounced cold front was very active over the area we were to traverse. It was hoped the front would weaken before we arrived at the Italian coast; but it grew more intense with winds 50-70 knots – this was not to helpful for an aircraft flying at 120 knots. We were blown off course and we were unable to get a specific pinpoint. We were confronted by masses of cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds. We couldn’t reach a higher altitude as our dear old Wimpy had troubles. We had to go below the cloud to try to get an accurate pinpoint to put us on the right course to the target.

We descended to a planned altitude of 3000 ft. I suddenly spotted a light that should not have been there. The WOP dropped a small flare and immediately lit up the ground below us revealing an Italian Villa with a marble statue in the garden. We were less than 300 ft, I anxiously told our Pilot to pull up and told the bomb aimer, who was in the nose of the craft, to drop our bomb load. We were just about blown to pieces by our own bombs. Our pilot (Eric) saw more than the rest of the crew – he never spoke the rest of the way home.

We then went down the coast of Sardinia. We saw two or three explosions, which were later, discovered as being crashed Wellingtons. We finally got a pinpoint and headed to our landing strip at El Oudna in Tunisia. The de-briefing was not a happy one – the losses were in the neighbourhood of 25% with very few aircraft reaching the target.”

http://www.unit302.ca/ClarionJanuary2008.pdf (Page 8)

This excellent account comes from the January 2008 edition of the ‘Clarion Newsletter’ from the Sidney Unit #302 website:

http://www.unit302.ca/

Is that were the dated expression ‘flaming onions’ comes from I wonder?

It is interesting (to me anyway) to speculate what a ‘scarecrow’ device would be like, assuming you had to design one.

First I would try to understand what a scarecrow was trying to simulate. An unseen bomber suddenly having its petrol tanks set alight by an unknown (and unseen) form of attack and then the bomber (judged by the flames coming from it) losing control and plummeting to earth.

The assumption seems to be that scarecrows are the result of Schräge Musik attacks but why should this be the case? The strength of the Schräge Musik attack seems to be to get a greater proportion of the cannon shells to hit the target at a predicted point thanks to close-range and zero-deflection. Clearly also the fighter was almost never seen but then attacking night-fighters were seldom seen in the more traditional forms of attack and the end result was often the same, cannon-fire setting the wing fuel-tanks alight.

What made Schräge Musik unseen to the crews of other bombers? Was it because tracer ammunition wasn’t used, although I’ve read one account of a gunner from another bomber stating that he saw green (I think) tracer being fired at 80° into the belly of a bomber (and being somewhat ‘miffed’ that the intelligence officer dismissed this saying the gunner didn’t know what he was talking about!). Was tracer used in the forward-firing cannon of German night-fighters? I don’t think it was in British night-fighters until June 1944.

The explosion of standard ‘flak’ shells must be visible at night from a considerable distance, and although not as likely as fighter losses flak must have claimed some bombers, so were the losses from that cause distinguishable from Schräge Musik losses?

Personally I think it would be quite difficult to produce a shell that could be fired from the common 88/105/150mm flak guns that would (invisibly) climb to a height of 20,000 feet and that would burst (but not visibly explode) and produce a convincing ‘flaming wreckage’ trail (and possibly even burn on the ground). I’ve never read any other description than a ‘shell’ for a scarecrow; never heard them called ‘scarecrow rocket’ for example.

And should such a technical achievement have been made it was kept so secret that not a single document, drawing, specification or instruction is in the public domain nor has any former flak-crew (who’s number often included schoolchildren, Hitler-Youth or ‘willing’ POWs) come forward.

So from a ‘technical’ point-of-view I personally doubt that ‘scarecrow (or scarecrew)’ shells existed.

Maybe, but how do they tell that by swinging all-four at once (with one pair of hands)? :confused:

A warm-up exercise possibly?