Grendel

The winter war is a part of history that I know very little about. I’m sure that I am not alone in this.

Perhaps you could recommend some good reading – particularly about the air war. Are there any autobiographies from Finnish pilots available in English?

Regards

Dak

I wonder if it needs to be brought into the 21st century. The days of facing enormous numbers of enemy tanks on the battlefield are gone for most of the worlds airforces. With decent communications artillery should be able to supply the necessary 24/7 support for the front line troops, with aerial support being largely what it was in WWI… ie the eye in the sky in the form of a UAV. Why risk an aircraft to deliver the payload when an artillery 30km away can do it without risking a pilot. There is less chance of collateral damage when the guys in the frontline are marking the targets with their lasers. If they can’t find the targets then the UAVs can be used to mark the targets instead.

:confused: This is a wind up right?

Another shortie was Eric ‘sawn-off’ Lock who was, according to some accounts, the second highest scorer in the Battle of Britain. He needed three cushions on his chute to see adequately out of his Spit. Lockie went missing on a fighter sweep in 1942.

[QUOTE=XN923;1091613]I think it’s in ‘Vulcan 607’, though I’m not sure and don’t have my sources to hand, that the crater in the runway from Black Buck 1 was only repaired cosmetically – i.e. thrown full of rubble and hasily concreted over to give the appearance that the runway was functioning again, but actually could not have supported aircraft landing on the ‘repaired’ section. Does anyone have any confirmation or otherwise for this?

XN

In David Morgan’s book ‘Dangerous Skies’, he quotes the fact that the Argentines had installed chain arrestor gear after 607’s hit on the runway. The only reason for doing this was to retain the ability to recover fast jet aircraft in emergency. The damage to the runway was not just a big hole. A delayed fuse, thousand pound, medium capacity bomb dropped from high altitude will cause more damage from shock wave effects than from pure blast. In this case the runway surface across a large area had been lifted and compromised. This made repairs very difficult with no dedicated equipment at hand.

Dave’s book will also explain why Sharkey Ward’s contention, that a card formation of four Shars could have achieved the same goal, is wrong. To cause similar damage to the runway, they would to have to drop from a high enough altitude to ensure penetration but low enough for reasonable accuracy. This would have put them smack in the middle of the Roland missile envelope – a system that demonstrated it’s effectiveness a few days later on a GR3 – not to mention the radar layed AAA. To drop from low level, or in a toss attack, would have caused very little damage, hence the 800 sqn attacks on Stanley airfield used mainly CBUs to damage structures and grounded aircraft.

HPS

I recommend this book. Dave Morgan was a light blue flying with 800 sqn on Hermes. He has no axe to grind and therefore his story of the conflict is refreshing. There is no hint of any friction between 800 and 801 indeed non between the hierarchies of Hermes and Invincible evident in this account. No mention of dissatisfaction with the Blue Fox either!
The other book to read, if you want a fuller picture, is Sandy Woodward’s account of the conflict. This may explain some of the ‘incredulous’ decisions made by the task force commander, which Sharkey Ward could not understand.

One book does not a history make.

Skyraider toilet bomb.

Gary

Would that be the P47 recovered from a certain part of Shropshire?

Didn’t Richey write another book detailing his later wartime career?