A thought has struck me maybe my mother was bombed out by an He 177 in the winter/spring of 1943-44 (I will have to speak to her about the date) – at the time she was a young teenager living with her parents and brother (who was out when the bomb hit) at 106 Elstree Gardens in Belvedere, nr Erith. She had been evacuated a couple of times, but had drifted back, only to be evacuated again when the V1s started. In the little Blitz she claims that the Germans were trying to bomb the invasion barges moored off Erith marshes (or were German crews just dropping their bombs on the edge of London and turning for home?).

One night she was standing in one of the upstairs front bedrooms with her father watching the desultory bombing when the bomb hit. The houses were early 30’s(?) houses built in blocks of four and my grand parents house was one of the central terraced ones in a block. The bomb demolished the next block of four (it was obvious in the sixties, when I remember it, that the rebuilt block differed from the others in the row). My grandfather was behind my mother and tried to push her to the floor, but of course was too slow and the glass from the window left some small scars in her face that were still visible decades later (she is too wrinkled today!), my late father always referred to it as her “war damage”! Shielded by my mother, my grandfather was cut rather less. My grandmother found herself blown into the cupboard under the stairs but was otherwise unharmed. Picking themselves up amongst the glass and plaster the first challege that they faced was to get around the front door, which was lodged at the top of the stairs… Only one elderly man was killed – my mother says that it was because his false teeth were blown down his throat – mmm!

What do you think He-177 or not?

the fact that the luftwatte lacked a significant four engined heavy bomber cost them the air war without doubt

Would have to differ from you there – the Luftwaffe lost the air war because it was defeated in air superiority battles, ultimately in its own skies, and secondarily by shortage of fuel (which one could argue was more to do with the Red Army overruning the Romanian oil fields than by allied strategic bombing) and to an even lesser extent by shortage of strategic materials (mainly as a result of British surface naval supremacy). (Clearly this is something of an oversimplification and other factors were also involved, not least tactical and strategic errors). Having its own strategic bomber force would not have helped the Germans win any of these battles

One could put it a different way, if one wishes to make a sweeping over-simplification: the Germans lost the war because they were overrun by the Red Army in the East, whilst the Royal Navy strangled thier supply lines. Having a strategic bomber would not have helped defeat the Red Army because the Russians relocated much of thier armament industry beyond the range of heavy bombers.

The value of the Allied heavy bombing campaign in winning the war is one that has been argued both ways – there is no doubt that it did a huge amount of damage, heavily degraded the German war machine and changed post war German attitudes, but on the debit side it cost tens of thousands of airmans’ lives and absorbed a significant proportion of the Allied research effort and industrial strength that might have been used elsewhere. I think it is very difficult if not impossible to say which side of the arguement is correct – it has been powerfully argued both ways. However, the key point is that in 1939-45 the heavy bomber was not a weapon that could win wars on its own.

There is a DB610 engine unit at Wroughton (I attached a photo of this to the Wroughton thread). According to the BAPC list the RAFM also has a pair – one at Cosford and one at Hendon, which I cannot recall seeing, but maybe that is me. So we have the engines “all” we need is the airframe to hang them on!

It looks the perfect size to me to cover that hole in my shed andat 99p fairly priced.

And if you want a model of an AEC bomber command refueller: http://www.accurate-armour.com/ShowProduct.cfm?manufacturer=0&category=82&subcategory=251&product=1854

Note that it is a 6×6 truck, whereas a Matador is a 4×4 – although clearly they have much in common.

Am I alone in thinking the book “They Were Never Told” is one of the most ignorantly written books ever produced about military matters? The authors deserve to be congratulated for investigating an overlooked tragedy and for dilligently collecting (wildly conflicting) eye witness accounts. But I believe that it is clear that they have absolutely no understanding of difference between the normal elaborate measures for storing aviation fuel in HM vessels and the extremely dodgy bulk fuel storage on the US built escort carriers. As a result of this fundamental lack of comprehesion the authors come up with the most ludicrous ‘**** and bull’ theories for the loss of the vessel. So if you want to find out more about this loss by all means read this book as one information resource, but be prepared to be deeply irritated by it.

Rant over. Other RN fleet aircraft carriers lost are HMS Courageous which went down in deep water off the coast of Ireland, HMS Glorous which is in the northern North Sea, and HMS Hermes in the Indian Ocean (hasn’t this been explored?).

Of the other escort carriers, the first HMS Audacity went down on the Gibraltar run (off the Bay of Biscay if I recall correctly), and HMS Avenger was torpedoed west of Gibraltar.

I recall reading The Forgotten Fleet by John Winton, about the ’44-’45 RN Pacific Fleet, many years ago. In that I recall reading that a large number of the Seafire pilots were Australasian combat veterans from the European campaign who all had at least 2,500 hours on Spits and how helpful their expertise in flying the spit was in minimising landing crashes, given the general unsuitability of the type as a carrier aircraft.