RadarArchiveBandwagon – jumping on. Oh well….
Episode 42
“Somewhere in England 1944”
Bovril: Morning, Squadron Leader.
S/L: What-ho, Squiffy.
Bovril: How was it?
S/L: Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how’s your father. Hairy blighter, ****y-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over his Betty Harper’s and caught his can in the Bertie.
Bovril: Er, I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you, Squadron Leader.
S/L: It’s perfectly ordinary banter, Squiffy. Bally Jerry … pranged his kite, right in the how’s yer father … hairy blighter, ****y-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Batty Harper’s and caught his can in the Bertie.
Bovril: No, I’m just not understanding banter at all well today. Give us it slower.
S/L: Banter’s not the same if you say it slower, Squiffy.
Bovril: Hold on, then. (shouts) Wingco!
Wingco: Yes!
Bovril: Bend an ear to the Squadron Leader’s banter for a sec, would you?
Wingo: Can do.
Bovril: Jolly good.
Wingco: Fire away.
S/L: (draws a deep breath and looks slightly uncertain, then starts even more deliberately than before) Bally Jerry . . . pranged his kite . . . right in the how’s yer father . . . hairy blighter . . . ****y-birdied . . . feathered back on his Sammy . . . took a waspy . . . flipped over his Betty Harper’s . . . and caught his can in the Bertie . . .
Wingco: … No, don’t understand that banter at all.
S/L: Something up with my banter, chaps?
(A siren goes. The door bursts open and an out-of-breath young pilot rushes in in his flying gear)
Pilot: Bunch of monkeys on your ceiling, sir! Grab your egg and fours and let’s get the bacon delivered.
(General incomprehension. They look at each other)
Wingco: Do you understand that?
S/L: No, didn’t get a word of it.
Wingco: Sorry old man, we don’t understand your banter.
Pilot: You know … bally ten-penny ones dropping in the custard … (searching for the words) um … Charlie Choppers chucking a handful …
Wingco: No, no … sorry.
Bovril: Say it a bit slower, old chap.
Pilot: Slower banter, sir?
Wingco: Ra-ther!
Pilot: Um … sausage squad up the blue end!
S/L: No, still don’t get it.
Pilot: Um … cabbage crates coming over the briny?
S/L: No.
Others: No, no …
(Stock film of a German bombing raid)
Voice over: But by then it was too late. The first cabbage crates hit London on July 7th. That was just the beginning …
(Cut to a Whitehall war ofice conference room. A general is on the phone. Four other generals sit there)
General: Five shillings a dozen? That’s ordinary cabbages, is it? And what about the bombs? Good Lord, they are expensive!
RadarArchiveI’d have to go with ‘The First AWACS’. I can’t remember off-hand which issue, but it was a few years back. It’s the story of Wellingtons with a dorsal radar array (a la Sentry E3Ds) patrolling up and down the Dutch coast watching for He 111s trying to air-launch V1s. Fascinating stuff. But then I would pick a radar story! 😀
RadarArchiveOriginally posted by whalebone
“That was never five minutes”“I’m afraid it was”
Surely there must be a separate Python forum? 😀
RadarArchiveAs Scots go, I’m pretty sober. I don’t drink much and not at all if I’m driving. Ican certainly pick anyone up from Edinburgh Airport or Waverley Station and transport to East Fortune/North Berwick, although I’d be limited to three others in the car.
I’m sure it would be possible to get access to the restoration and storage hangars and possibly some of the huts as well. I would be willing to organise a tour of local aviation sites if there was any interest – having written two books on military history in that part of the country – and perhaps other contributions could be included.
RadarArchiveIf it’s any help, if it is decided to go with East Fortune, since I work for the National Museums I could perhaps make some arrangements? I’m also a member of the Aviation Preservation Society of Scotland – the volunteers who do all the work down there – so I can possibly get a few doors open as well.
If anyone thinks this sounds OK, let me know and perhaps we could start to make some provisional plans.
RadarArchivedhfan,
The main bit that I know about is, surprise surprise, the terrain-following radar which is hled by the Museum of Flight at East Fortune and is on display on open days and airshows.
I know that the airframe at Shoeburyness range was burnt after being shot at numreous times, but am I right in thinking that there were rumours of small pieces still kicking about down there?
RadarArchiveDazz,
I’ve not had time to post earlier, and it looks like you have all the volunteers you need. However, if it’s any help I live in Peelbes but work in the Chambers Street museum in Edinburgh, so if you wanted I could have a look without you having to spend a fortune mailing a manuscript. Of course, you may well be e-mailing a file, so distance won’t be a problem. Anyway, just in case local help is any use, if I can be of assistance, do let me know.
RadarArchiveOriginally posted by dhfan
I’ve read rumours before that there are lots of bits scattered around the country so there’s one to be going on with.
DHFan,
Perhaps it’s worth starting a new thread about the TSR2 to see if you can get a list of where the various ‘bits’ are?
RadarArchiveOriginally posted by Der
Loch Ness is freshwater by the way, and full of peat, which must have helped preserve the Wellington.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t peat acidic? The high acidity in Scottish soils is why much archaeological material is destroyed. Even highly diluted in Loch Ness, a high acidity from peat wouldn’t have done the Wellington airframe much good. Presumably it is this that has caused the pitting and corrosion previously mentioned.
RadarArchiveA Google search has turned up some information on Sterba arrays at: http://www.qsl.net/we6w/projects/Sterba_ant.txt
Although, of course, rather technical it seems fairly clear that a Sterba array is indeed the dipoles seen down the side of the fuselage of your Fortress. I am therefore certain that the dorsal aerial has to be a normal HF or VHF R/T aerial, rather than anything to do with ASV or other radar equipment.
RadarArchiveIf I might add my tuppence worth…
The advent of flight came just after the end of the Victorian era, a period of tremendous social change when rural traditions were beginning to disappear as people drifted from the countryside into the industrial towns to work in the mills, etc. At the same time, people needed to cling to the past and the romantic ideal of history became very powerful. For example, Edward Landseer’s magnificent painting of the Monarch of the Glen typifies the Victorian image of a romantic, rural, Scottish Highlands, at a time when most Highlanders were moving into slums in Glasgow for work. This romantic image of the past, fuelled by historic writers such as Sir Walter Scott, still colours our view of the past and is the period when legends such as King Arthur and Camelot became particularly widespread. The ideas of chivalry became deeply embedded in the psyche, probably much more so than they had actually been in the medieval period. Into this romantic view of the past came the aircraft which finally fulfilled man’s dream of flying with the birds.
It was, of course, only just over ten years later that the Great War started and the romantic ideal of chivalrous, one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat was shattered when images and reports finally reached home of the carnage in the trenches. However, the one aspect of the Great War that was seen as maintaining the romantic ideal was the fighter pilot. His was an honourable war free of the mud and rats of the trenches, where modern-day knights could test their skills against each other. There, it was the better man who would win, not good men being slaughtered by weak men behind machine guns (I’m not saying weak men manned machine guns – that’s just the romantic view of the time). It was aerial combat which could be reported in the papers and wouldn’t cause respectable gentlemen to choke on their breakfast when they read it. Fighter pilots made galmorous, exciting news and that was how it was reported.
The point I’m trying to make, if you excuse the long-winded background, is that the contemporary view of history, combined with the reporting from the front lines, made the fighter pilot into the high profile modern day hero that they remain to this day.
That’s what I think, anyway. 🙂
RadarArchiveRobAnt,
I don’t know if you got these comments from the Radar Pages website, but they certainly appear there (http://www.radarpages.com) along with numerous other hilarious comments. If you ignore the radar stuff (which I suspect is only of interest to sad bug*ers like me), the funnies are excellent.
RadarArchiveThere is only one Fortress photo in Boffin, which I’m fairly certain is an IWM photo. It is a nose shot, but doesn’t really show very much.
I must confess, even though I’ve met Robert Hanbury Brown a couple of time, I’ve never heard of a Sterba array before. It sounds as though they were the dipoles in your photo, but the description of them being 12 feet long suggests something else. I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you.
RadarArchiveI stand corrected! 😮 Having checked Robert Hanbury Brown’s autobiography, ‘Boffin’ I note the following: in early 1941 Coastal Command were alredy operating 110 aircraft fitted with ASV Mark II, 60 of them with simple forward-looking aerials and 50 with high-gain sideways-looking aerials (LRASV).
He also notes earlier on: the first thing I did when I returned to St Athan was to design a sideways-looking aerial array for the Whitley. From an aerial designer’s point of view nothing could habe been nicer; the Whitley had a long box-like fuselage which was ideal for mounting an aerial array. As a transmitter aerial we fitted an array of 10 half-wave dipoles on 5 kingposts mounted in a line 18 feet long down the centre of the fuselage like the backbone of a fish. For receiving aerials we mounted to Sterba arrays, one on each of the flat sides of the fuselage; each Sterba array was about 12 feet long. The overall power gain of the two aerials combined was about 50 which increased the range of the ASV by about 2.5 times; it could then detect coastlines at about 60 miles, ships of 10,000 tons at about 40 miles and surfaced submarines at 10-15 miles. We called this installation long range ASV (LRASV).
As I said previously, airborne radar isn’t really my thing and I’ve not done any primary research on this, so my apologies for getting it wrong!
RadarArchiveThe dipole aerials which can be seen on the side of the fuselage certainly look identical to those of ASV II I have in several photos. I’m dubious that the aircraft’s skin would be used as a reflector; it would be more likely that a reflector aerial (such as those in a Yagi) would be used where needed.
These dipoles down the fuselage side were the transmitting aerials. Yagi type under the wings or on the nose would have been the receiving aerials.
It is important to recognise that there is a difference between ASV II and LR-ASV. The latter had large dorsal masts, leading to the aircraft being nick-named sticklebacks. This would be what you describe for the Liberator, Whitley and Wellington, but is NOT ASV II!
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