MarkG

Wikipedia claims it was designed to do 320mph at 45,000 feet, which would have made it a tough target for German fighters. However, I agree that those figures look debatable in the real world.

Moor Larkin

The bomber will always get through. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.
Stanley Baldwin, British Prime Minister, House of Commons speech 10 November 1932.

War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over."
William Tecumseh Sherman

The Air Force comes in every morning and says, "Bomb, bomb, bomb." And then the State Department comes in and says, "Not now, or not there, or too much, or not at all.
President Lyndon B. Johnson

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penfold

Indeed...the dimensions of the the Victory Bomber given makes it nearly twice the length and wingspan of the Lancaster, but with only 50 % extra engine power (assuming the later Merlins of '43 on..) .....and yet the designed performance figures given give it an airspeed 50 % greater and double the altitude ceiling of the Lancaster...with the greatest possible respect to Barnes Wallis, it doesn't add up...

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Moor Larkin

Wasn't a big part of the 'moral' of the film (to get myself back to the point) that people were always saying that to Barnesy and he just kept bouncing back at 'em....

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penfold

Sure....but if the figures projected for the Victory Bomber were his, he was way out....the engines simply weren't powerful enough in the late 30's....the Superfortress was the only WW2 bomber to come close to that performance, and had a ceiling of only 30,000 ft....after a whole war's worth of engine and airframe development.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

bloodworm

Interesting ML but i think you should have flagged up the full article which concludes as follows.....

The address given was a gate lodge and teachers residence belonging to the School so the School was immediately implicated. I remember the days after publication of the letter when to raise any voice of public criticism against the Government and Armed Forces was deemed treasonable by many. The Northern Whig received lots of letters in reply of which four1een were published, all expressing indignation and disgust such as :
" ...cannot feel the slightest pang of conscience for any scion of the German race"
"I do not believe that any Lisburn man or woman would wish to sully the name of his or her old town in this manner"
"..read with delight of how the R.A.F. bombed the German dams"
"..pitiable reading just that sort of soppy, sickly sentimentality that was par1ly
responsible for our unpreparedness for war"
The Editor of the newspaper brought the correspondence to a close with this note: -
"Owing to pressure on space it has been possible to give only a selection of the many letters received. All of them, it may be added, are in opposition to the sentiment of the letter from ten lisburn signatories"
In the aftermath, some parents threatened to remove their children from the school. Some suppliers to the school expressed their patriotic principles in unpleasant ways. There was a small amount of damage to school property. The Headmaster sent a memorandum to staff asking them to air their political and religious views privately without involving the institution for which they worked.

Puts a slightly different lilt on it .....what

The one that gets away is always the biggest but not always the best !!

bloodworm

Cant get to what you are trying to say ML..... Should we have stood back and turned the other cheek???? or should we have retaliated and taken an eye for an eye ??? The one to blaim for civil deaths is the original aggressor !!!!

War is War and there will be casualties both military and civil...Its been like that since the start of time and will go on long after we aint here.!!!!

The one that gets away is always the biggest but not always the best !!

Marky B

I agree,BW. The German Imperial Navy struck some towns on the eastern coast in 1914,including my home town of Hartlepool (my grandad was a witness to it),but whereas some towns were legitimate targets,Scarborough was hit and it served no military purpose.
I can't understand the criticism of the RAF and its bombing of Dresden,when the Luftwaffe struck towns and cities in Britain. My dad was buried alive during a bombing og Hartlepool in 1942.
Mark

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

Moor Larkin

I suppose that Baldwin's quote illustrates that the bombing campaign was clearly forseen, long before Hitler's war was even expected.

This month's BBC History magazine has a cover feature about the Bomber Command campaign: "Good men doing an ugly job". The Dambusters raid is referred to: "There were occasional 'rapier thrusts' like the Dams Raid of May 1943 led by Guy Gibson. But most of the work was done with the bludgeon."

There is a curious cover illustration with a Lancaster overlaid on what seems to me to be the bomb-load of a Vietnam-style B52 bomber.... ???

BBC History Magazine

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Steve Crook

Yes, even more so after the bombing of Guernica in 1937. But that was effectively undefended. There were some bombing raids on Britain in WWI, bombing from Zeppelins. But it was really the ideas developed between the wars that led people to believe that bombers were unstoppable and could win wars just by themselves.

That's why they feature so heavily in Things to Come (1936)

Luckily for us, it turned out that it was possible to defend against bombers. Although they did a lot of damage they certainly didn't win the war just by themselves. For either side.

But sadly, some people never learn the lessons of history and still think that a massive aerial attack will win a war.

Steve

MrDrakesDuck

It's a real pic, the're small incendiary bombs.

"I thought I had to shoot Germans, not chew 'em"

Moor Larkin

This chap seems to know his stuff:

"The Dam Busters" (1955) - Comments and Inaccuracies

orpheum

Remember it is said that as a result of a raid on Berlin by the RAF in late August 1940 the focus of the German bombers was switched from RAF bases to London.So what was probably the least effective raid of the war on Berlin turned out to have the most significance.Probably the best book on the bomber offensive is by Max Hastings.One can only come to the conclusion that Bomber harris was so obsessed with proving his ideas on carpet bombing right that he lost sight of the main objective.No wonder his crrews called him Butcher

ChristineCB

Butcher Harris probably earned his nickname, but Adolph showed that he would blink first. He abandoned the counsel of those experts who knew best by insisting they switch targets to cities from the airfields. And those experts showed their far-sighted intelligence by continuing their Ja Männer roles. This was a fortunate circumstance for the Allies.

orpheum

55000 lost british bomber aircrew show that Butchers nickname was well earned