A photo, that if you look closely enough you can see the terror unfold, caused by overfly on too fast or too slow..............then BOMB DOORS OPEN, BOMBS GONE!!
Would love to know if the crew made it home OK.
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A photo, that if you look closely enough you can see the terror unfold, caused by overfly on too fast or too slow..............then BOMB DOORS OPEN, BOMBS GONE!!
Would love to know if the crew made it home OK.
From what I can understand, it happened often enough. I knew a man that flew Lancasters, told me about one losing power and landing on top of another on takeoff. They were both fully loaded and both detonated.
That photo is part of a famous sequence.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...wjnjdn01-1.jpg
The plane in that pic immediately went into a dive and crash with a loss of all crew. Apparently the strike caused major damage to the control cables.
Bob
Bob,
Thanks for that. Always wondered where I had acquired it from. I was the village copper at Molesworth in the UK a big B17 base during WW2 now a U.S Intelligence Centre. I remember being shown many sites around Molesworth, Chelveston, and Glatton on my beat, of the other U.S B17 bases where they met as they circled to go off to Germany, and crashed together and made enormous craters in farm land that even today they are so evident. Around all three stations.
What a tragic loss of young life over here, without firing a shot.
Just up the road as well, near the old RAF Brampton even today two buildings still remain which were SPLASHER beacon transmitters so that aircraft could form up without colliding.
Brampton Grange | American Air Museum in Britain
They were manned by 8th Air Force guys, and not many enthusiasts know what I am talking about when I say SPLASHERS and BUNCHERS.............very interesting use of beacons to stop these types of accidents on take off from so many close Bomber stations.
And that was just the U.S as the whole area around where I live was RAF Bomber and PATHFINDER airfields, and of course U.S.AF Alconbury where up until 1999 the TR2 was based...............a real recipe for disaster during WW2 being so close together like that, but it is the flattest land in the UK, and the reason why airfields were amassed here
LEST WE FORGET.
Hey, Gil!
I've been interested in the B-17 and her crews since I was a teen. Way back then I bought a great book, Flying Fortress, by Edwin Jablonski. It is a history of the bird and her crews that features a bunch of photographs, including that sequence. That book led me to A Wing and a Prayer, by Harry Crosby. That book was a monograph from the lead bombardier of the 100th Bomb Group that flew out of Thorpe Abbotts (East of Alconbury) and formed over the Splasher 6 beacon. Both those books are fantastic if you want background.
Bob
The way that I understand it is that it was common practice for, certainly British bombers, to commence their bombing runs together, stacked at varying heights, and bomb together once over target. The theory being that the bombs released from the aircraft above would most likely miss the aircraft below because it is a very big sky. Sadly the bombs didn't always miss the bomber flying below. One has to understand that there may be a thousand aircraft to get over the target, on a large raid, and one could very easily end up with total chaos with that many aircraft airborne at the same time.
Bob,
Yes Thorpe Abbotts was near Diss in Norfolk some 45 miles from Alconbury, again on Fen flat land of East Anglia, basically the big bulge on the UK map.
Accidents appear to have occurred more frequently on large bomber formation attacks. This also happened in UK Squadrons as well.
In terms of bombs being dropped on friendly aircraft below, imagine the scene, you are over your target, everybody is concentrating on "seeing" the target in all types of cloud cover,weathers and of course night time. Hoping that in the latter that the target had been illuminated by the Pathfinders dropping their flares.
The very last thing you would be worried about, would be another friendly aircraft above with its throttle slightly advanced dropping its load on top of you. Interesting when you consider how many people, other than the bomb aimer who takes control at the last minute, didn't see the disaster unfold as planes accelerated above!!
By the way, my family is from East Anglia, many centuries ago.
Bob
From good stock then Bob, either Templar or Viking :thup:
Two brothers came back to East Anglia from the Crusades and were appointed to be sheriffs. Between that and an ancestor being hoodwinked into signing into the Doomsday Book, those are the first mentions we can find.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gil Boyd
Bob
Yes in a town close to me Huntingdon founded in 1086 by Danes we understand. An interesting local thing involving a "bank" of the Templars is under the town of Royston again not far from here and on a main old Roman Road. It is a very well carved bunker deep under ground with a tunnelled passageway to it where they kept their gold and riches on return to England. A bank in the very early days guarded by Templars: Royston Cave - Wikipedia
I am half German and half Irish, pick the bones out of that one, and East Anglian. I would have probably been a Templar as it was effectively a band of Mercenaries from many nations:madsmile:
Gil; do you know of Cressing Temple barns; in Essex? They were built by the Knights Templars around 1220 AD apparently.
They are well worth a visit.
I am from the village few miles down the road from the barns.
Yes well aware of that and other locations too in the area. Clearly the East Coast was a busy place in those days of fighting wars a long way away in the name of Christianity.
Interesting post. My father in law served as a waist gunner and toggler in the 8th. I found in a drawer after his passing a bunch of never seen photos, and the Brownie camera he used, of B-17’s bombing over Europe. I always wondered if anyone would be interested in seeing them?
After I purchased my first machine gun, a 1917 water cooled Browning, I showed it to him. He said that nice, but if you want to really get your blood pumping, look at a ME109 with its wingtips lit up heading for you at 500mph. Uh, no thanks.
Well I, for one, would be interested.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockandroll
Into the teeth. Some of the accounts talk about the German fighters weaving between the boxes of bombers as they passed through the big formation. One account I read talked about seeing a BF109 collide head-on with a B-17. Only the engine of the fighter exited the tail position of the bomber, and the person watching realized that eleven men had just died.Quote:
After I purchased my first machine gun, a 1917 water cooled Browning, I showed it to him. He said that nice, but if you want to really get your blood pumping, look at a ME109 with its wingtips lit up heading for you at 500mph. Uh, no thanks.
Bob
Robert, like Bob, please put them up on the site, really interested in their provenance as well in that your father served with the 8th and took them. ;)
The true stories that come out of the USAF over here in those three years is unbelievable and more should be done in schools especially around us in East Anglia where hundreds of thousnads of American crew flew and fought from and drank in our pubs............and many returned to marry and many ladies left these shores for the U.S.
If you are ever in Cambridge and around Cambridge there is so so much to learn about the USAF in WW2, with Madingley Cemetery where I go every year for a mIlitary remembrance where all the USAF bases have a large contingent turn up, with the missing Eagle as they fly past and the lone Dakota, always a tear jerker for the thousands that come rain or shine!!
The Spread Eagle Pub in Cambridge where I served in the Police, the ceiling in the pub now with a preservation order placed on it, where every crew member signed his name in candle smoke and the Squadrons they flew in, its a remarkable legacy of so many young men that flew from Bassingbourn, now an Army barracks, and of course the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and the American museum there, which is massive and rightly so, on the old Spitfire base where Douglas Bader flew his 212 Squadron from during the Battle for Britain...............dont just come for two weeks you'll need a month!!
Should get detailed pics of that pub roof for posterity as pubs have been known to burn down either that or see if they will donate it for a clean ceiling put in its place.
From below ~ Two Flying Fortresses Collided During WWII, And One Pilot Lived To Tell This Tale | The Veterans Site News
Cinders et al,
Here you go......................The Eagle, Cambridge - Wikipedia
Incredible piece of history over 70 years old!
I’ll see what I can do.
The Templars had to go: they combined a military monastic order answerable only to the Pope, an international banking and credit system, and a private army, with a proscription against usury!Quote:
Originally Posted by Gil Boyd
Rather a hard combination to beat if you're a more "traditional" banker, so unorthodox methods were required such as putting ideas in the head of one of France's more degenerate monarchs.
All the tripe and trash that has been talked about the Templars since is nothing but historical cuckooism, idle chatter of the Dan Brown variety, or attempts to disguise the facts.
Ian Wilson first assembled the evidence that pointed to the Shroud of Turin being the "disembodied head" the Templars were accused of worshipping - it was said to have been wrapped around a frame and covered with a mantle and it so happens that the neck area is so represented on the cloth that the neck is more or less unseen in that scenario. The Templecomb painting being an interesting clue in that puzzle.
It is recorded that the Shroud was displayed periodically on sort of elevating frame in a church in Constantinople, before "disappearing" during the sack of the city in the Fourth Crusade by the Franks and the Venetians. And that was by no means its first appearance in the historical record.
And of course when the Shroud turned up again in mid 1300s it was in the hands of the descendant of a leading Templar.
As the Shroud carbon dating has now been shown to be a tissue of at best errors, notwithstanding the million pound plum given by 45 "businessmen" for the finding of the "right answer", the game is on again.
Shroud of Turin ..The New Evidence - YouTube
The Templars and the Shroud of Christ: A Priceless Relic in the Dawn of the Christian Era and the Men Who Swore to Protect It: Frale, Barbara: 9781634502702: Amazon.com: Books
My Old Man flew out of Glatton as a waist gunner with the 457th bomb Group. Brought back bits of flak pulled from the aircraft. He kept them with his DFC and "Caterpillar Club" pin. Most of his flight gear came back in his duffel bag along with his 1911A1. It seems they were a bit lax at that time about checking the contents of the bags.
Glatton now a very small flying club, but all the runway lights are still in place alongside the original runway. Its now called Connington Airfield alongside the main A1 road from south to north in England ;)