Once again…

I was watching a very good programme last night on the telly, "The Colour of War". You might have watched it, it's about WWII original colour films and testimonies. Very touching and well-researched… or so I thought.

Last night it was about the Air war, and they mentioned a couple of things I tend to doubt. I think I had previously asked this precisely because of this show but I'm not sure of it…

They mentioned that:

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• Almost half of the men who served in Bomber Command lost their lives in WWII, i. e. 60.000.</font>
• 8.600 bombers were destroyed</font>
• That parachutes and steel-armour plaques were removed from Lancaster bombers to have more space/room for bomb load by orders of 'Bomber' Harris</font>

Martin, guys?

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

The number of crew lost varies from 55,000 to alittle over 60,000 depending on how you count the dead. Some use combat ops only and others include training ops and ground accidents.

I am not sure of the aircraft lost numbers, but 8,600 is in the ballpark,again it depends on ground accidents,training accidents, combat losses, and how you want to count the aircraft lost in each catagory.

At the height of operations in the 1943-1944 period, only 25 out of 100 graduating from an operational training unit survived their first 30 mission tour of duty.

Anouther way of looking at the numbers is that on one bad night of operations more crew were lost than all the aircrew lost during all of the Battle of Britain. Bombers usually carried 5-7 crew, depending on aircraft type.

The Lancaster only had armor for the pilot's seat and headrest. The parachutes for the crew were not worn but stored in the aircraft and clipped on to the crewman when needed. If the bomber went into a spin the crew were pinned in the aircraft due to the great centrifical force this caused.

The German, Japanese, and Russian bomber crews fared little better than the RAF.

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Gottfried:

Martin or TA or Stevin would be more precise but I feel that RAF bomber command lost even more than 8600 heavies to all causes.

Parachutes were used that is a fact by eye-witness accounts of German Nachjäger crews. They could see the RAF chutes agasint the flames below or over the top of haze, fog and certain cloud conditions.

v/r

E ~ and I did think the armor was removed to some degree to lighten the load of the Lanc aas well as Hali to make operational height.........please correct me experten

Bomber Command statistics courtesy of Middlebrook/Everitt, 'Bomber Command War Diaries' : -

Total aircrew served : 125,000
Total killed in action : 47,268
Total killed accidents : 8,195
Killed in ground-batle action : 37

Grand total : 55,500

Total aircraft lost due to all causes : 8,953

The only armoured parts of the Lancaster were the pilots seat, and an armoured plate at the rear of each engine nacelle ( the often-repeated remark about the pilot's seat being the only piece is a myth ).

Armour was not removed at Harris' order, speed and height were considered of greater benefit. To armour-plate all vulnerable areas of such a large aircraft would have been impracticable. The parachute thing is nonsense ; I'd be very interested to see the source of the programme-makers' information on this.

it's really quite incredible the extent to which Harris is vilified. He must have been a cross between Himmler/Eichmann/Saddam Hussein and the Devil to TV documentary makers. [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Without the Dresden incident and Churchill pulling the chair from under Harris after that things might have been different for the Bomber Command, I guess??

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Thank you all for that, guys!

And I agree with you, Martin. The History Channel keeps bashing Harris and Monty whilst Rommel is the greatest military genious of the whole century…

The programme is quite good though. I don't pay much attention at what they have to say, except for the personal accounts: diaries, letters and journals.

And of course, the colour war footage. Most of these films are astonishing. In this very show, after a film of P-47s attacking some lorries in France, there was a film by a foot Army cameramen in which he showed the corpses product of these attacks: blond, blue-eyed SS teenagers with their heads covered in blood or cut by half…

In the series' chapter about US submarines in the Pacific there were two films which shocked me. One, was the rescue of a shot-down Navy pilot in 1944, the pilot was George H. W. Bush and there's a full-colour close-up take of his face!
The second was taken on board the USS Wahoo and it showed how the crew was ordered to machine gun almost 900 Japanese soldiers and sailors from a just-sunk troop carrier… There's even a take of a Japanese who swam to the submarine and when he was some 3 metres away, he was shot with a Tommy. You can clearly see the dark-blue water turn red.

It's 'cause moments like those why I find the programme interesting.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

Gentlemen, I have been working with Dr. Theo Boiten this past week and even today for his new Nachtjagd book. Covering in some small details his first work "Nachtjagd" he mentions that the RAF/USAF lost some 7,308 confirmed, both day and night. This information was posted through the book in 1997, and he is working on updating that at some point in his newer work.

Kaffe mit Sahne bitte !

Erich - will Theo Boiten's new work include Nachtjagd claims, as mentioned on the Nachtjagd Forum ?

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Martin :

Yes it will and I suppose he will do more than one volume. The English authors did not do justice to their work as there are quite a few errors alone regarding German single enigne accounts. Theo told me before the volume of night fighter claims was out since he was able to preview a copy : "hold onto your monies"

E ~

...and I did !

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson