And I am VERY Excited! What a book to have! And Erich, it HAS the 109/Ju88 pic in it!

I am SO looking forward reading this book!

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"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" - Homer Simpson

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What is this ! you got yours before me..... Well in my stupid frame of mind I am going to have to knock on Peter's door..... seriously Stevin, congrats, and I hope it is a goood read. Mine is probably lost somewhere and it went to the antartic

thumbs up Peter !

E

EUH!?

I received the German version...I thought you wrote that you already received one from Mr. Spoden??

But, well, you know...that's one of the perks about living in Europe, Erich!

__________________
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" - Homer Simpson

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Stevin he is sending both, the first one in Deutsch for my looking over.....as he staed it is coming snail mail so it will be another month I bet ! ...... oh bummer.

E

[img]tongue.gif[/img] I got it from his publisher. But I am going to ask Mr. Spoden if he wants to sign it for me.

Nice chapter on Tageseinsaetze! And some really nice pics from his own collection! Oh Joy!

__________________
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" - Homer Simpson

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Peter is sending to me direct with signature, etc.......in the German version. Looking forward to it so the both of us and anyone else that gets the book can share notes.

goota run out the door to clear my head. I hate head colds

E

Peter just e-mailed me and said that RAF vet/friend and author Peter Hinchliffe has just translated Peter's book from German to English......will be published soon. An English translation of the Peenümunde raid in August of 1943 is on his web-site at :

www.nachtjaegerspoden.de

yeah

~E~

Good news, Erich. I am keenly awaiting this book.... ( BTW just found a first English edition of Wim Jonen's book in a secondhand shop )

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

you lucky guy you ! I do believe if my memory serves me correctly, that William has a section when he was with II./NJG 5 about the creation of the schräge musik installation....

~E

Peter Spoden's book is now available in English - my copy just arrived from Amazon !

The title is ' Enemy In The Dark - The Story Of A Night-Fighter Pilot ' , ISBN 1 84145 032 4, published by Cerberus at £8.99. Fully-illustrated, it is a bargain and a must for forum members.

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

EXCELLENT!!!

BUY THIS BOOK!

__________________
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" - Homer Simpson

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I've just finished reading this book. It's really excellent, and I'm not just saying that because Herr Spoden is a popular figure to many of us.

It's a brave thing to publish a book like this, which was originally intended for only his family to read. It is deeply thoughtful, including his reflections on the fate of Germany, his anger at the destruction of cities by Bomber Command, and his nightmares long after the war. His description of his reaction at reading, in 1978, the ages of the first Lancaster crew he shot down brought tears to my eyes, too.

On a lighter note, he includes a great description of Goering reviewing the Nachtjagd ; funny, yes, but it shows some of the charisma that Goering must have had.

There are very few books in English by German nightfighter veterans - BUY THIS ONE !
[img]graemlins/rk.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/rk.gif[/img]

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

wise decision guys ! well what can I say except that nf friend Peter is also working on a little something else........he must be having too much.
Received a neat little draft if I can open it although it is more subject with Christmas than anything.

Buy the BOOK ! Where the heck can you find something so up close and personal and from a German night fighter ace besides ?

~E

just in from Peter this morning to me.....

we had been discussing their actions with regard to flying/climbing towards the RAF heavy bomber formations without the useage of the FuG 220d set. Sent him a couple of pics to ID and here we go.

Always love first person accounts !

The jpg is the good old Knemeyer, a "Kreisrechner" named after a German navigator from before the war. We used this for computing(rechnen) of ground-speed and true airspeed and wind direction and velocity. i still have one in use and irritated the American Captains I was flying with as co-pilot in DC-3 in 1955........sorry, we did not have GPS in those days.

so long Peter-

Interesting - it looks similar to the RAF version.

I recently added a very battered old Air Ministry 'Dalton' navigational computor to my memorabilia collection. These were used by every RAF bomber crew.

I haven't the faintest idea how it works, and I can find nothing in books or the internet to enlighten me....

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

Martin my next questions to Peter are how to operate the item in question.......the German version. I am purhcasing a used example of the above.

Also my friend are you not part of a friends RAF bomb group or the Mossie association ? No one there could help you ?

~E

That was going to be my next stop, Erich

Hope to get to the Mossie Museum this weekend ; Reg Davey there was a Mosquito navigator.....

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

Excellent ! would like to know more of what you find and how the thing works...... as you say it must be similiar to the German version.

On another topic, an Aussie friend did send me some nice scans of the 100th group confound & destroy, but didn't you say they had a nice pic showing the appartaus of the mechanism in the bomb bay of the Forts somewhere in the book ? If so can you mention the page number(s) ?

Also I see they removed the belly turrets, was this becuase of the needed jamming units to be installed ?


~Erich

The 'Jostle' picture is on p.158 of the book. I am assuming that the ball-turrets were deleted due to the amount of electronic apparatus carried but am still looking for confirmation of that.

( BTW this is a most absorbing book - can't think how I've overlooked it until now...)

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

AFAIK the turret was indeed removed for that very reason. Didn't the 'Electronic' Lanc also have a cilinder form anti-jamming device in its belly, sticking out???

I am sure I saw a pic about that, either from the Fortress or the Lanc. Have to think deep and hard where I saw/read all this.

In the eighties divers found a similar German flying computer in a German fighter that was shot down in May 1940 (!). There was a pic of the thing in the paper. It looked very much like the one shown above, but had the silhouette of a plane on it too. This weekend I see if I still have that clipping and scan it (if quality allows).

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The only special Lancasters were the 'Airborne Cigar' equipped aircraft of 101 Squadron, flying from Ludford Magna. These carried the three 'ABC' aerials atop the fuselage but, as far as I know, no other protrusions.

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

another note from Peter this morn....

The bordfünker operated the small compass as I the pilot kept my console dark so I was able to see RAF bombers, and by the way we did not carry a wrist compass as if we were shot down we were over our "homeland"

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a little off topic but to get your book juices flowing......check this out :

www.gyges.dk/

two most interesting books by Michael Svejgaard