Bomber Command v the Flying Bombs

Bomber Command v the Flying Bombs
With Steve Darlow
More Science, Technology, Weapons and Inventions content on WW2TV
Prolific RAF and aviation author and publisher Steve Darlow joins us for the exciting show about Operation Crossbow.

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In the summer of 1944, in the skies over Southern England, a new era in international warfare began. A German reprisal weapon, called the V1 or 'flying bomb', launched from occupied France, would bring indiscriminate terror and panic to the civilian population of London and the home counties. The German High Command hoped the weapon would not only revenge the Allied bombing of their homeland, but seriously hinder Allied invasion plans. The Allies tried desperately to prevent this new scourge diverting their attention from D-day and the liberation of Western Europe. It was the job of RAF's Bomber Command to combat the new threat.

Steve will talk about some of the raids against the V-weapon targets, using testimonies from Bomber Command veterans, Luftwaffe night fighter veterans and from French people who witnessed the whole German operation from the construction of the secret weapon installations to the launching of the flying bombs.

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[MsZeeZed]

37:25 HE Bates was commissioned as a writer for the RAF in WWII. Two of his essays on “The Battle of the Flying Bomb” were endorsed by the RAF, but sanctioned by the War Ministry in 1945 and not fully published until 1994 as “Flying Bombs Over England” by Bob Ogley with extra maps, photographs and a description of their 50 year publication bar for security reasons.

[localbod]

Another classic presentation.
Your guest really knew his stuff.
Fascinating.
I remember learning about some of this from a documentary featuring Dr. R.V. Jones (battle of the beams / freya / wotan etc..).
I look forward to the V weapons group episode.

[jimwatts]

Howdy folks wherever y’all are. Great presentation on an important aspect of air power in WW2. Impressive effort on the difficulties of smashing a pinpoint target with strategic bombers

[Postpunk-cxph]

Superb talk. Keep the aviation stories coming!

[philbosworth]

Another interesting episode that I'm glad I managed to catch up on. Sooner or later I must get to the stage where I've watched the entire back catalogue of material here on @WW2TV

[matthewgreenfield]

Fascinating presentation Steve and Paul, thanks! I'm still going through the old WW2TV videos from before discovered it and subscribed. I knew Bomber Command's efforts against the V weapons was huge, but the comparisons Steve made really showed the scale of it.

[ToddSauve]

I remember watching a documentary (British I think) where the Allies had put a bunch of captured German generals in a mansion and filled it with microphones to spy on them. Of course the Germans got to chatting together and mentioned that they were wondering where the V weapons were that they knew had been scheduled to operational by a certain time. The Allied surveillance people took note and decided that a huge reconnaissance project had to be implemented to photograph almost every square inch of occupied Europe to find where these launch sites were. Eventually they found the V1 sites and started bombing them.

Then the Germans built a V2 space port type of installation in France from which they were going to start launching them into space and down onto the UK. The Allies dropped some "earthquake" bombs on the V2 space port, once they found it, and it knocked the entire concrete site off kilter by several degrees and the damage was so severe the Germans had to abandon the entire site. Can you imagine the money and resources the Germans put into these projects and the basically pitiful return on investment they earned?

It's been said numerous times before, and I don't know if it is worth repeating, but war is such a waste of humanity and wealth.

[scorcher]

Harris fair to say could be hard work.

[BK-ufqr]

A+ material and presentation info. The audio was not great unfortunately

[scorcher]

Is there any stuff on The Battle of Berlin on WW2 TV as I know Harris was thinking about this at around this time . I always remember Max Hastings comment about Berlin nearly broke Bomber Command .