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View Full Version here: : Dambusters flypast and ceremony on raid's 70th anniversary


Hans Tucker
20-05-2013, 03:32 PM
Ok..a bit late but.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22554314

asimov
20-05-2013, 03:40 PM
Great stuff :thumbsup:

DavidTrap
20-05-2013, 05:54 PM
The pilot wasn't holding back flying the Lancaster!

Great footage.

DT

GraemeT
20-05-2013, 07:27 PM
The additional links are also worth a look.

Steffen
20-05-2013, 08:12 PM
At least 1300 people died in the floods that ensued, most of them allied prisoners of war. Great stuff indeed… :rolleyes:

Cheers
Steffen.

AstralTraveller
20-05-2013, 08:42 PM
There appears to be a lot of bumpf written about the air war. Some years ago I read an evaluation of the air war in Europe written for the USAF in 1947 (well, I read the executive summary - the whole thing was huge). These serious researchers painted quite a different picture to what we are generally fed through the jingoistic media. The effect of the bombing campaign on German industry was not that great, though the damage to the civilian population was huge and this was the greatest concern to the German command. Germany had excess industrial capacity and had deliberately decentralised production so if one factory was damaged another elsewhere could pick up the slack. The real damage didn't start until 1944 when two things happened. The introduction of the long-range P-51 and a switch to seeking out German fighters basically shot the Luftwaffe out of the sky. The targeting of transport (eg trains, bridges) in preparation for D-day seriously disrupted the decentralised industry that was highly reliant on transport. Strangely enough the allies never targeted the electricity grid because they assumed Germany had an advanced grid with lots of redundancy. In fact it was quite fragile and the Germans were seriously worried by the prospect of it being damaged.

trek1701
22-05-2013, 07:06 PM
Back in 2010 I took my family down to Warrnambool so that my wife could catch up with an old friend.
Whilst down there her husband told me that there’s a bloke who actually flew one the Lancaster’s so I couldn’t help myself and had to take some pics of his decorated house :eyepop:


Cheers Mark