Blighty's super-duper F-35B fighter jets are due to arrive in a few weeks Britain's first permanently based F-35B fighter jets are due to arrive in our green and pleasant land in June. The news nugget was delivered by defence secretary Gavin Williamson, who informed world+dog that the supersonic stealth jets will arrive at RAF Marham in Norfolk in a few weeks. The announcement was timed for the …
If they're so stealthy perhaps we could claim we have a couple of full squadrons already operational but nobody can actually see them.
There was supposed to have been a fly-over of the Derwent dams in commemoration of the anniversary but it didn't happen because of unfavourable wind conditions. However I think they must have had the Tornado flypast; one appeared close to us yesterday afternoon.
"PA474 flew over Ladybower today instead, I don't know if there was anybody there to watch."
They flew one of the two surviving members of the original op. over, sitting in his usual seat. The bomb-aimer's seat. They reckoned that even if there was nobody there to watch they owed it to him.
There was yet another documentary about the dams raid on BBC4 last night, part of which involved trying replica bombsights on the Derwent dam. The wooden one was found to be extremely hard to use due to instability, although the light twin they were using probably bounced around more than a Lancaster. But apparently some bombardiers just used a piece of string fixed to two points in the nose: pull the middle out to get your eye in the right place, and it's much more stable than handholding a piece of wood.
They also demonstrated some of the low flying (with special permission from the CAA and their Dutch equivalent). It looked exciting in daylight; manhandling a fully loaded Lancaster in the dark must have been something else.
"It was ingenious but miles from being high-tech"
High-tech is relative. I actually took a "management of technology" course as part of my MBA. The first day, the instructor wrote on the whiteboard "Name a technology you see here." We went through about four minutes of discussion before he pointed out the answer he wanted was "a whiteboard"
he pointed out the answer he wanted was "a whiteboard"
Many years ago, in a city far, far away (OK, Leicester) a roomful of wannabe IT specialists (HND in IT) were horrified when their first lecture in Systems Analysis started with the words "Sometimes, a computer is not the best option"..
There were only really two good lecturers on that course - the said Systems Analysis tutor and the Telecoms Tutor.
And it's no coincidence that both of them had extensive industrial experience. Most of the rest of the tutors were PhD students (or people that had just got their PhD) and who were deeply uninterested in teaching a lowly HND class. I suspect that the only reason that most of them were there was because it got them easy access to all the female Art students..
(Our Art campus had the highest VD rate of any Polytechnic campus apparently.. we technical students were stuck in the middle of the city while the arts students got to be in the nicer bits of the outskirts)
"And it was perfect for the job, the standard all tech should be measured againts."
Indeed. You only have to look at most engineered systems these days to see maybe not engineering, but certainly software overkill, whether its from trains that won't open their doors because they can't get a GPS signal (why does a train need GPS, they know where the track goes and the stations don't move!) to cars whose brakes can be hacked via their wifi enabled entertainment systems to (an example from my office) lifts that stop working the minute the computer detects the slightest minor non safety related issue.
Unfortunately designers forget that because software is easy to add to a system it doesn't mean that adding ever more and more is always good idea. IIRC the computers controlling the space shuttle had something like 16K of memory. The software for the cockpit heater in the F35 probably uses up more memory space than that.
I'm completely disagree that the bouncing bomb wasn't high tech. Didn't particularly like the snearing tone anyway, given that the Lancaster was high tech, or at least had high tech bits. Such as all the nice navigation/direction finding stuff that us and the Germans competed over during the bombing campaigns of the war. For example the Luftwaffe had radio "beams" to guide their night bombers, which we then managed to bend to screw up their navigation, which they then countered etc. The RAF did similar things in the campaign over Germany, I think ending up with a navigation device that used radar to match known terrain to keep them on the right flightpath.
But back to the bouncing bomb. Surely a novel idea, that requires serious scientific testing including model work and high speed cameras counts as high tech?
Rubbish.
It was about crippling the steelmaking industry.
Without water they couldn't make steel, without steel there would be no weapons, and without weapons there would be no war.
"Thousands of German personnel were promptly redeployed to sit around the dams manning flak guns"
more importantly, 20000 man years of construction effort got committed to rebuilding the dams, which might otherwise have been spent building Atlantic Wall defences, which might explain why on and after D-Day Allied troops overran locations they expected bunkers but found only surveyors pegs.
There was a very good programme on the BBC World Service about this last night.
The raid was intended to impact industry geared towards manufacture of war materiel, but it was also intended to damage numerous power stations. As noted by other commentards, the knock-on effect of diverting German military manpower was highly significant.
The good bits:
- It generally achieved these goals
- A big propaganda win for the British
The bad bits
- The impact on power supply wasn't particularly major. In some cases power supply was restored in around 48 hours, in other cases a couple of weeks or so.
- Loss of life for crews involved in the rate was staggeringly high in the context of the number of planes involved in the raid.
- German industry used a lot of slave labour, and many hundreds of Ukrainians were killed as well.
- Significant number (small number of thousands) German civilians were killed as well...although in a few weeks' time the allies would be firebombing German cities, leading to civilian death toll an order of magnitude greater than that off the dams raid.
The programme also talked a bit about the incredible flying skill of the RAF pilots involved in the raid...taking huge Lancasters (no terrain-following radar or any of the other mod cons) at pretty much zero altitude across Europe and back.
Yes.
Also:
Conventional bombs were unable to reliably stay in contact with the wall before exploding.
No - the reason for the bouncing bomb was because the Germans has submersed torpedo nets in the reservoirs. Otherwise they could have sent Fairey Barracudas armed with torpedos, with considerably less loss of life than poor 617 squadron.
Also, can you please stop referring to the bomb as almost exclusively invented by Sir Barnes Wallis. Sir William Glanville, Dr. G. Charlesworth, Dr. A.R. Collins and others of the Road Research Laboratory were equally involved in its development; Dr Collins more than most: he was the one who tested the bomb's ability to destroy a dam when he exploded it with a reduced charge, and completely destroyed, a dam in Wales. A fact omitted in The Dambusters movie which shows Wallis supervising the test.
"and others of the Road Research Laboratory were equally involved in its development"
Indeed, the RRL were heavily involved in much of the fundamental concept of how effective a bomb would be against a structure if detonated in water next to/up against said structure. One of my former employers was based on the BRE site in Watford, and my jaw quite literally dropped the day I discovered the Moehne dam model nestling in the wooded area next to our building... the footpath running along side it became a regular part of my lunchtime walking route from then on!
I guess the reason Barnes Wallis gets so much of the attention is that, ultimately, he was the person in the right place at the right time to have that initial spark of an idea, combined with the ability (and the assistance of a sizeable team of other equally talented people) to see it through to a finished product. So whilst he wasn't solely responsible for *developing* the bomb, it's not entirely unreasonable to refer to it as having been his *invention*.
.... I got the Wikipedia entry for RAF Scampton changed some time ago, someone had made a couple of spurious claims about the Lancaster Gate Guardian, and the bomb, at the entrance, not only claiming it was a live bomb, but had it detonated it would have demolised Lincoln Cathedral.
First the claim it was a live bomb was based on a claim it was 'heavier than expected', but training rounds were the same weight, so they follow the same path when they were dropped.
Second, that the bomb would knock down a building five miles away. Er, why go to the lengths of precision bombing dams if we had a bomb that powerful?
(I use to live on the base in the mid 70s)
I did the guided tour* of Battle of Britain Memorial Flight at Conningsby a few years ago. I'm sure the guide there related a story about a "dummy" bomb that had been lying around an RAF base for years (it might even have been Conningsby) which was eventually identified as real when someone tried to move it. That wasn't a dams bomb though - it was either a Tall Boy or Grand Slam - both also Barnes Wallis creations and very powerful, but also not likely to demolish a building miles away.
* Very good, and highly recommended.
@Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese
It was allegedly the 'Grand Slam' at Scampton, although I wouldn't be surprised if this story was circualting on a different air base, as these memes are often recited as being handed down by someone close to the source, so if you were at Conningsby, the story would be linked to there.
The line from the Scampton WIki still reads: "the Grand Slam bomb had to be moved. Efforts to lift it with a small crane proved futile, as it was much heavier than expected. Upon closer examination, it was found to be still filled with live explosives. It was carefully removed on an RAF low loader and detonated on a test range."
Seems that has crept back into the article, like I said, training rounds would be the same weight, and the gate guardian, being at the front of the base, was right where the playground of the Infants school was in my day, so I really, really doubt it was live ordnance. I'm guessing it was detonated just to be on the safe side.
On demolishing Lincoln Cathedral, it's five miles from Scampton to Lincoln, a megaton range nuke would do it, but not a single conventional bomb.
had it detonated it would have demolised Lincoln Cathedral.
Second, that the bomb would knock down a building five miles away. Er, why go to the lengths of precision bombing dams if we had a bomb that powerful?
Perhaps they meant it would destroy Lincoln Cathedral if detonated within said cathedral?
Because yes, destroying buildings five miles away means you're chucking tactical nukes around.
> Because yes, destroying buildings five miles away means you're chucking tactical strategic nukes around.
Tactical nukes are small nukes designed to be used on the battlefield to take out concentrations of enemy troops - rallying areas - or to initiate breakthroughs or to stop an attack, or as demolition-type charges to take out hardened battlefield targets. Therefore they have to be small enough to be used in proximity (i.e. tens of miles to a few miles depending on the size) of friendly troops.
Tactical nukes are usually single or double-digit kiloton yields.
Destroying something within a 5 mile blast radius is firmly in the strategic arena.
If it had been perfect for the job they'd have been able reliably to find and hit their targets and we probably wouldn't have lost more than 200 of them in the last full month of the war in Europe.
Some of that makes an order for 135 aircraft over twenty years look a bit silly, especially when you factor in the number that won't be serviceable at any particular time because the bean-counters have decided to run down the stocks of spares to save a few bob and the RAF's latest modification broke something that nobody thought of.
Oh, the Tornado at Lady Bower was a Typhoon.
On a kind of related note about cutting corners affecting availability. Earlier this month, the Luftwaffe admitted of the 128 Eurofighters in service, the total number that were combat-ready was - 4; it is meant to be more than 80.
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/192965/only-4-of-128-german-eurofighters-are-combat_ready-–-spiegel.html
The German navy's latest surface ships have been returned to the builder as they are currently not fit for service and Germany currently has no working submarines - it looks like the MoD has found a worthy rival.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17185/the-german-navy-has-decided-to-return-their-new-frigate-to-the-ship-store-this-christmas
Earlier this month, the Luftwaffe admitted of the 128 Eurofighters in service, the total number that were combat-ready was - 4;
This is always the case in peacetime. Absent any immediate threat to the home country, the government bean counters cut the budgets for maintenance, consumables, parts and personnel. As with all very complex machinery, there's a steady state of breakdowns, and the unserviceable list grows and grows.
My father was squadron engineer with 29 Sqn flying Gloster Javelins in the 1960s, and recalls a similar audit of a summer Sunday and similar findings, even in those Cold War days. IIRC (and if he recalls correctly) this inspection found only seven fighter aircraft were ready to go, out of around 150-200, depending on whether you included the OCUs. I'd guess that the seven were the QRA ships, with everything else sitting around missing parts, people, or awaiting inspection and service. The availability of crew was about the same as the aircraft, since the poor serviceability meant that everybody had drifted towards an "office hours" air force. Apparently there was one hell of a stink when the top brass found out.
> The German navy's latest surface ships have been returned to the builder as they are currently not fit for service and Germany currently has no working submarines - it looks like the MoD has found a worthy rival.
No, I think this does actually mark the Germans as superior to the MoD.
At least the Germans had the strength of character to turn down an unfit-for-purpose warship and send it back to its builders until they make it fit for purpose.
The MoD would have accepted it, commissioned it, and put it on active deployment, all while touting how good it was.
"Perfect for the job?"
I think too many people confuse perfection with adequacy. The Americans had the B17 in Europe, which carried under a third of the bomb load when going to Berlin, and had such a horrific casualty rate that it's quite possible that the americans landed more tonnage of shot down B17's on the targets than bombs. The Lanc was probably about as good as it was possible to get at the time.
Possibly excluding the mosquito, but if the RAF had of based it's bombing force around doing low altitude strikes with the famous Timber Terror then you'd probably end up with the Germans building lots of rapid fire low level AAA guns to counter those, and people would now be going on about how much safer bombing from high heights was instead of the reverse.
And yes, we have nowhere near the number of fighters, tanks or even rifles required for a serious war. Hopefully we won't need them, especially since the production times of most modern equipment so long that it's certain that we won't actually be able to build many in WW1/WW2 timescales. A far sighted person would come to the conclusion that we'd be better off buying up a lot of long lead items and sticking them in a shed "just in case" and run a smaller military to afford to do this, but that would require planning which is sadly absent these days.
That's what's known as a load of cobblers.
The B17 was a very strong aircraft - which was one of the primary reasons why it carried a smaller payload than the Lancaster. In exchange for which it had lower combat losses than the Lancaster. The US lost around 3100 B17s in operations over NW Europe from 12,000 made. The RAF lost almost 4200 Lancaster's from 7400 made (albeit only about half of each set were 'combat' losses).
As for the Mosquito, there is a myth around that "if only we'd built more of them and fewer Lancasters/Halifaxs/etc." that the RAF's bombing war would have been better/faster/more effective. It flounders on the fact that pretty much everyone in the UK with the necessary skills to make Mosquitos were already doing so. There was no spare capacity to make more of them even if fewer Halifax's were made or what-have-you.
@Peter2
My father flew in Mosquito bombers towards the end of the War. They could, and did, bomb from high altitudes; the aircraft was very fast and generally could avoid fighters without having to “hedge hop”. Relative performances were roughly Lancaster: Bomb load ~6-7 tons (modified 10 tons for Grand Slam weapon), typical operational height 12,000-20,000 ft with a maximum loaded height of a bit higher, cruise speed ~200 mph, maximum speed 280-310 mph with a crew of 7; B17 Flying Fortress: Bomb load ~2 tons (~3.5 tons short range), operational height typically ~25,000 ft, service ceiling ~35,000 ft, cruise speed ~180 mph, maximum speed~290mph, crew of 10; Mosquito: Bomb load up to 1.8 tons, service ceiling: 37,000 ft, Cruising speed >280mph, maximum speed at altitude 380-415 mph, with a crew of 2.
Before the Mosquito he flew in American derived Medium/Attack bombers like the Martin Baltimore: Bomb load <1 ton, 305 mph at 11,600 ft, cruise speed: 224 mph with a crew of 4; and the Douglas Boston: Bomb load 1.8 tons, cruise speed: 256 mph, maximum speed 317 mph at 10,700 ft, service ceiling: 23,700 ft, with a crew of 3.
All of these aircraft could perform low level raids, but it was obviously much less common with the bigger bombers. The heavy bomber/Mosquito comparison has been based on the higher speed and relative simplicity of the Mosquito allowing the aircraft to perform a mission into Germany, return and be refuelled/rearmed and then carry out another missions and return in about the same time as the (4-engined) Lancaster. If the aircraft was shot down the loss was 2 crew instead of 7, and a much less expensive 2-engined aeroplane.
" Perfect for the job?
If it had been perfect for the job they'd have been able reliably to find and hit their targets and we probably wouldn't have lost more than 200 of them in the last full month of the war in Europe."
Eh ?
The 'Perfect for the job' item under discussion was the special improvised bomb-sight for the dams raid.
Nothing to do with finding other targets.
F-35s, whether the ones used by the US or those we're using ourselves, are about 15% British -
That's a deliberate fiction for the simple minded. Look at the detail of what's is "allegedly" British made, and you'll be lucky to see anything that could possibly represent 15% of the total value. All the money is in the engines, the airframe, wings and flight control, weapons and sensors and communication systems.
Now look at the names of who's making it, and you'll see that "British" content is anything where the parent group has some British connection. In some cases that does mean UK made - although not much of any value - but the bulk of the "British" value appears to be made by US subsidiaries of British holding companies. So the UK will see at best the net after tax corporate margin, which will be around 5-10% of the cost, so 5-10% of the 15%, . I'd guess the British value share of F35 is around 3% tops, and probably less.
And (yet again) finally, who on earth is dim enough to believe that the US would allow any significant value share or technology share of the F35 to be built by foreigners? This is the most advanced aircraft they've ever built. And therefore, no matter how crap, expensive and pointless the machine is, it is the current symbol of American military and technical supremacy. There's no way they'd be letting Johnny Britisher be having a handle on 15% of that.
And for anybody who believes that, the F35 web site says that Italian companies with orders of about $0.7bn will get 3-4% of the production value, Israel has similar value of contracts declared, so that's another 3-4%, Denmark can claim around 1%, Australia around 2%, Canada the same. If you look through the numbers and claims, then the easily convinced would find that around 30% of the total production programme value was international. And that's simply not believable.
Isn't the lift fan in the F-35B version made by Rolls-Royce?
There's a list in the article joeldillon links to above, and there's several bits that aren't cheap, and won't be low tech, including fans, ducts and nozzles, and the ejector seat.
But as a proportion of total value they'll be minimal, and you can smell that they're desperate to talk it up when the list of British content includes such high value items as "Stick and throttle for Trainers", and "Throttle quadrant", "Helmet shell", "Weapons bay door drive" Not to mention that they list famous British companies like GE Aerospace, UTC Aerospace, and Honeywell Aerospace - there will be some British link, but not much.
Some of that's a legal fiction. So BAE became an American company to satisfy US procurement rules, ie making sure DoD pork went to the right Congresscritter's district. Then once contracts or work packages are won, the rest is satisfying national security requirements, especially anything NOFORN that the US doesn't want to share. Otherwise with a bit of vetting and airgapping, work can get done by suitable non-US nationals outside the US. But then there's the political aspect, ie making claims around national workshares and their value. Which are probably complicated further by accountants for tax reasons. Which may upset politicians because due to the F-35's costs, there's bound to be scope for very large and tax efficient write-offs.
Meanwhile, the Dambusters get a new bomber that can carry less than the Lancaster.. Especially as the F-35's payload seems to shrink every time a snag's found, and more weight's needed to fix it. And for modern combat against enemies that don't have aircraft or much in the way of air defences, a Lancaster would be a cheaper and more effective bomb truck today.
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While F35A and C are indeed predominantly-American, the F35B is derived from both American work and Lockheed licensing Yak-142. So actually there is Russian tech in it and Russian patents (probably expired by now though).
Though let's face it, even mentioning it would probably cause our best beloved Ex-Fireplace Salesman to choke on his own bile.
It is also the complete and utter opposite of the Lanc. The Lanc was relatively cheap for a strategic bomber of that age, easy to manufacture and possible to build in quantity. I do not think any of that applies to F35B. In fact - just the opposite.
The Yak line is a bit of a red herring. At the time of the original competition the world leaders in STOVL design were in a team with McDonnell Douglas and Northrop Grumman, leveraging their experience with the Harrier and the P.1214 and P.1216 design concepts. These featured a tail exhaust much like the F-35/Yak-141 i.e. two bearings to allow it to rotate through ~90 degrees. Lockheed Martin were essentially flirting with Yak to try and get access to BAe System's knowledge base. Once BAe's original team lost they re-partnered with LM as part of the whole UK work-share agreement.
A lot of the control system tech for the F-35B was demoed in the VAAC Harrier proving the concepts that had originally been developed on the P.1216 design study. This has also made its way on to the F-35C to make it easier to land on the carrier, the so called Magic Carpet mode.
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