Tag Archives: bomber harris

Saturday 9th May 2015 – AND IF I THOUGHT …

autobahn rest area koln germany may 2015… that the other night’s sleep was something special, then I’m not sure what to say about last night’s. In bed by 22:30 after a nice meal of pasta, mushrooms and tinned veg, I remember nothing until about 06:30. Perhaps there was the odd lorry shunting around somewhere in the vicinity but I really didn’t care less.

Mind you, I was off on my travels during the night. I was a serial killer with bodies all over the place, including inside the doors of my car behind the door cards. And I remember having to move them and dispose of them properly, so extracting them from their hidey-holes was interesting, particularly as they now had the size and consistency of sausages.

After a nice leisurely breakfast of bread, jam, fruit juice and coffee, I hit the road and fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n-ed up the autobahn for my first dam.

I wasn’t on the autobahn for very long – the Lady Who Lived In The SatNav soon had me in the mountains.

german war memorial bilstein germany may 2015I came to a dead stop in the small town of Bilstein.

We saw some War memorials in Austria last year, but this is the first one that I ever recall seeing in Grmany. Interestingly, it contains names from the 1866 war against Austria and names from the 1870-71 war against France, but nothing from World War I or World War II.

Whilst World War II might in some circumstances and some quarters be considered controversial, I’m totally bewildered as to why the dead of World War I haven’t been honoured with a memorial.

As for World War II, my own opinion is that probably 99% of the German military were just as much victims of the war as anyone else and were no more guilty of war crimes than anyone else in any other army. Regardless of the cause that they fought for, their individual sacrifice should still be commemorated and I reckon that they deserve a memorial.

rohrenspring germany may 2015From there, the Lady Who Lives In The SatNav took me right into the mountains and over some stunning roads (some of which I was obliged to decline).

There were some beautiful things to see too, such as the village of Rohrenspring – just one of a thousand places that I could have stopped to photograph had there been anywhere convenient to park.

Still, I arrived at the Sorpe Dam soon enough and had a good drive round.

dambusters sorpe dam langscheid germany may 2015And it’s easy to see why it is that, despite the importance of the Sorpe Dam, the dambusters were unable to breach the dam.

They couldn’t fly along the length of the dam (although I’m not sure why as it’s a clear “in and out) but came in over the church steeple, dropped their bombs and then climbed up and out of the valley.

and you’ll notice the dam – on the right-hand edge of the photo about halfway up. There isn’t much to aim at, is there?

Only one of the bombs hit the dam and that did no more than damage the parapet. And there isn’t any evidence that I could see of the damage.

dambusters composite photo seating bays sorpe dam langscheid germany may 2015However if you notice the photo, it’s actually a composite photo. Some of the seating bays have stone walls and facings and are clearly the original onces. Some others have wrought iron railings.

It’s tempting to think that the wrought iron ones are the modern ones built as a cheap temporary measure to replace original ones destroyed in the blast.

dambusters sorpe dam barrage langscheid germany may 2015However, you can see how much water is in here judging by the height and the weight of the barrage here.

That really is an impressive structure and had the dambusters been able to let that lot go, there would have been a catastrophe. But they were always on a hiding to nothing with an earthen-banked dam. The earth would simply absorb the shock of the explosion.

dambusters mohne dam germany may 2015From there, I went to look at the Mohne Dam.

This was the classic dam, the one about which everone has heard and which collapsed in dramatic fashion after three direct hits. The planes had to fly at a height of about 60 feet at 240 mph right between the two towers, which were equipped with machine guns, and drop a bouncing bomb in a precise position.

dambusters mohne dam germany may 201530 years or so ago, you could still see where the stone from the new repair work differed from the original.

Today, however, I couldn’t see any difference at all, despite having a good luck around. But what did impress me was that within just a mere 4 months, this dam had been rebuilt of sorts and was back doing its job again.

And that’s the big issue with the British Bombing campaign. If it didn’t involve the gratuitous killing of defenceless civilians, “Bomber” Harris dismissed it as a “panacea target” and refused to carry it out, even when presented with a direct order.

Once the dams had been bombed, Harris abandoned them, when it was odds-on that they would be rebuilt. Anyone normal would have had high-level bombng raids every week to damage the rebuilding, and that was what most of the Germans expected.

Most except Alber Speer, that is. The German Minister of Economic Planning was well-aware that Harris would never come back to the dams (there was one further raid on the Sorpe Dam with the huge earthquake bombs, but they didn’t work and in any case it was far too late to influence the outcome of the war) and that they could be rebuilt in peace.

And now I’ve found a hotel right on the shore of the lake, with the water lapping at my feet, and this is where I’m staying the night.

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Sunday 17th October 2010 – SUNDAY NIGHT FOUND ME IN ST. BRIDES

atlantica motel st brides newfoundland canadaAnd I bet you are wondering where this might be. It is in fact right down in the south-east of Newfoundland on the coast of Placentia Bay.

The motel was cold and damp at first, but then again I was the first visitor for 5 weeks and I did appear unexpectedly. But half an hour with the electric heater soon solved the problem.

And Argentia, and Placentia Bay is of some historical significance – it’s a huge deep bay on the south coast of Newfoundland and its historical claim to fame is that it was one of the assembly point of ships sailing from North America during World War II. They would arrive in the bay here and would be marshalled into their appropriate convoys – the Home Fast, the Home Slow, the Arctic Convoys and so on, be allocated a destroyer group to escort them on their voyage, and then they would be sent off into the cauldron that was the Battle of the Atlantic

plancentia bay argentia newfoundland canadaAnd not only that, an important wartime conference took place here between Churchill and Roosevelt in August 1941 – 5 months before the USA entered the war. The Atlantic Charter, as it became known, set out Churchill and Roosevelt’s vision for a postwar world.

And the one thing that rings any kind of bell about the Bay – the memoirs of Jack Broome or the biography of “Johnny” Walker for example, will be the mists and the fog and the persistent rain of this area. And do you know what? It’s absolutely pouring down – rain I don’t recall ever having seen before – and the fog is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

deer lake motel newfoundland canada And that is astonishing because for about 9/10ths of my journey across the south of Newfoundland from leaving my motel at Deer Lake until about Clarenville or whatever, the weather was absolutely gorgeous and I was in shirtsleeves.

The moment I crossed the final mountain range to the east coast, the change in the weather was dramatic.

gander airport newfoundland canadaI’ve also been to another historical site today – the airport at Gander. Before he became the officer in charge of Bomber Command, “Bomber” Harris was the chief of the Royal Air Force’s Purchasing Commission in the USA, charged with re-equipping Bomber Command with medium bombers after the Fairey Battles had been annihilated during the retreat to Dunkirk.

He bought a large amount of Lockheed Hudson bombers but hadn’t thought about how he would get them back to the UK.

A young BOAC pilot by the name of Donald Bennett, who had been seconded to his command, said “why don’t we fly them back?” and the Atlantic Ferry was born.

lockheed hudson bomber air museum gander newfoundland canadaBennett, officially a civilian who, in his BOAC days had flown passenger aircraft across the Atlantic in the 1930s, himself flew the first one, from the USA to the civilian airfield at Gander where he refuelled.

On the night of 10th November 1940 as navigator, he led a squadron of Hudsons off for the 16-hour flight to Aldergrove in Northern Ireland, over 2000 miles across the Atlantic. All kinds of planes flew from North America to Europe with the Atlantic Ferry, and the father of Liz (who reads this blog) was a navigator on some of the Halifaxes made in Canada that made the crossing.

war grave world war II military cemeterygander newfoundlandn those days, with primitive navigational aids and unknown climatic conditions the flights could ba hazardous and many machines were lost.

Just outside Gander is a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery with the remains of 100 aircrew who perished at Gander – either exhausted after the long flight from the USA to Gander and becoming disorientated in the fog, or else failing to leave the ground in the planes so heavily overloaded with petrol for the long flight across the Ocean.

But I saw something in the cemetery that absolutely disgusted me. A woman was there with a dog – off its lead – and it urinated on a grave.

The woman did nothing. I did something – I made the woman completely aware of what I thought about all of this and by the time I had finished she got back into her car with her dog and left the scene. It was a thoroughly shameful display.

car towing two trailers clarenville newfoundland canadaAnd so I finished my journey along the Trans Canada Highway down to the south-east of Newfoundland, admiring the scenery and the rather lax traffic laws that allow all kinds of bizarre combinations of vehicles and trailers to take to the road.

Long-gone are they days when this kind of thing would be tolerated in Europe, and if I could obtain a residence permit for Canada I’d be here like a shot.

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