Book

Will Iredale

Pretty good but gets stuck in a formula of:

I took three things from this:

Finding targets from the air is really hard, the Pathfinders made it much easier.
Being a Bomber airman was a really dangerous job.
Bureaucracies really slow things down and will often block progress to further their own ends (even ahead of the national interest!)

After the bombing on Coventry “Barclays bank had taken a direct hit… was open for business 48 hours later.”
The X-Beam receivers are recovered from a down German bomber. The analysis was delayed by an “inter-service squabble between the army and the navy about who was responsible for salvaging the wreck.” As a result, the kit is damaged by a rising tide!
Some engineers bungle setting up the X-beam jammer on the night of the Coventry raid, resulting in lots of deaths.
Navigating in the air was like “sitting in a freeing cold stair cupboard with the door shut, the hoover running, and trying to do calculus.”
It cost £10k to train Bomber Command aircrew, £500k today.
Don Bennett was the pathfinder’s chief bio
Freeman Dyson did some work with Bomber Command and estimated a 1 in 11 chance of surviving a tour.
Doc MacGown did lots of research into seeing at night and regularly flew sorties with crews despite being over 40 and having already served in WWI. bio.
Harris was against the establishment of the Pathfinders and once established tried to undermine its authority by spinning up ‘finder’ units in other Bomber Command squadrons. It’s not easy to determine if this second lot of meddling was a bad thing in the end. Competition does make people raise their game.