Audio of Lancaster Under nightfighter attack

(Peter Stickney) wrote:

http://www.videointerchange.com/wire_recorder1.htm
is a good place to start.

....and end too I'd say...everything that you ever wanted to know
about wire recoeders!...great source of clues indeed.

It seems that wire recorders had one
advantage over tapes - splicing was done with a square knot.

These military recorders were used as audio and analog data recirders
in large ASW and ELINT (Ferret) aircraft, and are, no doubt, the
direct ancestor of teh unit in your P2V.

Actually, it was in our Lancs that I saw them, mind you, this was
in the early fifties...

I'm willing to bet Local
Currency vs. Local Breakfast Pastry that there wasn't one used in a
Bomber Command Lancaster to record a Night Raid for the BBC.

I tend to agree...your article seems to affirm that.

As to the comment from another post in this thread, yes, lip mikes
existed, but that theory falls down on two points. If I'm remembering
things correctly, you can't just plug one into a system intended for
Carbon mikes - As I Seem To Recall, there are impedance matching
issues that require some manner of additional circuitry.

Quite true Peter, most modern intercom systems use dynamic
mics...better fidelity...less noise.


It wouldn't
have been impossible, but I can't imagine the RAF restringing the
interphone system on a single Lancaster just to accomodate the
Propaganda Campaign. The other factor is that lip mikes and Oxygen
Masks don't mix. Bomber Command Lancs spent their missions at night
up past 18,000', and supplemental Oxygen is necessary t those heights,
and very useful at much lower altitudes. (The extra O2 increases night
vision). There should be 8 or 9 guys on that airplane, all waring
Oxygen masks, and all, at som epoint, talking on the intercom, with
the mask microphones. We ought to hear _somebody_ breathing,
dagnabbit!

And more than that oxygen masks mics sound very hollow and
muffled, They're much harder to understand than either carbon or
dynamic mics...no way these guys were wearing oxygen masks.

Mind you, they could have been bombing from lower level, but the
whole scenario just doesn't jell with me. I just cannot listen to
the audio and imagine that it's coming from a Lanc crew on a
bombing run...even factoring in the near 50 year time lapse it
still doesn't impress me as being plausible.

My memory of those years is crystal clear...
--

-Gord.