Audio recording of RAF Lancaster under nightfighter attack

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...

Who knows, maybe he was a Canadian ?

Sorry, Keith, this seems unlikely from a Canadian perspectivefor two
reasons: U.S. use of the term "bombardier" was not widely known in Canada
until films and radio plays started to be made about the U.S. air
campaign in Europe, and the Canadian desire to guard its cultural
distinctions even then -- the RCAF would have taken on RAF terminology as
part of doctrine, and use of correct terminology would have been insisted
upon in training after which it sticks.

The term bomb aimer and air bomber were both current in the RAF
but I believe bombardier was used by the RCAF and Americanisms
abounded in slang usage even in 1943.

One of the best Canadian memoires of bombing ops over Europe is Murray
Peden's _A Thousand Shall Fall_. He consistently uses "bomb aimer" in the
book; I could not find "bombardier" as I rescanned it last night. Mind
you, he's only one. However, I know some former 6 Group and other aircrew
from my membership in the Legion and from elsewhere; they get *very*
shirty if you use "bombardier" rather than "bomb aimer". "Bombardier" was
already in use in the RCA as a rank (and likely had been in use in
similar contexts since the formation of the Loyal Company of Artillery at
Saint John in 1783 or so) .

Personally I'm inclined to the view that it was not uttered
by the skipper at all but by an actor or continuity man in
BBC Broadcasting house when they were cleaning up the
tape.

I subscribe to the re-enactment hypothesis too, that way the BBC man and
the aircrew would have been able to say he was really there to record the
sortie and that they had really said those things. The only anomalous
thing seems to be the use of "bombardier".
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)

Andrew Chaplin wrote:

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message

snip

Personally I'm inclined to the view that it was not uttered
by the skipper at all but by an actor or continuity man in
BBC Broadcasting house when they were cleaning up the
tape.

I subscribe to the re-enactment hypothesis too, that way the BBC man and
the aircrew would have been able to say he was really there to record the
sortie and that they had really said those things. The only anomalous
thing seems to be the use of "bombardier".

Well, that, the lack of use of first names for the crew members other than
the pilot ("skipper" is correct), and the lack of profanity. Of course, a
crew that knew they were being recorded might well have tried to sound more
'professional'; use of names instead of job titles was officially frowned
upon, but almost universally practiced by the crews. I'd be willing to bet,
though, that the original language was a hell of a lot more salty, especially
when reacting to or talking about the fighter. I lean towards the cleaned-up
reconstruction view.

Guy

Guy Alcala wrote:

Andrew Chaplin wrote:

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message

snip

Personally I'm inclined to the view that it was not uttered
by the skipper at all but by an actor or continuity man in
BBC Broadcasting house when they were cleaning up the
tape.

I subscribe to the re-enactment hypothesis too, that way the BBC man and
the aircrew would have been able to say he was really there to record the
sortie and that they had really said those things. The only anomalous
thing seems to be the use of "bombardier".

Well, that, the lack of use of first names for the crew members other than
the pilot ("skipper" is correct), and the lack of profanity. Of course, a
crew that knew they were being recorded might well have tried to sound more
'professional'; use of names instead of job titles was officially frowned
upon, but almost universally practiced by the crews. I'd be willing to bet,
though, that the original language was a hell of a lot more salty, especially
when reacting to or talking about the fighter. I lean towards the cleaned-up
reconstruction view.

Guy

Come ON you guys...how in hell did they get all the engine noise
out?...NOBODY talks in a low conversational voice on a Lancaster
intercom ...you shout to be heard over the bloody engine noise...

Look...let's just for a minute think. Did you ever hear a hot rod
with no muffler? Loud aint it?, and that's going by your house
maybe 30-40 feet away. How loud would you think FOUR huge 12
cylinder unmuffled hot rod engines would sound all within about
the same distance??...it's so loud in fact that you can't use
the intercom on takeoff, it's all hand signals.
--

-Gord.

" wrote:

Guy Alcala wrote:

Andrew Chaplin wrote:

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message

snip

Personally I'm inclined to the view that it was not uttered
by the skipper at all but by an actor or continuity man in
BBC Broadcasting house when they were cleaning up the
tape.

I subscribe to the re-enactment hypothesis too, that way the BBC man and
the aircrew would have been able to say he was really there to record the
sortie and that they had really said those things. The only anomalous
thing seems to be the use of "bombardier".

Well, that, the lack of use of first names for the crew members other than
the pilot ("skipper" is correct), and the lack of profanity. Of course, a
crew that knew they were being recorded might well have tried to sound more
'professional'; use of names instead of job titles was officially frowned
upon, but almost universally practiced by the crews. I'd be willing to bet,
though, that the original language was a hell of a lot more salty, especially
when reacting to or talking about the fighter. I lean towards the cleaned-up
reconstruction view.

Guy

Come ON you guys...how in hell did they get all the engine noise
out?...NOBODY talks in a low conversational voice on a Lancaster
intercom ...you shout to be heard over the bloody engine noise...

Look...let's just for a minute think. Did you ever hear a hot rod
with no muffler? Loud aint it?, and that's going by your house
maybe 30-40 feet away. How loud would you think FOUR huge 12
cylinder unmuffled hot rod engines would sound all within about
the same distance??...it's so loud in fact that you can't use
the intercom on takeoff, it's all hand signals.

Without knowing how directional the in-mask mikes are, or their noise-cancelling
qualities/frequency characteristics, I'm not qualified to comment so I'll happily
defer to you on that point, although you've said that you used handheld rather
than throat or in-mask mikes. My only personal experience is with modern headset
mikes, which do indeed elminate most if not all of the engine noise (albeit a far
less powerful, single or dual piston engine).

Guy

Guy Alcala wrote:


Without knowing how directional the in-mask mikes are, or their noise-cancelling
qualities/frequency characteristics, I'm not qualified to comment so I'll happily
defer to you on that point, although you've said that you used handheld rather
than throat or in-mask mikes. My only personal experience is with modern headset
mikes, which do indeed elminate most if not all of the engine noise (albeit a far
less powerful, single or dual piston engine).

Guy

Yes indeed, those modern noise cancelling mikes are great, I
think some use sort of a feedback 'out of phase' of ambient noise
to cancel the noise, they work great but no such niceties were
available to us. We did (for the most part) use carbon hand held
mics but had carbon button mics inside the oxy masks for high
altitude ops. Most of us found them so muffled that we'd just pop
one side of the mask off to use the hand mic for a few secs.
--

-Gord.

Engine noise on aircraft has always been a problem, specifically on combat
(non-passenger) types. On some aircraft, you can tell which position a person
is sitting at by how much engine noise bleeds over to the ICS. Even something
as small as a B-25 has noticeable engine noise and high freq tones bleeding
over when you key the ICS, so I really can't see how a crew aboard a Lanc could
use their normal speaking voices and be heard. As for the technology of
noise-canceling microphones in 1943, I think its implausible that a Lanc would
be fitted with a system equipped with such microphones for every member of the
crew - I agree with the guys who feel this is a studio-done, or
studio-cleaned-up, product. I don't doubt that the dialogue came primarily
from a Lanc crew, but its too clean! Think of what its like in a WWII bomber -
you can barely hear yourself think. The drone of those Merlins would be
present on the recordings no matter what measures were taken to screen them out
- it would be like recording a dialogue aboard the "Maid of the Mist", and
somehow screening out the sounds of Niagra Falls, a few feet away. How likely
is that? My hunch is that the BBC guys did fly along on the mission, did
record it, and brought it back and (at a minimum) cleaned it up before
broadcast.
Next, I'd like to hear a recording of the Reichsjägerweile - the "running
commentary" radio broadcasts that occurred over Northern Europe during massive
Allied raids. Once the EW stations were overwhelmed, the Lulftwaffe ground
controllers switched to this commentary to tell units where and how the battle
raged - "Many trucks over Dortmund, heading Southward at 7,000 meters; at
fifteen after the hour, Christmas trees and duppel were dropped over Hanover
for what appears to be a feint attack. All aircraft in sector FA are ordered
to land for refueling and await further orders. Pfadfinder reported dropping
flares on Osnabruck in advance of a strong raid..." etc. Hour after hour of
the details of a strike, from the enemy perspective. I think it would be
highly interesting to hear, but as far as I know, there are no recordings
available...?

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR Aircrew

"Got anything on your radar, SENSO?"
"Nothing but my forehead, sir."

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Hash: SHA1


"Gordon" wrote in message
...
Engine noise on aircraft has always been a problem, specifically on combat
(non-passenger) types. On some aircraft, you can tell which position a
person
is sitting at by how much engine noise bleeds over to the ICS. Even
something
as small as a B-25 has noticeable engine noise and high freq tones
bleeding
over when you key the ICS, so I really can't see how a crew aboard a Lanc
could
use their normal speaking voices and be heard. As for the technology of
noise-canceling microphones in 1943, I think its implausible that a Lanc
would
be fitted with a system equipped with such microphones for every member of
the
crew - I agree with the guys who feel this is a studio-done, or
studio-cleaned-up, product.

If crew members had to yell over the mics to be heard, then it could not
have been a cleaned up recording. The speakers are not yelling. You could
filter out the engine sound, but a yelling voice is clearly noticible and no
filtration could make it sound like those voices, they were not yelling. If
you accept the premise that Lancaster crew members had to yell to be heard
over the intercom, it must have been a reenacted scene.

I don't doubt that the dialogue came primarily
from a Lanc crew, but its too clean! Think of what its like in a WWII
bomber -
you can barely hear yourself think. The drone of those Merlins would be
present on the recordings no matter what measures were taken to screen
them out
- it would be like recording a dialogue aboard the "Maid of the Mist", and
somehow screening out the sounds of Niagra Falls, a few feet away. How
likely
is that? My hunch is that the BBC guys did fly along on the mission, did
record it, and brought it back and (at a minimum) cleaned it up before
broadcast.
Next, I'd like to hear a recording of the Reichsjägerweile - the "running
commentary" radio broadcasts that occurred over Northern Europe during
massive
Allied raids. Once the EW stations were overwhelmed, the Lulftwaffe
ground
controllers switched to this commentary to tell units where and how the
battle
raged - "Many trucks over Dortmund, heading Southward at 7,000 meters; at
fifteen after the hour, Christmas trees and duppel were dropped over
Hanover
for what appears to be a feint attack. All aircraft in sector FA are
ordered
to land for refueling and await further orders. Pfadfinder reported
dropping
flares on Osnabruck in advance of a strong raid..." etc. Hour after hour
of
the details of a strike, from the enemy perspective. I think it would be
highly interesting to hear, but as far as I know, there are no recordings
available...?

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR Aircrew

"Got anything on your radar, SENSO?"
"Nothing but my forehead, sir."
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In article ,
nt (Gordon) writes:
Engine noise on aircraft has always been a problem, specifically on combat
(non-passenger) types. On some aircraft, you can tell which position a person
is sitting at by how much engine noise bleeds over to the ICS. Even something
as small as a B-25 has noticeable engine noise and high freq tones bleeding
over when you key the ICS, so I really can't see how a crew aboard a Lanc could
use their normal speaking voices and be heard. As for the technology of
noise-canceling microphones in 1943, I think its implausible that a Lanc would
be fitted with a system equipped with such microphones for every member of the
crew - I agree with the guys who feel this is a studio-done, or
studio-cleaned-up, product. I don't doubt that the dialogue came primarily
from a Lanc crew, but its too clean!

The first thing that popped out at me was the "No Engine Noise" thing.
Again, not only are the engines loud, but they're passing vibrations
into the structure at 2000-3000 Hz (engine revs) and 1000-1500 Hz
(prop revs) each. There should be a bug change in the character of
the background noise when the Flight Engineer pushes the props
up. (Increase RPM) Even with isolated engine mounts, the whole
airplane, and everything/everyone in it will be bucketing away. I
doubt any kind of 1940s recording technology, whether it be disk
(etching grooves in flight - how quiet will that be?) or wire (rare,
and, in fact, it could be that only the Germans had wire or steel tape
(sort of like a bandsaw blade) recorders at that time (Don't tell the
Rootin' Teuton I said so). If the sound were that well isolated, why
do the machnie gunes come through so well?
One last thing - This is supposed to be a Lancaster or Halifax (I
makes no difference for this point) on a night raid. That means that
all the crew would be on Oxygen, and they'd be using the mask
microphones. I don't here anyone breathing. They're talking, I'd
bloody well expect them to be breathing.

Next, I'd like to hear a recording of the Reichsjägerweile - the "running
commentary" radio broadcasts that occurred over Northern Europe during massive
Allied raids. Once the EW stations were overwhelmed, the Lulftwaffe ground
controllers switched to this commentary to tell units where and how the battle
raged - "Many trucks over Dortmund, heading Southward at 7,000 meters; at
fifteen after the hour, Christmas trees and duppel were dropped over Hanover
for what appears to be a feint attack. All aircraft in sector FA are ordered
to land for refueling and await further orders. Pfadfinder reported dropping
flares on Osnabruck in advance of a strong raid..." etc. Hour after hour of
the details of a strike, from the enemy perspective. I think it would be
highly interesting to hear, but as far as I know, there are no recordings
available...?

A combination of a Rugby play-by-play broadcast and the morning
traffic report. But a cleaver colution to the Command and CCOntrol
problem, and, in, some wwys, superior from the OPSEC point of view.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

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"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
nt (Gordon) writes:
The first thing that popped out at me was the "No Engine Noise" thing.
Again, not only are the engines loud, but they're passing vibrations
into the structure at 2000-3000 Hz (engine revs) and 1000-1500 Hz
(prop revs) each. There should be a bug change in the character of
the background noise when the Flight Engineer pushes the props
up. (Increase RPM) Even with isolated engine mounts, the whole
airplane, and everything/everyone in it will be bucketing away. I
doubt any kind of 1940s recording technology, whether it be disk
(etching grooves in flight - how quiet will that be?) or wire (rare,
and, in fact, it could be that only the Germans had wire or steel tape
(sort of like a bandsaw blade) recorders at that time (Don't tell the
Rootin' Teuton I said so). If the sound were that well isolated, why
do the machnie gunes come through so well?
One last thing - This is supposed to be a Lancaster or Halifax (I
makes no difference for this point) on a night raid. That means that
all the crew would be on Oxygen, and they'd be using the mask
microphones. I don't here anyone breathing. They're talking, I'd
bloody well expect them to be breathing.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

It could be a genuine recording. Did you know they have actual recordings of
Snoopy shooting down the Red Baron during WW1? Yeah, I think it was recorded
by a company called the Royal Guardsmen or something....
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In article , Peter Stickney
writes
In article ,
nt (Gordon) writes:
Engine noise on aircraft has always been a problem, specifically on combat
(non-passenger) types. On some aircraft, you can tell which position a person
is sitting at by how much engine noise bleeds over to the ICS. Even something
as small as a B-25 has noticeable engine noise and high freq tones bleeding
over when you key the ICS, so I really can't see how a crew aboard a Lanc
could
use their normal speaking voices and be heard. As for the technology of
noise-canceling microphones in 1943, I think its implausible that a Lanc would
be fitted with a system equipped with such microphones for every member of the
crew - I agree with the guys who feel this is a studio-done, or
studio-cleaned-up, product. I don't doubt that the dialogue came primarily
from a Lanc crew, but its too clean!

The first thing that popped out at me was the "No Engine Noise" thing.
Again, not only are the engines loud, but they're passing vibrations
into the structure at 2000-3000 Hz (engine revs) and 1000-1500 Hz
(prop revs) each. There should be a bug change in the character of
the background noise when the Flight Engineer pushes the props
up. (Increase RPM) Even with isolated engine mounts, the whole
airplane, and everything/everyone in it will be bucketing away. I
doubt any kind of 1940s recording technology, whether it be disk
(etching grooves in flight - how quiet will that be?) or wire (rare,
and, in fact, it could be that only the Germans had wire or steel tape
(sort of like a bandsaw blade) recorders at that time (Don't tell the
Rootin' Teuton I said so). If the sound were that well isolated, why
do the machnie gunes come through so well?
One last thing - This is supposed to be a Lancaster or Halifax (I
makes no difference for this point) on a night raid. That means that
all the crew would be on Oxygen, and they'd be using the mask
microphones. I don't here anyone breathing. They're talking, I'd
bloody well expect them to be breathing.

I've only just caught up with this thread, so apologies if I'm repeating
anything that went before.

Breathing: If most of the crew were using their mask switches properly
they would only have the mike switch to 'on' immediately prior to
talking and would switch them off again when finished, so breathing
sounds should be at a minimum (although I seem to pick up one individual
who seems to be breathing without talking at times, perhaps WV-T?).
Mind you, a WWII era mask tends reflect and thus muffle the voice a bit,
and muffling is not very apparent in the recording.

However, there is much more that is suspect in this sequence. The pilot
is instructed to keep weaving after the navigator has announced half a
minute to go before bomb drop, and before the fighter puts in an
appearance. If the bomb aimer were staring through the bomb sight
stabilisation glass at that time, to get a straight run in on the
target, the last thing he would have wanted was a weave. And just who
is asking for the weave, and why? Then the pilot is told to steer
'left, left' without having been first told to stop weaving.

Then the pilot asks for more revs. Why - just at the time the bomb
aimer needs constant speed maintained for his bomb sight predicting
computer? This doesn't feel quite right.

Then the rear gunner opens up with his four Brownings and amid the noise
you can hear an individual gun start and stop cycling. Four Brownings,
at a total 80 rounds per second would sound more like a waterfall. Also
these shots did not have the timbre of a .303 to me, and although I'll
allow that recording circumstances might have made the shots sound
funny, what was picking them up? The mask mike of the rear gunner?
That might have picked up a muffled roar - and I guess we can assume it
would remain switched on in these circumstances so he can instruct the
pilot if need be. But would it pick up the crisp cycling gunshots from
outside the turret? There would be more clanging from the breeches if
anything.

Suspicious - but if Gord Beaman can recall the noise a couple of
Brownings made in the front turret I will be willing to be corrected.
Otherwise - more redolent of a few STENs being fired into a crate in the
BBC car park :-)

Finally, the pilot is instructed to weave again at a time when the
bomber should have been flying straight and level for the post-drop
picture to be taken - which would have resulted in a VERY nice piccy of
the drop zone.

I am sure that Wynford VT really did fly that night and his journalistic
skills were put to good use, but this sequence does not add up as a
complete real time item.


Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth