Audio recording of RAF Lancaster under nightfighter attack

I have a wave file of a VN-era rescue going bad - a Jolly enters into a pick up
zone over a downed pilot and are promptly driven off by a blizzard of small
arms fire. The voices are professional but not entirely "calm" as they are in
direct fire from the enemy that they cannot see.

A pilot reacts to the sight of the H-2 getting raked as it pulls in over the
survivor and yells, "Get out of there buddy - you were recievin' fire that
time!" He replies stoicly, "We're takin' fire every time."

After a pause, he came back on the air, over the sound of his own
disintegrating helicopter, "We've been shot... out of the ... sky.." at which
point the transmission ends.

I think judging an entire Air Force's radio discipline and drawing conclusions
as to their professionalism based on the comments made during a combat
encounter is rather churlish, when its done from the comfort of a computer
chair in someone's home.

Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR Aircrew

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

On 01 Oct 2003 23:14:32 GMT, nt (Gordon) wrote:

I have a wave file of a VN-era rescue going bad - a Jolly enters into a pick up
zone over a downed pilot and are promptly driven off by a blizzard of small
arms fire. The voices are professional but not entirely "calm" as they are in
direct fire from the enemy that they cannot see.

A pilot reacts to the sight of the H-2 getting raked as it pulls in over the
survivor and yells, "Get out of there buddy - you were recievin' fire that
time!" He replies stoicly, "We're takin' fire every time."

After a pause, he came back on the air, over the sound of his own
disintegrating helicopter, "We've been shot... out of the ... sky.." at which
point the transmission ends.

I think judging an entire Air Force's radio discipline and drawing conclusions
as to their professionalism based on the comments made during a combat
encounter is rather churlish, when its done from the comfort of a computer
chair in someone's home.

Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR Aircrew

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

And these guys were flying through flak at night. One or two crew see
tracers from behind, and the tail gunner shoots down a fighter, before
the rest of the crew really know what was going on.

Not quite the same thing as trying to land a helicopter in a hot LZ.

Not that it wasn't dangerous bombing Germany at night in WW2, it is
just that being scared and expressing it on the radio requires an
apprehension of immediate and unexpected danger. What the Brits were
doing, in all likelihood, they had done numerous times before. Most of
them didn't know about the fighter until it was going down. Not to
mention the specialist on the airplane recording what they were saying
on this funny disc cutter.

"Gord Beaman" wrote in message
...
av8r wrote:

There are other things that don't sound right but I'll leave it at
that
for now.

Cheers...Chris


Well, I could be wrong of course but I doubt that it's real. As
Chris says it's too quiet. the bloody Lanc makes one hell of a
lot of noise and I remember the intercom being of poor quality
because of that and the poor headsets we used (HS-33 with
handheld T-17 carbon mikes). You can indeed hear several people
talking at once on any a/c intercom system that I've ever used
though but it's just too quiet on this one.

I get the impression it was genuine.

This lack of noise *could* be because of limitations in the recording
process.
It could also be due to to things done post recording to improve the
quality.
If this was a 'disc cutter' of some kind it may have had some
problems reproducing high frequency hiss and even static.
The ear is far better at hearing such things, though I suspect the
actual intercom is the reason for the lack of engine noise at least.
The lack of engine noise doesn't greatly surprise me, a carbon mike
is insensitive at best and if they were mask fitted (which seems to be
the case) they might well not 'hear' the engine noise well enough for
the recording device to record it. (Again bear in mind that your ears
are more sensitive than the equipment likely used, if you were there,
you'd hear it, but the level might not be high enough for the recording
equipment to record it at anything like the same level.)

There is also another possibility that I'll mention in a moment.

Another thing is that
on any system that I've used (except for 'hot mics' on takeoff
and landing) you always hear the click as anyone pushes their mic
switch and the hiss of background noise while the mic is open.
There was none of this...all in all it was too quiet in my
estimation...I think it was faked. I gotta add though that the MG
sounded kinda real to me...

The MG sounds like it was picked up through the rear gunners mike, with
the
resulting loss of high and low frequencies that would cause.
The general audio quality has that 'telephone' quality that such a
system would
present, and the lack of hiss and other noise may be due to either the
lack
of audio bandwidth in the system itself, or in the recording process.

The other possibility is an 'either or both' thing.

It's also *very* possible it was 'washed' in the process of putting it
into electronic format
to make it clearer. This is quite trivial to do and can make a bad
recording sound
significantly better, simply by eliminating the audio frequency 'notch'
that (mostly) contains the noise.

It's also *possible* that the original disk (or whatever) was played
back and the output
put through some passive filters to clean it up a bit and perhaps adjust
the levels and *then* cut
to a new disk before it was airplayed (or whatever they did with it).

Some of the terminology seems appropriate as well.
There is a report in there 'Photograph taken' which would probably be
a little obscure for all but the most cunning of fakers. That bomber
command did in fact take photos (and the reasoning for it) is pretty
well
covered in 'Evidence in Camera" by Constance Babbington-Smith, but it
strikes me that a faker could overlook that in a construct.

The CO

Tripped over this on Ebay. Seems to be an LP that includes this
particular recording.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....925013&categor
y=306

The CO

In article , The CO
writes
It's also *very* possible it was 'washed' in the process of putting it
into electronic format
to make it clearer. This is quite trivial to do and can make a bad
recording sound
significantly better, simply by eliminating the audio frequency 'notch'
that (mostly) contains the noise.

Maybe they were using filters on the recording equipment? If the first
thing an experienced Lanc crewman says when planning the idea is "You
can't hear anything over the engines, and there's this awful hiss from
the intercom..." it would make sense to me.

--
John

"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.