TonyEnjoyD
Guru
- Location
- Newcastle upon Tyne
On Friday I was part of a senior management team holding a workshop based around communication.
We were very lucky to have along to give a talk, a 92 yr old WWII vet who was a rear gunner on Lancaster bombers and was awarded the DFC in 1943 when he took out three German Stukka (sp?) fighters during a sortie/dogfight.
His talk and q&a was fascinating, at times very inspiring, and at others, very deep and poignant.
He flew 60 missions in two sets of 30 at a time when the average life of a crewman was 6 missions!
The stuff he talked about was not what you would see in the movies and rarely documented as it was not seen as the correct way of doing things.
One which sticks with me was on one mission, they had bombed their target in Germany and had then been hit by German fighter fire which had killed their engineer and bomb aimer.
He had taken out the fighter but they found the ice that had built up at 25 thousand feet and had frozen the controls so they couldn't turn or alter altitude.
The only way they could turn was by backing off one engine and thrusting the other to put the bomber in a flat turn which took over 5-miles!
They flew back over England, used the same method to turn back in over the West coast.
They dumped most of the remaining fuel over the sea then baled out leaving the bomber to fly back toward Europe until it ran out of fuel hopefully over the North Sea.
They then had to freefall to about 11000 feet then deploy the chutes as they didn't have oxygen , so had to try and hold their breath for the time it took to freefall!
All three made it safely back.
Bloody amazing stuff!
We were very lucky to have along to give a talk, a 92 yr old WWII vet who was a rear gunner on Lancaster bombers and was awarded the DFC in 1943 when he took out three German Stukka (sp?) fighters during a sortie/dogfight.
His talk and q&a was fascinating, at times very inspiring, and at others, very deep and poignant.
He flew 60 missions in two sets of 30 at a time when the average life of a crewman was 6 missions!
The stuff he talked about was not what you would see in the movies and rarely documented as it was not seen as the correct way of doing things.
One which sticks with me was on one mission, they had bombed their target in Germany and had then been hit by German fighter fire which had killed their engineer and bomb aimer.
He had taken out the fighter but they found the ice that had built up at 25 thousand feet and had frozen the controls so they couldn't turn or alter altitude.
The only way they could turn was by backing off one engine and thrusting the other to put the bomber in a flat turn which took over 5-miles!
They flew back over England, used the same method to turn back in over the West coast.
They dumped most of the remaining fuel over the sea then baled out leaving the bomber to fly back toward Europe until it ran out of fuel hopefully over the North Sea.
They then had to freefall to about 11000 feet then deploy the chutes as they didn't have oxygen , so had to try and hold their breath for the time it took to freefall!
All three made it safely back.
Bloody amazing stuff!
