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Butt Report
The Butt Report, released on 18 August 1941, was a report prepared during World War II, revealing the widespread failure of RAF Bomber Command aircraft to hit their targets. At the start of the war, Bomber Command had no real means of determining the success of its operations. Crews would return with only their word as to the amount of damage caused or even if they had bombed the target. The Air Ministry demanded that a method of verifying these claims be developed and by 1941 cameras mounted under bombers, triggered by the bomb release, were being fitted. Contents The report was initiated by Lord Cherwell, a friend of Churchill and chief scientific advisor to the Cabinet. David Bensusan-Butt, a civil servant in the War Cabinet Secretariat and an assistant of Cherwell, was given the task of assessing 633 target photos and comparing them with crews' claims. The results, first circulated on 18 August 1941, were a shock to many, though not necessarily to those within the RAF, who k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lancaster Bomb Bay Jan 1944 IWM CH 18554
Lancaster may refer to: Lands and titles *The County Palatine of Lancaster, a synonym for Lancashire *Duchy of Lancaster, one of only two British royal duchies *Duke of Lancaster *Earl of Lancaster *House of Lancaster, a British royal dynasty Places Australia *Lancaster, Victoria Canada *Lancaster, New Brunswick *Lancaster, Newfoundland and Labrador *Lancaster, Ontario *Lancaster, St. Catharines, Ontario *Lancaster Sound, Nunavut United Kingdom *Lancaster, Lancashire, the original Lancaster from which other place names are derived **Lancaster University **Lancaster (UK Parliament constituency), a historical political district **Lancaster and Wyre (UK Parliament constituency), the modern political district **City of Lancaster, a non-metropolitan local government district based in Lancaster, formed in 1974 **Lancaster Rural District, a former local government area abolished in 1974 **Municipal Borough of Lancaster, a former local government area abolished in 1974 *Lancaster ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archibald Sinclair
Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso, (22 October 1890 – 15 June 1970), known as Sir Archibald Sinclair between 1912 and 1952, and often as Archie Sinclair, was a British politician and leader of the Liberal Party. Background and education Sinclair was born in 1890 in Caithness, Scotland. Sinclair was the son of a Scottish father, Clarence Granville Sinclair, and his American wife Mabel Sands, daughter of Mahlon Day Sands, and half-sister of Ethel Sands. His mother died shortly after his birth, and his father in 1895. He was brought up in families including those of his paternal grandfather Sir Tollemache Sinclair, 3rd Baronet, his uncle William Macdonald Sinclair, and Owen Williams, married to his aunt Nina. Educated at Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Sinclair was commissioned into the Life Guards in 1910. In 1912, he succeeded his grandfather, as the fourth Baronet, of Ulbster. He became one of the largest landowners in the Un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bombing Of Dresden
The bombing of Dresden was a joint British and American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, during World War II. In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 772 heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city.*The number of bombers and tonnage of bombs are taken from a USAF document written in 1953 and classified secret until 1978 . *Taylor (2005), front flap, which gives the figures 1,100 heavy bombers and 4,500 tons. *Webster and Frankland (1961) give 805 Bomber Command aircraft 13 February 1945 and 1,646 US bombers 16 January – 17 April 1945. "Mission accomplished", ''The Guardian'', 7 February 2004. The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed more than of the city centre. An estimated 22,700 to 25,000 people were killed. Three more USAAF air raids followed, two occurring on 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pathfinder Force
The Pathfinders were target-marking squadrons in RAF Bomber Command during World War II. They located and marked targets with flares, which a main bomber force could aim at, increasing the accuracy of their bombing. The Pathfinders were normally the first to receive new blind-bombing aids like Gee, Oboe and the H2S radar. The early Pathfinder Force (PFF) squadrons was expanded to become a group, No. 8 (Pathfinder Force) Group in January 1943. The initial Pathfinder Force was five squadrons, while No. 8 Group ultimately grew to a strength of 19 squadrons. While the majority of Pathfinder squadrons and personnel were from the Royal Air Force, the group also included many from the air forces of other Commonwealth countries. History Background At the start of the war in September 1939, RAF Bomber Command's doctrine was based on tight formations of heavily armed bombers attacking during daylight and fending off attacks by fighters with their defensive guns. In early missions ov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
H2S Radar
H2S was the first airborne, ground scanning radar system. It was developed for the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command during World War II to identify targets on the ground for night and all-weather bombing. This allowed attacks outside the range of the various radio navigation aids like Gee or Oboe, which were limited to about . It was also widely used as a general navigation system, allowing landmarks to be identified at long range. In March 1941, experiments with an early airborne interception radar based on the 9.1 cm wavelength, (3 GHz) cavity magnetron revealed that different objects have very different radar signatures; water, open land and built-up areas of cities and towns all produced distinct returns. In January 1942, a new team was set up to combine the magnetron with a new scanning antenna and plan-position indicator display. The prototype's first use in April confirmed that a map of the area below the aircraft could be produced using radar. The first systems ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
G-H (navigation)
Gee-H, sometimes written G-H or GEE-H, was a radio navigation system developed by Britain during World War II to aid RAF Bomber Command. The name refers to the system's use of the earlier Gee equipment, as well as its use of the "H principle" or "twin-range principle" of location determination. Its official name was AMES Type 100. Gee-H was used to supplant the Oboe bombing system which worked along similar lines. By measuring and keeping a fixed distance to a radio station, the bomber could navigate along an arc in the sky. The bombs were dropped when they reached a set distance from a second station. The main difference between Oboe and Gee-H was the location of the equipment; Oboe used large displays in ground stations to take very accurate measurements but could only direct one aircraft at a time. Gee-H used much smaller systems onboard aircraft and while somewhat less accurate, could direct as many as 80 aircraft at a time. Gee-H entered service in October 1943 and first us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oboe (navigation)
Oboe was a British bomb aiming system developed to allow their aircraft to bomb targets accurately in any type of weather, day or night. Oboe coupled radar tracking with radio transponder technology. The guidance system used two well separated radar stations to track the aircraft. Each Oboe tracking station used radio ranging to define a circle, the radius of which was the distance from the station to the target, the third point in the triangulation. The two circles intersected at the target. Radar pulses from each station were picked up by a transponder mounted in the aircraft. The aircraft transponder transmitted the signals back to the stations, after a slight delay. By assessing the time it took for the signal to return the distance between the station and the aircraft could be determined. One tracking station, the Cat station, was used to adjust the aircraft's flight path. The other station, the Mouse, was used to key the bomb release point. Oboe, in essence, was a ground- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GEE (navigation)
Gee, sometimes written GEE, was a radio navigation system used by the Royal Air Force during World War II. It measured the time delay between two radio signals to produce a fix, with accuracy on the order of a few hundred metres at ranges up to about . It was the first hyperbolic navigation system to be used operationally, entering service with RAF Bomber Command in 1942. Gee was devised by Robert Dippy as a short-range blind landing system to improve safety during night operations. During development by the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Swanage, the range was found to be far better than expected. It then developed into a long-range, general navigation system. For large, fixed targets, such as the cities that were attacked at night, Gee offered enough accuracy to be used as an aiming reference without the need to use a bombsight or other external references. Jamming reduced its usefulness as a bombing aid, but it remained in use as a navigational aid in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur "Bomber" Harris
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet, (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the RAF as "Butch" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) RAF Bomber Command during the height of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Born in Gloucestershire, Harris emigrated to Rhodesia in 1910, aged 17. He joined the 1st Rhodesia Regiment at the outbreak of the First World War and saw action in South Africa and South West Africa. In 1915, Harris returned to England to fight in the European theatre of the war. He joined the Royal Flying Corps, with which he remained until the formation of the Royal Air Force in 1918. Harris remained in the Air Force through the 1920s and 1930s, serving in India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Harris took command of No. 5 Group RAF i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Area Bombing Directive
The Area Bombing Directive was a directive from the wartime British Government's Air Ministry to the Royal Air Force, which ordered RAF Bomber Command to destroy Germany's industrial workforce and the morale of the German population, through bombing German cities and their civilian inhabitants. Background and implementation The ''Area Bombing Directive'' (General Directive No.5 (S.46368/111. D.C.A.S) was a 14 February 1942extract from the official account of Bomber Command by Arthur Harris, 1945 , for thei [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Edward Singleton
Sir John Edward Singleton (18 January 1885 – 6 January 1957) was a British politician and judge. Early life and career Singleton was born in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire, and was educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read Law, obtaining a third-class degree. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1906, and joined the Northern Circuit. During World War I he served in the Royal Field Artillery, achieving the rank of captain. He was also mentioned in dispatches. He became a King's Counsel in 1922. In the 1922 general election, he was elected to the House of Commons for Lancaster as a Conservative, but was unseated in the 1923 general election by the Liberal candidate. After his defeat, he returned to the bar; he was Judge of Appeal in the Isle of Man between 1928 and 1932, and Recorder of Preston between 1928 and 1934. Judicial career Singleton was appointed a judge of the King's Bench Division of the High ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
