Defiant pictures

[lesofprimus]

This is absolutley hilarious, watching you guys bicker over your countrys coastline....

 

[cheddar cheese]

I know, We're a sad lot, the Brits

 

[stug3]

Air-gunner of 264 Squadron wearing a GQ Parasuit, or "rhino suit" (August 1940)

 

[Wurger]

 

[stona]

That old row about the islands was hilarious! It also showed a breath taking lack of geographical knowledge

The Isles of Scilly are usually accepted to mark the south-eastern corner of the rectangular sea area the Royal Navy calls the Western Approaches. They are technically, in the Celtic Sea but I wouldn't argue with the Atlantic Ocean.
The area of the English Channel is usually bounded at the western end by an arc drawn from Land's End to the tip of Brittany, near Brest. The Scillies definitely lie outside this .

The Isle of Wight is definitely in the English Channel. It might only be five miles off the Hampshire coast but it is an island and it is in the Channel

For those keen on the shipping forecast, the Scillies lie in sea area 'Plymouth' and the Isle of Wight in, amazingly, 'Wight'. Now you can tune in to the BBC and discover what lovely weather two of our southern outposts are enjoying

Cheers

Steve

 

[pbehn]

For much of the BoB RAF pilots were disobeying orders going over the channel. The Isle of Wight is technically an island but had a big RAF airfield and Chain home station on it.

Great defiant picks BTW

 

[vikingBerserker]

That Rhino Suit is funny looking.

 

[Airframes]

There were no RAF airfields operational on the Isle of Wight during the BoB, or during WW2. All the airfields (which were civilian) were closed for the duration of the war, with the exception of Somerton, which saw only light use for communication flights, mainly by Saunders Roe.
There was, as stated, a Chain Home station at Ventor, but this was on the cliff above the town, and did not have an airfield.

 

[Snautzer01]

Yes the germans had some foating beacons.Had a radio in as well if I remember right.The germans had a much better air/sea rescue that the english and the germans pilots were better equiped than the english for survival in case of ditching.I think the british pilots had to rely on luck.Maybe a passing ships or one of the few sea rescue craft spotting them.

The Germans had also Rescue floating buoy as did the British. They were set all along the coast. It is not true that the British had a poor sea rescue service,

 

[Wurger]

 

[stona]

The Germans had also Rescue floating buoy as did the British. They were set all along the coast. It is not true that the British had a poor sea rescue service,

The buoys were German. The British didn't have a poor air sea rescue service in 1940, they didn't have one at all. The assumption was that given the density of traffic in the Channel downed airmen would be rescued this way. It didn't happen.

On August 19th 1940 Park did indeed order controllers not to vector fighters over the sea because "too many were getting drowned."

On 22nd August an emergency meeting was held (chaired by none other than Arthur Harris) to investigate the shortcomings of air sea rescue provision.

In January 1941 the RAF Directorate of Air Sea Rescue was established but it did not become functional until the autumn of 1941. It largely copied the methods of the German 'Seenotdienst' which had been established in 1935.

By the end of the war the RAF operated 600 rescue launches and several squadrons of dedicated aircraft. In 1940 it had 18 launches and no dedicated aircraft covering the entire coast of Britain. This utterly inadequate, effectively non existent, service led a New Zealand pilot, Flt Lt RF Aitken, to "scrounge" a Walrus flying boat from the Fleet Air Arm and save 35 British and German airmen over the summer acting unofficially, though he must have had some more senior support.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Snautzer01]

Either i am very good with Photoshop or you are not correct The German ones were targets for the RAF but the Luftwaffe let the allied ones with peace.

 

[stona]

Got a date for those RAF rafts....not in 1940 and a good part of 1941. The "Air Sea Rescue Service" (properly the RAF Directorate of Air-Sea Rescue) didn't even exist until 1941. The RAF's 'floating rescue stations' were deployed much later. I don't have a date to hand but probably 1943 or 1944. The only ASR station, the British version of the German rescue buoy) that I know of in existence is/was at the Scottish Maritime Museum and was built in 1942 as an 'experimental vessel', maybe a prototype, and was never deployed.

The first two squadrons designated for air sea rescue were not until October 1941. Until then there were no official air sea rescue aircraft operated by the RAF.

Even in 1942 the service failed. Of the 1,761 aircrew who ended up in the water in the last six months of 1942, 1,166 were lost. That is not a great set of odds to ditch on.

It gets worse. The post of station Air-Sea Rescue Officer was not established until early 1942. These were the officers who would train aircrew in correct ditching, dinghy and survival techniques.

The first Air-Sea rescue school opened on 30th May 1943.

The British were in fact years behind the Germans, and they are the islanders!

As I said, in the first two years of the war, including the BoB, the British had no organised air sea rescue service at all. They didn't begin to have an effective one until 1943. By the end of the war it was a large and efficient service.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Capt. Vick]

Yes, but the German ones had board games, like Chinese checkers (see above).

 

[vikingBerserker]

Which oddly enough was inventoried in Germany (I learned that last night).

 

[Airframes]

Ah, but did they have ..... Bacon ?!!!

 

[Snautzer01]

Np but they had Spam.

 

[Capt. Vick]

I though that's what the war was fought over, no?

 

[stug3]

 

[nuuumannn]

The shipping forecast is such a really quirky thing about the British and I used to laugh when my girlfriend at the time used to listen to it on Radio 4, despite having no interest in either boats or the sea!

The Shipping Forecast: From Britain's Seas Into Its Soul : NPR

Nice pic Snoutzer, one of a series of images taken on a photo sortie, which was widely distributed. The aircraft in the foreground is N1535, Sqn Ldr Philip Hunter's machine in which he was last seen chasing a Ju 88 out to sea on 24 August 1940. Note the different styles of roundel.