Defiant pictures

nuuumannn said:

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!

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Thats right, many love to hear the shipping forecast even if they dont understand a word, it is a few minutes of relaxation therapy. My wife bought me a beautiful book with a map of all the areas a brief description and a water coloured painting of each area, it is called "Rain later, good". I even listened to it in Germany.

An interesting article from the "Telegraph". I'm sure some of the info already stated is corroborated here.

British pilots relied on German sea rescue service during Battle of Britain - Telegraph

And yet the RAF targeted the German rescue aircraft which were painted white with red crosses (as per international regulations) and unarmed. It is a grey area of international law, not that the Nazi regime was a stickler for the law.
The reason given for attacking the the rescue aircraft was that they acted as spotters, reporting the position of British ships and convoys. This was and is vehemently denied by the Germans, but that's why they were attacked.
Cheers
Steve

Edit
Some 'notseedienst' aircraft were armed.

stona said:

And yet the RAF targeted the German rescue aircraft which were painted white with red crosses (as per international regulations) and unarmed. It is a grey area of international law, not that the Nazi regime was a stickler for the law.
The reason given for attacking the the rescue aircraft was that they acted as spotters, reporting the position of British ships and convoys. This was and is vehemently denied by the Germans, but that's why they were attacked.
Cheers
Steve

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It is the reverse of the argument about shooting men on parachutes, I think Dowding said German pilots were justified but British pilots wernt, a German over UK was out of the conflict. Many forget how huge the stretch of water being fought over actually is It went from the Thames estuary all the way around and past Southampton. Surviving dropping in the Channel was difficult and spotting a man from a boat is much harder than is first thought.

Dowding argued that a Luftwaffe airman descending in a parachute over England was already effectively a prisoner of war and should not be targeted. Churchill thought he should be shot. The vast majority of the RAF's pilots agreed with Dowding. Luftwaffe airmen rarely shot RAF pilots in parachutes, even though they must have known that they might be flying again the next day.

There has been much debate about this. All sides on occasion shot men in parachutes and there are well documented cases of this. It was an exception, not the rule. The principle regulatory factor was fear of revenge. If your side started routinely shooting your adversaries in parachutes it wouldn't be long before you were on the receiving end of similar treatment.

Cheers

Steve

In the pic above I see three different roundels.

In the pic above I see three different roundels.

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There are actually four different types of roundel. PS-A, V and R (the rear most in the image, the 'R' obscured by PS-Z's tail) are wearing the standardised form from August 1940, PS-O's differs in that it has a slightly larger red centre dot. This is plainly visible in another image of the same aircraft in formation during that photo shoot, in a book I have. Both PS-U and 'Z wear pre-war style roundels. Despite instruction being issued for the standardisation of markings, 264 Sqn aircraft were each repainted during major repair work rather than all at once.

The colour profile posted in post #21 (for the first time at least) shows the same roundel as the standard one, but altered for night fighter camouflage; the yellow extends over the blue and the white is painted out in black. The photograph of PS-P has a different roundel altogether. Other 264 night fighter Daffys retained the full colour roundel.