The Air War – background – Page 3 – RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVE

Paradog, Salvo

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon July 5, 2018in Archive News, The Air War - background

Nothing to do with the Pathfinders but also about a flying dog, this time in the wartime USAAF, which raises an interesting point connected to today’s earlier post on Pathfinder Pets

If these dogs were flying with their owners, how did they cope at high altitude without oxygen?

Perhaps Paradog Salvo was not flying above the altitude which requires oxygen – 8,000 feet – but Bomber Command aircrew certainly were and any dog they took with them would have had to do this too.

It is hard to imagine Bomber Command crew members having the time to keep an oxygen mask over a dog’s face during high altitude flying, and the idea of there being dog oxygen masks seems slightly preposterous, So perhaps the whole thing of dogs flying on Bomber Command operations is just a myth. Clayton’s spaniel had his own logbook, but that may have been in a supporting, ground crew type of way.

Any ideas or comments?

The Lure of Flying

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon June 19, 2018in 97 Squadron Aircrew, 97 Squadron Crews on Black Thursday, The Air War - background

The lure of flying for people growing up in the 1920s and 1930s is hard to appreciate now when commercial flying is so commonplace. Then, flying was ultra-modern and incredibly glamorous, and airshows (as in the photograph above) fed this fascination. Many of the boys who were aeroplane-mad in those years grew up to join the RAF and the Pathfinders. For more on this see our new page on the Lure of Flying.

Bomber Command’s Greatest Enemy – the Weather

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon June 8, 2018in Aircrew Losses, RAF Missing Research, War Graves, & Remembrance, The Air War - background

Bad weather killed many experienced crews, including those who were only carrying out training duties. Icing could be particularly lethal. Today we have added a page about certain aspects of ICING as it affected aircrew, sometimes lethally. A reporting system was vital, so Air Ministry orders made it a duty for a pilot who had encountered ice formation to report this when he landed.

Bomber Harris – Interview 1943

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon May 13, 2018October 14, 2020in Other Wartime Topics, The Air War - background

In 1943, E Colston Shepherd, the editor of The Aeroplane, interviewed Harris both at his office and at home, the latter being Springfields at Great Kingshill, close to High Wycombe’s Bomber Command HQ. In the subsequent article in the Picture Post, Colston Shepherd described Harris as:

broad-shouldered, bull-necked, of medium height, unsmiling and of a ruddy complexion, […] the sort of officer with whom no one takes liberties.

A caption to the photograph, above, of Harris with his wife and his daughter Jacqueline, aged 3 and a half, is captioned:

Air Chief Marshal Harris at Home: The Only Time When He Is Smiling

In 2017 Springfields was on the market for the first time since sold by the Ministry of Defence in 2002. Again, you can read this on the Daily Mail online, as long as you can ignore all the peripheral distractions. Bomber Harris Home for Sale

Bomber Harris – More on Yesterday’s Post

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon May 13, 2018in Home Front, Other Wartime Topics, The Air War - background

A couple of minor clarifications about yesterday’s post. ‘Bomber Harris is seldom equated with a sense of humour’ – we meant, of course, in the general public’s view, including that of people abroad.

The standard identikit image of Harris is of a mono-focused, stern and vengeful killer of civilians; this is not just a modern view, and Harris was well aware that many held this opinion of him during the war. The story about the sentry on the roof, as given yesterday, concluded with Harris saying that that was the one and only time, on one of the worst nights of the Blitz, that he felt vengeful against the Germans. We should have made it clearer that this comment was a direct riposte to wartime criticisms: ‘I have often been accused of being vengeful during our subsequent destruction of German cities’.

Not to go off on too much of a tangent about this, but the Blitz, not only in London but all over the country, was the catalyst for many young men and women in their decision to join the RAF. This may have been partly an impulse of revenge, but it was also the keen desire to take the war back to the Germans, a direct land assault on western Europe being out of the question until a late stage of the war.

Max Hastings’ 2010 account of the Daily Mail photographer who took the iconic picture of St Paul’s in an ocean of fire can be read (if you can stand all the adverts and general distracting junk) on the Daily Mail online: Max Hastings on Herbert Mason

Drawing by German POW of PFF Airman

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon April 29, 2018April 29, 2018in Pathfinders, The Air War - background

Portrait of Dennis Walters (possibly of 635 Squadron)

This sketch is thought to be by a German prisoner of war, Kurt Kranz, who was conscripted for German Military service in 1940, and served in Norway and Finland. He died in 1997, aged 87.

Dennis Walters is believed to have served in 635 Squadron, but we have not yet managed to trace him in the records. If anyone can shed any light on Dennis’s RAF career, please contact us.

At the time the sketch was made, in 1946, Dennis would almost certainly have been serving with BAFO, the British Air Forces of Occupation, in Germany.

The sketch is now at Eden Camp Museum at Malton in North Yorkshire. It was donated by Bryan Marvin.

Portal, Chief of Air Staff, & RAF Organisation

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon April 25, 2018in The Air War - background, Training

As part of our emphasis on the wider picture and on the wartime context in which the Pathfinders operated, we are giving details of how the RAF was organised in wartime and how it fitted into the structure of government.

This includes brief details of Charles Portal, the top man in the RAF, and also three pages of detailed description with organisational diagrams, as issued by the Directorate of Flying Training, the Air Ministry, in September 1942, the month after the Path Finder Force was formed. RAF Wartime Organisation

Scrapbook, 26th Birthday of RAF (1944)

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon April 16, 2018December 17, 2019in The Air War - background

More on the extremely tattered scrapbook in the Archive. Whilst looking through it, we discovered this gem, which we regret not having found two weeks ago in time for the 100th birthday of the RAF. Once again the anonymous aircraft fan who constructed the scrapbook has employed his formidable skills of cut-and-paste. The tear through the headline is part of the general dilapitude of the scrapbook.

Additional Page from Archive Scrapbook

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon April 15, 2018in Pathfinders, The Air War - background

Further to our post this afternoon about TALES FROM THE ARCHIVE No.7, it seems a shame not to publish part of a page from the tattered old scrapbook in the Archive which is mentioned in No.7. The scrapbook page has newspaper clippings about the Pathfinders just after the news had been broken to the world of the existence of this new Force.

We have therefore set up a single page addition to TALES No.7 showing the scrapbook page exactly as it is: Tales from the Archive 7, plus – 17 April 2018

Bomber Command, Publicity, & the Augsburg Raid

Posted by RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVEon April 15, 2018April 17, 2018in 97 Squadron Aircrew, Bomber Command, The Air War - background

Further to our previous post, we are now publishing the seventh issue of TALES FROM THE ARCHIVE, which is on the RAF’s PR war, and how the Augsburg raid was covered in the Press. It also shows how the existence of the Pathfinders was revealed in November 1943, just prior to the start of what came to be known as the Battle of Berlin.

Tales from the Archive 7. 17 April 2018