Posted by Peter Ceresole on December 16, 2005 at 18:35:26 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Smoking heroes and heroines posted by John Nichols on December 16, 2005 at 16:50:20:
If you are flying on a bomber over Europe in WW2, your life expectancy would be quite short.
A few weeks on average. German defences were fierce; Bomber Command was used very much as a blunt instrument and crews suffered accordingly. Even when effective measures were discovered by Operational Research, they were frequently ignored. Read R.V Jones's account in 'Most Secret War'; a true scandal was that bombers were equipped with IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) equipment, that responded with a pulse to interrogation. This was meant to be switched off over enemy territory but a myth grew up among crews that keeping IFF permanently 'on' confused German searchlight and gun laying radar. There was no reason at all why this should be so, and indeed operational research proved it to be quite ineffective and probably harmful, and recommended an urgent order to switch the damn things off. But as a matter of policy, crews weren't told this as it was felt that they would press home their attacks because of what they *believed*. They were in fact provided with an over-ride switch ('Jam mode') so that the bombers would go on transmitting IFF pulses and giving away their positions all the way across.
The German fighter force must have felt it was Christmas every day...
I think the overall survival rate for bomber crews was one in three. All the others died.
Not good at all.