The Dam Busters I

[Alan Eardley]

Marv,

Thanks - yes that was it. I'm in the crowd somehere in the background. You were there, I take it?

Alan

You mean like this...........

 

[Marv]

Unfortuantely Alan I wasn't, would have liked to have been as you don't see that very often......certainly looks like a day to remember. :eusa_clap

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Alan, PM storage limit reached.

pc

 

[Smithy]

Heads up for fans of 617 and Operation Chastise, James Holland - author of "Fortress Malta", the recent "Battle of Britain", "The Burning Blue", etc - is releasing his book on the raid, the lead up to it and the aftermath in May of this year.

Worth keeping an eye out for.

 

[Spitfire]

I need larger bookcases!

 

[Smithy]

I need larger bookcases!

Tell me about it! I've got books in storage back home in NZ, I've got some in storage here, and yet there's still piles of them all over the hallway floor.

 

[Worf]

Hope they do a better job for this lot than they did with "Redtails". And I for one say call the dog what they called it.

Worf

 

[Smithy]

Hope they do a better job for this lot than they did with "Redtails". And I for one say call the dog what they called it.

Worf

Hi Worf,

They haven't given a release date for "Red Tails" here in Australia but to be honest now even if they do I don't think I'll go. I've heard some really bad things about it. A chap over on another board I belong to had this to say...


"Wow.. that was so bad it was almost painful.
They took what should have been a great story and turned it into StarWars with airplanes~

Pretty amazing that a 262 hits a P-51 with his 30mm and the P-51 flies on.. yet the P-51 hits the 262 with a burst of .50 cal and the 262's wing comes off! And that was just one of the many ridiculous scenes. I also liked it when they showed the B-17 pilot pulling back the no.2 mixture to open the bomb bays doors.

Like I said, it was painful to watch after a while. This one made 'Pearl Harbor' look like a masterpiece."


Sadly it sealed the deal for me. I'll wait for PJ's new Dam Busters and get my aviaition film fix from some of the oldies and goodies in my DVD collection.

Best,

Tim

 

[Effingham]

I must say... if the new Dambusters movie doesn't incorporate the Dambuster March in some way in the soundtrack, I'll be greatly disappointed.

 

[Espee]

This is taking me back over 40 years, to watching the movie on TV with my father, and building the Revell model kit, soon after.
Eventually I got rid of the plane, but I was into other modeling, so I kept the cylindrical bomb in case I could use it to represent something else.

 

[Edward]

Hope they do a better job for this lot than they did with "Redtails". And I for one say call the dog what they called it.

Worf

Let's not go there again - we had a thread on that before, and it got very messy.

I must say... if the new Dambusters movie doesn't incorporate the Dambuster March in some way in the soundtrack, I'll be greatly disappointed.

I'm sure they could come to an arrangement re copyright if they could, though personally I'd rather see this as something new and of itself, not a remake of the original.

 

[Story]

Funeral directors arranging the send-off of a war hero who died in his sleep aged 99 have made an appeal for attendees to his service because no relatives are able to go.

Harold Jellicoe ‘Coe’ Percival served in RAF Bomber Command as ground crew during the Dambusters raid in World War Two and ‘travelled the world and somehow ended up in Blackpool.’

It has emerged that Mr Percival was one of four siblings, but lived a ‘nomadic lifestyle’ and never married nor had children.

Poignantly, the funeral takes place on Remembrance Day – on the two minutes’ silence mark at 11am on November 11 – at the Lytham Park Crematorium, Regent Avenue, FY8 4AB.

The printed announcement has been shared by many servicemen and women on social media, including Sgt Rick Clements who posted the appeal on Facebook alongside a caption which read: ‘This guy needs and deserves your help.’

Comedian Jason Manford also tweeted out the request, which has led to a pledge by the RAF Benevolent Fund that some of its uniformed members will attend the service.

Janet Wareing, a matron at Mr Percival’s nursing home, said: ‘We’ve been told one group is looking to bring around 200 people to the service, which would be fantastic.’

‘I put the appeal in because we have very little information on Harold,’ funeral director Edmund Jacobs told Metro.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/09/emoti...ral-of-raf-serviceman-who-died-alone-4179724/

 

[Story]

300+ turned out.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/a-veteran-died-with-nobody-to-attend-his-funeral-what-happen

 

[B-24J]

Just great. Very moving indeed.

John

 

[Harry Gooch]

Dambusters Royal Canadian Legion Branch 617.

http://www.rcl617.com/

Their motto: "Après moi le Deluge" (After me, the flood.)

 

[rjb1]

Those who care about "The Dam Busters" might be interested to know that I use clips from the original movie in my Engineering Design course to illustrate good engineering principles. One example is when Guy Gibson notices the spot lights at the music hall and gets the idea to use them for the aircraft-height indicator. Engineering Principles: 1) Good design ideas come from unexpected sources, and 2) it's best if you can come up with a simple solution to a complex problem. (Same for the distance-estimating "sight")
I use the bouncing-ball model-testing segment to illustrate an engineering principle called "Dimensional Analysis", which is used to connect the results of small-scale testing to real (full-size) objects. When Barnes Wallis (in the movie) mentions to the visitors to the lab that he has found the "scaling factor", that's what he is talking about.
The fact that the bombs fail at first, but he keeps on working on them, illustrates the most fundamental engineering Idea: "Oh well, back to the drawing board."
In addition to teaching some good engineering (and history), I like think of it as a small tribute to a great engineer, Barnes Wallis.

 

[GHT]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-59413350

The last British survivor of the World War Two Dambusters raid is celebrating his 100th birthday. Sq Ldr George "Johnny" Johnson, who lives in Bristol, was a bomb-aimer during the daring operation. Mr. Johnson was just 21 when he took part in the 1943 operation, which involved experimental bouncing bombs.