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By: - 22nd May 2010 at 13:59 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Remember reading a book many years ago that mentions a Battle of Britain Pilot was killed when he bailed out of his aircraft. On investigation his parachute was cut to bits by someone causing him to fall to his death.
G.
By: - 22nd May 2010 at 14:09 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
There is a similar accusation in the Battle-of-Britain edition of the ‘Lost Voices’ series of books. In that case the person quoted states that parachutes were re-packed by Irish labourers and blames the sabotage on some of them with ‘IRA sympathies’. I’m not sure that re-packing parachutes would have been entrusted to ‘labourers’ whatever their background.
I also seem to remember a case from the Battle-of-Malta where an RAF pilot fell to his death after his parachute was tampered with. I cannot remember details only that some ‘pin had been bent so it was impossible to pull’.
By: - 22nd May 2010 at 16:18 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Sabotage was mentioned as a possible reason for a 20 OTU Wellington bursting into flames on the ground at RAF Elgin (AKA Bogs O' Mayne, or Manbeen) during WW2.
(Action Stations: Military Airfields of Scotland)
By: - 22nd May 2010 at 22:26 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Andy Bird's "A Separate Little War" describes how the investigation of the crash of a Banff Wing Mosquito (aileron detached, IIRC) resulted in a finding of sabotage, and the responsible individual being traced and punished.
By: - 22nd May 2010 at 23:40 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
One of the local furniture factories came close to being prosecuted for sabotage, when it was found that one of the employees, instead of filling gaps in Mosquito wing joints with wood, as he'd been told, was stuffing them with paper, instead, then pouring glue over the top, hoping it would fail. Unfortunately for him, it was found that his method, because the glue soaked into the paper, was actually stronger than the approved system.
There will always be someone, in any war, who thinks contrary to others; I worked with a man, 10 years my senior, who continually said that we'd have been better off, if the Germans had won.
Edgar
By: - 23rd May 2010 at 06:38 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
My father, a 15th AF B-17 pilot, said that there were stories/rumors of 15th AF B-24s exploding soon after takeoff because of a bomb that would be detonated by the retraction of the rioght main UC leg.
I've never read anything about it...
It could have been one of those "camp tales"...anyone else ever hear a similar story?
By: - 23rd May 2010 at 06:52 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
There will always be someone, in any war, who thinks contrary to others; I worked with a man, 10 years my senior, who continually said that we'd have been better off, if the Germans had won.
Edgar
Well, all other issues aside, at least we wouldn't have to deal with the bloody French ;)
By: - 23rd May 2010 at 07:02 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
A big 'What if' ....would he have still been around,10 years your senior, if the Germans had won?
There will always be someone, in any war, who thinks contrary to others; I worked with a man, 10 years my senior, who continually said that we'd have been better off, if the Germans had won.
Edgar
Couple of incidents recorded wartime HMS Condor, shore station, of Swordfish crashes due to sugar put into fuel tanks.
By: - 23rd May 2010 at 07:55 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I worked with a man, 10 years my senior, who continually said that we'd have been better off, if the Germans had won.
Edgar
I've spoken to many British WW2 veteran servicemen who have said the same thing. For instance, the father of a friend of mine was a Commando during the North African and Italian campaigns, and then helped track down war criminals after the war. He was disgusted at the way Britain slowly rotted away industrially, socially and intellectually since the war, and was often heard to mutter that the wrong side won.
What if the Germans had won? I can remember seeing a Nazi map of Britain, split into ethnicity, and it showed just how skewed their theories were. They thought England was an equal, since the Saxons originally came from Germany, and the Gaels in Scotland were considered Aryan too. But my lot, the Picts, were labelled as 'Untermensch' - sub-humans, so their geneticists obviously had no idea that the Picts came from northern Germany, Denmark, and Norway originally. The Gaels had migrated north from the Basque region of Spain, so their racial theories were 100% out.
Some groups would have been allowed to live their lives unmolested, so long as they towed the party line, maybe even Germanicised, while other groups would have been rounded up, used for slave labour, then exterminated...
By: - 23rd May 2010 at 14:42 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Reports of a fifth columnist active at the Vickers plant at Broughton in 1940 somewhere ?
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By: Beermat - 22nd May 2010 at 11:53
A recent thread around General Sikorsky got me wondering - has anyone published a study of sabotage activities against allied aircraft during WWII?
It certainly seems to have been relatively rife - Alex Henshaw describes force-landing a factory-sabotaged Spitfire (split pin inserted into the magneto housing - 'Sigh for a Merlin' p.87), there is a reference in Whittel's 'Spitfire Women' to straightforward vandalism of Jackie Cochran's Hudson in Montreal (though this seems to have been a case of extreme misogeny), while Denys Braithwaite in 'Target for Tonight' describes his near-fatal incident in Mosquito KB119 on take off in Dorval, Canada as the result of sabotage.
Who was doing this, and why, and were they acting independently or part of an axis-supported network? Was anyone ever charged with deliberate sabotage of an aircraft?
Any pointers out there? Cheers!