Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Recent 60 years on publicity has reminded me of memories of Barnes Wallis's links with C,H. At Hertford we had girls whose fathers had been in 617 Squadron who wore silver medallions on their tunic which had aeroplanes on them.

We also had "free" showings of the Dambusters film and he came to talk to us about it and and showed us photos of his recent invention of a special sort of landing aeroplane.

I also remember that he showed us a scale model of a swing wing plane he called the Swallow - possibly a prototype of Concorde.

Yes.As a mon, I also once sat next to him for a "special" lunch on the "top table" overlooking the rest of the girls . He talked so much about his experiences, both at work and at school, that he had hardly eaten, so everyone was waiting for half an hour. He was a lovely man to talk to, but DR had a mutter with his wife who then told him off and insisted that he finally finished eating not chatting!

Fjgrogan wrote:I also remember that he showed us a scale model of a swing wing plane he called the Swallow - possibly a prototype of Concorde.

It was certainly a forerunner of modern fighter (and possibly other) aircraft which needed low speeds to land and take off (wings forward) and swept back for high speed in the air (swept back). BW thus brought in a whole new concept in aircraft design.

Concorde was not a variable wing aircraft - the wing was a permanent delta shape.

I remember the film being shown at BW's suggestion prior to general release. I don't remember him attending.

I will tell you two things about the Dambusters raid that were not mentioned in the film.

1) 1200 civilians were killed, most of them forced labourers from Poland.
2) The Möhne Dam was rebuilt within four months. The other two were barely scratched.

It achieved nothing.

It is simply not true that the Dams Raid achieved nothing. Rommel complained later about shortage of labour and materials for his Atlantic Wall because they had been diverted to repair the dams. In that way the dams raid made a useful contribution to D-Day. Most of the hindsight criticism has been of the diversion of crews and resources from mainstream bombing, but the later precision exploits of 617 show that there was a place for an elite unit of that sort.

The reason one of the dams didn't burst was because it was of a different construction from the others and this was not known to our planners.

The fate of the Polish slave labourers is to be regretted, but we didn't know about them either.

Wallis' other developments of the Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs enabled the RAF to crack key targets like Tirpitz and the Bielefield viaduct where other attacks had failed or only partially succeeded.

DON'T MENTION THE WAR!!!

Barnes Wallis attended the RMS tercentennial dinner in 1973 and I was lucky enough, aged 11 and during my first term, to be picked at random by the Senior Grecian, along with another squit (possibly Richard Charlesworth), to join the great man for dinner. I was in considerable awe of him but he and Lady Wallis were very kind to me (even though he wouldn't let me have a glass of wine). A great privilege and a memory that I treasure.

When I was in the VI form, all those doing Maths A level went to visit him at BAC Weybridge. He said that he would give any of us who got a degree in Maths a job on graduation, I didn't take him up on it! (He did add that we probably wouldn't stay long as we would get married, and he liked having pretty young mathematicians working for him) We were given a souvenir of the visit, a non-misting mirror, something he was working on at the time. He was a lovely man.

michael scuffil wrote:I will tell you two things about the Dambusters raid that were not mentioned in the film.

1) 1200 civilians were killed, most of them forced labourers from Poland.
2) The Möhne Dam was rebuilt within four months. The other two were barely scratched.

It achieved nothing.

That film keeps changing. In the last version Guy Gibson's dog has mysteriously disappeared.

As for your statement that Op Chastise achieved nothing, well, the clue is in the name. Rather like the Black Buck raids on the Falklands by Vulcan, amongst the benefits of the raids were the proof that such raids were possible and dams could be broken again and again. This would have caused a planning headache as combat power (in this case AA) would have needed concentration around such sites, and therefore been diverted from elsewhere.

Additionally, there's an interesting dimension to this that had 617 Squadron not been doing Chastise it might have been prosecuting Harris's area bombing doctrine which history is having a real problem stomaching.

Every 88mm diverted to protect against bombing was one less on the Eastern Front, together with its crew and support.

Meanwhile last night a team of adults on a quiz show had plainly never heard of the Dams Raid. The question related to Guy Gibson's age at the time (24). The contestants debate showed that they had no idea what the qn was about and assumed GG was a soldier.

postwarblue wrote:
Meanwhile last night a team of adults on a quiz show had plainly never heard of the Dams Raid. The question related to Guy Gibson's age at the time (24). The contestants debate showed that they had no idea what the qn was about and assumed GG was a soldier.

Yes, we saw that too ( though as I recall, there were only two left in the team by the time that question arose) and were quite shocked. On reflection however, why should we expect them to know? They were in their mid-twenties, so not nearly as familiar with the detail of WW2 as we are who were born at least two generations earlier.

Avon wrote:

michael scuffil wrote:I will tell you two things about the Dambusters raid that were not mentioned in the film.

1) 1200 civilians were killed, most of them forced labourers from Poland.
2) The Möhne Dam was rebuilt within four months. The other two were barely scratched.

It achieved nothing.

That film keeps changing. In the last version Guy Gibson's dog has mysteriously disappeared.

As for your statement that Op Chastise achieved nothing, well, the clue is in the name. Rather like the Black Buck raids on the Falklands by Vulcan, amongst the benefits of the raids were the proof that such raids were possible and dams could be broken again and again. This would have caused a planning headache as combat power (in this case AA) would have needed concentration around such sites, and therefore been diverted from elsewhere.

Additionally, there's an interesting dimension to this that had 617 Squadron not been doing Chastise it might have been prosecuting Harris's area bombing doctrine which history is having a real problem stomaching.

.... only because Guy Gibson had named his dog, (a BLACK Labrador), with a name which we are told today by the PC brigade that we cannot use. Bureaucracy, gone totally mad, in my view !!

So what did they use for the codeword which was the name of the dog?