h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My Mother remembers days when doodlebugs (V1 flying bomb) flew over her house in dorking (Surrey, England) on their way to London. The Anti Aircraft (Ak Ak) gun sights weren't set correctly for the speed of these things so you would often see these flying bombs buzzing through the sky followed by a trail of small black puffs of smoke. The Spitfires used to fly along side them and clip their wings to knock them off course. Not so great when one was knocked your way.

The V1 flying bomb was designed to keep going until it ran out of fuel, so the Germans relied on intelligence to tell them whether they were falling short and would adjust the quantity of fuel accordingly. Lengend has it that we were able to feed them false information so that the bombs started to fall short, and they never knew.

The dreadfull deep droning noise of the doodlebug engine would be bad enough, but then it would stop, and you would wait for perhaps one minute as it dropped out of the sky and hope to god that your number wasn't up.

The V1 rocket was very cheap to produce but the Germans decided to go for development of the much more expensive V2 rocket which was virtuall impossible to stop. Due to their cost not many V2's were launched but had a devestating effect when they hit. Whole rows of houses could be destroyed.

There is an urban legend that an ARP (Air Raid Precaution) man had his clothes blown off by a V2. He was stunned, naked but otherwise untouched. You could never hear the V2 coming.

More later.

Cheers

HappiNÔse (aka Moonglum Clampflower)

There was a regiment of Canadian troops stationed in the woods on Ranmore, near Dorking. During their leave, they would wander down to the pubs in Dorking High street and drink whisky (amongst other things). It would appear that many of them weren't used to the strength of english spirits and would quickly get paralytic and sometimes violent.

My mothers father was in the Home Guard. One of his jobs was to patrol the high street armed with a cosh (rubber tube with a lead weight at one end) and would drag these poor souls on to a truck and send them back to camp.

When their time came, they went to fight on Omaha Beach (I think it was) and due to some error of command did not get the support they needed. It might have been that they landed at the wrong beach, not sure.

However, they never came back. The whole regiment was lost. Dorking town was never quite the same after that.


HappiNÔse (aka Moonglum)

The German bombers usually came at night in their hundreds. Their target was London. The bomber crews would be looking for any sign of life below, which meant the residents of towns and cities had to ensure that all lights were switched off or covered so they could not be seen from above. It really didn't take much, just a brief glimpse of a light and the bombers would drop their load and run for it back to Germany. It was the ARP wardens whose job it was to patrol the streets looking for such leaks of light and fine people accordingly.

Up on Ranmore, small lights were set up deep in the woods away from civilisation, and the bombers would often mistake these for a target and bomb them instead.

Many German planes were shot down and sometimes the crew were able to bail out and parachute to safety. However, on landing, they were often confronted by angry lynch mobs who would not hesitate to string them up if given the chance. If they were lucky, they would be captured and protected by the army of police.

The Parachutes were made of silk and often made their way through the black market into civilian hands to be made in to things like wedding dresses. Times were hard and absolutely everything was used as much as possible. Nothing went to waste.

Other precautions against air raids was tape over the windows to avoid glass being blasted everywhere if a bomb landed nearby.

A good indication an air raid was coming was household pets running for cover and hiding under tables well before any sirens went. They seemed to have a sixth sense about these things.

Air Raids on the whole were the most difficult thing to cope with during WWII. They instilled terror on a daily or nightly basis for years and it made civilians feel very much involved in the war.

Modern warfare does not seem to bring this home to the civilian population as bombing of this nature is no longer possible, and so seems far more remote.


Happinose (aka Moonglum)

My father as a teen watched the skys with fascination as the second world war raged, and he started collecting the bits of shrapnell and cartridge cases that often rained out of the sky. As time went on his collection grew and started to include bits of aircraft and in some cases, live munitions which he defused himself .

In one such incident he removed blue phosphorus from an incendary bomb. Without thinking he threw it on to the fire and got caught in a small fireball. Not seriously hurt though.

This is how his museum started. His father was a great help and managed to bring back incendary canisters and complete (already defused) bombs etc. The bits of aircraft recovered started to include significant parts such as a fixed mount german machine gun complete with ammunication clips.

Before you ask, yes, all of this was strictly illegal and held stiff penalties if you were caught, but boys will be boys and neither this nor the inherent danger ever stopped him.

In later years, the museum would grow to an enormous size. Big, that is, for a private collection. Items would include Uniforms, replica weapons, medals and the heaviest radio equipment you could possibly imagine.

Some of the prize pieces included a complete parachute, an r1154 / t1155 radio transmitter / receiver for the Lancaster Bomber, purchased from an army surplus fair, and a Magnetron which was the central piece that produced high powered radar waves. Interestingly enough, a modern Microwave uses a magnetron to cook food!!

My parents, after their retirement decided to move to the Ilse of Man. The whole collection was offered to the Imperial War Museum but the were not interested, so being half Belgian, my father offered the entire collection to the Belgian War Museum instead. They gladly accepted and this collection will be put on display in the next few years after treatment and various displays being built.

My father has passed away now, but would be greatly interested and inspired by pages like these, so keep up the good work and everyone keep the info coming.

Cheers

HappiNÔse (aka Moonglum Clampflower).

Your mention of parachutes reminds me of a story my mother tells. She was a teenager in Scotland during the war and was sent along with other girls her age to work on a farm, the regular workers being men were in the forces. Mum says this was called the Land Army. One night she and one of her friends walked out to smoke a cigaret and spotted in the sky a parachute floating to earth. Thinking this was a pilot shot down they ran closer but stayed in the shadows by the side of the barn in case the pilot was German. Partly hidden from sight but close to the expected landing place they waited in excitement. Then her friend grabbed her by the arm and cried. "It's a land mine!" With no time to run they hid beside the barn wall and fortunately the bomb was a dud. Land mines I am told were parchute bombs with a long probe extending below that detonated the bomb about a yard above the ground. Why it floated down in the middle of a farm late at night was never explained to me.

Wow! Sounds like a close call.

Yes the Land Army went around helping out with farms and such like. Invaluable when you consider that the majority of men had gone to the front or at least were involved in the armed forces somewhere.

The parachute mine (although I'm no expert) seemed to be designed to give an airburst rather than hit the ground. The advantage is a greater blast area and example being ...

http://www.digiserve.com/peter/sturry2.htm

Typically, they were dropped on factories and such like.

Sometimes the bomber would come across and get attacked by the RAF in spitfires of hurricanes. The bomb load on these planes was heavy so to get speed up to get away from the attack, the bombers would often just dump the bombs and run. This would account for spurious drops like this.

I'll have to check this out further because I initially thought that the idea of a parachute on a mine was to be able to land the mine and arm it without damaging it. Thus you could seed an area with mines from the air. However that wouldn't work because the mines would be highly visible due to the parachute flapping about.

Cheers

HappiNÔse (aka Moonglum Clampflower)

HappiNÔse your Canadians were probably involved in Operation Jubilee -the raid on Dieppe in 1942 which was a precursor to the D Day landings and involved mostly Canadian forces. It was meant to be a raid in force rather than a commando style attack and was designed to measure German defenses and the Allies ability to land large forces of men and equipment on the coast of France.

It was an unmitigated disaster as you can see at http://users.pandora.be/dave.depickere/Text/dieppe.html

Omaha Beach was purely a US Army affair although Canadian forces did land on Juno Beach in Normandy on D-Day - http://www.stormpages.com/junobeach/