On the heavy bombers the role of the crew members was symbiotic. The pilot needed the flight engineer to fly; the navigator got the plane to the target, and it was the bomb aimer that delivered the ordinance.
Wartime films give the impression of the bomb aimer's job being simply to look through the bombsight and press the button to release the bombs at the right time. In actual fact, their job is much more sophisticated. They aided the navigator, took readings to be dialled into their computer connected bomb sight, and often they might also be expected to man a machine gun in the plane's nose.
In this episode I’m joined by Colin Pateman. If you recall in episode 76 I talked to Colin about Flight Engineers. Well, he’s been busy since then and has just completed a new book Aiming for Accuracy which focuses on bomb aimers in the RAF.
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225 - Hill 107 and the Battle of Crete
224 - The Theory and Practice of Command in the British and German Armies
223 - Landing Craft Infantry
222 - The D-Day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations
221 - Training the Indian Army
220 - The Archer: Reversing to Victory
219 - D-Day Tourism
218 - Target Hong Kong
217 - How the Luftwaffe Lost the skies over Germany
216 - The Latvian Legion
215 - The Power of Japanese Propaganda
214 - Stan Hollis VC and the Green Howards on D-Day
213 - The British Empire and Commonwealth’s War Against Imperial Japan
212 - Invisible Generals
211 - HG-76: Taking the Fight to Hitler's U-boats
210 - The Battle for Italy, 1943
209 - Hospital Trains of WWII
208 - 2SAS and Bill Sterling
207 - Tank Warfare in North Africa, 1942-43
206 - The Extraordinary Life of Journalist Wallace Carroll
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