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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49 - Castle of Eagles
48 - Fallen Giants: The Russian T-35 Tank
47 - Flying to Victory: The Western Desert Campaign 1940-41
The Covenanter Tank
46 - Fighting Through From Dunkirk to Hamburg
45 - The Jersey Brothers
44 - The Winter War: The British Reaction to the Invasion of Finland
43 - The Red Cross: Humanitarians at War
42 - The Battle of the Coral Sea
41 - Amphibious Operations in WWII
40 - Homefront to Battlefront
39 - Allen Dulles and the German Resistance
38 - The Race for the Rhine
37 - 82nd Airborne at Operation Husky
36 - Volunteers and Pressed Men
35 - Air Campaigns on the Eastern Front
34 - Surviving the Nazis, Gulags and Soviet Communism
33 - The American St Nick
32 - Operation Sea Lion - The invasion of Britain
31 - Shadow Warriors: Daring Missions of WWII by Women of the OSS and SOE
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