This and several other messages in the thread seem to have eluded my
server, so I just found them on googlegroups.

(The Revolution Will Not Be Televised) wrote in message ...
On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 03:20:19 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

[Stirlings doing daylight tactical bombing in support of B-17s]

snip

BTW, do you have any idea why they didn't put some
extended tips on the Stirlings, as they did for the Halifax? Maybe it just would have taken too much of
a change to get them up to reasonable heights.

The only effort to do this that I can see came with the
"super-Stirling" using Centaurus engines mooted by Shorts in 1941.
The Centaurus wasn't going to appear in adequate numbers in time to
have an impact on Stirling usage in the real world, meanwhile in
1941-42 the MAP and AM were unhappy with Short's chronic failure to
meet existing Sitrling production targets. Any new type or equipment
change which would further hinder production seems to have been
dismissed out of hand, although that's conjecture on my part in the
absence of hard evidence.

Green says they were supposed to get new wings of 135 ft.(!) span.

snip

[2 Group B-25s using 4,000lb bombloads in January 1943]

BTW, what was the
target of that first attack? Are we talking a "just nip across the channel to Calais and back" sort of
thing?

Yes, the targets were on the Ghent-Terneuzen canal in Belgium; but on
the other hand they also carried 4,000lbs on deeper penetrations to
Brest and Normandy that I'm aware of. I was hoping you might have
some evidence of 12th AF range and bombloads to compare, or even from
ops in the SWP.

I'll have to retrieve a book on the B-26 from another library, as it
compares the B-25 and B-26 in North African ops. All I have handy is
a table printed in Wagner's "American Combat Planes," labeled "AAF
Bombers in the European War, 1942-45." Here's the sortie count and
bomb tonnage for the B-25 and B-26:

B-25: 63,177 sorties; Tonnage 84,980. 1.345 Tons/sortie.

B-26: 129,943 sorties; Tonnage 169,382. 1.304 Tons/sortie.

These are presumably short tons. I've always been a bit surprised
that the average bomb load is higher for the B-25, but that gets into
too many unknown variables.


[cowardly and snivelling agreement by the colonialist Yanqui
running-dogs snipped]

J. Edgar Hoover, eat your heart out.

We draw the line at accessorizing with earrings and pearl necklaces; supposedly he didn't.

snip story confirming tea as vital to the British war effort

Well, it would help if you were aiming to contribute some badly-needed
inaccurate, nationally chauvanistic-abuse to this thread, if you could
actually manage some substantive inaccuracy. I note that so far I
have been the only contributor to succeed in adding unsupported
personal abuse to the thread so far. My victory in traditional usenet
terms is, frankly, unassailable.

True. I blame my upbringing. How was I to know that opinions based
rational analysis as free as possible of emotional attachment to the
subject matter, would be considered so passe'? Even when I try and
make some really outrageous, wholly partisan and wildly inaccurate
statement, I find facts and weaselly caveats creeping back in. Oh,
the shame of it, that I'm so ill-suited for the majority of Internet
discourse.

Guy