Wing Commander Guy Gibson


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I finally got round to finishing my book about Guy Gibson last night, which, incidentally, is called Guy Gibson by Richard Morris.

For a start, Gibson really resented Leonard Cheshire taking over as CO of 617 squadron, when Cheshire won the VC, Gibson was allegedly furious. The thing was, Cheshire was all things to all men, he respected everyone from the lowest ranked member of the ground crew at Scampton, he knew how important they were in the scheme of things and treated them with respect and gave them encouragement, being a snob, Gibson was unable to do this. The other thing about Cheshire was that he was a natural born pilot whereas Gibson wasn't, apparently when the MkIII Mustang arrived, Cheshire, despite having never flown one before, jumped into the cockpit and went off on a target indicating mission with no problems whatsoever.

It would seem that Gibson's Mosquito was indeed a Canadian built, Packard Merlin example, but then, so was the one he rejected. American built Packard Merlin's were notoriously unreliable, it seems that their quality control was not as good as Rolls Royce in Derby, the MkXVI Spitfire for instance was fitted with a Packard Merlin which gave trouble from the outset, the pilots preferred the MkIX or the later RR Griffin powered versions. Note that one of the Canadian Lanc's Packard Merlins failed during the trip and was replaced by the BBMF with one of their spare RR built examples.

Back to Gibson, he had few hours on Mosquito's and had been ordered to attend a conversion course on type, which he ignored. He was given a so called 'safe' mission as target marker controller, to the chagrin of the other, far more experienced squadron members. His TI's hung up yet he continued to circle around the danger zone, he was ordered to take a specific safe route home over Allied lines but ignored this too. People on the ground noticed that the descending Mosquito's cockpit was lit up with a bright white light. The theory is that the hung up Target Indicators got hit by a stray piece of flak, either British, American or German which set them off, burning through the bomb bay into the cockpit. In other words, they were fried. The Mosquito cockpit was notoriously difficult to escape from, even on friendly ground exercises it took over half a minute to get out, imagine, inexperienced, hit and over enemy territory, it must have been a nightmare, my theory is they were trying to simply belly land the plane, they were too low to bail out anyway.

Another horrible theory put forward is that the ground crew, that Gibson treated with contempt, had enough of him and sabotaged the aircraft, unlikely, but who knows.

Many years ago I bought a book by the late, great Roger Freeman called 'The Mighty Eighth in Colour'. Roger, whom I had dealings with, found that many USAAF aircrew had managed to scrounge 35mm Kodachrome colour film from sources in Hollywood studios and, a being a good old Suffolk boy and the acknowledged worlds foremost authority on the subject, obtained the most amazing photo's from WW2. He tracked down for me film of my ex-wife's Uncle Ralph's flight in a Halifax to refuel at a USAAF base, as filmed by none other Clarke Gable himself, but that's another story.

Roger then tried to track down colour film of the RAF, it was hard but he managed to produce a book called 'The RAF in Colour', buy it, it's amazing.

In this book are colour pictures taken of Gibson and his crews after the Dam Busters raid, they are taken on Kodachrome and are quite stunning, with respect to Roger and what are presumably RAF sources, here are some of them:-

gg6.jpg

This is of local interest, taken at Scampton, the old boy in the bowler hat walking with 'Gibbo' on the right is Sir Albert Ball, former Nottingham Lord Mayor and father of Captain Albert Ball VC.

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Incidentally, note on some of the pictures that Gibson is wearing the top button of his flying jacket undone, this was a symbol of being a fighter pilot going back to the Battle of Britain, having served in a night fighter squadron, he felt he was entitled to do this, it doesn't seem to have endeared him to the rest of the bomber pilots though.

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Scampton201232_zps0ab03720.jpg

Nigger's well tended grave outside Gibson's office, I have a picture I took inside Gibson's office I will find it and post

Rog

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DSCF3928_zps0dd3c353.jpg

Inside Gibson's office at Scampton, I took this pic a couple of months ago when on a private tour of the base

Rog

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#27 firbeck. I'm afraid you are wrong about the reliability of the Packard Merlin engine. In actual fact it was more reliable than the British-built Merlin. It is said that Gibson asked for the Lancaster III because of it having the Packard-built engines. There are a number of contemporary accounts of the Bomber Command maintenance statistics proving this, and Rolls-Royce being told that its engines were less reliable. Rolls-Royce engines improved as the war went on, but the Packard was always that little bit better. In fact it was the quality of the American engine that made it better than the British Merlin. That was as a result of having better machine tools to give better finishes to joint surfaces etc., There always was a tendency to knock the American engine; typical of the period when we always thought that we were better than anyone else. Remember that Packard motor cars were the American equivalent of Rolls-Royce cars, in the US - the best engineered (and the most expensive).

Remember also that it was the Packard Merlin in the Mustang that escorted the 8th Air Force bombers to Berlin and back, fighting the Luftwaffe as they did so. Some of those missions were seven hours long - not bad for a high-performance engine in a single-engined aircraft. The British Merlins in single-engined aircraft were never called upon to do same.

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Quite so. Packard built Merlins also had a somewhat improved oil cooling arrangement. The Canadian Lancaster's engine trouble was caused by the supercharger disintegrating. I don't see how you can put that down to bad manufacture on an engine that is most likely around 70 years old - it lasted this long. On any mechanical device of that sort of age something can quite unexpectedly just break. As someone who runs a car that is a mere 52 years old and I can say I have personal experience of this. :(

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Sorry I haven't responded earlier chaps, computer problems again and I can't stand replying on my I-phone, those tiny touch buttons do my head in.

I'll hold my hands up and plead guilty to generalising, but I was only referring to what I'd read in the past. This stems from a book about Douglas Bader and what subsequently happened to his fellow squadron pilots that he trained up, a good read. When the Allied air forces moved on to the continent following the Normandy landings, the fighter tactics changed, rather than act in a role that was purely air to air combat, fighters became fighter-bombers, they were required to engage ground targets as well. This was fine for such dedicated aircraft as Typhoons, Tempests, P-47's and P-38's but the most widely used Spitfire type, MkIX, was designed purely as an air to air combat machine. As a consequence, the Mk XVI was developed which was the same airframe but fitted with a long range slipper tank, underwing bomb mountings and clipped wings to give it a better performance at low level, it was also fitted later with a bubble cockpit for better all round vision. The crux of the matter was that it was also fitted with the newly imported Packard Merlin 266 as opposed to the R-R Merlin 66, the Packard having a few design differences. 403 Squadron moved to a captured airfield near Brussels and on Dec 4th 1944 exchanged it's Mk IX Spifires for the Mk XVI. Several pilots were lost flying this mark when the Packard Merlins caught fire in flight because of faulty quality control in the factory, which failed to detect cracks in the piston big ends. The Packard Merlins did not have the performance under boost of the Rolls Royce version, and the pilots were unanimous in their preference for the British engined Mk IX.

To quote a Canadian 403 Squadron pilot:-

"We hated to see the Mk IX leave us for it was the ultimate in Spitfires with the Rolls Royce engine and elliptical wings. Now we were given the Mk XVI and, ultimately, it was a wonder it ever got off the ground. We could carry two 500-pound bombs and a slipper tank, but the Packard Merlin did not compare as there were many times when the crankcase and pistons could not handle the boost".

You may argue that the added weight didn't help matters, but Mk IX's had been fitted with bomb racks prior to D-Day (they were adapted to carry beer barrels in some cases), but it didn't affect the performance of the engine.

I note that quite a few Mk XVI's have survived so they must have rectified the problems, though I note that some are fitted with the R-R Merlin 70, whether this was the answer at the time I wouldn't like to say, I can't find my ultimate Spitfire book which deals with them mark by mark which would probably tell me more.

Just to get back on the subject, if rather tenuously, did any of you see the Channel 4 programme 'Guy Martin's Spifire' on Sunday night. I thought it was brilliant, if you missed it, watch it on Ch4OD. I know Guy Martin isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I'm a fan of his, I like his enthusiasm for all things mechanical, and he does own a Merlin engine (R-R variety) from a Lancaster which he likes to run up from time to time, clip available on Youtube. The point is, being a Lincolnshire lad, his parents named him Guy when he was born in tribute to Guy Gibson!

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I think you will find that Packards DID have serious problems with Merlins when they first started building them but they improved over time while they adopted there own building techniques instead of building them 'our way'.

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Nice video of the Packard, if you can see it!

Something a bit different tonight oil priming a Packard Merlin 266. I have posted this before but I think it is worth seeing again . Enjoy. Paul B

Posted by Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (Official) on Monday, 6 October 2014
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The first Packard Merlins built - several hundred - had their con-rod big-end bolt tightened by an incorrect procedure. The engines were dismantled and corrected before they went into service. There was also a problem with the quality of the cylinder head castings, and the worse ones had to be replaced before the engines entered service. There was a problem with some engines whereby there were con-rod failures. This was as a result of polishing hiding score marks. This was corrected quickly. Once in service, apart from problems that affected other marks of Merlin, they did well.

The improved oil cooler mentioned by Pianoman, was for the engines in the experimental lightweight P-51F and P-51G, and the production P-51H. For these models the oil was cooled by engine coolant, not by a oil cooler radiator.

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