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air fix sounds like eastern edge of Atlantic ocean. one i live on western edge of atlantic in the usa. two snd 3 hobbire shops no longer exist in the profusion of 50 years ago which then asks question where does on get needed & necessary plastic adhesive?
The narrator quotes one crewman or pilot who states with certainty that on a raid he saw a scarecrow shell explode in a position where he knew there were no bombers.. Then indirectly cals him a liar.
Interesting video. Just wondering - could some of these be German anti-aircraft shells fired from two different anti-aircraft guns hitting each other mid-air? Surely that must have happened at times but perhaps the "show" wouldn't be enough. Finally, have you seen Bomber Harris starring John Thaw? It's on TH-cam.
We had a teacher when in the junior school who must have been ex RAF. Someone brought a Lancaster model to school and our teacher explained all of the various parts with a detailed description!!
Occam's razor suggests that the things blowing up that looked like aircraft blowing up were aircraft. I reckon that it was just a story to help boost morale. Another good story! Well done!
Well if they can engineer a shell that can perfectly mimic an exploding bomber they can probably also engineer a shell capable of taking them down. Nah its propaganda plain to see. Like carrots for the night fighter pilots vision. Very clever psychological trick to those who believed it but must have been pretty bewildering to be lied to for those that saw through it.
Bit like the sudden spate of gas explosions that suddenly started to happen in London around September 1944 which were in reality the V2 rockets, because there was no form of detection of there arrival or defence against them it was thought to explain them off to other reasons as to not panic the public.
@@agdgdgwngo as far as the carrot trick went, imagine being completely duped by the stories of improved night vision and telling everyone that it was true, finding out that it was all a lie must've been pretty embarrassing, especially when the people who you told found out!
It's the British government. They've always were more happy with risking people getting harmed than acknowledging real dangers. Of course that extends to military leadership.
most aircrew knew exactly what it was, if your trucking through flak with 4000ibs steel bins of explosive in a machine full of fuel it doesn't take much to go boom
My Uncle a Halifax and later a Lancaster pilot in WW II talked about the scarecrow, but also believed it was a myth. On nights where there were large numbers of supposed scarecrows, the RCAF experienced high bomber loses.
My father was a wireless operator in a Halifax ,told me once they were on the way to a raid over Berlin he decided by chance to check things over in the bomb bay he noticed the pin that locked the fuse in one of the bombs had come out , the draught in the aircraft was slowly turning the little prop that set the fuse , he replaced the pin , if he hadn't noticed that then game up , he didn't tell anyone else on the aircraft but had a quiet word with the ground crew
@@alanjones6359 AFAIK those little propellors just activated the fuse but did not set them off. Just as today's safety measure where a missile has to travel for some time after being launched in order to become active. Maybe if the fuse hit something on its way out that would have ment "game over". But that not being the case the bomb would behave just normal. So a bit of embellishment to his narration.
@@alanjones6359 , as V 100 says, the propeller turned a given number of turns, deactivating a safety that would prevent the fuse from functioning. It's to ensure separation from the aircraft before the fuse becomes active. The propeller safety portion couldn't have triggered the bomb.
@@ShawnD1027 he was obviously playing safe ! But I spoke to a navigator once who flew in tornados he was captured in the gulf War they released a bomb on a raid but unfortunately the bomb went off prematurely damaging the aircraft pilot and him had to eject at 350 mph
It's very hard to accept that such a weapon wouldn't leave footprints all over Nazi communications, given the bureaucratic propensity to document everything.
What about window (aka chaff) it was developed to jam night fighters radar, was it not? The RAF had to find the Wavelength of every new German aircrafts radar.
My father was a Lanc tail gunner. He said the crews knew it was planes going down, the intelligence men at debriefing often 'softened' the reports. He flew from September 1944... did 40 ops... he said he did not believe in 'scarecrow' shells.
@davidelliott5843 I can imagine it, actually. You're in the dark, almost alone, being hunted by a predator made specifically to kill you. You see your friends getting killed. Maybe you believe the myth to try to comfort yourself, maybe you spread the rumor to keep your fellow crew calmer. It's the same as U-Boat crews with their "Tauchretter" escape device, you have it to make yourself feel better, because it only actually works if you sink in a bathtub.
I think scarecrows are mentioned in Len Deighton's Bomber. He points out the impossibility of the Germans expending such a huge amount of valuable material into the sky justbto scare the air crews
@@LeifNelandDk An "idea", yes. Not fact though. The mind would play all sorts of tricks in such a situation. That combined with rumours being spread amongst the air crews.
Myth. Much the same as the famous "Blue master searchlights". ( AC Arc lamps had symmetrical carbons as they wore evenly. As an Arc operator, you needed to watch for two errors.. if the carbons burned unevenly, the center of the arc would move out of focus, and the beam would open or close up with a black spot in the centre.. you watched the shape of the spot and adjusted the feed accordingly. The other problem was the carbon gap size.. if the carbons were too close together, the arc ran cool and colour of the light went from white to red. If the gap was too wide, the arc ran hot and the light went blue before the arc blew out and the light stopped..)
There were many tricks used in WW 2, Schrage Musik was achieved by the removal of tracer bullets from the belts being fired. A rear gunner on 617 squadron did the opposite. Tracer rounds were normally inserted into the belt in the ratio of 1 tracer to 4 bullets. What he would do is make up his belts of ammo with tracer bullets as 1 in 2 rounds, so to the German night fighter pilot it would appear as a higher density of fire rate. All it needed was a slight delay in the fighter pilots wondering what was shooting at him and the Lancaster would corkscrew away and hopefully disappear.
Actually "Shräge Musik" is something totally different. It was whole automated device (eventually; once entered serial production). It required from pilot just to fly below the target. Shoot was triggered automatically.
@@krzysztofgawe1089 Not really because the Air Ministry denied Shrage Musik the same as Scarecrow shells. Without the tracer shells, aircraft would appear to blow up or crash for no apparent reason.
@@krzysztofgawe1089 "Shräge Musik" was a cannon firing upwards at an angle of about 60 degrees with a sight that allowed the pilot to sight the guns looking forward. The attack was from behind and below with the pilot usually going for the left side of the bomber between the inboard engine and the fuselage. As the fighter drifted under the bomber its with would be silhouetted against the sky. The cannon would be fired, it would hit the wing fuel tank, setting the plane on fire. The fighter would peel left to go after the next victim. It didn't need tracers -- that would give the game away -- and it was devastatingly effective.
@@martinusher1 That is exactly what I'm trying to explain... Except of one thing. Firse upward shooting gun was a field modification. The later ones, were triggered automatically by photocell, and loaded with limited number of bullets. The reason was that to big burst causes damege or lost a fighter. To avoid these necessary modifications were needed.
@@krzysztofgawe1089 I don't believe it was triggered automatically . It needed to be lined up . There was a device by Germans under development late war that worked like that but utilizing photovoltaic cells during DAYLIGHT.
as a little kid back in the 70s i remember talking to a guy that had been bomber crew. he described some raids as 'being bad' and some just looking bad with 'lots a scarecrow used'. up till now i never understood what he had been alluding to by the use of the word scarecrow. now i know. he clearly believed they existed.
My late father, a 56 operations veteran, makes no mention of 'scarecrows' in his contemporary diaries, although he does record bombers being hit by flak and exploding in a fireball. I rather suspect that the 'scarecrow' myth was derived from crews witnessing Schrage musik attacks or direct flak hits and not realizing what had happened. Remember that, at night, you wouldn't see the aircraft and it would be difficult to determine distances. Was that a small explosion nearby, or a large one further away? There is no evidence that either 'scarecrows' existed or that Bomber Command went along with a falsehood. Remember that if enough crews at debriefing reported seeing, what they thought were, some kind of aerial decoy fired by the Germans, the intelligence officers would have accepted that and, in turn, briefed about it. That many ex aircrew clung to their belief that 'scarecrows' were real is an understandable facet of human psychology relating to confirmation bias. Given the circumstances in which they gained their belief, it's hardly surprising! On the question of when crews became aware of Schrage musik, certainly by March 1944 it had been addressed in the modification of Lancasters with a small, oval, blister below and immediately behind the bomb aimers 'bubble'. These are clearly visible in the photos of my father's aircraft at RAF Graveley and which he told me were so that the bomb aimed could see down and behind to watch for nightfighters coming up from below
My uncle had 47 ops. He once told us about the scarecrows, but believed it a myth. Any night where they were seeing so called scarecrows, it was accompanied by large bomber losses, which is what he attributed them to
I can't remember where, but I read a rear gunner's account of his dilemma when he spotted a night-fighter. He wasn't sure if they'd been spotted themselves, and was wary of giving away their position, but eventually he decided to give the enemy a 'warning squirt'. The fighter, realising that it had been spotted itself, broke off and went after easier prey.
My late father in law was a Rear Gunner in PFF and flewin Lancasters. He described an event where after a raid, he saw the vague silhouette of a night fighter stalking another bomber, he let it close in and then gave it 5 seconds of tracerless .303 and gad tbe satisfaction of seeing the ME110 blow up. He advised his skipper that the other lanc was badly damaged from what he had seen, and they shepherded out over the North Sea. It made an emergency landing just after it crossed the coast. He found out that the rear gunner was dead which was why he had not seen the ME110, and the MUG badly injured. He knew the crew.
@@iangarrett741 Not necessarily true, the rear gunner would give assistance to others. My late father in law was a Rear Gunner, flew in PFF and said he sometimes had his belts filled with tracers, other times no tracer. But he - and others would shoot at an attacker attacking another bomber. It all depended on circumstances
@@swaders It's generally accepted that Gibson flew into the ground because he and his navigator had issues with changing the fuel control levers. These levers were behind the pilots seat and the Nav had not flown in a missies before.
first thing i thought, when i heard that story: why would someone put effort into making scarecrow bullets? better put this effort into producing more normal ammo to shoot down more bombers. but who would have an advantage by spreading stories about scarecrow shells: well the bombercommand…to keep their crews happy…
My father was a Lancaster pilot and a pathfinder eventually with 75sqn flying out of Mepal in Oxfordshire. He flew operationally from May 1944 through to being demobbed in 1946. Very interested in your video, as Dad and I spoke often at length about aircraft and flying during that time and his training. Although a very intelligent man and a truly exceptional instrument flyer (a fitter and turner by trade) it appears that he genuinely ‘believed” the scarecrow myth, interestingly he also mentioned that there were more than one type of shell burst and of different colours. As for the schrage musik he was well aware of it during his operational flying. Wether he ever evaded one of these night fighters I can’t remember but he did have to do the corkscrew manoeuvre on multiple occasions to avoid night fighters. Incidentally he met and became close friends with a nightfighter pilot after we had settled back in New Zealand. Dad was a New Zealander and mum was English. It turned out that when comparing logbooks that they were in the air in the same airspace during one of his ops. He nearly completed 2 tours when the war ended and he was blessed with never losing a crew member. Cheers from NZ THANKS FOR THE VIDEO
A small insignificant correction sir, Mepal was in Cambridgeshire not Oxfordshire. As a child I used to go through it every other Saturday on the journey from Ilford Essex to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, to visit my Grandparents. This was between 1962-70 at that time there was a German V2 rocket standing at the edge of the airfield, it had the classic black/white chequered type nose cone paint scheme, and as a small boy (at first lol)I used to marvel at it . In my eyes, your father and all the other RAF, Dominion and all others who volunteered to fight the air war were all hero's of the first order.
The author Len Deighton references this in his novel Bomber. Although a novel Deightons research was always thourgh. There were no scarecrow shells just exploding bombers.
It is a long time since I read it, and knowing several people who had flown in BC - my father in law was a Rear Gunner in PFF, they all said the same 'Fiction it most certainly was, who he discussed the raid with is a mystery because it was nothing like that. It should have been pulped!'
@@Volcano-Man - it wasn't about a real & specific raid (it was set on June 31st, for a start). Deighton's research was always top-notch and he explains in the after-word (or foreword, it's been awhile) about any deviations from history. No offence to your FIL, but it wouldn't be the first time that actual participants object to anyone pulling the veil back from their experiences. The book certainly fits in well with a lot of the much more recent writings on the period - memoirs and others.
@@thosdot6497 Well I never knew that. How strange, especially as I served in the RAF and I also knew men who flew in Bomber Command. Two - my late father in law and a friend were rear gunners. My remark stands, the story is poorly written twists facts and should gave been pulped! But wait, you mean there aren't 31 days in June?, well I never!! Oh and when you know what you're talking about get back to me. Until then STFU!
@@Volcano-Man - mate mate mate, one thing you can't do on TH-cam with any conviction is to tell someone to shut up. When you understand that, get back to me. In the meantime, declaring anything published by Len Deighton as "poorly written" demonstrates a certain lack of, well, pretty much any appreciation of the written word. If you think Bomber should have been pulped I can wait to hear what you think is worthwhile to read. Oh no, on second thoughts, spare me that.
My guess is that the "Scarecrow" flak shells were a ruse to reduce the negative morale of the bomber crews. Very much like the stories of the British fighter pilots eating carrots which supposedly improved their night vision and diverted attention from the fact that they were receiving early warning from the advanced British radar system. Thank you for an excellent post!
Great video. I first heard of Scarecrow shells in Len Deighton's Bomber, which although a novel, was very well researched. Deighton said there were no such shells, only exploding bombers, and your video covers really well why aircrews believed in them. It's way easier to cope with when you think you are seeing a pyrotechnic, rather than the sudden, fiery death of 7 men just like you. I also think your conclusions are spot on, especially as far as Shrägemuzik is concerned, and just bad luck. But the big giveaway is that at war's end there was so record found of any such ammunition, when its use would have to have been widespread across western Europe. Apart from records, huge stocks of these shells would have been found, and pored over like all other German weapons. This, for me, is enough to prove there was never any such thing, only exploding aircraft. Taking nothing away from the aircrew, eyes play tricks and the power of suggestion is strong.
Having studied WWII history for over 40 years, I believe that this is the same type of myth about British pilots eating carrots for the vitamin A so they could see better at night. This was a cover story for British airborne radar. Bomber Command had very high loses and was afraid that the moral would break so they come up with stories about scarecrow shells. This is the first instance I have heard of this.
I heard the story of the carrots was a myth they wanted the Germans to believe in. To cover up the fact that we were using radar, and could actually see in the dark!
I used to fly light aircraft and gliders . I met some people who had flown in the Second world war . One chap had flown Hurricanes . He said they had great respect for the bombers crews . Going out night after night , with a average life expectancy of 14 sorties !
An average life expectancy of 14 missions in a combat tour of around 30 plus missions. The actual number of missions required to complete a tour could vary depending upon losses and the types of missions flown and the time period during the war. 1943 and the Battle for Berlin was a particularly hard period to be flying and a crew could be finished up a couple of missions early in order to maintain Squadron and Station morale. Conversely in the lead up to and after D-Day the shorter missions over France were viewed as easier and the number required to complete a tour rose well above 30 and closer to 40. The trouble was that flying over France was just about as dangerous as being over Germany and could see experienced crews getting "the chop" before finishing their extended tours. From my reading of aircrew memoirs, it would appear that at the end of it all it came down to constant vigilance right up until the engines were switched off and a considerable amount of damn good luck.
At Elvington Museum there is a special feature on tail gunners (who had a survival rate of 50%). 20,000 air gunners were killed whilst serving with Bomber Command. .303s against cannons.
I dont see how the German 88 or even 128mm flak can throw up a big enough shell to contain all the pyrotechnics to simulate an exploding 4 engined bomber. You would need something at least like the Yamato's main rifles.
See my post above... I dug into this and found only around a 300mm railway gun or a Werner Von Braun rocket could have got such a device up to 10,000 feet. And I can't see the resources being diverted to engineer and produce it during wartime.
@@pepwaverley2185 I tried to factor in the fact crew had not only seen their mates going down in flames before, but likely saw them going down in flames on more missions than not. In other words, they had lots of experience watching fellow bombers going down in flames and therefore knew in too much horrible detail about not only what that looks like, but what that looks like in the range of variety of distance and other factors. I chose a 1:20 ratio of fuel burning simulant chemical volume, not because I thought a chemical compound could be developed that would burn convincingly to simulate 400 gallons of avgas at that ratio, but because that was the absolute largest volume I could see being blasted to 10,000 feet. Years ago, I knew a guy who was an armature pyrotechnic engineer. He developed and built fireworks rockets all by himself himself, from scratch. He mixed his own powders from a variety of powdered chemicals to achieve the desired colors and explosive effects. So having seen how many hours he spent in the development process to achieve a single effect of say a burst of first red, then, white, and then blue, in a single firework warhead, I set the odds of the Germans committing the time and resources required to pull off a Scarecrow shell at millions to one against. -Which would explain why there is no data or even German accounts of them having done so.
11:55 The German "'Schräge Musik'' weapon system typically consisted of a couple of heavy machine guns or cannon, usually 20 or 30 mm. These were not installed in a turret but were fixed in the hull of German nightfighters, pointing up and slightly forward. The nightfighter would approach a British bomber from below and a bit behind.
And they were optimised to hit the heavy laden Lancs's fuel tanks - angled at at least 45 degrees. Translates as Jazz music in Nazi vernacular. "Jazz music" was actually an RFC innovation of WWI. The Sopwith Dolphin had two maxims buried over the engine to keep them warm (avoid freezing up the guns), plus two Lewis guns on a ring round the pilot's head. They fired upwards to shoot up two seaters from below. Pilots often deleted one gun to save weight. Between the wars the RAF experimented with an oblique mounted 37mm cannon to deal with Zeppelins (should any show up).
The RAF command must have been well aware of what was actually happening The RAF Fighter Interception Unit FIU had their own "'Schräge Musik''; in 1940/41 they had an experimental installation mounted in a Havoc aircraft. For various reasons they abandoned the experiment.
@WolfingtonStanley Well...apparently it was a contempory colloquialism for music to an odd tune or time or basically discordant. It could then be taken to mean weird. Or another possibility one interpretation of schrage is oblique. I think the sense to be conveyed is something out of the ordinary.
@piper081147 They should do. They invented it during WWI to deal with two seaters and avoid the gunner with his parabellum or other mg. They also had experimental fighters between the wars using the principle. I suppose the radar equipped Defiant NF is another good example.
I remember my dad, who was a Lancaster Navigator in 1944 saying that the UK radio constantly under reported RAF losses. He said that on one occasion the radio said that following a raid which he had been on, the RAF had lost 5 aircraft... He said that from the squadron he was in 5 had failed to return, and he was certain other squadrons had taken losses too. The losses of Bomber command were awful. If the British public had been aware of the scale of the losses, there may well have been some kind of outcry against the policy of heavy night bombing.
@@SkuliBragason according to the bullshit all one sided the Russians are completely useless this is believed by the NATO forces and EU what idiots the western governments are
In WW2, the Western Allies replaced trench-based attrition warfare with aerial attrition warfare. The targeted firepower of 10 Lancasters pounding German cities in exchange for the potential loss of 70 crewmen was a much better trade than 70 men lost 25 years earlier over the control of a few yards of Flanders mud. However, in terms of material, those Lancasters and their supporting components (airfield, hangars, fuel trucks, fuel pumps, repair parts, ground crew, etc) were far, far more expensive than a couple of Vickers guns, Lewis guns, and a few dozen SMLE's. Britain and the US chose to spend money and material much more than men in WW2. It also accounts for the incredibly slow pace of the US/UK advance from Normandy to the Elbe River in Germany. Bing maps shows a 700 mile / 1130 km drive taking 10 hours with no stops from Caen, France to Magdeburg, Germany. Turn each of those hours into roughly a month and you have the final year of World War II in Europe on its Western Front. Going faster would have killed a lot more British/Commonwealth soldiers and their American counterparts. Obviously, the Germany Army had a lot to say about the pace of the advance, but it's pretty apparent the West was trading time for the preservation of lives. It was the political response to the bloodbath of World War I.
I knew an old AG who became operational on Lancasters quite late, for two trips, he had a jury rigged .50 set up to allow him to fire beneath the aircraft, but the amount of visibility he had made it pointless. He was on 90 Sqdn, from memory out of RAF Tuddenham.
Some aircraft, mostly Halifaxes, carried the Preston Green Mk. II ventral turret with a 50, occasionally two. FN. 64s in some Lancasters, Boulton-Paul ventral in some Halifaxes, plus a variety of makeshift arrangements up to 20mm. But a lot had H2S so not much could be done.
The H2S scanner was occupying the space where the useless FN64 ventral turret was designed to sit. Some aircraft without H2S were equipped with guns there as a field mod.
@@ericadams3428 a few crews seemed to rate the FN. 64, although from all I've read about it, I can't see how that could be the case, but maybe there were a few mid-under gunners descended from Luke Skywalker or something.
@@wbertie2604 the one story I heard about a turret gunner liking it also made a VERY big detail clear… he had a very good technical crew and his turret was maintained and coddled like a favourite pet, moved far more smoothly according to him than the same turrets on other planes because when other gunners sat in his turret they always were surprised at how fast and smoothly it turned. It is possible the turret was not maintained the way it was supposed to and this increased the issues and when it was maintained correctly it did a lot better.
The principle of misdirection has a fine history. To quote the inimitable Molesworth "As any ful kno"....Thanks to the brilliance of the researchers at the University of Birmingham the UK developed the cavity magnetron. This was worked up by the teams at the forerunner of the RSRE in the Malvern hills into an airborne radar set capable of producing millimetric wavelengths. That set achieved this with lower power requirements than anything else then flying, and it was a very practical size. Also, it could "see" further and in far greater detail than anything else around by quite some margin. In the nose of a Beaufighter, plus 4 x 20mm cannon in the belly and lots of mgs in the wings, it made night time forays over the UK somewhat unhealthy for the Luftwaffe. Logically the RAF et al devised all sorts measures to hide this rather significant development from the enemy. Germany was still using the Klystron tube which simply couldn't touch it in performance. So....a propaganda campaign was started to convince the World that the extraordinary accomplishments of the RAF NFs was down to a heavy consumption of carrots by the aircrew. I kid you not, CARROTS allegedly because of the vitamin content. The press ran publicity stories on the matter and profiled the fighter ace who could see in the dark "Cat's Eyes Cunningham" q.v., with photos of the NF crews chomping on orange root vegetables. This was at a time of strict food rationing but the UK could grow carrots. For years Mothers would convince children to eat up their carrots by saying they were so good for the eyes that they could help them see in the dark. I remember it well. A couple of facts, at Goodrich Castle near the Anglo/Welsh boarders there is a stained glass window in the chapel showing a cavity magnetron. It is a memorial to the scientists and aircrew killed when an "RSRE" test aircraft crashed nearby. The UK literally gifted the cavity magnetron to the USA, along with a lot of other intellectual property, a necessary expedient in time of war.
Ten years ago a Boeing 777 "disappeared" over the Andaman Islands, until a British satellite company created a story entirely from whole cloth claiming they had developed a "new" form of aircraft locating utilizing Doppler Affect which placed the ill-fated airliner in the Southern Indian Ocean where no one could ever hope to find it. The calculations for this magic mathematical formula have never seen the light of day and never will because, like "Scarecrow" it doesn't exist.
Great video, putting the scarecrow myth to one side, their bravery, fear, and courage to do that night after night is something we cannot ever imagine, we shall forever be in their debt.
All that I have read seems to suggest that the Scarecrow story was in part a less frightening explanation of the emergence of night fighters equipped with upward-firing "schrage muzik" cannons. These could be fired directly into the fuel tanks of a heavy bomber from below, sometimes resulting in the explosion of the target aircraft. I imagine that there were many causes of what were described as Scarecrow Shells. However, many were likely to have been the result of an unseen attack from below, using "schrage muzik" cannons.
Not only would there have been records of scarecrow shells in Germany, there would have been an entire, huge paper trail, starting from some company's engineers plans and development notes, testing reports, and probably some invoices and payments from the Reichsluftfahramt paying for the development, or at the very least, authorizing it. Then finished production plans for munitions factories to implement, all the orders for the shells and the materials to make the shells, production reports, transportation, delivery and then supply reports throughout the Luftwaffe (responsable for air defense) orders form flak formations and distribution. And there would absolutely have to be manuals telling how to implement the shells - how often to fire them, at what heights, under what condition. And I cannot imagine they wouldn't have had a tactic worked out to cause the greatest effect, like firing a whole bunch of them on a specific path heading toward a target to simulate a bomber formation being wiped out in a specific area. Imagine if entire squadrons started diverting away from what they perceived to be a death-trap, possibly disrupting the entire bomber wing and forcing it to lose all organization, and completely miss all their targets. No, if there were any truth to these scarecrow shells, we would have known a lot about it already during the war.
So, at the end of the war, when the German ammo dumps, factories, and AA batteries fell into allied hands, not a single scarecrow was found??? Sounds to me more like Bomber Command was afraid of its men losing their nerves and tried to convince them to carry on after nearby planes were shot out of the sky.
L.Myrski I read your post and thought to myself: "I didn't know that the Germans invented the double A battery." Then I got to laugh a bit over what a dimbulb I can be!😂
"Myrski"??? So close to "Mynarski", the heroic Canadian Lancaster pilot commemorated by the designation given to the one remaining Lanc still airworthy, VR-A. In recent years the Brits got one back in the air so now there are two.Hopefully there will be more. I have spent many hours aboard "Vera" as she is also known.
The scarecrow shell was a myth. If there was any official action to perpetuate the myth, it wouldn't work, as pilots tended to be educated enough to understand what they were doing, and were au fait with the costs involved in getting an explosive into a bomber stream as being more expensive than a night-fighter blowing a plane out of the sky. A more serious threat to their lives was the use of the 'Monica' short-range rear-facing radar, intended to warn the crew of an approaching night-fighter. This had transmissions that were routinely tracked by night-fighters, and was employed long after it was known that this was happening. A captured Junkers Ju-88 night fighter was examined, and the use of a German radio set to follow the Monica transmissions.
In memory of: Heinz Wolfgang Schnaufer By the end of the war, he had completed 2300 take-offs, 1133 flying hours and 164 enemy flights. He had achieved 121 aerial victories, including 114 four-engine bombers.
@@DraftySatyr Yes, few people talk about how they are hounded by conscience in their dreams, and if they do, we don't want to hear it and start new wars. As a curious boy, I used to ask my grandfather about his experiences in the war and he would say: "never never never war again, against anyone"
When American bomber pilots showed serious signs of cracking up from stress, their commanders generally found a reason to transfer them out of combat. In the same situation RAF bomber command would often push a pilot beyond his limits, and then court marshal and imprison him. Any organization hard hearted enough to do this would have no problem lying about scarecrow shells.
My Dad flew Lancaster bombers in WWII. He also played bass in my rock band and drove us to gigs. He had an unconscious habit of turning his head and then suddenly his face would distort and then go back to normal. I think this was because he was unconsciously looking for night fighters and then his logical brain took over - so his face distorted because of these conflicting instructions from his subconscious. This is an indication of just how traumatic his experiences had been.
I had a friend who was a Flight Engineer in Lancs. He played cornet for Gracie Fields. I feel honoured to have known him. Your father has my deepest respect.
Nice 1, theres always stuff people can't explain, that they have to explain. If they are real, or not. My Uncle [Australian W.O.] was a Nav on on a Mosquito Pathfinder. was buried in uniform with his logbooks. I used to ask about WW2 and he would never tell me anything.
It’s also ironic that the unlamented Boulton Paul Defiant was apparently also briefly used to fire into the bottom of German night bombers. I’m sure the Air Ministry knew about Shrägemusik.
Naw. They just knew the Germans didn't have turret fighters. Because they weren't foolish enough. By the way, The Japanese also used "jazz" in their fighters, specifically to shoot down bombers from close-up in the blindest spot there was.
Actually the Defiant wasn't a bad night fighter by 1940 standards, though not much good as a day fighter. When I was a boy during the London blitz of 1940, I saw one flying low over Chetwynd Road near Tuffnell Park during an air raid, its roundels lit up by the flames below.
There's a nice matt black Defiant NF in the RAF Museum, or was, they move some exhibits around. It has, Yagi aerials spaced out along the wings for the radar set, the pilot watched the tube. I suppose making wave guide connexions for the rotating turret would be tricky. Sniper doctrine in the air, the spotter spots and the shooter shoots.
@@bernardedwards8461Quite likely, at an early point the Hurricane was camouflage pattern on top and the underside was half black and half white split evenly along the centre line. There must have been a good reason.
There were also cases of aircraft on the bomb run being hit by bombs falling from other bombers that were higher up in the bomber stream. In 1944, William Reid VC from 617 Squadron had his Lancaster hit by a bomb dropping from a bomber 6000ft above his plane. His plane was seriously damaged & William Reid gave the order to bale out. Reid was pinned to his seat as the plane went into a dive. He managed to get out as the aircraft broke in two. He was captured & spent the remainder of the war as a POW.
Probably in Stalag Luft III. The camp made famous in 'The Great Escape'. I knew a man who forged documents for the escape. He brought me out on his sailboat when I was a baby, yet I still remember the experience.
I noted with interest that the Thumbnail featured a somewhat rare Merlin engine powered Wellington, which only had a short production run. Mark from Melbourne Australia
Interesting. Although the RR likely would have been the superior engine, the Wellington got by with Bristols and STILL attained it's enviable record. All the more remarkable. Of the 11,461 Wellingtons built slightly less than 500 had Merlins. More credos to Barnes Wallis and to a lesser extent, the human computer and my personal hero, Nevil Shute.
The Germans were extremely good at document creation, distribution and storage. If there are no accounts of such a weapon in any type of document. Such as - designs, orders for production, orders for parts from subcontractors, transport orders, designations of types for field use. Delivery orders, operational logs from batteries, operational crews designations, the type of rockets used, there’s full documentation and many histories of the activities at The heavily watched rocket development stations. I’m afraid that I believe the RAF lied to help with morale, in the same situation I would do the same.
I suspect that these 'Scaracrow shells' were thought up by either the 'Air Ministry' or some Senior RAF officer, as a way of trying to improve morale. No one likes seeing their close friends die!
My uncle was a Lancaster pilot during the war. He's long gone now but I would have loved to ask him about this!!! RIP, Uncle Esmond! I'll ask you later perhaps! ;-)
A wonderful story, told from 3 different points of view; a RAF bomber crew, a Luftwaffe night fighter station, and the town being bombed in Germany. I found my sympathies being switched each time.
You can find pictures and film showing white phosphorus shells exploding above and around US bombers on daylight attacks, these explosions are pretty big and do hang in the air for a while, so I’m guessing that the Germans could have fired these at RAF aircraft at night, and maybe the cause of the scarecrow effect that some bomber crews saw
Exploding white phosphorus shells are white and leave a cloud of white smoke, not a red explosion followed by oily black smoke, burning fuel and coloured sparks.
@mimikurtz2162 @mimikurtz2162 I know how white phosphorus works as I work with it, and I never mentioned about them leaving red oily black explosions. I was stating that maybe the Germans used it alongside flak as wp will burn through anything it touches especially fuel tanks.
@@scottnicholls8304 I know you never claimed that white phosphorus makes red oily black explosions, but that is how the scarecrow shells are described several times in the video. My simple point is that scarecrow explosions cannot therefore be white phosphorus. If you are unable to understand that, you really shouldn't be working with anything potentially dangerous.
@mimikurtz2162 Well, what you're trying to describe and what actually happens when explosions (including wp) occur at night are two different things. While working with various types of munitions over the last 14 years, I've come to see what they're capable of and how they behave. So my understanding is excellent, thank you. And I believe there are different accounts from bomber crews stating that scarecrows that they had witnessed ranging from exploding balls of fire to piercing bright white explosions that hung in the air. So that definitely puts wp into the mix. I do believe that red phosphorus was being used as well, but I may be wrong about that one.
@@scottnicholls8304 It seems to me that you don't know if you're talking about daylight or night operations. Explosive munitions used in daylight included HE bombs and Wfr. Gr. 21, but neither was used at night.
Purely my own speculation here... Suppose the Germans saw a benefit from such a shell as a Scarecrow. How many of such shells do you think they would determine to be the optimum number to use on a given raid? Firstly, consider that every Scarecrow shell fired is one less Flak shell fired and one less chance of hitting an enemy bomber. And the more Scarecrows that are fired, the more likely the bomber crews are to figure it out. Especially if reports of bombers going down in flames exceed the number of bombers that failed to return from the mission. So Scarecrow shells, if they existed, would need to be limited to just a couple used, up to maybe four or five maximum, on a particular raid. So we can conclude that a few hundred of these Scarecrow pyrotechnic shells would go a long way and thus, the limited production effort required could be satisfied by just a handful of workers in a small shop producing a few shells per day. This level of production would be easily achievable for Germany during that time. Now let's attempt to design a Scarecrow shell, because that strikes at the heart of the debate in my not so humble opinion. The requirements are: - Simulate several hundred gallons of high octane aviation gasoline burning for around 45 seconds at around 10,000 feet elevation according to the eyewitness reports. Even today, I know of no powders or gasses that would burn long enough to simulate a burning liquid. Therefore it seems likely that a liquid or liquids would be required. The simplest way to simulate several hundred gallons of burning aviation gas would be to use several hundred gallons of aviation gas in our Scarecrow shell. But perhaps a chemist might know of a way of substituting a mixture of other chemical liquids, that when combined, like how the Germans combined T-Stoff and Z-Stoff to create rocket fuel, would give us the desired effect with a lower quantity of liquid required. Even so, it would seem reasonable that more than a few gallons would be required to yield the desired effect. And it seems the secrecy of the production work would have to be incredibly secure for that method to not have become common knowledge to those designing pyrotechnic displays after the war. I mean think about it, what fireworks display celebrating a holiday would not be enhanced by a flaming night sky, burning several thousand feet about the fireworks bursts and blooms? You would think someone would be doing that today if they knew how to pull it off. So let's be optimistic and assume the Germans had a combination of liquid chemicals that when combined and/or ignited, could simulate 20 times their volume of burning avgas. I have seen where Lanks had 997 gallons of internal fuel capacity in three fuel tanks. Of course additional fuel tanks could be added like another 400 gallon tank in the bomb bay. But even a fully fueled Lank would have consumed more than half of the fuel required for the mission to get to Germany heavily laden with its bomb load. And would require much less fuel to return the same distance being much lighter without its bomb load on the way back. So let's also assume we need to only simulate 400 gallons of avgas burning at 10,000 feet for 45 seconds and we can achieve that with what I will call "P-Stoff" (for Pyrotechnic-Stoff) and our P-Stoff can achieve this with a 1:20 liquid volume ratio. So now we know we "only" need 20 gallons of our P-Stoff, plus our means of ignition and dispersion, and any other pyrotechnics to simulate flares going off and to simulate other things like a certain color lingering smoke cloud. Water is roughly 8 pounds per gallon and gasoline around 6 pounds per gallon. Let's assume the ancient Germanic gods have favored us with our P-Stoff weighing only 5 pounds per gallon or 100 pounds for the 20 gallons our Scarecrow shell requires. Now we can approximate the minimum volume of our Scarecrow shell's warhead to not be less than four 5-gallon plastic buckets stacked one atop the other, about 1' diameter (300mm) and around 6' feet tall (1,830mm) without the propellent section, which would make our Scarecrow shell not only longer than the ceiling height of 8' feet tall, but would require an extremely large diameter very heavy barrel. Fortunately for the Germans, they had their choice of railway guns that could have launched our Scarecrow shells to the required altitudes. The 283 mm Krupp K5 could have been made to work, or perhaps a captured French railway gun, some of which I believe were around 320mm. But you might think using a railway gun to fire Scarecrow guns would have been not only impracticable, but the Allies would have seen such a massive gun and targeted it. I agree. But there is one other possibility, the use of a rocket with a Scarecrow warhead, of similar dimensions. But not just any rocket, a rocket that does not have a visible exhaust and does not leave a smoke trail. A rocket that would have required expert engineering that was needed for other applications like engineering the V2, and conducting research for plans to build a future 2-stage intercontinental ballistic V9 missile to target New York and Washington DC, that later became the Saturn-5 rocket that took NASA to the moon. Does anyone believe that Werner Von Braun couldn't have designed a rocket to lift a Scarecrow shell warhead? And do any of those of us who believe he could have designed a rocket to perform the Scarecrow shell requirements, believe he, or anyone else, would have authorized him diverting time or resources to the Scarecrow shell "mind games" propaganda oriented project? I just don't see any way anyone in 1942, could have pulled off all of the extensive engineering requirements to make a Scarecrow shell actually work, nor Germany diverting war production efforts to such a project. If anyone has other possible viable methods a Scarecrow shell could have been made to work, and how that shell would have been launched to its operational altitude, please share your thoughts!
In hindsight, about as plausible as having the navy destroyers tow imploding cans filled with oil and German uniforms around the Atlantic to demoralize Uboat crews.
Great video but what you failed to mention anywhere in the video that the Germans did send up decoy flares. These were of various colours and were designed to deceive the bombers to drop their bombs in the wrong area. They were to deceive bomber crews that they were the flares dropped by the 'pathfinder' mosquitos. Due to wartime lack of resources, the Germans couldn't always get the right shade for the fares to successfully deceive. One video I saw said that they couldn't replicate the red flare colour convincingly enough. (You should make a video on these 'decoy flares'). It is entirely possible that the RAF man in your video who is convinced that he witnessed a 'Scarecrew' explosion, was in fact witnessing a German decoy flare.
@@CalibanRising I have to admit . I was a bit disappointed that you would accept , disrespectful ( untrue ) stuff about Bomber Command Vs the 8th AirForce . Perhaps you were playing devil's advocate . However , these videos are getting better all the time and are a bit quirky and esoteric .
One has to remember that crews were in a situation where there is an adrenalin rush, other neurological and pathological aspects in flow.. we should NOT forget that the number of flights would also contribute to many disparities in reasoning ie the senses et. 👀Bomber crews deserve the respect of millions for their bravery.
Interesting and informative excellent photography job making it easier for viewers to better understand what the orator was describing. Orator presented the documentary very well. Class A research project. Special thanks to the allied veteran pilots/crews. Fighting/perishing/surviving knowing certain death/debilitating wounds were often possible. Yet still advanced forward regardless of the odds. That's true grit style determination to succeed.
Kevin Wilson's "Bomber Boys" is just one of a number of books I have read on the bomber crews. They are all very sceptical. Shrage Musik was something that the Bomber Command brass tended to deny. They did little to try and overcome it either. It is worth remembering that the casualty rate was around 50% killed in the bomber crews. The "scarecrows" often seemed to be where the slower and less functional Stirlings were found.
Believable rumours have been circulated before to try and obscure the truth, eg carrot eating to improve night vision as a distraction from the actuality of radar equipped planes. It would be nice to think that the sight of an exploding bomber was only a "scarecrow" so the rumour was probably encouraged to boost the morale of the bomber crews. It may have been encouraged by the Westminster propaganda machine. My father was an RAF armourer and he had never said that he had heard anything about this. I wasn't there, but shells are expensive to produce and I just can't see the German defences using fireworks to scare instead of real munitions which can inflict damage.
The propellant wears the gun. Let a balloon carry some salt, chalk, used oil and petrol up to a predetermined height and set it off. But make it cheap.
The "Carrot Eating" propaganda was not supposed to fool Germans ( who both sides knew had knowledge about RADAR). It was part a campaign to encourage the eating of carrots (and other unrationed vegetables) by the Ministry of Food. There were posters and newspaper stories featuring "Cats eyes" Cunningham who the articles said ate Carrots (and other vegetables). A similar campaign took place in the US.
If scarecrow shells existed they would be identified in manifests, quartermasters returns along with all the other different munition types. They wouldn’t have just randomly turned up at a flack unit anonymously in unmarked boxes.
One or two of these German nightfighters became victims of their own success. Having hit the Lancaster the bomber would sometimes come straight down on top of the nightfighter killing the German pilot as well as the British crew. So though this may have been an easier way to bring down a British Bomber it was not without risk.
@@bigblue6917 If it happened slow enough for the pilot to realize, it happened slow enough for him to get out of the way. The instances when it happened, the night fighter pilot almost certainly didn't the time to realize what was going on, much less reflect upon it.
Accidents happen. Nighfighters flew under the port wing, aimed at the fuel tank between the engines or no 2 engine and the fuselage and immediately banked away to avoid debris. Obviously they didn’t fire directly into the fuselage where the bombs were.
The guy at 14mins 40 secs talking about 'no dorsal turret' on the Lanc got it wrong. Lancs had dorsal turrets. What they didn't have, unlike B17s, was a ventral (under-belly) turret.
In my research looking into the ORBs of my great uncle's Sqn, 43-44, I've seen crews witnessing the Jazz Music shooting a/c down. Plus, the Nuremburg Op crews actually saw all the a/c around them being shot down (half moon) and because of this, there were zero reports of scarecrows.
Well it was true Germans fired rockets in the sky that looked like flares I had never heard the term scarecrow perhaps that is what happened. The rockets fired in the sky were like fireworks and not part of Anti aircraft. So they could had been using fireworks to confuse the pilots hence seeing black smoke. I think not used very often but a great idea for the use of fireworks rockets.
@ 5 min in I guess the RAF just made them think they were scarecrows not planes going down to stop the crews being more frightened as it must have been a bloody nightmare for them anyway.
Firing a pyrotechnic "shell" large enough to simulate an aircraft exploding and then crashing would be techinally very difficult. You could not simply fit some sort of special shell into a standard AA cannon as there is simply not enough space to accomodate sufficient pyrotechnic material. You could use a conventional pyrotechnic mortar to fire a large firework type shell, but these do not normally reach the heights of the bomber streams of the time. Even if you could launch a large lightweight high capacity pyrotechnic shell, these normally burst within a period of seconds, not the 40 second events being reported by the crews. I have had access to and studied German WW2 munitions of the period and I have no recollection of anything that would have provided the described phenominon. Anti Aircraft defence was wholly in the hands of the Luftwaffe, including ground gun batteries. The only thing in their inventory which could have been used to achieve this effect were air dropped flares, but these were invariably for battlefield illumination and photographic purposes. There are no "decoy" type flares in the inventory. If these had existed, they would have been documented.. that is what the Germans did!
A very interesting video. Thanks for uploading. I have never heard of such a weapon as a scarecrow. An old fella I knew in Australia who was a navigator in Lancs out of RAF Wickenby never mentioned them. My own grandfather who was also a navigator in Lamcs also out of Wickenby never mentioned them. I think it was a convenient way to comfort crews by the top brass.
Thanks Adam. I hadn't either before doing this research. I still see the term coming up from time to time in old interviews with aircrew. It would be interesting to know when your grandfather and Australian friend were on Ops, perhaps the myth had been stamped out by then.
My Father and his crew in HE-702 were shot down over Holland by a Messerschmitt Bf110 on the 13th May 1943. I have seen reports that it was ground guns, but witnesses to the crash said a night fighter shot it down. That pilot was to lose his life only a few months later.
Thankyou for this informative presentation. I think an obvious clue as to the truth of the 'scarecrow' shells is the comment from an aircrew member: "How do they make the explosions look so realistically like a bomber exploding?"
Look at modern fireworks, while spectacular they can't go beyond a range of fairly simple shapes and actions dictated by an exploding shell and gravity. There is just no way to make something that looks like an exploding WWII British bomber without it actually being an exploding bomber.
Just recently discovered your channel and I’m enjoying your content a great deal. I’d like to make a possible suggestion if I could, it’s from a memory of a book written around 1943 or so that I found when I was a kid in elementary school. I borrowed a duffle bag from my uncle who had been in the Air Corp back in the second world war and in it he had a book of jokes form 43 or 44 (most of which I shouldn’t have been reading as a child). However, there was a section about something the RAF called “gremlins”. There was even a poem/song about them “ jiggling your flaps” and such. This story just reminded me of it so I’m offering the memory for your research.
Thanks for watching Scott. I recently came across a book about wartime songs which was quite funny (link at the end). So I'm happy to get your suggestion, I'll see if I can track it down. It's important to understand the worldview of the veterans we read about, and understanding their humour is key I'd say. Thanks for the comment and here's a link to the book I was talking about: archive.org/details/kissmegoodnights0000page/mode/2up
One equally unbelievable story which turns out to be true is that at one point a German fighter pilot came up with the idea of flying high above a bomber stream and dropping bombs on it. With time fuses set to explode in the middle of the bombers. It's detailed in Heinz Knocke's autobiography "I flew for the Fuhrer". Bombing the bombers. One harrowing story I remember from that is him recalling a fellow pilot shot down. They recover the body and the pilot's widow asks for his wedding ring. "What do I tell her? His hands had been blown off"
Bomber command lost over 60,000 people, so plenty of crews were going down. So, to keep up morale, the British made this story up. And, to this day, we are fed claptrap stories, to keep us in the dark. Peace be unto you.
It remains a mystery if 'scare crews' were actually deployed. There is no evidence from Germany, the use of them, their cost compared to mass produced flak shells is another major factor. The RAF flew in squadrons so they would know which crews returned and the fate of friends and fellow members who didn't. The incredible flak and search lights were scary enough. A far greater mystery with few accounts are the multiple spheres of light that travelled amongst the USAF squadrons in broard daylight.
I think its really sad that British crews were told lies to boost moral. rather british and your clue about usaf not seeing scrarcrow shells.....nails it.
Ah my Dad was an RCAF F/O in a Lanc at the end of the War. Fortunately he was held back in Canada because he worked as a civy for the Commonwealth Air Training Plan so was a survivor. I look for pictures of him in these clips as his plane went down in '50.
What do you mean by F/O? I'm familiar with copilot's being referred to as "First Officer" but Lancs didn't have co-pilots. Do you mean "Flying Officer" as in the Captain?
Designing and producing a munition that would create the visual artifacts described would have been a large and complex undertaking. I don't believe for a second something like that existed without any evidence discovered after the war.
The Brits lost MORE planes than we did. There were NO "Scarecrow-Flares"! The Jerry-gun crews didn't CARE to "SCARE", they "SHOT" & "GOT" many air victories, by flak/fighter. Before "Jazz- Musick", a fighter'd acquire a bomber, coming from behind & below, then tilt his plane in a 45-degree or so angle-UP, fire-off a burst of machine-guns & cannon from the guns in the nose/sides, --2-3 seconds worth, and often the wing-tanks between the Lancaster fusilage & inner engine were lit on fire. Then if high-enough, the bomber'd turn-into a "cork-screw-manuver" to make sure the German-fighter was no longer following, then went into a DIVE, often reaching a terminal speed of 450mph [--Col. Tibbets of "Enola Gay" fame had flown the European theatre in B-17s/-24s, and picked-up his "Escape-manuver" for his B-29 A-bomb drop, from the Lancaster-pilots diving to put-out gas-tank fires ], and after a time the fire was put out, and the Lanc turned for Home. Ignorance abounds! There were some Silly-Brits FEELING the then New Lincoln bomber Couldn't have dropped our A-bombs on Japan, IF the Silverplate-[--made by Martin, NOT Boeing ] B-29s, had turned-out to NOT 'Work', {which of COURSE, they "worked" beautifully!},--maybe not knowing/caring that each Silverplate-bomber used LANCASTER-Bomb-Toggles to heft our A-bombs to their targets in the first place! Poor Mark Felton did an astonishingly good Vid on this possibility, on "Black Lancasters", but even HE couldn't 'know' that the black "Lancs" would've become "White" LINCOLN BOMBERS, the progressively improved, Lancaster, and because the Silverplates worked So well, of course, the Brit-Lincolns were never Organized for Our nukes, but post-war, dropped Brit-nukes in practice. The Brits were the Originators of in-flight re-fueling, so the Lincoln's lack of range vs the B-29'd NOT have been an un-surmountable 'problem.' The LINCOLN had "auto-defensive" guns, like the '29. The Lancaster SHOULD have had a ball-turret, mounted on the underside, who's "DISSONANCE" would've RUINED... the German's "Jazz-Musick"! ;)
One thing that needs to be taken into account is that a bright light will appear to be closer than it really is. This I learned from years of driving at night. There are roads in California that are dead straight with few landmarks along the way for perspective. A cation light on an intersection would often appear to be far closer that it really was. So if a bomber or a fighter were to explode on a particularly dark night it's reasonable to conclude the observing crews might misjudge both size and distance of the exploding object. If you wanted to test this out find yourself a really long road with a intersection at one end, preferable one you aren't too familiar with, and drive it at night.
I was under the impression that night fighters preferred to operate away from flak batteries and bombing targets. I suppose no one reported Scare Shells while they were still over water, even though the observation would be identical.
The AA batteries may have had orders not to fire at any time. Alternatively, if they were radar controlled, don't give them a target. Or possibly, allow a maximum altitude.
An old timer who was stationed in Scotland told me about a gun bubble being fitted to a bombers belly as an experiment, the idea being a retractable bubble, it could be lowered out and after use be winched back into the plane ,took off and once airborne flew over the observers and he witnessed the bubble being lowered out then dislodging and the man trapped inside falling to his death. The observers where told never to talk about what they had seen.
Early Lancaster had a remote turret fitted below and behind the bomb bay, they were discontinued due to limited field of fire, complexity of the mechanism and weight of the whole thing.
Just more lies to those called upon to sacrifice from those who benefit most, and then rationalised in justification. Lies started it and perpetuated it while those who looked on were fed a load more lies in the name of security and morale.
My father flew Wellingtons with No. 70 Sqadron in the Middle East and Italy. In his aircraft, there was an unwritten rule, "No Smoking in flight". He said the reason was simple, the aircraft wreaked of fuel and was described as an accident waiting to happen. He also said that many crews did smoke, but couldn't say that smokers blew up often than non smokers. He also said he had seen aircraft just explode for no reason, and in friendly airspace. Just a thought.
Very interesting. I suppose that battle damage and a sudden spark could have led to exploding bombers. I hadn't considered that, thanks for the comment.
Because they operated at night they had no idea how many other aircraft were around them I was in the RAF in the early 60''s and some aircrew were still there at that time they always used to say that one of the most frightening times was when they coasted into the UK and all the bombers switched on the Navigation lights and suddenly the sky was full of aircraft some of them only a few yards away. The only casualties they knew about were from their own squadron or airfield, so they were only fed the same proper gander as the general public, which consistently understated our losses.
It's interesting that "scarecrow" reports increased after the introduction of Schrage Musik in August 1943. German night fighters used "Glimmspur" (dim tracer) and many night fighter aces used none at all in their upward firing cannons as it was very hard to miss a 4 engined bomber from the range they fired from. It was a preference to aim for the fuel tanks rather than the payload, more than one night fighter was brought down with its victim when the bombload detonated. Bomber crews who witnessed the explosion would not have seen either the attacking fighter or the cannon fire, so the Scarecrow myth was started. Bomber Command were slow to react as there no evidence of the attacks, simply because no aircraft survived until one did in late 1943. The RCAF who ran 6 Group were suspicious and introduced the Preston Green ventral turret in their Halifax III's but these were later removed so that H2S could be fitted. It was later discovered that X band H2S sets could detect an aircraft so repeater scopes were fitted so that the Wireless Operator could scan the underside of the aircraft but this didn't happen until late 1944.
The Germans did not possess an AA gun anywhere near big enough to simulate a 4000 lb cookie bomb detonating. Their biggest AA gun was the 4.1 inch with a shell weight of 53.4 lbs. the shell needs to be 2 orders of magnitude bigger (75 x the size) to be able to simulate the explosion of one third of a Lancaster bomb load. Most RAF, RCAF and RAAF pilots would have known this to be a bullshit story. The only guns capable of getting close are the US 16 inch Super heavy and Japanese 18 inch shells which were not designed as high angle guns.
German officer to his anti-air gun crew: "Lads these bombers flying over head are going to bomb our families. So let's shoot up a fake shell instead of a real one." I wonder how many times that would go before the crew would say forget that, we're saving our families.
The routine debriefing of returning aircrews threw up a lot of feedback for Operations. The crews gave feedback on what they saw, heard, felt and noted at stages of the sortie from their respective positions and rôle in the aircraft. This was collated into how the aircraft performed, how equipment and weapons worked, effectiveness of manoeuvering or not and so on. A lot of operational decisions were based on this. A phenomena arose as improvements in defensive techniques ( window, spoof raids, 100Group ops) leading waves would suffer much less than following ones( the Germans unable to identify the target area until it was bombed). With the nightfighers slowed by antenna they inevitability approach the bomber stream in a chase (a Me 110 could barely match the speed of an undamaged, unladen Lancaster or Halifax as it returned, especially if manoeuvering) the aircrew most likely to observe bombers losses were the "Tail end Charlies". This became more apparent with the deployment by Germans of Schrägmusik, inexplicably exploding aircraft behind those often on their bombing approach run.
It's hard enough to get a 20 lb. She'll up to 20,000 feet. They were suggested to believe someone could also get oil, parts, pyrotechnics and 45 burn streaks up to the same altitude ? The problem for me is that bulls..(self agrandizing statements that truly don't care about a truth) eventually cost people somewhere
If these "scareshells" did exist, could someone explain to me, what would be involved in the process of creating such ammunition. What kind of pyrotechnic items would be loaded? What size shell would be used? I find it difficult to imagine fitting something to simulate an exploding bomber going down in flames into an 88mm shell, a 105mm or even a 128mm shell. Bright orange flames, multi-colored flares, and oily black smoke, and a visual duration of at least 45 seconds - this does not sound like a simple matter of loading various black powders into an anti-aircraft shell and lobbing it 20,000 ft. into the air. I guess the best way to finally prove or disprove the existence of such shells would be to see if the can be replicated at all using 1940s technology.
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The narrator quotes one crewman or pilot who states with certainty that on a raid he saw a scarecrow shell explode in a position where he knew there were no bombers..
Then indirectly cals him a liar.
Interesting video.
Just wondering - could some of these be German anti-aircraft shells fired from two different anti-aircraft guns hitting each other mid-air? Surely that must have happened at times but perhaps the "show" wouldn't be enough.
Finally, have you seen Bomber Harris starring John Thaw? It's on TH-cam.
We had a teacher when in the junior school who must have been ex RAF. Someone brought a Lancaster model to school and our teacher explained all of the various parts with a detailed description!!
Occam's razor suggests that the things blowing up that looked like aircraft blowing up were aircraft. I reckon that it was just a story to help boost morale. Another good story! Well done!
Well if they can engineer a shell that can perfectly mimic an exploding bomber they can probably also engineer a shell capable of taking them down. Nah its propaganda plain to see. Like carrots for the night fighter pilots vision. Very clever psychological trick to those who believed it but must have been pretty bewildering to be lied to for those that saw through it.
If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck....
Bit like the sudden spate of gas explosions that suddenly started to happen in London around September 1944 which were in reality the V2 rockets, because there was no form of detection of there arrival or defence against them it was thought to explain them off to other reasons as to not panic the public.
It was a comforting illusion. Much preferable to knowing that could be you.
@@agdgdgwngo as far as the carrot trick went, imagine being completely duped by the stories of improved night vision and telling everyone that it was true, finding out that it was all a lie must've been pretty embarrassing, especially when the people who you told found out!
I'm inclined to belive it was something dreamed up by top brass to keep morale from going down.
It's the British government. They've always were more happy with risking people getting harmed than acknowledging real dangers. Of course that extends to military leadership.
most aircrew knew exactly what it was, if your trucking through flak with 4000ibs steel bins of explosive in a machine full of fuel it doesn't take much to go boom
My Uncle a Halifax and later a Lancaster pilot in WW II talked about the scarecrow, but also believed it was a myth. On nights where there were large numbers of supposed scarecrows, the RCAF experienced high bomber loses.
My father was a wireless operator in a Halifax ,told me once they were on the way to a raid over Berlin he decided by chance to check things over in the bomb bay he noticed the pin that locked the fuse in one of the bombs had come out , the draught in the aircraft was slowly turning the little prop that set the fuse , he replaced the pin , if he hadn't noticed that then game up , he didn't tell anyone else on the aircraft but had a quiet word with the ground crew
@@alanjones6359 AFAIK those little propellors just activated the fuse but did not set them off. Just as today's safety measure where a missile has to travel for some time after being launched in order to become active. Maybe if the fuse hit something on its way out that would have ment "game over". But that not being the case the bomb would behave just normal. So a bit of embellishment to his narration.
@@alanjones6359 , as V 100 says, the propeller turned a given number of turns, deactivating a safety that would prevent the fuse from functioning. It's to ensure separation from the aircraft before the fuse becomes active. The propeller safety portion couldn't have triggered the bomb.
@@V100-e5q he was obviously p,aying safe !
@@ShawnD1027 he was obviously playing safe ! But I spoke to a navigator once who flew in tornados he was captured in the gulf War they released a bomb on a raid but unfortunately the bomb went off prematurely damaging the aircraft pilot and him had to eject at 350 mph
It's very hard to accept that such a weapon wouldn't leave footprints all over Nazi communications, given the bureaucratic propensity to document everything.
Yeah --- Also, not a better source of rumors than the terror and fog of war.
I agree, I think if such a weapon did exist the Nazis would have made a record of it somewhere
Ditto, I think the lack of primary evidence from German sources rather proves the fact they didn't exist....
We have lots of documentation about German ordnance
What about window (aka chaff) it was developed to jam night fighters radar, was it not?
The RAF had to find the
Wavelength of every new German aircrafts radar.
My father was a Lanc tail gunner. He said the crews knew it was planes going down, the intelligence men at debriefing often 'softened' the reports. He flew from September 1944... did 40 ops... he said he did not believe in 'scarecrow' shells.
Aircrew were hardened professionals. The biggest surprise is they didn’t call out the scarecrow hoax from day one.
@davidelliott5843 I can imagine it, actually. You're in the dark, almost alone, being hunted by a predator made specifically to kill you. You see your friends getting killed. Maybe you believe the myth to try to comfort yourself, maybe you spread the rumor to keep your fellow crew calmer. It's the same as U-Boat crews with their "Tauchretter" escape device, you have it to make yourself feel better, because it only actually works if you sink in a bathtub.
I think scarecrows are mentioned in Len Deighton's Bomber. He points out the impossibility of the Germans expending such a huge amount of valuable material into the sky justbto scare the air crews
"Bomber" is a fictional novel. Not a factual account.
True events or not; doesn't change the idea.
@@LeifNelandDk An "idea", yes. Not fact though. The mind would play all sorts of tricks in such a situation. That combined with rumours being spread amongst the air crews.
It's easier to convince people of a lie than it is to convince people they've been lied to.
Do you believe that?
Every politician does.....
@@noelpucarua2843 he just lied to you
Finally a smart comment. 100 % on.
@@noelpucarua2843 It's true. It is a psychological known.
Myth. Much the same as the famous "Blue master searchlights". ( AC Arc lamps had symmetrical carbons as they wore evenly. As an Arc operator, you needed to watch for two errors.. if the carbons burned unevenly, the center of the arc would move out of focus, and the beam would open or close up with a black spot in the centre.. you watched the shape of the spot and adjusted the feed accordingly. The other problem was the carbon gap size.. if the carbons were too close together, the arc ran cool and colour of the light went from white to red. If the gap was too wide, the arc ran hot and the light went blue before the arc blew out and the light stopped..)
Thanks. That's interesting about arc lights. I've been puzzled most of my life why they went incandescent.
There were many tricks used in WW 2, Schrage Musik was achieved by the removal of tracer bullets from the belts being fired. A rear gunner on 617 squadron did the opposite. Tracer rounds were normally inserted into the belt in the ratio of 1 tracer to 4 bullets. What he would do is make up his belts of ammo with tracer bullets as 1 in 2 rounds, so to the German night fighter pilot it would appear as a higher density of fire rate. All it needed was a slight delay in the fighter pilots wondering what was shooting at him and the Lancaster would corkscrew away and hopefully disappear.
Actually "Shräge Musik" is something totally different. It was whole automated device (eventually; once entered serial production). It required from pilot just to fly below the target. Shoot was triggered automatically.
@@krzysztofgawe1089 Not really because the Air Ministry denied Shrage Musik the same as Scarecrow shells. Without the tracer shells, aircraft would appear to blow up or crash for no apparent reason.
@@krzysztofgawe1089 "Shräge Musik" was a cannon firing upwards at an angle of about 60 degrees with a sight that allowed the pilot to sight the guns looking forward. The attack was from behind and below with the pilot usually going for the left side of the bomber between the inboard engine and the fuselage. As the fighter drifted under the bomber its with would be silhouetted against the sky. The cannon would be fired, it would hit the wing fuel tank, setting the plane on fire. The fighter would peel left to go after the next victim. It didn't need tracers -- that would give the game away -- and it was devastatingly effective.
@@martinusher1 That is exactly what I'm trying to explain...
Except of one thing. Firse upward shooting gun was a field modification. The later ones, were triggered automatically by photocell, and loaded with limited number of bullets. The reason was that to big burst causes damege or lost a fighter. To avoid these necessary modifications were needed.
@@krzysztofgawe1089 I don't believe it was triggered automatically . It needed to be lined up . There was a device by Germans under development late war that worked like that but utilizing photovoltaic cells during DAYLIGHT.
as a little kid back in the 70s i remember talking to a guy that had been bomber crew. he described some raids as 'being bad' and some just looking bad with 'lots a scarecrow used'. up till now i never understood what he had been alluding to by the use of the word scarecrow. now i know. he clearly believed they existed.
When the gentleman speaks of the lack of "dorsal turrets" on Lancs, he means ventral turrets.
For sure. We forgive him his use of terminology, of course.
USA had ventral turrets. They were just as ineffective as the other turrets.
@@Dave5843-d9m Garp.
My late father, a 56 operations veteran, makes no mention of 'scarecrows' in his contemporary diaries, although he does record bombers being hit by flak and exploding in a fireball.
I rather suspect that the 'scarecrow' myth was derived from crews witnessing Schrage musik attacks or direct flak hits and not realizing what had happened. Remember that, at night, you wouldn't see the aircraft and it would be difficult to determine distances. Was that a small explosion nearby, or a large one further away?
There is no evidence that either 'scarecrows' existed or that Bomber Command went along with a falsehood. Remember that if enough crews at debriefing reported seeing, what they thought were, some kind of aerial decoy fired by the Germans, the intelligence officers would have accepted that and, in turn, briefed about it.
That many ex aircrew clung to their belief that 'scarecrows' were real is an understandable facet of human psychology relating to confirmation bias. Given the circumstances in which they gained their belief, it's hardly surprising!
On the question of when crews became aware of Schrage musik, certainly by March 1944 it had been addressed in the modification of Lancasters with a small, oval, blister below and immediately behind the bomb aimers 'bubble'. These are clearly visible in the photos of my father's aircraft at RAF Graveley and which he told me were so that the bomb aimed could see down and behind to watch for nightfighters coming up from below
My uncle had 47 ops. He once told us about the scarecrows, but believed it a myth. Any night where they were seeing so called scarecrows, it was accompanied by large bomber losses, which is what he attributed them to
I can't remember where, but I read a rear gunner's account of his dilemma when he spotted a night-fighter. He wasn't sure if they'd been spotted themselves, and was wary of giving away their position, but eventually he decided to give the enemy a 'warning squirt'. The fighter, realising that it had been spotted itself, broke off and went after easier prey.
My late father in law was a Rear Gunner in PFF and flewin Lancasters. He described an event where after a raid, he saw the vague silhouette of a night fighter stalking another bomber, he let it close in and then gave it 5 seconds of tracerless .303 and gad tbe satisfaction of seeing the ME110 blow up. He advised his skipper that the other lanc was badly damaged from what he had seen, and they shepherded out over the North Sea. It made an emergency landing just after it crossed the coast. He found out that the rear gunner was dead which was why he had not seen the ME110, and the MUG badly injured. He knew the crew.
I understood that gunners were advised not to shoot unless they were being attacked as it would give their position away.
@@iangarrett741 Not necessarily true, the rear gunner would give assistance to others. My late father in law was a Rear Gunner, flew in PFF and said he sometimes had his belts filled with tracers, other times no tracer. But he - and others would shoot at an attacker attacking another bomber. It all depended on circumstances
Guy Gibson was killed by friendly fire from a bomber, he's buried in Holland.
@@swaders It's generally accepted that Gibson flew into the ground because he and his navigator had issues with changing the fuel control levers. These levers were behind the pilots seat and the Nav had not flown in a missies before.
Also the veteran guest speakers sharing their informative personal combat experiences. Making this documentary more authentic and possible.
This is fascinating! I've never heard of this before. Thanks for enlightening me!
first thing i thought, when i heard that story: why would someone put effort into making scarecrow bullets? better put this effort into producing more normal ammo to shoot down more bombers.
but who would have an advantage by spreading stories about scarecrow shells: well the bombercommand…to keep their crews happy…
My father was a Lancaster pilot and a pathfinder eventually with 75sqn flying out of Mepal in Oxfordshire. He flew operationally from May 1944 through to being demobbed in 1946. Very interested in your video, as Dad and I spoke often at length about aircraft and flying during that time and his training. Although a very intelligent man and a truly exceptional instrument flyer (a fitter and turner by trade) it appears that he genuinely ‘believed” the scarecrow myth, interestingly he also mentioned that there were more than one type of shell burst and of different colours. As for the schrage musik he was well aware of it during his operational flying. Wether he ever evaded one of these night fighters I can’t remember but he did have to do the corkscrew manoeuvre on multiple occasions to avoid night fighters. Incidentally he met and became close friends with a nightfighter pilot after we had settled back in New Zealand. Dad was a New Zealander and mum was English. It turned out that when comparing logbooks that they were in the air in the same airspace during one of his ops. He nearly completed 2 tours when the war ended and he was blessed with never losing a crew member. Cheers from NZ THANKS FOR THE VIDEO
A small insignificant correction sir, Mepal was in Cambridgeshire not Oxfordshire. As a child I used to go through it every other Saturday on the journey from Ilford Essex to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, to visit my Grandparents. This was between 1962-70 at that time there was a German V2 rocket standing at the edge of the airfield, it had the classic black/white chequered type nose cone paint scheme, and as a small boy (at first lol)I used to marvel at it . In my eyes, your father and all the other RAF, Dominion and all others who volunteered to fight the air war were all hero's of the first order.
The author Len Deighton references this in his novel Bomber. Although a novel Deightons research was always thourgh. There were no scarecrow shells just exploding bombers.
It is a long time since I read it, and knowing several people who had flown in BC - my father in law was a Rear Gunner in PFF, they all said the same 'Fiction it most certainly was, who he discussed the raid with is a mystery because it was nothing like that. It should have been pulped!'
Len Deighton's Bomber is an excellent book. I've got it as an audiobook.
@@Volcano-Man - it wasn't about a real & specific raid (it was set on June 31st, for a start). Deighton's research was always top-notch and he explains in the after-word (or foreword, it's been awhile) about any deviations from history. No offence to your FIL, but it wouldn't be the first time that actual participants object to anyone pulling the veil back from their experiences. The book certainly fits in well with a lot of the much more recent writings on the period - memoirs and others.
@@thosdot6497 Well I never knew that. How strange, especially as I served in the RAF and I also knew men who flew in Bomber Command. Two - my late father in law and a friend were rear gunners. My remark stands, the story is poorly written twists facts and should gave been pulped! But wait, you mean there aren't 31 days in June?, well I never!! Oh and when you know what you're talking about get back to me. Until then STFU!
@@Volcano-Man - mate mate mate, one thing you can't do on TH-cam with any conviction is to tell someone to shut up. When you understand that, get back to me. In the meantime, declaring anything published by Len Deighton as "poorly written" demonstrates a certain lack of, well, pretty much any appreciation of the written word. If you think Bomber should have been pulped I can wait to hear what you think is worthwhile to read. Oh no, on second thoughts, spare me that.
Also the veteran guests speakers for sharing their personal combat experiences. Making this documentary more authentic and possible.
My guess is that the "Scarecrow" flak shells were a ruse to reduce the negative morale of the bomber crews. Very much like the stories of the British fighter pilots eating carrots which supposedly improved their night vision and diverted attention from the fact that they were receiving early warning from the advanced British radar system. Thank you for an excellent post!
Great video. I first heard of Scarecrow shells in Len Deighton's Bomber, which although a novel, was very well researched. Deighton said there were no such shells, only exploding bombers, and your video covers really well why aircrews believed in them. It's way easier to cope with when you think you are seeing a pyrotechnic, rather than the sudden, fiery death of 7 men just like you.
I also think your conclusions are spot on, especially as far as Shrägemuzik is concerned, and just bad luck.
But the big giveaway is that at war's end there was so record found of any such ammunition, when its use would have to have been widespread across western Europe. Apart from records, huge stocks of these shells would have been found, and pored over like all other German weapons.
This, for me, is enough to prove there was never any such thing, only exploding aircraft.
Taking nothing away from the aircrew, eyes play tricks and the power of suggestion is strong.
Having studied WWII history for over 40 years, I believe that this is the same type of myth about British pilots eating carrots for the vitamin A so they could see better at night. This was a cover story for British airborne radar. Bomber Command had very high loses and was afraid that the moral would break so they come up with stories about scarecrow shells. This is the first instance I have heard of this.
I heard the story of the carrots was a myth they wanted the Germans to believe in. To cover up the fact that we were using radar, and could actually see in the dark!
The British leadership has always been inventive with the truth. Handy in times of war, not so great for the populace otherwise.
@@jimdavis8391 In times of war, all sides get creative with the truth. A practice that seems to have spread to many areas.
@@PhilJonesIII Not just in times of war!
@@PhilJonesIII What's the old saying, "The first casualty of war is the truth."
I used to fly light aircraft and gliders . I met some people who had flown in the Second world war . One chap had flown Hurricanes . He said they had great respect for the bombers crews . Going out night after night , with a average life expectancy of 14 sorties !
An average life expectancy of 14 missions in a combat tour of around 30 plus missions. The actual number of missions required to complete a tour could vary depending upon losses and the types of missions flown and the time period during the war. 1943 and the Battle for Berlin was a particularly hard period to be flying and a crew could be finished up a couple of missions early in order to maintain Squadron and Station morale. Conversely in the lead up to and after D-Day the shorter missions over France were viewed as easier and the number required to complete a tour rose well above 30 and closer to 40. The trouble was that flying over France was just about as dangerous as being over Germany and could see experienced crews getting "the chop" before finishing their extended tours.
From my reading of aircrew memoirs, it would appear that at the end of it all it came down to constant vigilance right up until the engines were switched off and a considerable amount of damn good luck.
At Elvington Museum there is a special feature on tail gunners (who had a survival rate of 50%). 20,000 air gunners were killed whilst serving with Bomber Command. .303s against cannons.
I dont see how the German 88 or even 128mm flak can throw up a big enough shell to contain all the pyrotechnics to simulate an exploding 4 engined bomber. You would need something at least like the Yamato's main rifles.
See my post above... I dug into this and found only around a 300mm railway gun or a Werner Von Braun rocket could have got such a device up to 10,000 feet. And I can't see the resources being diverted to engineer and produce it during wartime.
@@pepwaverley2185 I tried to factor in the fact crew had not only seen their mates going down in flames before, but likely saw them going down in flames on more missions than not.
In other words, they had lots of experience watching fellow bombers going down in flames and therefore knew in too much horrible detail about not only what that looks like, but what that looks like in the range of variety of distance and other factors.
I chose a 1:20 ratio of fuel burning simulant chemical volume, not because I thought a chemical compound could be developed that would burn convincingly to simulate 400 gallons of avgas at that ratio, but because that was the absolute largest volume I could see being blasted to 10,000 feet.
Years ago, I knew a guy who was an armature pyrotechnic engineer. He developed and built fireworks rockets all by himself himself, from scratch. He mixed his own powders from a variety of powdered chemicals to achieve the desired colors and explosive effects. So having seen how many hours he spent in the development process to achieve a single effect of say a burst of first red, then, white, and then blue, in a single firework warhead, I set the odds of the Germans committing the time and resources required to pull off a Scarecrow shell at millions to one against. -Which would explain why there is no data or even German accounts of them having done so.
@@pepwaverley2185 I think we largely agree, and I was just elaborating rather than trying to argue. It's a subject I find "vewry interesting" 😁
11:55 The German "'Schräge Musik'' weapon system typically consisted of a couple of heavy machine guns or cannon, usually 20 or 30 mm. These were not installed in a turret but were fixed in the hull of German nightfighters, pointing up and slightly forward. The nightfighter would approach a British bomber from below and a bit behind.
And they were optimised to hit the heavy laden Lancs's fuel tanks - angled at at least 45 degrees. Translates as Jazz music in Nazi vernacular. "Jazz music" was actually an RFC innovation of WWI. The Sopwith Dolphin had two maxims buried over the engine to keep them warm (avoid freezing up the guns), plus two Lewis guns on a ring round the pilot's head. They fired upwards to shoot up two seaters from below. Pilots often deleted one gun to save weight.
Between the wars the RAF experimented with an oblique mounted 37mm cannon to deal with Zeppelins (should any show up).
@@TheArgieH it's always puzzled me that the Germans called it "Jazz music" when jazz was banned under the nazis
The RAF command must have been well aware of what was actually happening The RAF Fighter Interception Unit FIU had their own "'Schräge Musik''; in 1940/41 they had an experimental installation mounted in a Havoc aircraft. For various reasons they abandoned the experiment.
@WolfingtonStanley Well...apparently it was a contempory colloquialism for music to an odd tune or time or basically discordant. It could then be taken to mean weird. Or another possibility one interpretation of schrage is oblique. I think the sense to be conveyed is something out of the ordinary.
@piper081147 They should do. They invented it during WWI to deal with two seaters and avoid the gunner with his parabellum or other mg. They also had experimental fighters between the wars using the principle. I suppose the radar equipped Defiant NF is another good example.
I remember my dad, who was a Lancaster Navigator in 1944 saying that the UK radio constantly under reported RAF losses. He said that on one occasion the radio said that following a raid which he had been on, the RAF had lost 5 aircraft... He said that from the squadron he was in 5 had failed to return, and he was certain other squadrons had taken losses too. The losses of Bomber command were awful. If the British public had been aware of the scale of the losses, there may well have been some kind of outcry against the policy of heavy night bombing.
My dad's 94 , a working teenager during the war. Things just weren't reported, all secret.
It is the same today in Ukraine war. News say Russia has big losses when in fact it is Úkraine.
@@SkuliBragason according to the bullshit all one sided the Russians are completely useless this is believed by the NATO forces and EU what idiots the western governments are
In WW2, the Western Allies replaced trench-based attrition warfare with aerial attrition warfare. The targeted firepower of 10 Lancasters pounding German cities in exchange for the potential loss of 70 crewmen was a much better trade than 70 men lost 25 years earlier over the control of a few yards of Flanders mud. However, in terms of material, those Lancasters and their supporting components (airfield, hangars, fuel trucks, fuel pumps, repair parts, ground crew, etc) were far, far more expensive than a couple of Vickers guns, Lewis guns, and a few dozen SMLE's. Britain and the US chose to spend money and material much more than men in WW2. It also accounts for the incredibly slow pace of the US/UK advance from Normandy to the Elbe River in Germany.
Bing maps shows a 700 mile / 1130 km drive taking 10 hours with no stops from Caen, France to Magdeburg, Germany. Turn each of those hours into roughly a month and you have the final year of World War II in Europe on its Western Front. Going faster would have killed a lot more British/Commonwealth soldiers and their American counterparts. Obviously, the Germany Army had a lot to say about the pace of the advance, but it's pretty apparent the West was trading time for the preservation of lives. It was the political response to the bloodbath of World War I.
I knew an old AG who became operational on Lancasters quite late, for two trips, he had a jury rigged .50 set up to allow him to fire beneath the aircraft, but the amount of visibility he had made it pointless. He was on 90 Sqdn, from memory out of RAF Tuddenham.
Some aircraft, mostly Halifaxes, carried the Preston Green Mk. II ventral turret with a 50, occasionally two. FN. 64s in some Lancasters, Boulton-Paul ventral in some Halifaxes, plus a variety of makeshift arrangements up to 20mm. But a lot had H2S so not much could be done.
The H2S scanner was occupying the space where the useless FN64 ventral turret was designed to sit. Some aircraft without H2S were equipped with guns there as a field mod.
@@wbertie2604 H2s would start another argument.
Effectively it was being given to the Germans without a self-destruct device.
@@ericadams3428 a few crews seemed to rate the FN. 64, although from all I've read about it, I can't see how that could be the case, but maybe there were a few mid-under gunners descended from Luke Skywalker or something.
@@wbertie2604 the one story I heard about a turret gunner liking it also made a VERY big detail clear… he had a very good technical crew and his turret was maintained and coddled like a favourite pet, moved far more smoothly according to him than the same turrets on other planes because when other gunners sat in his turret they always were surprised at how fast and smoothly it turned.
It is possible the turret was not maintained the way it was supposed to and this increased the issues and when it was maintained correctly it did a lot better.
happy new year Cali , great vid
Happy new year!
The principle of misdirection has a fine history. To quote the inimitable Molesworth "As any ful kno"....Thanks to the brilliance of the researchers at the University of Birmingham the UK developed the cavity magnetron. This was worked up by the teams at the forerunner of the RSRE in the Malvern hills into an airborne radar set capable of producing millimetric wavelengths. That set achieved this with lower power requirements than anything else then flying, and it was a very practical size. Also, it could "see" further and in far greater detail than anything else around by quite some margin. In the nose of a Beaufighter, plus 4 x 20mm cannon in the belly and lots of mgs in the wings, it made night time forays over the UK somewhat unhealthy for the Luftwaffe. Logically the RAF et al devised all sorts measures to hide this rather significant development from the enemy. Germany was still using the Klystron tube which simply couldn't touch it in performance. So....a propaganda campaign was started to convince the World that the extraordinary accomplishments of the RAF NFs was down to a heavy consumption of carrots by the aircrew. I kid you not, CARROTS allegedly because of the vitamin content. The press ran publicity stories on the matter and profiled the fighter ace who could see in the dark "Cat's Eyes Cunningham" q.v., with photos of the NF crews chomping on orange root vegetables. This was at a time of strict food rationing but the UK could grow carrots. For years Mothers would convince children to eat up their carrots by saying they were so good for the eyes that they could help them see in the dark. I remember it well.
A couple of facts, at Goodrich Castle near the Anglo/Welsh boarders there is a stained glass window in the chapel showing a cavity magnetron. It is a memorial to the scientists and aircrew killed when an "RSRE" test aircraft crashed nearby. The UK literally gifted the cavity magnetron to the USA, along with a lot of other intellectual property, a necessary expedient in time of war.
Ten years ago a Boeing 777 "disappeared" over the Andaman Islands, until a British satellite company created a story entirely from whole cloth claiming they had developed a "new" form of aircraft locating utilizing Doppler Affect which placed the ill-fated airliner in the Southern Indian Ocean where no one could ever hope to find it. The calculations for this magic mathematical formula have never seen the light of day and never will because, like "Scarecrow" it doesn't exist.
Great video, putting the scarecrow myth to one side, their bravery, fear, and courage to do that night after night is something we cannot ever imagine, we shall forever be in their debt.
All that I have read seems to suggest that the Scarecrow story was in part a less frightening explanation of the emergence of night fighters equipped with upward-firing "schrage muzik" cannons.
These could be fired directly into the fuel tanks of a heavy bomber from below, sometimes resulting in the explosion of the target aircraft.
I imagine that there were many causes of what were described as Scarecrow Shells.
However, many were likely to have been the result of an unseen attack from below, using "schrage muzik" cannons.
The cowardly RAF bombed innocent civilians at night. The brave Americans carried out strategic bombing in daylight.
Great video. Great work. Thanks for sharing your hard work.
Thanks for watching!
Brilliant vid, first I've seen of yours and you instantly gained a subsriber.
Thanks for watching Darragh!
Not only would there have been records of scarecrow shells in Germany, there would have been an entire, huge paper trail, starting from some company's engineers plans and development notes, testing reports, and probably some invoices and payments from the Reichsluftfahramt paying for the development, or at the very least, authorizing it. Then finished production plans for munitions factories to implement, all the orders for the shells and the materials to make the shells, production reports, transportation, delivery and then supply reports throughout the Luftwaffe (responsable for air defense) orders form flak formations and distribution. And there would absolutely have to be manuals telling how to implement the shells - how often to fire them, at what heights, under what condition. And I cannot imagine they wouldn't have had a tactic worked out to cause the greatest effect, like firing a whole bunch of them on a specific path heading toward a target to simulate a bomber formation being wiped out in a specific area. Imagine if entire squadrons started diverting away from what they perceived to be a death-trap, possibly disrupting the entire bomber wing and forcing it to lose all organization, and completely miss all their targets.
No, if there were any truth to these scarecrow shells, we would have known a lot about it already during the war.
^ True.
So, at the end of the war, when the German ammo dumps, factories, and AA batteries fell into allied hands, not a single scarecrow was found??? Sounds to me more like Bomber Command was afraid of its men losing their nerves and tried to convince them to carry on after nearby planes were shot out of the sky.
Yeah, sounds like Sir Max was right!
L.Myrski I read your post and thought to myself: "I didn't know that the Germans invented the double A battery." Then I got to laugh a bit over what a dimbulb I can be!😂
@@richardbale3278 You're clearly not using the right kind of battery 🙃😉
"Myrski"??? So close to "Mynarski", the heroic Canadian Lancaster pilot commemorated by the designation given to the one remaining Lanc still airworthy, VR-A. In recent years the Brits got one back in the air so now there are two.Hopefully there will be more. I have spent many hours aboard "Vera" as she is also known.
The scarecrow shell was a myth.
If there was any official action to perpetuate the myth, it wouldn't work, as pilots tended to be educated enough to understand what they were doing, and were au fait with the costs involved in getting an explosive into a bomber stream as being more expensive than a night-fighter blowing a plane out of the sky.
A more serious threat to their lives was the use of the 'Monica' short-range rear-facing radar, intended to warn the crew of an approaching night-fighter.
This had transmissions that were routinely tracked by night-fighters, and was employed long after it was known that this was happening.
A captured Junkers Ju-88 night fighter was examined, and the use of a German radio set to follow the Monica transmissions.
In memory of:
Heinz Wolfgang Schnaufer
By the end of the war, he had completed 2300 take-offs, 1133 flying hours and 164 enemy flights. He had achieved 121 aerial victories, including 114 four-engine bombers.
I know it's war and a case of 'him or me', but it must be difficult to live with the knowledge that you are personally responsible for so many deaths.
@@DraftySatyr
Yes, few people talk about how they are hounded by conscience in their dreams, and if they do, we don't want to hear it and start new wars.
As a curious boy, I used to ask my grandfather about his experiences in the war and he would say:
"never never never war again, against anyone"
Cracking video, I’m new to your channel and love the heavy use of eye witness accounts.
Cheers for watching mate!
Very interesting information about the bravery of these flyers. Cannot imagine being there.
Me neither
When American bomber pilots showed serious signs of cracking up from stress, their commanders generally found a reason to transfer them out of combat. In the same situation RAF bomber command would often push a pilot beyond his limits, and then court marshal and imprison him. Any organization hard hearted enough to do this would have no problem lying about scarecrow shells.
@@fafner1 RAF Bomber Command is long overdue being investigated for war crimes tbh
My Dad flew Lancaster bombers in WWII. He also played bass in my rock band and drove us to gigs. He had an unconscious habit of turning his head and then suddenly his face would distort and then go back to normal. I think this was because he was unconsciously looking for night fighters and then his logical brain took over - so his face distorted because of these conflicting instructions from his subconscious. This is an indication of just how traumatic his experiences had been.
That's incredible. It's a real shame these brave lads didn't get the treatment they needed back then. Thanks for sharing John.
I had a friend who was a Flight Engineer in Lancs. He played cornet for Gracie Fields. I feel honoured to have known him. Your father has my deepest respect.
@@UguysRnuts Many thanks. He was also very charming and females of any age and animals were instantly attracted to him.
Nice 1, theres always stuff people can't explain, that they have to explain. If they are real, or not. My Uncle [Australian W.O.] was a Nav on on a Mosquito Pathfinder. was buried in uniform with his logbooks. I used to ask about WW2 and he would never tell me anything.
It’s also ironic that the unlamented Boulton Paul Defiant was apparently also briefly used to fire into the bottom of German night bombers. I’m sure the Air Ministry knew about Shrägemusik.
Naw. They just knew the Germans didn't have turret fighters. Because they weren't foolish enough. By the way, The Japanese also used "jazz" in their fighters, specifically to shoot down bombers from close-up in the blindest spot there was.
Actually the Defiant wasn't a bad night fighter by 1940 standards, though not much good as a day fighter. When I was a boy during the London blitz of 1940, I saw one flying low over Chetwynd Road near Tuffnell Park during an air raid, its roundels lit up by the flames below.
There's a nice matt black Defiant NF in the RAF Museum, or was, they move some exhibits around. It has, Yagi aerials spaced out along the wings for the radar set, the pilot watched the tube. I suppose making wave guide connexions for the rotating turret would be tricky. Sniper doctrine in the air, the spotter spots and the shooter shoots.
@@TheArgieH The one I saw in 1940 was black underneath, but I suspect the upper parts were camouflaged like the Hurricane..
@@bernardedwards8461Quite likely, at an early point the Hurricane was camouflage pattern on top and the underside was half black and half white split evenly along the centre line. There must have been a good reason.
A very interesting video.
I only recently found your channel and subscribed. Excellent job, mate.
Thanks and welcome
There were also cases of aircraft on the bomb run being hit by bombs falling from other bombers that were higher up in the bomber stream. In 1944, William Reid VC from 617 Squadron had his Lancaster hit by a bomb dropping from a bomber 6000ft above his plane. His plane was seriously damaged & William Reid gave the order to bale out. Reid was pinned to his seat as the plane went into a dive. He managed to get out as the aircraft broke in two. He was captured & spent the remainder of the war as a POW.
Probably in Stalag Luft III. The camp made famous in 'The Great Escape'. I knew a man who forged documents for the escape. He brought me out on his sailboat when I was a baby, yet I still remember the experience.
1:47 Tribute to these brave men. This photograph deserves an award.
Brilliant, cheers.
I noted with interest that the Thumbnail featured a somewhat rare Merlin engine powered Wellington, which only had a short production run.
Mark from Melbourne Australia
Interesting. Although the RR likely would have been the superior engine, the Wellington got by with Bristols and STILL attained it's enviable record. All the more remarkable. Of the 11,461 Wellingtons built slightly less than 500 had Merlins. More credos to Barnes Wallis and to a lesser extent, the human computer and my personal hero, Nevil Shute.
The Germans were extremely good at document creation, distribution and storage. If there are no accounts of such a weapon in any type of document. Such as - designs, orders for production, orders for parts from subcontractors, transport orders, designations of types for field use. Delivery orders, operational logs from batteries, operational crews designations, the type of rockets used, there’s full documentation and many histories of the activities at The heavily watched rocket development stations.
I’m afraid that I believe the RAF lied to help with morale, in the same situation I would do the same.
I suspect that these 'Scaracrow shells' were thought up by either the 'Air Ministry' or some Senior RAF officer, as a way of trying to improve morale. No one likes seeing their close friends die!
My uncle was a Lancaster pilot during the war. He's long gone now but I would have loved to ask him about this!!! RIP, Uncle Esmond! I'll ask you later perhaps! ;-)
Len Deighton's "bomber" tells the story well !
Cracking book 👍
‘Bomber’ is a masterpiece, mostly accurate.
A wonderful story, told from 3 different points of view; a RAF bomber crew, a Luftwaffe night fighter station, and the town being bombed in Germany. I found my sympathies being switched each time.
You can find pictures and film showing white phosphorus shells exploding above and around US bombers on daylight attacks, these explosions are pretty big and do hang in the air for a while, so I’m guessing that the Germans could have fired these at RAF aircraft at night, and maybe the cause of the scarecrow effect that some bomber crews saw
Exploding white phosphorus shells are white and leave a cloud of white smoke, not a red explosion followed by oily black smoke, burning fuel and coloured sparks.
@mimikurtz2162 @mimikurtz2162 I know how white phosphorus works as I work with it, and I never mentioned about them leaving red oily black explosions. I was stating that maybe the Germans used it alongside flak as wp will burn through anything it touches especially fuel tanks.
@@scottnicholls8304 I know you never claimed that white phosphorus makes red oily black explosions, but that is how the scarecrow shells are described several times in the video. My simple point is that scarecrow explosions cannot therefore be white phosphorus. If you are unable to understand that, you really shouldn't be working with anything potentially dangerous.
@mimikurtz2162 Well, what you're trying to describe and what actually happens when explosions (including wp) occur at night are two different things. While working with various types of munitions over the last 14 years, I've come to see what they're capable of and how they behave. So my understanding is excellent, thank you. And I believe there are different accounts from bomber crews stating that scarecrows that they had witnessed ranging from exploding balls of fire to piercing bright white explosions that hung in the air. So that definitely puts wp into the mix. I do believe that red phosphorus was being used as well, but I may be wrong about that one.
@@scottnicholls8304 It seems to me that you don't know if you're talking about daylight or night operations.
Explosive munitions used in daylight included HE bombs and Wfr. Gr. 21, but neither was used at night.
I didn't know about this, well done.
Purely my own speculation here...
Suppose the Germans saw a benefit from such a shell as a Scarecrow. How many of such shells do you think they would determine to be the optimum number to use on a given raid?
Firstly, consider that every Scarecrow shell fired is one less Flak shell fired and one less chance of hitting an enemy bomber.
And the more Scarecrows that are fired, the more likely the bomber crews are to figure it out. Especially if reports of bombers going down in flames exceed the number of bombers that failed to return from the mission. So Scarecrow shells, if they existed, would need to be limited to just a couple used, up to maybe four or five maximum, on a particular raid.
So we can conclude that a few hundred of these Scarecrow pyrotechnic shells would go a long way and thus, the limited production effort required could be satisfied by just a handful of workers in a small shop producing a few shells per day. This level of production would be easily achievable for Germany during that time.
Now let's attempt to design a Scarecrow shell, because that strikes at the heart of the debate in my not so humble opinion. The requirements are:
- Simulate several hundred gallons of high octane aviation gasoline burning for around 45 seconds at around 10,000 feet elevation according to the eyewitness reports.
Even today, I know of no powders or gasses that would burn long enough to simulate a burning liquid. Therefore it seems likely that a liquid or liquids would be required.
The simplest way to simulate several hundred gallons of burning aviation gas would be to use several hundred gallons of aviation gas in our Scarecrow shell.
But perhaps a chemist might know of a way of substituting a mixture of other chemical liquids, that when combined, like how the Germans combined T-Stoff and Z-Stoff to create rocket fuel, would give us the desired effect with a lower quantity of liquid required. Even so, it would seem reasonable that more than a few gallons would be required to yield the desired effect. And it seems the secrecy of the production work would have to be incredibly secure for that method to not have become common knowledge to those designing pyrotechnic displays after the war. I mean think about it, what fireworks display celebrating a holiday would not be enhanced by a flaming night sky, burning several thousand feet about the fireworks bursts and blooms? You would think someone would be doing that today if they knew how to pull it off.
So let's be optimistic and assume the Germans had a combination of liquid chemicals that when combined and/or ignited, could simulate 20 times their volume of burning avgas. I have seen where Lanks had 997 gallons of internal fuel capacity in three fuel tanks. Of course additional fuel tanks could be added like another 400 gallon tank in the bomb bay. But even a fully fueled Lank would have consumed more than half of the fuel required for the mission to get to Germany heavily laden with its bomb load. And would require much less fuel to return the same distance being much lighter without its bomb load on the way back.
So let's also assume we need to only simulate 400 gallons of avgas burning at 10,000 feet for 45 seconds and we can achieve that with what I will call "P-Stoff" (for Pyrotechnic-Stoff) and our P-Stoff can achieve this with a 1:20 liquid volume ratio. So now we know we "only" need 20 gallons of our P-Stoff, plus our means of ignition and dispersion, and any other pyrotechnics to simulate flares going off and to simulate other things like a certain color lingering smoke cloud.
Water is roughly 8 pounds per gallon and gasoline around 6 pounds per gallon. Let's assume the ancient Germanic gods have favored us with our P-Stoff weighing only 5 pounds per gallon or 100 pounds for the 20 gallons our Scarecrow shell requires.
Now we can approximate the minimum volume of our Scarecrow shell's warhead to not be less than four 5-gallon plastic buckets stacked one atop the other, about 1' diameter (300mm) and around 6' feet tall (1,830mm) without the propellent section, which would make our Scarecrow shell not only longer than the ceiling height of 8' feet tall, but would require an extremely large diameter very heavy barrel. Fortunately for the Germans, they had their choice of railway guns that could have launched our Scarecrow shells to the required altitudes. The 283 mm Krupp K5 could have been made to work, or perhaps a captured French railway gun, some of which I believe were around 320mm.
But you might think using a railway gun to fire Scarecrow guns would have been not only impracticable, but the Allies would have seen such a massive gun and targeted it. I agree. But there is one other possibility, the use of a rocket with a Scarecrow warhead, of similar dimensions.
But not just any rocket, a rocket that does not have a visible exhaust and does not leave a smoke trail. A rocket that would have required expert engineering that was needed for other applications like engineering the V2, and conducting research for plans to build a future 2-stage intercontinental ballistic V9 missile to target New York and Washington DC, that later became the Saturn-5 rocket that took NASA to the moon.
Does anyone believe that Werner Von Braun couldn't have designed a rocket to lift a Scarecrow shell warhead? And do any of those of us who believe he could have designed a rocket to perform the Scarecrow shell requirements, believe he, or anyone else, would have authorized him diverting time or resources to the Scarecrow shell "mind games" propaganda oriented project?
I just don't see any way anyone in 1942, could have pulled off all of the extensive engineering requirements to make a Scarecrow shell actually work, nor Germany diverting war production efforts to such a project.
If anyone has other possible viable methods a Scarecrow shell could have been made to work, and how that shell would have been launched to its operational altitude, please share your thoughts!
In hindsight, about as plausible as having the navy destroyers tow imploding cans filled with oil and German uniforms around the Atlantic to demoralize Uboat crews.
Brilliant video! Absolutely brilliant! Thank you.
Great video but what you failed to mention anywhere in the video that the Germans did send up decoy flares. These were of various colours and were designed to deceive the bombers to drop their bombs in the wrong area. They were to deceive bomber crews that they were the flares dropped by the 'pathfinder' mosquitos. Due to wartime lack of resources, the Germans couldn't always get the right shade for the fares to successfully deceive. One video I saw said that they couldn't replicate the red flare colour convincingly enough. (You should make a video on these 'decoy flares'). It is entirely possible that the RAF man in your video who is convinced that he witnessed a 'Scarecrew' explosion, was in fact witnessing a German decoy flare.
Good to see you doing all that research from good secondary sources
I have to admit I really enjoyed researching this video. Absolutely fascinating stuff.
@@CalibanRising I have to admit . I was a bit disappointed that you would accept , disrespectful ( untrue ) stuff about Bomber Command Vs the 8th AirForce . Perhaps you were playing devil's advocate . However , these videos are getting better all the time and are a bit quirky and esoteric .
One has to remember that crews were in a situation where there is an adrenalin rush, other neurological and pathological aspects in flow.. we should NOT forget that the number of flights would also contribute to many disparities in reasoning ie the senses et. 👀Bomber crews deserve the respect of millions for their bravery.
Interesting and informative excellent photography job making it easier for viewers to better understand what the orator was describing. Orator presented the documentary very well. Class A research project. Special thanks to the allied veteran pilots/crews. Fighting/perishing/surviving knowing certain death/debilitating wounds were often possible. Yet still advanced forward regardless of the odds. That's true grit style determination to succeed.
Kevin Wilson's "Bomber Boys" is just one of a number of books I have read on the bomber crews. They are all very sceptical. Shrage Musik was something that the Bomber Command brass tended to deny. They did little to try and overcome it either. It is worth remembering that the casualty rate was around 50% killed in the bomber crews. The "scarecrows" often seemed to be where the slower and less functional Stirlings were found.
It is easier to con someone than it is to convince them they are being conned.
Believable rumours have been circulated before to try and obscure the truth, eg carrot eating to improve night vision as a distraction from the actuality of radar equipped planes. It would be nice to think that the sight of an exploding bomber was only a "scarecrow" so the rumour was probably encouraged to boost the morale of the bomber crews. It may have been encouraged by the Westminster propaganda machine. My father was an RAF armourer and he had never said that he had heard anything about this.
I wasn't there, but shells are expensive to produce and I just can't see the German defences using fireworks to scare instead of real munitions which can inflict damage.
The propellant wears the gun. Let a balloon carry some salt, chalk, used oil and petrol up to a predetermined height and set it off.
But make it cheap.
The "Carrot Eating" propaganda was not supposed to fool Germans ( who both sides knew had knowledge about RADAR). It was part a campaign to encourage the eating of carrots (and other unrationed vegetables) by the Ministry of Food. There were posters and newspaper stories featuring "Cats eyes" Cunningham who the articles said ate Carrots (and other vegetables). A similar campaign took place in the US.
If scarecrow shells existed they would be identified in manifests, quartermasters returns along with all the other different munition types. They wouldn’t have just randomly turned up at a flack unit anonymously in unmarked boxes.
One or two of these German nightfighters became victims of their own success. Having hit the Lancaster the bomber would sometimes come straight down on top of the nightfighter killing the German pilot as well as the British crew. So though this may have been an easier way to bring down a British Bomber it was not without risk.
More so if the target bomb load detonates at an instant.
@@572Btriode That is true. Imagine being the German pilot watching all of that and knowing he'd just sealed his own fate as well.
@@bigblue6917 If it happened slow enough for the pilot to realize, it happened slow enough for him to get out of the way. The instances when it happened, the night fighter pilot almost certainly didn't the time to realize what was going on, much less reflect upon it.
Accidents happen. Nighfighters flew under the port wing, aimed at the fuel tank between the engines or no 2 engine and the fuselage and immediately banked away to avoid debris. Obviously they didn’t fire directly into the fuselage where the bombs were.
@@drstrangelove4998 it did happen though. Sometimes the 30mm shells would ignite the incendiery bombs in the lancaster
It's sad. Young crews being lied to give them some courage. The older crews perpetuating these myths to keep the young crews calm.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls. YOU are still being subjected to man-made myths. Remember the Malaysian airliner which "disappeared"? It didn't.
The guy at 14mins 40 secs talking about 'no dorsal turret' on the Lanc got it wrong. Lancs had dorsal turrets. What they didn't have, unlike B17s, was a ventral (under-belly) turret.
I think we can forgive him for the slip up... we knew what he meant!
In my research looking into the ORBs of my great uncle's Sqn, 43-44, I've seen crews witnessing the Jazz Music shooting a/c down.
Plus, the Nuremburg Op crews actually saw all the a/c around them being shot down (half moon) and because of this, there were zero reports of scarecrows.
Well it was true Germans fired rockets in the sky that looked like flares I had never heard the term scarecrow perhaps that is what happened. The rockets fired in the sky were like fireworks and not part of Anti aircraft. So they could had been using fireworks to confuse the pilots hence seeing black smoke. I think not used very often but a great idea for the use of fireworks rockets.
@ 5 min in I guess the RAF just made them think they were scarecrows not planes going down to stop the crews being more frightened as it must have been a bloody nightmare for them anyway.
Firing a pyrotechnic "shell" large enough to simulate an aircraft exploding and then crashing would be techinally very difficult. You could not simply fit some sort of special shell into a standard AA cannon as there is simply not enough space to accomodate sufficient pyrotechnic material.
You could use a conventional pyrotechnic mortar to fire a large firework type shell, but these do not normally reach the heights of the bomber streams of the time. Even if you could launch a large lightweight high capacity pyrotechnic shell, these normally burst within a period of seconds, not the 40 second events being reported by the crews.
I have had access to and studied German WW2 munitions of the period and I have no recollection of anything that would have provided the described phenominon. Anti Aircraft defence was wholly in the hands of the Luftwaffe, including ground gun batteries. The only thing in their inventory which could have been used to achieve this effect were air dropped flares, but these were invariably for battlefield illumination and photographic purposes. There are no "decoy" type flares in the inventory. If these had existed, they would have been documented.. that is what the Germans did!
Sterling video pal : )
A very interesting video. Thanks for uploading. I have never heard of such a weapon as a scarecrow. An old fella I knew in Australia who was a navigator in Lancs out of RAF Wickenby never mentioned them. My own grandfather who was also a navigator in Lamcs also out of Wickenby never mentioned them. I think it was a convenient way to comfort crews by the top brass.
Thanks Adam. I hadn't either before doing this research. I still see the term coming up from time to time in old interviews with aircrew. It would be interesting to know when your grandfather and Australian friend were on Ops, perhaps the myth had been stamped out by then.
My Father and his crew in HE-702 were shot down over Holland by a Messerschmitt Bf110 on the 13th May 1943. I have seen reports that it was ground guns, but witnesses to the crash said a night fighter shot it down. That pilot was to lose his life only a few months later.
Thankyou for this informative presentation.
I think an obvious clue as to the truth of the 'scarecrow' shells is the comment from an aircrew member: "How do they make the explosions look so realistically like a bomber exploding?"
I think you are right on that point.
Look at modern fireworks, while spectacular they can't go beyond a range of fairly simple shapes and actions dictated by an exploding shell and gravity. There is just no way to make something that looks like an exploding WWII British bomber without it actually being an exploding bomber.
Just recently discovered your channel and I’m enjoying your content a great deal. I’d like to make a possible suggestion if I could, it’s from a memory of a book written around 1943 or so that I found when I was a kid in elementary school. I borrowed a duffle bag from my uncle who had been in the Air Corp back in the second world war and in it he had a book of jokes form 43 or 44 (most of which I shouldn’t have been reading as a child). However, there was a section about something the RAF called “gremlins”. There was even a poem/song about them “ jiggling your flaps” and such. This story just reminded me of it so I’m offering the memory for your research.
Thanks for watching Scott.
I recently came across a book about wartime songs which was quite funny (link at the end). So I'm happy to get your suggestion, I'll see if I can track it down. It's important to understand the worldview of the veterans we read about, and understanding their humour is key I'd say. Thanks for the comment and here's a link to the book I was talking about: archive.org/details/kissmegoodnights0000page/mode/2up
One equally unbelievable story which turns out to be true is that at one point a German fighter pilot came up with the idea of flying high above a bomber stream and dropping bombs on it. With time fuses set to explode in the middle of the bombers. It's detailed in Heinz Knocke's autobiography "I flew for the Fuhrer".
Bombing the bombers.
One harrowing story I remember from that is him recalling a fellow pilot shot down. They recover the body and the pilot's widow asks for his wedding ring. "What do I tell her? His hands had been blown off"
59 years old and this is the first time I have ever heard of "scarecrow" A.A. shells !
Bomber command lost over 60,000 people, so plenty of crews were going down. So, to keep up morale, the British made this story up. And, to this day, we are fed claptrap stories, to keep us in the dark. Peace be unto you.
It remains a mystery if 'scare crews' were actually deployed. There is no evidence from Germany, the use of them, their cost compared to mass produced flak shells is another major factor. The RAF flew in squadrons so they would know which crews returned and the fate of friends and fellow members who didn't. The incredible flak and search lights were scary enough. A far greater mystery with few accounts are the multiple spheres of light that travelled amongst the USAF squadrons in broard daylight.
I think its really sad that British crews were told lies to boost moral. rather british and your clue about usaf not seeing scrarcrow shells.....nails it.
Ah my Dad was an RCAF F/O in a Lanc at the end of the War. Fortunately he was held back in Canada because he worked as a civy for the Commonwealth Air Training Plan so was a survivor. I look for pictures of him in these clips as his plane went down in '50.
What do you mean by F/O? I'm familiar with copilot's being referred to as "First Officer" but Lancs didn't have co-pilots. Do you mean "Flying Officer" as in the Captain?
Designing and producing a munition that would create the visual artifacts described would have been a large and complex undertaking. I don't believe for a second something like that existed without any evidence discovered after the war.
The Brits lost MORE planes than we did. There were NO "Scarecrow-Flares"! The Jerry-gun crews didn't CARE to "SCARE", they "SHOT" & "GOT" many air victories, by flak/fighter. Before "Jazz- Musick", a fighter'd acquire a bomber, coming from behind & below, then tilt his plane in a 45-degree or so angle-UP, fire-off a burst of machine-guns & cannon from the guns in the nose/sides, --2-3 seconds worth, and often the wing-tanks between the Lancaster fusilage & inner engine were lit on fire. Then if high-enough, the bomber'd turn-into a "cork-screw-manuver" to make sure the German-fighter was no longer following, then went into a DIVE, often reaching a terminal speed of 450mph [--Col. Tibbets of "Enola Gay" fame had flown the European theatre in B-17s/-24s, and picked-up his "Escape-manuver" for his B-29 A-bomb drop, from the Lancaster-pilots diving to put-out gas-tank fires ], and after a time the fire was put out, and the Lanc turned for Home. Ignorance abounds! There were some Silly-Brits FEELING the then New Lincoln bomber Couldn't have dropped our A-bombs on Japan, IF the Silverplate-[--made by Martin, NOT Boeing ] B-29s, had turned-out to NOT 'Work', {which of COURSE, they "worked" beautifully!},--maybe not knowing/caring that each Silverplate-bomber used LANCASTER-Bomb-Toggles to heft our A-bombs to their targets in the first place! Poor Mark Felton did an astonishingly good Vid on this possibility, on "Black Lancasters", but even HE couldn't 'know' that the black "Lancs" would've become "White" LINCOLN BOMBERS, the progressively improved, Lancaster, and because the Silverplates worked So well, of course, the Brit-Lincolns were never Organized for Our nukes, but post-war, dropped Brit-nukes in practice. The Brits were the Originators of in-flight re-fueling, so the Lincoln's lack of range vs the B-29'd NOT have been an un-surmountable 'problem.' The LINCOLN had "auto-defensive" guns, like the '29. The Lancaster SHOULD have had a ball-turret, mounted on the underside, who's "DISSONANCE" would've RUINED... the German's "Jazz-Musick"! ;)
One thing that needs to be taken into account is that a bright light will appear to be closer than it really is. This I learned from years of driving at night. There are roads in California that are dead straight with few landmarks along the way for perspective. A cation light on an intersection would often appear to be far closer that it really was. So if a bomber or a fighter were to explode on a particularly dark night it's reasonable to conclude the observing crews might misjudge both size and distance of the exploding object. If you wanted to test this out find yourself a really long road with a intersection at one end, preferable one you aren't too familiar with, and drive it at night.
I consider myself quite well versed in the air war, but I’d never read of this. It’s always great to learn new things.
I was under the impression that night fighters preferred to operate away from flak batteries and bombing targets. I suppose no one reported Scare Shells while they were still over water, even though the observation would be identical.
The AA batteries may have had orders not to fire at any time. Alternatively, if they were radar controlled, don't give them a target. Or possibly, allow a maximum altitude.
An old timer who was stationed in Scotland told me about a gun bubble being fitted to a bombers belly as an experiment, the idea being a retractable bubble, it could be lowered out and after use be winched back into the plane ,took off and once airborne flew over the observers and he witnessed the bubble being lowered out then dislodging and the man trapped inside falling to his death. The observers where told never to talk about what they had seen.
Early Lancaster had a remote turret fitted below and behind the bomb bay, they were discontinued due to limited field of fire, complexity of the mechanism and weight of the whole thing.
Yikes. Almost as bad as all the ball turret gunners trapped in position during gear up landings.
Just more lies to those called upon to sacrifice from those who benefit most, and then rationalised in justification. Lies started it and perpetuated it while those who looked on were fed a load more lies in the name of security and morale.
My father flew Wellingtons with No. 70 Sqadron in the Middle East and Italy. In his aircraft, there was an unwritten rule, "No Smoking in flight". He said the reason was simple, the aircraft wreaked of fuel and was described as an accident waiting to happen. He also said that many crews did smoke, but couldn't say that smokers blew up often than non smokers. He also said he had seen aircraft just explode for no reason, and in friendly airspace. Just a thought.
Very interesting. I suppose that battle damage and a sudden spark could have led to exploding bombers. I hadn't considered that, thanks for the comment.
Interesting footage showing many RAF bombers; Lancasters, Halifaxes, Wellingtons, a Stirling, and even a crash-landed Whitley.
Would not the returning bomber crews have noticed the missing bombers (and crew) after a mission (or lack thereof)?
Because they operated at night they had no idea how many other aircraft were around them I was in the RAF in the early 60''s and some aircrew were still there at that time they always used to say that one of the most frightening times was when they coasted into the UK and all the bombers switched on the Navigation lights and suddenly the sky was full of aircraft some of them only a few yards away. The only casualties they knew about were from their own squadron or airfield, so they were only fed the same proper gander as the general public, which consistently understated our losses.
It's interesting that "scarecrow" reports increased after the introduction of Schrage Musik in August 1943. German night fighters used "Glimmspur" (dim tracer) and many night fighter aces used none at all in their upward firing cannons as it was very hard to miss a 4 engined bomber from the range they fired from. It was a preference to aim for the fuel tanks rather than the payload, more than one night fighter was brought down with its victim when the bombload detonated.
Bomber crews who witnessed the explosion would not have seen either the attacking fighter or the cannon fire, so the Scarecrow myth was started. Bomber Command were slow to react as there no evidence of the attacks, simply because no aircraft survived until one did in late 1943. The RCAF who ran 6 Group were suspicious and introduced the Preston Green ventral turret in their Halifax III's but these were later removed so that H2S could be fitted.
It was later discovered that X band H2S sets could detect an aircraft so repeater scopes were fitted so that the Wireless Operator could scan the underside of the aircraft but this didn't happen until late 1944.
Great video
Glad you enjoyed it
The Germans did not possess an AA gun anywhere near big enough to simulate a 4000 lb cookie bomb detonating. Their biggest AA gun was the 4.1 inch with a shell weight of 53.4 lbs. the shell needs to be 2 orders of magnitude bigger (75 x the size) to be able to simulate the explosion of one third of a Lancaster bomb load. Most RAF, RCAF and RAAF pilots would have known this to be a bullshit story. The only guns capable of getting close are the US 16 inch Super heavy and Japanese 18 inch shells which were not designed as high angle guns.
Fascinating, to read the comments of relations and friends of bomber and nightfighter crews
German officer to his anti-air gun crew: "Lads these bombers flying over head are going to bomb our families. So let's shoot up a fake shell instead of a real one." I wonder how many times that would go before the crew would say forget that, we're saving our families.
The routine debriefing of returning aircrews threw up a lot of feedback for Operations. The crews gave feedback on what they saw, heard, felt and noted at stages of the sortie from their respective positions and rôle in the aircraft. This was collated into how the aircraft performed, how equipment and weapons worked, effectiveness of manoeuvering or not and so on. A lot of operational decisions were based on this. A phenomena arose as improvements in defensive techniques ( window, spoof raids, 100Group ops) leading waves would suffer much less than following ones( the Germans unable to identify the target area until it was bombed). With the nightfighers slowed by antenna they inevitability approach the bomber stream in a chase (a Me 110 could barely match the speed of an undamaged, unladen Lancaster or Halifax as it returned, especially if manoeuvering) the aircrew most likely to observe bombers losses were the "Tail end Charlies". This became more apparent with the deployment by Germans of Schrägmusik, inexplicably exploding aircraft behind those often on their bombing approach run.
It's hard enough to get a 20 lb. She'll up to 20,000 feet. They were suggested to believe someone could also get oil, parts, pyrotechnics and 45 burn streaks up to the same altitude ? The problem for me is that bulls..(self agrandizing statements that truly don't care about a truth) eventually cost people somewhere
Scarecrows seem to be a waste of materials that late-war Germany could ill afford.
If these "scareshells" did exist, could someone explain to me, what would be involved in the process of creating such ammunition. What kind of pyrotechnic items would be loaded? What size shell would be used? I find it difficult to imagine fitting something to simulate an exploding bomber going down in flames into an 88mm shell, a 105mm or even a 128mm shell. Bright orange flames, multi-colored flares, and oily black smoke, and a visual duration of at least 45 seconds - this does not sound like a simple matter of loading various black powders into an anti-aircraft shell and lobbing it 20,000 ft. into the air.
I guess the best way to finally prove or disprove the existence of such shells would be to see if the can be replicated at all using 1940s technology.