The Dam Busters

May 17, 1943, seventy years ago today.  British Lancasters, iconic airplanes of World War II, bombed Germany’s Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams.

On May 17, in 1955, 12 years to the day after the raid, the famous movie premiered.

There is a Lancaster model airplane among my DVDs. When I watch The Dam Busters, I bring the airplane with me to the couch.

        

Few stories about World War II are as fabled as the ‘Dam Buster’ raid.  The Ruhr dams of Germany were tempting targets.  They supplied water and power to the industrial heartland of a country at war.  Britain’s Royal Air Force was determined to attack them.

To hurdle anti-torpedo nets that protected the dams, Barnes Wallis, who designed airplanes and other useful gadgets for the RAF, invented the bouncing bomb.  It looked like a drum.  A motorized drive put a back spin on it.  The bomb was designed to skip over the anti-torpedo nets, smack into the dam, sink against the dam wall and detonate 30 feet down.

        

     

To skip the bomb properly, the pilots had to fly exactly 60 feet above the lake, at exactly 220 miles per hour.  They released the bomb exactly 425 yards from the dam wall.  At night.  Under intense anti-aircraft fire.

Today, few pilots can fly 4-engine airplanes that precisely without an autopilot.

The German gunners could see them clearly — each Lancaster had two spot lights ingeniously affixed so that from a height of exactly 60 feet the spots aligned on the water below.  More precise than using altimeters.

Eight of 19 aircraft failed to return.  Shot down over the target, downed en route or on the way home.  They flew below treetop height most of the way, and at least one Lancaster crashed after running into Dutch power lines.

Squadron Commander Guy Gibson led the raid, which earned him the Victoria Cross.  He was 24 years old.  He was shot down and killed 16 months later.

Two dams were breached and 1,600 people on the ground lost their lives, including hundreds of prisoners-of-war used as forced labourers.  The Germans repaired the dams within the year.  Today the reservoirs are quiet recreation sites, and few of the people who live, sail or hike there know about the raid.

  

  

The 70th anniversary of the Dam Busters raid is spawning articles, model airplanes and documentaries.

         

     

I bought these magazines at a bookstore in Köln Hauptbahnhof, in Germany.  The model airplane came from a Bangkok hobby shop.

        

        

In the 1955 movie The Dam Busters, Richard Todd starred as Guy Gibson.  A former theatre actor, Todd was a paratrooper in World War II and jumped into Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944 on the ‘Pegasus Bridge’ mission.  Later, he played the role of his D-Day commanding officer in another famous movie, ‘The Longest Day’.

Michael Redgrave did a delightful performance as Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb.

A young Robert Shaw played a supporting role.

Of course for aviation enthusiasts the stars are the airplanes.  They used five Avro Lancasters in the movie.  One actually came from 617 Squadron.

        

         

In 1955 there were no computer graphics.  The airplanes were actually flown at hair-raising ultra-low altitudes.  There is an absolutely gorgeous scene, shot in low light from a hilltop, of a Lancaster skimming a lake and then climbing just above the slope of the hill toward the camera.

Right after the shooting was over, all the Lancasters were sold to British Aluminum and melted down to scrap.

         

         

Many scenes were later copied in Memphis Belle and other WWII movies.  Engine starts, chocks being pulled off the wheels, airplanes taxying out.

But the real gem is this:  George Lucas ‘borrowed’ entire lines of dialogue from the film.  Star Wars fans will spot them right away.

“How many guns do you think there are, Trevor?”

“I’d say there’s about ten guns, some in the field and some in the towers.”

 

“My goodness. It’s… It’s big, isn’t it? Can we really break THAT?”

“Let me know when you’re in position, I’ll draw the flak for you!”

“Down a bit, steady, 225, steady, 230, 225, steady, steady, … bomb gone!”

The scenes of Hopgood’s Lanc going down, the action switching back to Harris, Cochrane and Wallis waiting back at the base for reports… .  The only thing Lucas didn’t do was make Princess Leia look like Michael Redgrave.
        
You can enjoy the dialogue and the attack scene here.

         

Use the Force, Guy… !

         

Today most pilots don’t know the difference between a Lancaster and a Diet Coke.  These pretenders should throw their wings into a lake.  I bet they can’t even make them skip.

 

Posted from Manila, May 17, 2013

70th Anniversary of the Dam Busters raid

  

  

          

        

        

 

         

           

           

Interesting links:

     

Of the 133 flight crew who flew on the raid, only 80 survived that night.  Today, only 3 are still alive – one in the UK, one in New Zealand, one in Canada.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/raf-bomber-command/9359640/Bomber-command-Dambusters-survivor-at-memorial-unveiling.html

 

Someone finally did it.  The soundtrack of Star Wars’ attack on the Death Star, overlaid on The Dam Busters!  George Lucas was a big fan of the 1955 movie.

Long ago, in a reservoir far, far away… .

 

René, a Private Pilot, flew a Piper Cherokee over the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams a few weeks ago.  Here are interesting photos of his aerial tour.

http://www.hebels.nl/flights/20130327-1/overview.htm

 

Christopher Toh, a Singapore writer, wrote a blog on Christmas Eve, 2009, on George Lucas’ liberal shoplifting of entire lines of dialogue from The Dam Busters into Star Wars.

http://blogs.todayonline.com/ratedg/2009/12/24/

 

Eric Coates’ “Dam Busters March” from the movie has become a British icon – even played at football matches in the UK.

http://home.comcast.net/~classicwarmovies/mp3_ww2/Dambusters,_The__March.mp3

 

And then the infamous Carlin Black Label TV commercial, with the German sentry goalkeeper on the dam.

Upkeep goalkeep

Dead Stick

  

The Pipistrel Virus, a light sport aircraft designed in Slovenia, won NASA’s Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation’s title as the most efficient aircraft in the world.  The rigorously exacting competition focused on noise, cruise speed, and fuel burn. 

Using space-age instrumentation, NASA’s CAFE Foundation proved that the Virus had the shortest takeoff distance, the highest climb rate, the steepest climb angle, the highest top speed and the lowest fuel burn.  It also was tied for the quietest cabin noise.

   

     

I myself could barely hear the engine.  Then Neil made it quieter by turning the engine off.  In mid-air.  But I’m getting ahead of my story.  

    

  

          

      
When I first visited Pattaya Airpark, Neil let me fly the Pipistrel Virus, the flagship of his fleet.  We soared over Pattaya’s beaches, and I couldn’t tell which entranced me more – the spectacular view outside, or the data on the instruments inside.

  

  

   

In the last photo above, we are in level flight in a steep 45-degree bank, at just 40 knots.  Every powered airplane I’ve flown would fall from the sky with that loading, at that frugal an airspeed.  The lightest whisper of airflow over this wing’s sensuous surface kept us aloft. 

The Pipistrel Virus has a glide ratio of over 17:1. For every 200 feet it descends, it glides well over 1.5 miles.  A hefty three miles from Pattaya Airpark, Neil turned the engine off.  Theory was about to become practice.

  

 

In the photo above, the propeller is frozen.  We still need to fly over the runway, at left, fly right downwind and base, and land from the opposite direction.

We flew over the airfield.  At mid-downwind, we were at 547 feet MSL, descending 500 feet per minute at 65 knots.  Two-mile pattern, a minute per mile … I did the math furiously in my head.

  

  

The “0” and the stationary propeller said it all.  Zero RPM.  The engine was off.

  

  

On base leg, we were at 255 feet, 57 knots.  In the movie Always, Pete (Richard Dreyfuss) flew a similarly impaired A-26 to an airfield surrounded by pine trees, dead stick.  I knew the dialogue by heart.

  

Pete:  [right engine out of fuel and dead] Tanker 57 to tanker base.  I’ve got a small inconvenience here.
Tower:  Talk to me Pete.
Pete:  I may have overestimated my fuel just a tad, but I can see the base from here and my right engine is fine, so I don’t think there’s going to be any…
[left engine also runs out of fuel and whines to a stop]
Pete:  … problem.
Tower:  Pete, what do you need?  What do you need?
Pete:  [both engines now dead] Glider practice.
Tower:  [rings the crash alarm and announces over the PA] We’ve got a situation here.  We’ve got a flier coming in dead stick.
Pete:  This is good.  I was rusty on panic.  OK, no problem, I’ve got the airport in sight, … .

  

As we turned onto final approach, the vertical speed, incredibly, was zero.  In a 30-degree bank, we were in level flight, maintaining altitude, with no power.

  

          

It was a solid performance by a master aviator thoroughly familiar with the airplane’s capabilities.  Neil often landed the Virus dead-stick.  He knew exactly how it behaved without power.

I loved every minute of that flight.

  

I will so miss flying with Neil.

    

      

    

  

Written on CX879, San Francisco to Hong Kong

Posted from Singapore, February 14, 2013.

  

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Pattaya Airpark

       

I first met Neil almost exactly three years ago, at the 2010 Wings Over Asia Aviators’ Gathering in Singapore.  I’ve written about Wings Over Asia – the premiere social network for private pilots and aircraft owners, based in Singapore.

             

      

     

Sentosa, Singapore, February 2010  

        

The 2010 Wings Over Asia event started with dinner at One Degree 15 Marina in Sentosa, serendipitously close to the Singapore apartment I would move to three years later.  The next day, the group flew in several aircraft to Pulau Tioman, off the coast of Malaysia.  The photo shows Neil, and the surrounding high terrain that makes Tioman an exhilarating approach!      

   

          

I gave a multi-media presentation at the Asia Aviators’ Gathering gala dinner that night at Keppel Bay Marina.  Neil and his wife Amparo, who is from Colombia, were there.  Neil was a leading general aviation advocate in Thailand.  He owned Pattaya Airpark, with a 570-meter macadam runway just off Jomtien Beach in Pattaya.

         

       

At the dinner in Singapore, Neil invited me to fly with him in Thailand.  In the five years I had lived in Bangkok, I had never flown in Thailand. 

As usual, work got in the way.  In August, 2010, I finally visited Pattaya Airpark.

  

  

Pattaya, Thailand, August 2010  

  

Pattaya Airpark is Neil’s baby — a residential park with an airport.  Aircraft owners would build homes for themselves and hangars for their airplanes.  The airpark is two hours drive from Bangkok and just minutes away from some of the best restaurants and beaches in Thailand.  It is also a short hop from major airports like Suwarnabhumi International and U-Tapao air base, and general aviation and ultralight airfields in Chonburi and Hua Hin.  The Cambodian border is less than an hour’s flying time away.

    

     

Neil and Amparo had a charming little home on a hill southeast of the runway, where Amparo served the best Columbian coffee west of Bogota!  Outside was a huge ‘Yaang-na’ tree.  The ‘helicopter seeds’ of the Yaang-na tree have graceful rotary wings that fly the seeds far and wide – nature’s way of creating space and light in forests.

  

  

Last month I moved to Singapore, where I first met Neil three years ago.  I still have one of those seeds from Neil’s airfield.  I thought it was so cool that his airfield’s trees were seeded in flight and rooted in aviation.  Literally.       

  

Posted from San Francisco, February 9, 2013

  

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No Good-byes

       

A lot of people saw the Facebook thread. 

It was going to be a sad weekend.  After eight years in Bangkok, I was closing our condominium unit and moving to Singapore.

I had no idea how sad it was about to become.

  

  

  

My Thai friend Nawaporn wanted me to to visit ‘PAP’ – Pattaya Airpark.  He was owner and CEO.  Neil, a very capable pilot, had just flown a Pipistrel Virus to Angkor Wat, in Cambodia.  Now he was back at Pattaya, Thailand, eager to share his stories and photos. 

I was panic-packing in Bangkok.  In 36 hours I was leaving Thailand for good.  There was no time to go to see Nawaporn at Pattaya. 

“No goodbyes,” I wrote.  “We will try to be back every month.  We love Thailand.” 

I hit ‘Share’ so that my friends could ogle Nawaporn’s breathtaking aerial views of Angkor Wat.  His last post was 3:26pm.

   

Five hours later he was gone forever. 

  

  

Neil – his English name — was the owner and manager of an airfield and ‘airpark’, where aircraft owners could build their homes and hangar their airplanes.  He was a superb pilot.  His logbook had thousands of flights in scores of aircraft. 

Neil was also the sweetest husband I had ever met.  His Facebook profile photo shows him in a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog.  His wife Amparo is in the back seat.  Amparo is from Bogota, Colombia.  How they met, married and doted on each other is pure romance.

 

  

Now Neil was gone, just hours after we had agreed “No good-byes.” 

  

     

I did move to Singapore as scheduled, right after Neil’s last, tragic flight.  But I came back to Bangkok at the end of the week, for his funeral and cremation.  My last day in Thailand, and his.

  

    

 

    

    

Posted from Bangkok, January 20, 2013.

Do It With Thy Might

  

This is a piece quickly scribbled on Facebook for my son Julio to reflect on, as he crafted his resume’.  Carlo asked that I post it here also.

             

      

Everyone is passionate about something.  When passion is channeled entirely towards a cause, we get an advocate, an activist, a zealot or even a militant.  Legendary Filipino photographer John Chua is an advocate,  Jose Rizal an activist,  Bin Laden a zealot and militant.  It can be about sovereignty or photography.

When the passion is aligned with a source of livelihood — work — then we get an entrepreneur or a pioneer — Steve Jobs, Li Ka-Shing, Orville and Wilbur Wright, John Lennon, Coco Chanel.

Few of us get a chance to have perfect alignment between what we passionately want to do versus what we get to do or have to do.  We do have to earn a living, if only to be able to continue being passionate about something (then we become active in a charity, an NGO, or a sport, even a hobby).

Some of us are thrust into roles that tremendously benefit a team, an organization, or a country — then we become a reluctant leader, like college basketball coach Norman Black, Philippine cabinet secretary Jesse Robredo, who died in an airplane crash last year, Noynoy Aquino (who had to be persuaded to run for Philippine President, thank goodness, otherwise Erap would be President today — he was 1st runner-up).

These reluctant leaders dedicate their lives and talent to that role.  Then they fade out and do what they always wanted to do.  Or they die in role.

I’ve learned that fulfillment — the contentment over a job well done, a cause well-served, a role fulfilled to the great benefit of others — is what really matters. 

And you know what?  We never know where the fulfillment will come from.

Never.

Che Guevara died in the mountains of Bolivia.  He was passionate, but for what?  Lance Armstrong was so passionate about winning that he shamelessly cheated and lied his way to victory.  No fulfillment there.  There’s a lot of passion in the science and arts, and yet nobody really cares until you invent a cure for cancer or paint the next Mona Lisa.  Then it matters.

The key is, society as a whole must benefit.  Advocate.  Your field of expertise must benefit.  Pioneer.  Your team must benefit.  Leader.  And you, in the most selfish, self-centered way, must benefit.  Only then will there be complete fulfillment.  If any one of those is missing, you are a Lance Armstrong, a Che Guevara or a Don Quixote.

Passion isn’t the thing.  Fulfillment is.  And you know what?  Fulfillment is a moving target.  You stake your life on a narrowing funnel of options as you grow older, and you hope you find fulfillment.

And then you die.

      

    

In my all-time favorite book, Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Caine Mutiny, Willie Keith’s father sends his son a Bible, a last gift just before the father dies.  The gift catches up with Willie in Pearl Harbor, where he is in transit to the floating rattletrap, the USS Caine.  Stunned to see the handwriting of his father, already passed away, Willie opens the Bible to Ecclesiastes 9:10, which his Dad has underlined in a wavering hand. 

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

            

            

Posted from Singapore, January 26, 2013.

               

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Sawasdee Krub!

 

I arrived in Bangkok in January, 2005.  I thought it would be a two-year assignment.  Almost exactly eight years later, I left Thailand deeply affected by the country and its people. 

 

      

I shed tears as we locked our apartment door for the last time.  That door had secured us for nearly 3,000 nights, welcomed me home from over 600 business trips.  Our apartment had repeatedly hosted my three sons, my mom, my sister, in-laws, nieces, countless friends.

We were the longest-staying tenants in a condominium tower that saw waves of Japanese and American expatriates come and go.  We were a fixture – nobody had been there longer.  We knew several generations of security guards, the delivery men’s routines, the Thai millionaire landlord himself.

    

As I turned away from my door for the last time, a foreign expatriate came out of the the condominium unit next door.   He got into the elevator with me. 

“Where are you being assigned now,” he asked.

I told him, Singapore.

“Congratulations!  I heard that Singapore is blooming!  And there is no rubbish in the streets.  And they actually have footpaths!”

Footpaths? 

He had been in Thailand eight months.  Clearly, he had not yet unlocked the code.  I had lived in Thailand one year for every month he had been there. 

  

  

   

As the elevator started down, I wanted to tell him about the most beautiful beaches in the world, just an hour away from where we stood.  Hua Hin, Phuket, Phi-Phi, Krabi, Koh Chang.  I wanted to tell him about the Mandarin Oriental Dhara Dhevi in Chiang Mai, rated the #1 resort hotel in the world.  Where you got a two-story cottage with a grand piano and your own lap pool, a huge bedroom, a bathroom the size of a studio with a traditional stand-alone bath tub in the center of the room.  Even your own personal rice paddy.

  

I wanted to talk about Songkran, the Thai New Year water festival, the biggest holiday in Thailand.  When everyone considers it a blessing to be sprinkled or soaked.  I told my visiting son David to get me a double-barreled 2-liter super soaker from a street vendor – and he got himself a massive four-barreled cannon!  Shirl had a water pistol … fed by a hose from a 3-liter backpack.  We leaned out the windows and sun roof of our hybrid van, strafing pedestrians, buses, even policemen.  They waved cheerfully and heaved buckets of water back at us.  At a stop light, we blasted a cab driver who had his window open.  He beamed, did a respectful ‘wai’, took two water pistols from his seat and blew us away.

 

One of the best images I have of Songkran, is a ticket clerk at an MRT station, surrounded by coins and token cards, with a water pistol on the counter beside her.  Locked and loaded.

  

 

I wanted to tell my foreign neighbor about Loi Kratong.  The light festival when Thais send flower boats with lighted candles down the Chao Praya river, loaded with wishes for health and happiness.  Imagine millions of floating flowers bearing millions of lighted candles and millions of earnest wishes, twinkling down one of the biggest rivers in Asia.

     

     

I was looking forward to new adventures in Singapore, but I could not help wanting to tell my foreign expat neighbor – “See this map?  That’s the Kingdom of Thailand.  The places to go to are Chiang Mai, Hua Hin, Koh Samui, Krabi, Phuket, Koh Chang.  There are 70 million Thais, each with his own life story.

“And you see that dot?  That’s Singapore.  It’s a dot.  With footpaths.  Enjoy your time in Thailand.”

But I never got to say anything.  How do you compress eight years in an elevator ride?

 

  

  

Posted from Bangkok, Jan 19, 2012.  Sawasdee krub!

  

Winged Poetry

              

                 

I’ve unloaded my Christmas stories.  It’s time now for a few fresh cups of aromatic aviation coffee for the New Year.  A refreshing look at flight, from another point of view.  Literally. 

             

                 

                

                

I met Christina on the internet.  She introduced herself here, in Flying in Crosswinds.  You can still see some of her first comments in the 2010 posts.  She got my attention.

I read a lot.  From Browning to le Carré and Maugham, Tennyson to Wouk and Wren.  Poetry or prose, I enjoy good writing.  Carlo teaches English and English Lit in one of the top Universities here.  So he is no slouch as a critic, either.

We love Christina’s writing. 

She was introduced to aerobatics even before she got her pilot’s license (even before she soloed, if I remember right).  She drank it all in eagerly, thirstily.  And she writes like she flies.  Poetry and prose.  Oh, man does she write.

She has moved from the US to Europe, and is waiting for a chance to go flying again.  Trying to outwait bureaucracy is one of the agonies every pilot goes through.  So, as therapy, she has been writing.

Today, the Feast of the Three Magi, I gift you with three jewels from Christina. 

Please click on the links to enjoy her writing.

         

L’amour de Voltige – The Hammerhead

Of course she had to start with the Hammerhead, my favorite of all aerobatic maneuvers.  I will say no more.  Read this piece on a daring day, when you feel like a jolt of exhilaration.

Fly it solo on an empty stomach, with minimum fuel on a cold and not too windy winter day.  Fly it early in the morning when whispers of fog cover the forests like a delicate blanket and the rising sun bathes you and your craft in warm gentle light, the promise of a new, fresh day.  Fly it in a light airplane at a density altitude below sea level.

  “… at a density altitude below sea level.”  Damn!  She just described pilot heaven in seven words.  Why can’t I write like this?  Damn.

     

None But the Lonely Heart

Low overcast, dull and grey, tower light’s on.  Into the air, into the clouds, water on the wind shield, surrounded by thick, wet darkness, eyes glued to the attitude indicator.

This one is for retired flyers.  Ex-Flyers.  Or those of us who think they are happy to never fly in pummeling weather again.  Then we read that line, and we miss it.  Shame on us, we miss battling bad weather.  It’s her fault.

         

Dream On

The pilot as a living and breathing attitude indicator, listening to engine noise and slipstream, feeling the G-forces.  Pure flying. Feet, hands and seat of the pants.  I wake up with a start, feeling cruelly deprived. In the wintery, early morning darkness I force myself up and stumble to the coffee maker, while a dull ache settles in my chest. Acro deprivation. I smile wistfully and welcome the day, grateful for the pain.

           

Happy New Year, Christina.  Fellow writer and aerobatic pilot.  Friend.  I wish for you your million shades of blue, and soon.

  

  

Posted from Manila, January 6, 2013.

         

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