The Vickers Warwick; Life Saver
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- Опубліковано 31 січ 2024
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I think 13k aircrew is not a insignificant number and this aircraft and it's crews deserve much more recognition
Quite remarkable to think that the equivalent of over 1,850 seven-man bomber crews were saved. I had heard of the Warwick but thanks to Ed to bringing it to our attention and telling its story.
Thanks for this programme @Military Matters. The air sea rescue function gets almost no mention. As you say, it lacks glamour.
However, these guys had to perform when, by definition, weather was often at its worst as that was often a contributing factor to aircraft crashing. So they would have flown in the most atrocious of conditions in order to try to save their comrades.
The book, 'Dinghy Drop, 279 Squadron RAF 1941-1946' covers some of this for those wanting further reading.
That is a huge number of aircrew. Star performer.
Looks like a pretty stout aircraft!! 🇺🇸👍
@@jackdaniel7465 they were constructed like the Wimpy. They were constructed geodetically which made them as tough as old boots.
Few aircraft get the glory of saving live in wartime. But when someone looks up and sees a big beautiful aircraft dropping a life raft that means they don't end up as fish food...that's a truly worthy achievement.
My dad flew air-sea rescue patrols with 280 Squadron, RAF. The squadron re-equipped with Vickers Warwicks in October 1943 but, before this, 280 used Avro Ansons. My dad said it was a helpless feeling, going to war in a plane that couldn't fight and couldn't run away.
The Annies were only just capable of doing the job. The inflatable dinghies they carried were so big, the Annies had to fly with their bomb flaps open, because they couldn't close the doors! Even though the Anson was designed as a maritime patrol aircraft, their range was too short for them to patrol the North Sea for very long, so they patrolled closer to the UK shore, while longer-ranged and better-armed aircraft like the Lockheed Hudson patrolled closer to the enemy coast.
The much larger and capable Warwicks were a welcome replacement.
I love that the human side of operations is reflected in these videos, the summing up was very well judged. My father was a mid upper gunner in Lancasters (83 Pathfinder Sqdn) but it was only operation Dodge, the repatriation of 8th Army personnel from Italy to England, that he liked to talk about. As they neared the coast he would invite these men, who had endured years of bloody fighting in the Mediterranean theatre, into his turret one by one for a first sight of home. He never forgot their reaction to this small act of empathy.
My dad was with 83 Squadron at the same time.
He'd transferred there from 61 Squadron in June 1945 to train for Tiger Force after the Germans surrendered.
He met my mother there, who was a WAAF and they married in Horncastle in 1946.
I have photos of him from 61 Squadron at Skellingthorpe but none from Coningsby and he couldn't remember his new crews names.
The best man at mum and dad's wedding was another ex 61 Squadron rear gunner.
Small world eh ?
@@larryjenkinson4789 Same story here, Dad trained for Tiger Force, had his tropical kit issued and jabs before the A bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered. Interesting how that transfer led to your parents meeting. Dad thought that Tiger force would suffer heavy casualties and that I owe my existence to the atom bomb. Strange to think our fathers might have trained together and rubbed shoulders in the mess, unless yours was an officer of course!
13,000 flight crew back into planes to fight again, all for the cost of 100 airframes you could use in anger anyway, yep it doesn't sound glamorous but absolutely crucial.
iam sure the 13.000 werent flightcrews only but also alot of Sailors from sunken ships
Well the 13000 will include some axis aircrews (the sea does not take sides, neither do rescuers), so it's more "an extra farmhand" than "a pilot back in the fight"
Its aggressive, purposeful lines make it look like a German plane. It kind of gives off Ju-86 vibes, like a Vickers Wellington and Dornier 217 hooked up at a dive and had a kid who grew up not wanting to talk to either of them anymore.😮
Sometimes the wrong aircraft is the right aircraft it just needs placing in the right roles.
Hey Finland, say hello to the Brewster Buffalo!
CAC Boomerang, not a lot of use as the emergency fighter it was designed to be, but great at CAS!
@@NoName-ds5uq As I said. Once you've found its niche just stand back and leave them to it. It would have been interesting to have seen the CA-15 in action.
@@neilcoligan8621 That's another aircraft which was flown by many countries was did not get the recognition it deserved.
@@bigblue6917 that would’ve been a sight! It’s such a shame it took so long in development.
Some planes just look right, and the Wellington was definitely one of those. It was beautiful and graceful. The Warwick was also that, but looked a little angry at the same time. Thank you for this one. It definitely deserves more recognition.
Lmao the wellington looks angry??
@@chunkblaster No...?
@@bowser515 i reread your comment and you're right, you said the Warwick looked angry, my b
@@chunkblaster That's okay lol.
It would never have occurred to me that anyone could find the Wellington "elegant".
'Homemade', maybe.
I never got to meet my grandfather but I know from his log book that he spent ww2 as a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner in Coastal Command operating various aircraft like Ansons, Whitleys, Wellingtons and Liberators. He also had logged time on both Warwick’s and a Defiant so it was great to see both in this video. The Defiant had me wondering if it was gunner training or Air Sea Rescue.
Later in 1946, he was on a Liberator involved in the search for a missing Quantas Lancastrian airliner that went missing over the Indian Ocean carrying some of the Avro bigwigs to Australia. Might be an interesting story for a future video…?
if anyone is interested ... the only figures I can find about the Airborne Lifeboat drops are: 113 dropped (of which 15 were from USAF B17s, the rest from RAF Warwicks and Hudsons). 61 were successfully boarded by at least one survivor. So if we guesstimate an average of 6 men boarding that would be 360 -ish aircrew saved directly by the lifeboats. There are many accounts of the survivors being simply too exhausted to make it to the boat or the the drop just going wrong, the boat sinking etc.. The operation was often fraught with difficulties, but could work if everything went well. (info from RAF historian Air Commodore Graham Pitchfork's book, "Shot Down and in the Drink") Amazingly there is a story of a Warwick crew who dropped a lifeboat successfully on survivors, and were then shot down by Luftwaffe fighters and took to their dinghy. They were eventually spotted by another Warwick which dropped a lifeboat, but it capsized .A third Warwick dropped another lifeboat and they managed to board. Another Warwick found them next day and was able to lead a Navy patrol craft to recover them!
My father flew the Warwick SAR version during WW2. He flew in the MTO as a member of RAF sq. 284. He dropped his lifeboat to a downed. Spitfire pilot off the coast of N. Italy. High winds prevented the parachutes from detaching properly and they drug the boat away before the pilot got onboard. The pilot got rescued by HSL.
hooray, I am first to respond !!! Ed, please keep up the great work, your productions are very very informative. I have never heard of the Vickers Warwick, which seems to be another black hole in aviation history.....
With all of the in development power plants that ultimately failed to meet expectations and were scrapped you would think that we were unable to get it right, but from the ashes a mighty world leading power plant industry has developed, perhaps even the best in the world, all those failures have not been for nothing.
Thanks for another excellent article, interesting and informative. 😀👍🇬🇧🏴🇺🇦
My father was a ground engineer assigned to 283 SQ. in Malta and worked on these Warwicks. The first demo in Malta of dropping an under slung 'boat' to downed aircrew ended with it being turned into a pile of floating matchsticks ! There is an example of one of these 'boats' in an aviation museum in Norfolk, UK. Thks
It looks like a Wellington in a tie and jacket.
Sunderlands and PBY Catalinas with much longer range, heavier payloads and sea landing option, did alot more (overall) to save lives and sink subs. You mention engine production constraints, but the issue was much more important than realised from todays perspective (Dad was in manufacturing throughout the war (Solex: Engines and other projects)).
Your one-sentence closing is powerful in its eloquent simplicity.
I wonder how much of its relative anonymity was simply due to confusion with the Wellie. In US vernacular, such rescue aircraft were nicknamed 'DUMBOS' and were employed in the Pacific, as well as postwar.
For those whose knowledge is as patchy as mine, the Double Wasp is the R-2800.
Whenever I hear the name Warwick, I think of one man. Derek Warwick, racing driver. The way he spoke in interviews I would have guessed he was a Duke, Lord or Earl of Warwick. See they named a plane after him before he was born. He's that darn good.
There is never anything insignificant about search and rescue, it is one of the most vital and appreciated noncombat roles of any military service.
It's a role that even today doesn't get much coverage in the media even if the conditions are dangerous for the aircrew. Usually when it's mentioned it is part of another story such as the PBY that found the USS Indianapolis survivors. But the actual patrols and missions don't get a dedicated history.
This has prompted me to look into the deployment of these airborne lifeboats and it is fascinating. The first were the Mk1s (71built) which fitted the Lockheed Hudson and were first used operationally in May '43. The Lifeboat-Warwicks used the Mk 1A (402) and later the larger Mk2 and 2A (241) and were operational from Oct '43. It was a very tricky operation...first the survivors had to be located of course, and the boat was dropped from about 700 feet. Large parachutes were deployed but the boat would still hit the sea at quite a rate and was sometimes damaged or turned over. (They were wooden after all!) During the drop a CO2 bottle was triggered which inflated the buoyancy chambers, and on reaching the water a battery switch would trigger 2 rockets (yes!) to fire out lines to either side for survivors to grab , and another rocket would fire out a line from the bow to deploy a sea anchor. If the boat was not close enough, or the sea/wind conditions were not helpful, the survivors did not always make it on board. Sometimes multiple drops were needed to save a crew. If they did make it, there were two small 2-stroke engines, or 1 larger engine in the later versions , and they could attempt to head to a friendly coast. The vast majority were picked up by patrol craft directed by the rescue plane. Perhaps Mr.Nash could give us a video about wartime Air-Sea rescue development? It's an interesting story.
Lol I think you've provided the info already!
@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters Sorry! I think in my over enthusiasm I have repeated some of the info that you already narrated in the video. Apologies.
@@timdavies5219 Perfectly fine. Think you added some valuable extra info
Thank you for another very informative video about an aircraft I did not know before your excellent video.
This is why I love this channel, I never knew about the Warwick.
It is hard to believe in this day and age with the modern deindustrialized Britain we see today that Britain once had a massive aircraft industry.
We had massive industry!!.
My dad was flying asr in Italy and flew Warwick's and walrus flying boats. He'd have definitely have approved of this video.
The Warwick became an air-sea rescue plane, the Anson became a trainer, the Defiant and Henley became target tugs. Never waste a good airframe!
The Defiant also made a good night fighter, the Battle made a good target tug, which was about all it was good for!.
@@CrusaderSports250 This IS still good though. If you look at records from WW2 there are officers in the commonwealth writing to London going "got any more target tugs? we need more of them!"
Fascinating! It must have been such a relief seeing one drop a boat and supplies whilst drifting in the sea cold and extremely miserable.. I suppose it's not bad for morale to know that if you ditch, someone is going to try and help.
It also gives you the incentive to push that bit harder, getting the job done, crew protection/rescue is an often overlooked area but can be more influential in achieving an objective than having the best available kit.
Maybe Air sea rescue could do with a video all of its own
Alas, poor Warwick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times.
The Vulture engine the bane of all bomber designs
I always had a soft spot for the Wimpy´s younger, angrier Brother.
Thank you for shining a Leigh-light on it!
I've always liked the non Wellington Vickers heavies but knew very little about them before. Well, thanks to this excellent video, I know a bit more now.
Silloth, Kirkbride & Anthorn airfields in Cumberland were stuffed full of new, unused Warwicks from mid 1944 on.
When a Wellington and a B 26 love each other very much...
Unbelievable that such and important and useful plane could get largely forgotten. I'm glad you highlighted the many jobs it undertook. Great video Ed.
Glad you told the Warwick's story.
I never would have guessed that the Wellington was the most produced British bomber. They certainly don't get the most coverage.
Great vid! Thank you for producing these!
Nice video Ed! Great B-roll footage in your video as well.
Nicely done and a great ending.
As an aside to the role the Warwick played in saving 13,000 lives, you had a brief note of the role of speed-boats played in the channel. Something that was foreseen by none other than RAF Airman Shaw, nee T. E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia. Could you do a feature on this most remarkable man?
Love that RAF operational requirement for unglamourous bimbling along doing its job 😂
You're right Ed, we here love the workhorses. Thanks for this one.
I think Ive seen these before a lot but I just thought them to be Wimpies.
Nice touch at the end. A few hours in a tiny dingy in the North Sea and the sight of a Warwick would be very, very welcome. I think I read somewhere that the Beaufort and mossie squadrons attacking Norway would regularly have the Warwick crews over for a thank you bash. Anyone confirm this?
That is correct - usually 2 warwicks would sent in support of coastal command strikes by beaufighters or mosquitos off Norway. Being interested in beaufighters lead me to become aware of the Warwick. The crews were incredibly dedicated. Though standing off the coast to provide support there are accounts of them going in closer to try and assist but being caught be fighters or flak.
@@Mini13Mini Well, if they dropped me a boat in the middle of Dogger Bank while I was in nowt but my Mae West I’d certainly buy them a pint of ten.
Thanks again Ed, you have just the correct span and details for my time and keep it coming please Sir 👍 📚 🇬🇧 🙏
Lindholme gear - developed at RAF Linholme - nowadays carved up into 3 adjacent prisons
Are the Prisons also joined together with long ropes? :)
Nice one, Ed. Thanks.
Thanks Ed. I did know of this workhorse but only the tip of the iceberg , so to speak . But had no idea of it's prolonged gestation . Top man Ed.
Thanks for adding to my store of knowledge.
Another very 'spot-on' video.
Really interesting ed one of your best
Thanks Ed Nash and all of y'all excellent research that goes into making these video's 👍
Old F-4 2 Shoe🇺🇸
It may not be as iconic as the Lancaster or the B17 but the Vickers Warwick did have a crucial role saving some 13000 + lives Is no small feet It's roll in the air search rescue servicer the equipment and the methods they developed in the second World War are still being use until the very day I guess there are some good things that do come out of war..
Good video, my Grandfather was groundcrew on Warwick asr 281sq on Tiree.
Thank you for posting.
A glamorous posting if ever there was! 😊.
@CrusaderSports250 I know, sent there in disgrace I think !
Still, at least as a youngster I was the only kid with an ASR Air drop Lifeboat spec box kite....
Ed: It would be interesting to see a vid on the many engines, which did not live up to the pre-build, calculated expectations. Secondarily, how many otherwise good aircraft designs failed, due to the planned engine not being up to snuff.
We hear about this on several of your vids on aircraft. It would be interesting to see it in macro.
Thanks
There's dozens of them and the reasons why they were dropped are hard to fathom.
@@jimdavis8391 Most of them were because, as I wrote, the engines did not live up to expectations. Ed has mentioned dozens on individual vids. That is why I suggested a roll up vid on that subject.
I think that the development of high output, high specific output engines were alway going to be a challenge regardless of the country that were developing them. You can point to the B 29 and HE 177 as examples as well.
I do wonder if the failed engines like the RR Vulture would have been perfectly fine if developed in peacetime without the pressure forcing manufacturers to build rather than design and develop.
Really interesting, I previously knew nothing about this plane, or its contribution..!
Yup. Enjoyed that. Thanx
You've done it again, Ed.
Though I might(?) have heard of the Warwick.
I had no idea it had Double Wasp engines (originally).
Or that it performed so many interesting tasks with the RAF.
Thank you.
☮
Never even heard of this plane. Thank you for this video
Great video of a relatively unknown aircraft! It certainly looked the business in the later variants. 👍🏻
6:46 - my uncle flew on a KM-B-for-beer, I think soon after this 'photo. RIP.
Speaking of SAR, could you maybe do a video on the Do 24? The last one was only recently brought into a museum.
Awesome vid.👍
Facinating video, on an aircraft I'd never previously heard of. That being said, I really want to hear more about the Fox boats.
Excellent!
Great Essay! 👍
There is a Warwick on top of Cheviot in Northumberland, right beside the Scottish Border. It was on a ferry flight to be scrapped in 1941 when it struck the top of the hill in poor visibility.
Please do a video on the Fairey Monarch engine.
Nice Ed!
Unsung and absolutely essential for saving lives.
Planes like these are my favourites because they exemplify how the Allies approached waging war.
Yes, there were many projects that turned out to be bloody useless for anything but there were many which failed at their specified job but turned out to be rather good at applications their original designers hadn’t even considered.
Of course, the Axis did this also but the Allies were far better at it.
My grandfather was a navigator and trained on Wellingtons, flew Halifax and Mosquito during the war and then post war flew on the Warwick.
A new one on me, even at my time of life. Very interesting.
As with a lot of good British aircraft that were delayed by engines that had major teething problems, this one goes on a long list.
Would it be possible to make a video about U.S. engine development with successes and failures?
Great job!!
Narrator:"...the Rolls Royce Vulture."
Aviation fans: *ah crap...*
Beautiful plane.
Yes! Beautiful ending!
'WAR - WICK !" what a name, rolls off the tongue like a German Command :D..
He's got a brother called Woderwick
I'm pretty sure German command struggled to produce it themselves
Warrick the second w nor pronounced😊
Possibly "VAR-ICK!" as a German command?
@@LukeBunyip his parents are Woger and Vewonica and they drive a wange wover.
I first became aware of the Warwick when I read All Weather Mac, a most interesting book.
Great looking aircraft, in my opinion.
Late, Centaurus models remind me of the Lockheed Neptune.
nice work
It's not a bad looking plane. The common theme of potentially great planes ruined by engine delays. Still, it did have a decent career
Before Ed had mentioned the stability issues I was wondering why this design hadn't sprouted a much bigger fin by the time the big Centaurus's had been installed. I have always tended to think the B-17's fin was basically the size norm for multi-engined aircraft. The FW-200 is another multi engined aircraft with a surprizingly small fin from the outset, and was never modified. Directional stabilisers never seem adequate enough with the Me-109's Nemo fin being a case in point.
Well the final German 109, the K, did have a taller fin. Not to mention the towering unit on the 209-II that was once intended to replace the 109 (look it up if you haven't seen one, it's a sexy beast...sort of a Bf109K/Fw190D mashup)...
That's about how the Me-109 should have looked all along. It looks better than the Ta-152 and a pitty it lost by 50kmh to the Dora. Thank you for reminding me of the 209, and I see its mentioned in another of Ed's videos.@@stevetournay6103
super cool
Never put your eggs in a basket with a Vulture.
This has to be the first ever instance of "reliability issues" and "double wasp" being used in the same sentence ive ever experienced
The early ones had some problems, which was pretty much standard with any radial.
@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters sorry Ed I wasn't trying to imply you were misrepresenting the reliability of the Double Wasp, moreso i just think the lack of discourse around failures and the double wasp is a strong indicator of the quality of that powerplant.
Absolutely! As said, the centaurus turned into a good engine, but it was a while getting there. P&W really did get it right with the twin and doubles.
English please.
Life's too short .
I built 1 /72nd planes and have looked in libraries for the obscure planes of history ,my brother built a fine Wellington (Airfax) the interior structure we thought was elegant..yer article waz a good find. thanx./^\_[*]|""
Wimpy had a big brother 😊it was a good looking plane in the transport configuration even with the fat belly
The Lindholm equipment is just genius lol 13,000 lives saved that otherwise might have perished thats not something to dismiss. The Warwick was just great in my mind but also its just another indication of how much material and human advantage the allies had over the axis. That they could spend all the resources building and Air Sea Rescue aircraft equipped with sophisticated rescue equipment is so far ahead of what the axis could offer its downed sea men
I think the figure of 13000 men rescued refers to the total number recovered by in WW2 by "Air Sea Rescue" as a whole, not specifically by the Warwick lifeboat/ dinghy method. That would be an impossibly large figure, given that they were only deployed in the latter half of the war. (from 1943)
Ah... Lol.... Sorry but you are wrong
Go do a bit of research before making comments like that.... Do you understand that there were hundreds of thousands of allied aircrew during WW2
Well, the Wiki page on 'Air Sea Rescue' has this quote: "In all, 10,663 persons were rescued by Coastal Command in ASR operations. Of this total, 5,721 were Allied aircrew, 277 enemy aircrew, and 4,665 non-aircrew. By the end of the war, British ASR had saved over 13,000 lives and was one of the largest such organisations in the world." Notice that the video script says that the Warwick played a 'substantial part" in rescuing 13000 persons from the seas. There were also the seaplanes, like the Walrus, other aircraft types, and the RAF rescue motorboats engaged in this, for 3 years before the Warwick even came on the scene.
Hi again Edd.
Out of curiosity, have you found any further information on the South African Bomtrok design?
Afraid not.
This seems to be a difference between American and British military procurement during the war: both countries had plenty of failed projects (in the air services, many of those in both countries would be due to developmental engines not developing as hoped), but while the UK response to discovering a new combat aircraft wasn't going to meet their needs was to look desperately for any _other_ roles the type might fill, the US approach was to cancel the whole program and fill their "less glamorous" needs (roles like VIP transport, air-sea rescue, and maritime patrol) with adaptations of the types it was building by the thousands anyway.
Made possible by having a very large production Base and one that wasn't having the Germans constantly doing their best to close it down.!.
@@CrusaderSports250 Maybe it's just me, but I think that seems like an even better argument for maximizing your industrial output by concentrating on building fewer types of kit in greater numbers.
looks like the wellington.
Might not have won the war, but sure did it's part. And rescuing people at sea is no small part for sure.
Just an opinion. I think the sabre was so beautifully elegant that arrogance crept in e.g. the enemy would fall over backwards at its elegance and a few more mph speed. Practicality as ai serviceable war machine seemed not much of a concern
What next? A four-engined Warwick with RR Peregrines?😅
This is a twist: Usually prop-transports evolve into bombers, not the other way around!
Now let's look up the Vickers Warwick four-engined bomber.
- and all the planes like the Varsity, Valetta, etc. that look like modernised Wellingtons.
Vickers were still making planes for quite a while after the Warwick.
Many years ago I made a model of the proposed four engined Blenhiem as a college project, it was based on the all glazed nose Mk1 version, looking at the design with hindsight you could see it would have very quickly have become obsolete as bombs got larger due to them being stored in the inner wing, giving little chance of development.
The dropable rescue dingy looks like it has a bow sprint. Any more details on this vessel?
Have a read of Uffa Fox’s biography
Looks like wellington