Jones, in a BBC documentary series in the 80s, tells how they got hints as to what the Germans had developed. A Luftwaffe POW was heard in a deliberately recorded conversation telling his comrade they had this navigation device and that the British "would never find it". Inspection of downed German bombers found no specific night guidance equipment, but in conversation with an electronics engineer looking at the equipment in the bomber, Jones asked him if he'd found anything unusual. The engineer said that the blind landing receiver apparatus appeared to be far more powerful than he would have expected. This was the equipment ! The Germans transmitted a beam using the Lorenz blind landing principle. This system developed in Germany in the early 30s was not, therefore secret, and its intricacies well known. The pilot flew along the beam and if he deviated, he'd hear dots, or dashes to indicated deviation left or right of the beam. The system was in use in the RAF and my father actually completed the RAF course on how to set it up at an aerodrome !
Just as important was the second transmitted beam from a location in the North. These 3 beams crossed the primary at intervals km apart... the "Ready", "Set" and "Bombs Away" signals. IIRC this system landed most bombs w/in 100 yards left/right and 300 yards +/- along their path. For WW2, that's considered "dead on".
I his book Most Secret War I recall that Jones spoke of how long it took to come up with counter measures the the bean system, as the Germans were using centrimetic value sets, and that had not dawned on the allies for some time. The beams could be picked up, and they sounded like a middle C note on a radio receiver set.
I always find it disheartening the advances that we are capable of when trying to kill each other, but we don't seem to be as capable of advances towards prolonging each other's lives
This technology was created for civilian use and continued to be developed for civilian use after the war. Read the Wikipedia page on radio navigation; you’ll find that the “battle of the beams” was a rather brief footnote in a long line of civilian technology developments. There are certainly examples of technology created only for war (e.g. napalm) but radio navigation is actually amazing technology. Starting with Lorenz transmitters in the 1930's and it was only a few decades later that we started putting the transmitters in space. Today most of us carry radio navigation receivers (GPS) in our pockets.
I get what you mean. Even lifesaving improvements in medicine were spurred on by the needs of war. Madame Curie persuaded the French government to let her put mobile x-ray units in the field hospitals of WW1. The purpose was to avoid unnecessary amputations by x-raying soldier's wounds to see if the bones could be repaired by casting. Many improvements in surgery were pioneered in war. It's probably because anger, hate and fear are stronger psychological motivators than compassion or charity. At least in large social groups.
Consider how quickly we would populate ourselves into a very nasty situation without war and sickness. It’s happening already. We cull animal overpopulations but are blind to the disaster that looms in our very near future. War and sickness are natures way to balance things.
My mother was a theatre nurse, midwife and radiographer in London during the Blitz. She was often out during the raids and the blackout to deliver babies. Then back to the hospital to take care of civilian casualties and wounded military personnel and airmen from the surrounding airfields. My father was in India and Burma fighting the Japanese. Truly a generation of heroes.
@@cirrus1964 Bloke, my father volunteered into the army in 1939. I did not say he was in India at the same time as the blitz but implied that he fought through the entire war, mobbing out in 1946.
@@trig1900 I wrote respect, thank you for responding, my brother was on the Prince of Wales, and before was in Duinkerken. My Grandfather was Charles Nicolas Heywood. Boer War veteran, First World War (wounded 7 times) Russian Expedition 1918, holder of the Russian Order of St Anne, MM, Mons star etcetera. My Mother country were never on it's knees!
This channel has some excellent material at times but the background music is so overpowering and distracting it is hard to follow. Please just give the information only, as it is more than interesting enough to hold one's attention. The intense distracting music is not needed!! Otherwise, very interesting video.
RV Jones was attached to the Air Ministry NOT MI6. Omits the extremely important Oslo report that predicted much of German research (and would bring to production) - written in 1939. Though initially disbelieved, Jones thought it so valuable that "...in the few dull moments of the War I used to look up the Oslo report to see what should be coming along next...."
Too much hyperbole. The German weapon which almost “put the U.K. on its knees”. Was theU-Boat. The rest were inconveniences, that were relatively easily surmounted.
The bombing of Britain was devastating, killing tens of thousands and destroying factories, infrastructure and housing leaving millions homeless, the UK government has never made the actual losses public record..
IIRC I read the book on RV Jones and German POW aircrew were overheard saying the Brits would never find the equipment on the aircraft. The Brits investigated the General Navigation Receivers on the downed aircraft and found them too sensitive in receiving signals for normal use. That led to them locating the beams 👍 Battle of the Beams is a great book to read on this 👍👍
Only a half description of the method of "beam riding navigation" the aircraft followed an outbound beam,and when this was crossed by a second beam denoting distance by triangulation the bombs were released. The counter measures were beams transmitted on the same frequency to cross the outbound ridden beam to signal bomb release early,so the cities were not reached.
Yes I agree. I bought a SH copy of the RV Jones autobiography. A slow start but when it gets going the explanations of why certain engagements happened as a direct result of the hidden scientific war-which of course still happens today.
There is no such rank in the RAF or RAAF as ‘Captain’. I assume you mean the Army Air Force equivalent of captain, flight lieutenant (O3). The only rank within the RAF and RAAF in which the term ‘captain’ is used, is group captain. This rank cannot be diminished to ‘captain’, as this reducing the status by 3 ranks (if indeed there were captains in the RAF). It may be useful for your becoming familiar with the correct ranking system and nomenclature of British Commonwealth forces.
I would strongly recommend R V Jones' own account in his book 'Most Secret War', available from several second-hand on-line book sellers. His account of the circumstances surrounding the Coventry raid is as close as we are gong to get to the truth, as he was the king-pin of our technical defences. The way he and his several teams analysed and overcame the enemy tricks is utterly amazing. His illustrated book gives gives the answers we need to counter various myths, and highlights the incredible risks undertaken by our reconnaissance pilots and other personnel throughout the 1939-45 war. I was a child in Wimbledon at the time and I well recollect the raids and the destruction caused.
100% Agree I read his book about 20 years ago, and it plugged a lot of gaps in my WW2 history, including clearing up a lot of myths surrounding technology's used during WW2 both both allies & axis forces. His section on The Beam Wars goes in to great detail
Really important because there are lots of people who believe (including some historians) that victory over Germany was inevitable-when it really wasn't.
@@catinthehat906Victory was not inevitable but neither was defeat. The Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine never had the aircraft or ships to dominate air and sea so any attempt at a landing in the UK would always fail. The best Germany could have hoped for was to strangle the UK shipping lanes to the point a peace settlement would eventuate. The Kriegsmarine was adamant that invasion would be a suicide mission.
@@Spookieham Post Dunkirk the UK was on it's knees having lost a vast amount of equipment including tanks and artillery in the defence of Europe. If the Germans had put the same resources as they devoted to Barbarossa into Sealion, there's a reasonable chance they would have overwhelmed UK coastal. defences.
@@catinthehat906 Most historians agree that the cobbled-together "watercraft" (towed barges and river ferries) that the Germans assembled would have been destroyed by the RAF and the Royal Navy, if not by bad luck and the unpredictable English Channel weather. Remember, the Royal Navy was the most powerful navy in the world in 1940. Had the Battle of Britain tanked for the British, the RN would have been gathered together to defend the Channel. Even if the Germans had managed to gain a foothold on the island, the chances of them keeping such a force supplied (much less reinforced) was practically nil.
My family lived in the suburbs of East London during the Blitz and often had to put out incendiary bombs fires from Luftwaffe pathfinders as part of the attacks.
Wait a minute. Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Wilkins demonstrated a working radar system for the Air Ministry in February 1935. And by 1939 there were 20 radar stations in the UK that could detect enemy aircraft over 100 miles away. So the British government must have known from the start that the Luftwaffe was using radar.
For sure, but they wanted to keep the nazis in the dark as much as they could about the extent of British intelligence on nazi advances in radar technology. The nazis thought themselves more advanced than the Brits in radar & the latter wanted to keep it that way. Even if this meant sacrificing your own to fool the enemy.
This isn't about radar, it's about radio navigation. Two different uses of radio signals and waves. Think of it like GPS. The military uses GPS to guide everything from ships, planes, and troops, to missiles and bombs. Remove GPS, and everything gets pretty useless pretty quickly. This was a similar issue here. The radio beams were highly localized, so the planes could follow the radio beams to the intended target. If you jam those beams, the planes could not navigate to the target, or could be mislead to the wrong location.
@@jameskwon7617 The nazis at 1st didn’t fully grasp the significance of the towers dotting the England 🏴 southern coast. There were some attacks against the towers, but not followed through. Perhaps because the nazis were feeling so much more advanced in radar than the British.
True, but this wasn't much help at night because ground radar on its own couldn't get a British night fighter close enough to a German bomber to be able to see it. It needed the development of a small radar that could be carried in the night fighter to finally get close enough to see the target. This was first successfully done using a modified Bristol Blenheim in late 1940. In early 1941 early airborne radar was fitted to the more powerful new Bristol Beaufighters which took a steady toll of German Bombers from then on.
The saddest part of Coventry being bombed was that the Enigma machine codes had been broken and they KNEW that Coventry was going to be bombed...but they dared not evacuate the city lest they give away the fact that they were reading the German communications.
Not strictly true. The message they decrypted was that there would be a massive raid that night, but not the target. Intelligence believed it was going to be London or a south east city. They didn't know it was Coventry until the knickebein beams pointed at the cty
Yeah, thats not remotely true. They knew a bombing raid was coming but didn’t know the target. Just a stupid conspiracy theory. Spend a minute looking things up before making silly comments, all the information is right there on the same device you wrote your comment on 🙄
Enigma revealed on November 12th that am unusual raid was coming (November 14/15th) but the target itself and the two alternatives were given code names that were not identified. Churchill was convinced the target was going to be London and was driven back there in the afternoon to go to his underground shelter . Nobody in Britain knew the target was going to be Coventry for sure , the beams were turned on about 1pm and an aircraft was sent up to see where the beams trianglated which confirmed Coventry as the target around 3pm. Unfortunately the jammers were set at the wrong frequency but in the case of this raid it did not matter, it was a cloudless night and the bombers would have found their target easily without assistance. Of the 121 night fighters sent up to intercept, only two bombers were attacked with only damaged. Since 1996, the Ultra decrypts for the period have been available in the UK National Archives Between 07:35 GMT on 10 November 1940 and 05:00 GMT on 11 November, a German signal was deciphered and given the serial number CX/JQ/444 The message set out code words to be used by aircraft on an operation named Mondschein Sonat but did not give Coventry as the target or a date.
The British could not really read Enigma at the time of the raid. According to the Imperial War Museum they did not really crack it until the Spring of 1941, certainly not with any reliability and it often took days for one message.
On a scale of 1 to 10, their stuff is averaging a 3. They have poor consistency of research, and a slap-dash, thrown-together feel to their production quality.
@@randallreed9048 It's bad when the narrator rushes ahead. Even worse if he does so while mumbling. As if to give you no time to consider the iffy statement just made, since it takes all your concentration to decipher the next paragraph he just spit out.
@@Candyohh not even that, I wrote a reply to someone , discussing Technology, strategy and pre ww1 naval doctrine and the comments are only viewable if you set the comments to newest first
While I love Dark sky's video's for the historical footage shown, the voice overs are often abysmal in their litany of inaccuracies, sometimes in the historical but more annoyingly in their mispronunciation, for instance in this vid there is no "L" in Knickebein ( ker nikker bine (or been) not ker nickle bine ). I thought when I first heard it that it was just a mispronunciation.....until he said it a further two or three times on the trot. Please dark skies you obviously put a lot of effort into the production of your videos which we all enjoy but proof read your narrations first before adding it to the video and try to tone down the click bait titles. the UK was NEVER "on its knees" under area bombing any more than our side mistakenly thought the German population were. neither side had their spirits broken throughout the entire conflict.
Broadcast radio stations have known locations. We old guys remember when radios had CONELRAD markers on the dials at 640 and 1240 KC. In the event of an air raid all stations broadcasting were to use one of those frequencies. That would prevent a bomber or missile from knowing where a signal originated.
09:18. Both of my grandfathers were volunteer fireman during the blitz. According to other family members, neither talked about it although they likely should have. Few people, alive today in the west, have experienced such darkness.
RV Jones's book "Most Secret War" was published in the US as "The Wizard War" It is an outstanding literary masterpiece written by an outstanding human being. Churchill, in his second volume of his History of World War two , titled "their Finest Hour", has a chapter titled "The Wizard War" which describes this incident and Jones' contribution to win the Battle of the Beams. Jones' book give a more accurate description of their meeting.
Some of these heavy bomber pilots weren’t old enough to hold a drivers license. The British Pathfinders (Mosquitoes) would drop incendiaries of differing colours to denote primary/secondary targets. “Bomb gone!”🇬🇧👍🏻
Even today, in Victoria, there is the occasional case of a 16 year old gaining his full pilots license, but being unable to drive to the airport because he couldn’t get his motor vehicle license until he was 18! Mostly it was a case of dad owning his own aircraft and the kid learning to fly as soon as his feet could reach the pedals and his hands the yoke and the relevant instruments.
for over 50 years the credit was given too Robert Watson-Watt scientist , who talks of the interference the radar and beam signals in the documentary series "the world at war"
By the time of the Coventry raid, countermeasures to the German navigation systems were in place. Unfortunately, a frequency was incorrectly measured, rendering the countermeasures ineffective. However, the raid was conducted in bright moonlight, so the countermeasures wouldn't have worked anyway.
One of my uncles grew up in Coventry. He lived there with his parents and siblings at the time the bombing happened. There was a great deal of bitterness among the survivors, because it was felt that Coventry had very little strategic value for the Germans to target. Contrary to what was said in the video, Coventry was not an industrial city. It was a commonly-held belief that the Luftwaffe had made a navigational error and bombed Coventry, thinking it was the intended target of God-knows-where. The feeling was that the Germans were woefully off their intended course.
How to do background music: Use compression to get the music at a relatively constant level. Second lower the compressed audio levels to between -25 to -30db.
At 11:50 you say "The attack on Coventry marked the climax . . . " When you said that, did you know that Coventry Climax was a British motor engine manufacturer, successfully powering Formula One cars between 1958 and 1965?
The Luftwaffe dropped approx. 10 percent of the bombs tonnage that Britain dropped on Germany later in the war. And Britain's relentless night bombing did not break Germany, so Britain was never in any real danger of defeat from Nazi bombing.
The saddest thing about WW2 was how the Brits Treated Australians and New Zealanders after 1947, and then how it smashed them economically when the Pomes joined the EEC in 1973! Stabbed in the back! If the British Empire, German Empire, French empires etc had set a Free Trade Agreement within them selves and their colonies. The worst evil was the Communists….or war itself… I can’t understand why Britain and France were so anti German and not Anti Communist? I am prepared to be enlightened!
@nameless4270 True, other crimes against humanity committed by the British during WW2 are far worse... particularly the abuses and destruction of native indigenous cultures in Africa and Asia... Even more repugnant is recent UK polls showing that up 68% of British people are generally proud of their country's colonial conquests and think that these first nation people were actually better off under British Rule.
Myself and my family wouldn't be here if not for the advancements to stop the German bombings. My Great Grandmother and my Grandmother only just survived before moving to Australia in the early 50's.
*There were only two winners in WW2* *Britain was forced to surrender in September 1940, it remains a United States protectorate and is still occupied by American military forces*
Almost forgot about this and well I swear I'm not praising the people who employed it this was a 1940s version of GPS and had it had gone unnoticed this could have put England on death's doorstep in the war but thankfully it was figured out and it was stopped One thing that didn't help is that aircraft using the system had to have a dedicated Black box in the cockpit the show the radio signals
Ludicrous title. Britain was never on its knees during WW II, even during the major setbacks. As for the night bombing, it killed a lot of people, created a lot of damage, but had no real affect on the course of the war.
@@michaelwicks7680 I said it wasn't even on its knees after major setbacks, which included Dunkirk, the fall of France, Crete and defeats in North Africa. Losing a battle doesn't mean you are on your knees. Being on you knees means being unable to fight on and resist. There is a huge difference. To be on your knees, means complete capitulation, and the country never was in that position. The definition in Mirriam-Webster is "to completely defeat or overwhelm". At a national level, which is what is relevant here as it refers to Britain, that never happened.
@@jamesmcdonald5026 you might want to re-write that so it makes some sense. If you meant, the Germans came within two weeks of stopping the RAF being able to put up meaningful resistance, then no they didn't. Fighter production and pilot trading in the UK just about kept up with losses. That was not the case with the Luftwaffe. In any event, the RAF was able to maintain and even increase effective resistance and the Luftwaffe had unsustainable losses. The RAF ended the BoB with more operational fighters than it started with. The Germans most certainly did not.
@TheEulerID the German attacks were only focused on RAF targets. The Germans attacked a British city by mistake and England responded by attacking a German city. Hilter switched all bombing to English cities. That allowed the RAF to recover.
Without those Technical Illustrations of.....sort of a #1: leading esge Slats that Opens for Hydrogen Fuel Cell #2: Full Pallets underneath Eing of DryCell Plates #3: Fiber Carbon Rear Igniter Nozzle If has to be; Basic Oxygen Electric Ignitor Generator/ Nitroys
Knickebein was the name of the beam system used in the early stages of the German night-bombing but the British discovered the frequency and it was the same frequency that the diathermy sets worked on in the hospitals so by modified medical diathermy sets transmitted interference signals and bent the beams sending German planes to the wrong location
*Germany did,* *Britain was forced to surrender in September 1940, it remains a United States protectorate and is still occupied by American military forces.*
The more advanced system could have been defeated before Coventry was attacked, had it not been for an over zealous British soldier. A German bomber with the equipment force landed on a south coast beach. The soldier was told to stop anyone touching it until the experts arrived. The tide started to come in threatening to swamp the aircraft. People were offering to help push it up the beach to keep it out of the water. His response was to threaten them with his gun if they touched it. And yes, the aircraft was eventually partially submerged by the time Jones’s team got there. With the equipment no longer operational, it took quite a bit longer to figure out counter measures against the system.
Finest flavor, nowadays, of even the Rum !! CCSR, $20 per gallon Alarmingly Zangy ( ZingTahoe), Slight LemonLime with Ginger Carbonated Pressurized w/ Cork Silver and Steel Electrolysis Brewed into the Vat !! Sugary, thick in a Potatow Vodka base flavor
Dates are out by a year, the Battle of Britain was over, Britain was also trying to develop the very narrow beam radio signal, it was 2 radio beams and Germans would follow down one radio beam and when the second one cross, they drop their pay load, then came more radio beam signals, only good thing about it was it told the beaut fighters how to find the German planes, but to combat these radio signals Britain set up their own that cross the tracking beam the German bombers followed, these narrow radio beams was very clever tech back then, because if you use a standard ariel the signal would go in very direction, use a standard beam ariel even low you get that concentration of the signal it would still be a wide signal and get wider the more you moved away from the transmitter, so dish antennas were used, but it was not one on its own it was 3 dish antennas with in one, the radio signal would bounce of the first dish onto the second dish then onto the third dish, the signal would only be as wide as the dish with only about 0.8 % spread and the spread would die off quickly All of this happened in May 1941 Coventry was destroyed by blanket bombing, they were after the Rail Works
As has been said above, the battle of the Atlantic with the U boats was touch and go with serious rationing of everything because so much of what was being sent to the UK by America went to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Maybe someone else has identified the clickbait image for this experimental Nazi weapon as a version of the Bachem 349 "Natter" aka the "Viper." If so, I second this ID. From the wiki: "The first and only manned vertical take-off flight, on 1 March 1945, ended in the death of the test pilot, Lothar Sieber." Like the Me 163, this aircraft exacted a heavy cost in lives relative to its value as a wonder weapon. If I'm wrong about its identity, at least acknowledge my admittance of this possibility.
That's not a "Natter." It's hard to tell, but its wings appear larger than the short, stubby ones of the Natter. Also, the Natter had a nose-cone full of rockets, not what appears to be the intake of a turbojet. And the Natter's cockpit was up front. It was designed to separate from the rear propulsion unit and parachute back to the ground. And NO weapon "Put the UK on Its Knees." The V-2 could have, had it been equipped with an atomic warhead, or maybe, a radiologic one, or one loaded with Sarin or Tabun. Hitler didn't have the former, and no doubt feared the Britts would retaliate, in kind, if he employed the latter. This is CLICK-BAIT!....CLICK-BAIT!....CLICK-BAIT!....
@@Pootycat8359 Sorry, but my reverse-image search turned up the Natter, and thought I'd throw it out (or rather "up," appropriate for clickbait) for fun. The stubby wings did kinda conform to those of the Bachem and the crude attempts of Dark Dics (sorry again for the typo, Dark Docs), to find/mutilate something under the heading of a "Wunderwaffe." I'll try again for another possibility. Or not...
Interesting subject, but over dramatic, which isn’t needed as the subject is compelling enough, but please drop the distracting and intrusive loud music .
Click bate title. The only thing that brought us close to being on our knees was the U boat threat to supply convoys and we got a grip on that reasonably quickly. Nothing else even came close. My dad was born in 1923 and served in the RN along with his brother. We discussed the war a lot when I was growing up and at no time did he or anyone else think we wouldn't be victorious. So not on our Knees at all.
Jones, in a BBC documentary series in the 80s, tells how they got hints as to what the Germans had developed. A Luftwaffe POW was heard in a deliberately recorded conversation telling his comrade they had this navigation device and that the British "would never find it". Inspection of downed German bombers found no specific night guidance equipment, but in conversation with an electronics engineer looking at the equipment in the bomber, Jones asked him if he'd found anything unusual. The engineer said that the blind landing receiver apparatus appeared to be far more powerful than he would have expected. This was the equipment ! The Germans transmitted a beam using the Lorenz blind landing principle. This system developed in Germany in the early 30s was not, therefore secret, and its intricacies well known. The pilot flew along the beam and if he deviated, he'd hear dots, or dashes to indicated deviation left or right of the beam. The system was in use in the RAF and my father actually completed the RAF course on how to set it up at an aerodrome !
Excellent post!
@@randallreed9048 "Most Secret War" is Jones' book about this and much else he di - a great read.
@@grandaddyoe1434 Good books are such great things to share with others with similar interests. I will seek it out. Thank you!
Just as important was the second transmitted beam from a location in the North. These 3 beams crossed the primary at intervals km apart... the "Ready", "Set" and "Bombs Away" signals. IIRC this system landed most bombs w/in 100 yards left/right and 300 yards +/- along their path. For WW2, that's considered "dead on".
I his book Most Secret War I recall that Jones spoke of how long it took to come up with counter measures the the bean system, as the Germans were using centrimetic value sets, and that had not dawned on the allies for some time. The beams could be picked up, and they sounded like a middle C note on a radio receiver set.
I always find it disheartening the advances that we are capable of when trying to kill each other, but we don't seem to be as capable of advances towards prolonging each other's lives
This technology was created for civilian use and continued to be developed for civilian use after the war. Read the Wikipedia page on radio navigation; you’ll find that the “battle of the beams” was a rather brief footnote in a long line of civilian technology developments. There are certainly examples of technology created only for war (e.g. napalm) but radio navigation is actually amazing technology. Starting with Lorenz transmitters in the 1930's and it was only a few decades later that we started putting the transmitters in space. Today most of us carry radio navigation receivers (GPS) in our pockets.
War creates invention and investment. Shamefully human suffering doesny
I get what you mean. Even lifesaving improvements in medicine were spurred on by the needs of war. Madame Curie persuaded the French government to let her put mobile x-ray units in the field hospitals of WW1. The purpose was to avoid unnecessary amputations by x-raying soldier's wounds to see if the bones could be repaired by casting. Many improvements in surgery were pioneered in war.
It's probably because anger, hate and fear are stronger psychological motivators than compassion or charity. At least in large social groups.
@@brianniegemann4788 It's known as the survival instinct,--- and the funds suddenly become available with the priority.
Consider how quickly we would populate ourselves into a very nasty situation without war and sickness. It’s happening already. We cull animal overpopulations but are blind to the disaster that looms in our very near future. War and sickness are natures way to balance things.
My mother was a theatre nurse, midwife and radiographer in London during the Blitz. She was often out during the raids and the blackout to deliver babies. Then back to the hospital to take care of civilian casualties and wounded military personnel and airmen from the surrounding airfields. My father was in India and Burma fighting the Japanese. Truly a generation of heroes.
Sounds like a parent to love AND be proud of! 🙂
The British declared war on Germany and were the first ones to target civilians in bombing raids
Although respect, but during the Blitz Britain wasn't at war with Japan, so your dad had to wait some years fighting the Japanese in Burma.
@@cirrus1964 Bloke, my father volunteered into the army in 1939. I did not say he was in India at the same time as the blitz but implied that he fought through the entire war, mobbing out in 1946.
@@trig1900 I wrote respect, thank you for responding, my brother was on the Prince of Wales, and before was in Duinkerken. My Grandfather was Charles Nicolas Heywood. Boer War veteran, First World War (wounded 7 times) Russian Expedition 1918, holder of the Russian Order of St Anne, MM, Mons star etcetera. My Mother country were never on it's knees!
This channel has some excellent material at times but the background music is so overpowering and distracting it is hard to follow. Please just give the information only, as it is more than interesting enough to hold one's attention. The intense distracting music is not needed!! Otherwise, very interesting video.
RV Jones was attached to the Air Ministry NOT MI6.
Omits the extremely important Oslo report that predicted much of German research (and would bring to production) - written in 1939. Though initially disbelieved, Jones thought it so valuable that "...in the few dull moments of the War I used to look up the Oslo report to see what should be coming along next...."
His Book "Most Secret War" is a must read
@@MadAntz970 Agreed.
This video is from a channel which talks clickbait b0II0ck5.
Too much hyperbole. The German weapon which almost “put the U.K. on its knees”. Was theU-Boat. The rest were inconveniences, that were relatively easily surmounted.
The bombing of Britain was devastating, killing tens of thousands and destroying factories, infrastructure and housing leaving millions homeless, the UK government has never made the actual losses public record..
Excellent point.
True. Churchill, in his memoirs, said the U-boat peril was his biggest worry in ww2.
did you not pay attention? they were using radio guidance for night bombing.
And we even beat the U-Boats, eventualy.
IIRC I read the book on RV Jones and German POW aircrew were overheard saying the Brits would never find the equipment on the aircraft. The Brits investigated the General Navigation Receivers on the downed aircraft and found them too sensitive in receiving signals for normal use. That led to them locating the beams 👍 Battle of the Beams is a great book to read on this 👍👍
Only a half description of the method of "beam riding navigation" the aircraft followed an outbound beam,and when this was crossed by a second beam denoting distance by triangulation the bombs were released. The counter measures were beams transmitted on the same frequency to cross the outbound ridden beam to signal bomb release early,so the cities were not reached.
Fascinating, chilling, formidable
Yet another fascinating history lesson, thank you.
Lesson in how not to present ANY history "lesson".
If you can find a copy, read RV Jones' book, Most Secret War. It's all about the British scientific efforts during WWII.
You beat me to it. An amazing book. A brilliant man.
Yes I agree. I bought a SH copy of the RV Jones autobiography. A slow start but when it gets going the explanations of why certain engagements happened as a direct result of the hidden scientific war-which of course still happens today.
And when it was published, enigma suddenly became known.
Add _Instruments of Darkness_ to the list.
The book was also made into an excellent BBC television series, broadcast in early 1977.
This was new to me, thank you
Search “the secret war” an old British tv series
There is no such rank in the RAF or RAAF as ‘Captain’. I assume you mean the Army Air Force equivalent of captain, flight lieutenant (O3). The only rank within the RAF and RAAF in which the term ‘captain’ is used, is group captain. This rank cannot be diminished to ‘captain’, as this reducing the status by 3 ranks (if indeed there were captains in the RAF). It may be useful for your becoming familiar with the correct ranking system and nomenclature of British Commonwealth forces.
Captain of the a/c as in first captain..................duh!!!
Oh aren't you a smartass
I would strongly recommend R V Jones' own account in his book 'Most Secret War', available from several second-hand on-line book sellers. His account of the circumstances surrounding the Coventry raid is as close as we are gong to get to the truth, as he was the king-pin of our technical defences. The way he and his several teams analysed and overcame the enemy tricks is utterly amazing. His illustrated book gives gives the answers we need to counter various myths, and highlights the incredible risks undertaken by our reconnaissance pilots and other personnel throughout the 1939-45 war. I was a child in Wimbledon at the time and I well recollect the raids and the destruction caused.
100% Agree I read his book about 20 years ago, and it plugged a lot of gaps in my WW2 history, including clearing up a lot of myths surrounding technology's used during WW2 both both allies & axis forces. His section on The Beam Wars goes in to great detail
I like your channel very much. The presentation and narration are world class! Thank you.
One of your most meaningful installments about the war.
Really important because there are lots of people who believe (including some historians) that victory over Germany was inevitable-when it really wasn't.
@@catinthehat906Victory was not inevitable but neither was defeat. The Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine never had the aircraft or ships to dominate air and sea so any attempt at a landing in the UK would always fail. The best Germany could have hoped for was to strangle the UK shipping lanes to the point a peace settlement would eventuate. The Kriegsmarine was adamant that invasion would be a suicide mission.
@@Spookieham Post Dunkirk the UK was on it's knees having lost a vast amount of equipment including tanks and artillery in the defence of Europe. If the Germans had put the same resources as they devoted to Barbarossa into Sealion, there's a reasonable chance they would have overwhelmed UK coastal. defences.
@@catinthehat906 Most historians agree that the cobbled-together "watercraft" (towed barges and river ferries) that the Germans assembled would have been destroyed by the RAF and the Royal Navy, if not by bad luck and the unpredictable English Channel weather. Remember, the Royal Navy was the most powerful navy in the world in 1940. Had the Battle of Britain tanked for the British, the RN would have been gathered together to defend the Channel. Even if the Germans had managed to gain a foothold on the island, the chances of them keeping such a force supplied (much less reinforced) was practically nil.
@@catinthehat906 So are you a historian?
amazing piece of history! thank you for the video!
As someone who worked in SIGINT and EW in the military, I find stories like this totally fascinating.
My family lived in the suburbs of East London during the Blitz and often had to put out incendiary bombs fires from Luftwaffe pathfinders as part of the attacks.
Wait a minute. Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Wilkins demonstrated a working radar system for the Air Ministry in February 1935. And by 1939 there were 20 radar stations in the UK that could detect enemy aircraft over 100 miles away. So the British government must have known from the start that the Luftwaffe was using radar.
For sure, but they wanted to
keep the nazis in the dark as much as they could about the
extent of British intelligence on
nazi advances in radar technology.
The nazis thought themselves more advanced than the Brits in
radar & the latter wanted to keep it that way.
Even if this meant sacrificing your own to fool the enemy.
This isn't about radar, it's about radio navigation. Two different uses of radio signals and waves. Think of it like GPS. The military uses GPS to guide everything from ships, planes, and troops, to missiles and bombs. Remove GPS, and everything gets pretty useless pretty quickly. This was a similar issue here. The radio beams were highly localized, so the planes could follow the radio beams to the intended target. If you jam those beams, the planes could not navigate to the target, or could be mislead to the wrong location.
@@jameskwon7617
The nazis at 1st didn’t fully grasp the significance of the towers
dotting the England 🏴 southern coast.
There were some attacks against the towers, but not
followed through.
Perhaps because the nazis were feeling so much more
advanced in radar than the British.
True, but this wasn't much help at night because ground radar on its own couldn't get a British night fighter close enough to a German bomber to be able to see it. It needed the development of a small radar that could be carried in the night fighter to finally get close enough to see the target. This was first successfully done using a modified Bristol Blenheim in late 1940. In early 1941 early airborne radar was fitted to the more powerful new Bristol Beaufighters which took a steady toll of German Bombers from then on.
@@philiphumphrey1548
Yes, thankfully the miniaturization of the radar aboard the British night fighters came just in time.
Now a days they would just program a UAV to follow the radio waves back to its source and end it.
The saddest part of Coventry being bombed was that the Enigma machine codes had been broken and they KNEW that Coventry was going to be bombed...but they dared not evacuate the city lest they give away the fact that they were reading the German communications.
Not strictly true. The message they decrypted was that there would be a massive raid that night, but not the target. Intelligence believed it was going to be London or a south east city. They didn't know it was Coventry until the knickebein beams pointed at the cty
Yeah, thats not remotely true. They knew a bombing raid was coming but didn’t know the target. Just a stupid conspiracy theory. Spend a minute looking things up before making silly comments, all the information is right there on the same device you wrote your comment on 🙄
I think that’s been debunked as a myth IIRC
Enigma revealed on November 12th that am unusual raid was coming (November 14/15th) but the target itself and the two alternatives were given code names that were not identified. Churchill was convinced the target was going to be London and was driven back there in the afternoon to go to his underground shelter . Nobody in Britain knew the target was going to be Coventry for sure , the beams were turned on about 1pm and an aircraft was sent up to see where the beams trianglated which confirmed Coventry as the target around 3pm. Unfortunately the jammers were set at the wrong frequency but in the case of this raid it did not matter, it was a cloudless night and the bombers would have found their target easily without assistance. Of the 121 night fighters sent up to intercept, only two bombers were attacked with only damaged. Since 1996, the Ultra decrypts for the period have been available in the UK National Archives Between 07:35 GMT on 10 November 1940 and 05:00 GMT on 11 November, a German signal was deciphered and given the serial number CX/JQ/444 The message set out code words to be used by aircraft on an operation named Mondschein Sonat but did not give Coventry as the target or a date.
The British could not really read Enigma at the time of the raid. According to the Imperial War Museum they did not really crack it until the Spring of 1941, certainly not with any reliability and it often took days for one message.
I'm getting really tired of Dark Skies' sensationalist headlines. Are the content workers journalists from The Sun or The Daily Star?
They do seem to purvey the official line, in as much as bits and pieces of information broke free and need to be discredited with fresh half-truths.
No they're YTS.
On a scale of 1 to 10, their stuff is averaging a 3. They have poor consistency of research, and a slap-dash, thrown-together feel to their production quality.
@@randallreed9048 It's bad when the narrator rushes ahead. Even worse if he does so while mumbling. As if to give you no time to consider the iffy statement just made, since it takes all your concentration to decipher the next paragraph he just spit out.
More like the National Enquirer
The level of censorship in yt comments section is mental
Yeah, you write something mean about the nazis and it gets deleted.
@@Candyohh not even that, I wrote a reply to someone , discussing Technology, strategy and pre ww1 naval doctrine and the comments are only viewable if you set the comments to newest first
Yet, the proliferation of inane to incomprehensible comments increases.
While I love Dark sky's video's for the historical footage shown, the voice overs are often abysmal in their litany of inaccuracies, sometimes in the historical but more annoyingly in their mispronunciation, for instance in this vid there is no "L" in Knickebein ( ker nikker bine (or been) not ker nickle bine ). I thought when I first heard it that it was just a mispronunciation.....until he said it a further two or three times on the trot.
Please dark skies you obviously put a lot of effort into the production of your videos which we all enjoy but proof read your narrations first before adding it to the video and try to tone down the click bait titles. the UK was NEVER "on its knees" under area bombing any more than our side mistakenly thought the German population were. neither side had their spirits broken throughout the entire conflict.
Broadcast radio stations have known locations. We old guys remember when radios had CONELRAD markers on the dials at 640 and 1240 KC. In the event of an air raid all stations broadcasting were to use one of those frequencies. That would prevent a bomber or missile from knowing where a signal originated.
Well described in The Secret War part-1 (1977), available with all 6 parts as a 5 hour binge right here on UA-cam!
09:18. Both of my grandfathers were volunteer fireman during the blitz. According to other family members, neither talked about it although they likely should have. Few people, alive today in the west, have experienced such darkness.
Baron Von Warren. I can tell you living down that name was rough.
Coming to you live from the inside a fridge... what have you done to the MIC lol
You know this would make a good war film this could
RV Jones's book "Most Secret War" was published in the US as "The Wizard War" It is an outstanding literary masterpiece written by an outstanding human being. Churchill, in his second volume of his History of World War two , titled "their Finest Hour", has a chapter titled "The Wizard War" which describes this incident and Jones' contribution to win the Battle of the Beams. Jones' book give a more accurate description of their meeting.
Awesome 😎
Some of these heavy bomber pilots weren’t old enough to hold a drivers license.
The British Pathfinders (Mosquitoes) would drop incendiaries of differing colours to denote primary/secondary targets.
“Bomb gone!”🇬🇧👍🏻
Even today, in Victoria, there is the occasional case of a 16 year old gaining his full pilots license, but being unable to drive to the airport because he couldn’t get his motor vehicle license until he was 18! Mostly it was a case of dad owning his own aircraft and the kid learning to fly as soon as his feet could reach the pedals and his hands the yoke and the relevant instruments.
Цікаве та пізнавальне відео. Дякую ❤️
Good one Dark film relevant and info' relevant to the video keep it up
Knickebein, not Knickelbein!
for over 50 years the credit was given too Robert Watson-Watt scientist , who talks of the interference the radar and beam signals in the documentary series "the world at war"
The early show.
By the time of the Coventry raid, countermeasures to the German navigation systems were in place. Unfortunately, a frequency was incorrectly measured, rendering the countermeasures ineffective. However, the raid was conducted in bright moonlight, so the countermeasures wouldn't have worked anyway.
Len Deighton in his book "Fighter" wrote a lot about Knickelbine.
One of my uncles grew up in Coventry. He lived there with his parents and siblings at the time the bombing happened. There was a great deal of bitterness among the survivors, because it was felt that Coventry had very little strategic value for the Germans to target. Contrary to what was said in the video, Coventry was not an industrial city. It was a commonly-held belief that the Luftwaffe had made a navigational error and bombed Coventry, thinking it was the intended target of God-knows-where. The feeling was that the Germans were woefully off their intended course.
Mark Twain's "War Prayer" tells it like it is...
I don't mind if it sounds like hyperbole. Without the benefit of hindsight, knowing the Allies won, enemy advances would be pretty unnerving
In hindsight we also know that while the "Allies" won, there were really only two winners... and Britain was not one of them.
Hold on! There were no Nazi pilots in the Lufwaffe! Get your comments right!
What where they then ghosts?
How to do background music: Use compression to get the music at a relatively constant level. Second lower the compressed audio levels to between -25 to -30db.
The battle of the beams.
At 11:50 you say "The attack on Coventry marked the climax . . . " When you said that, did you know that Coventry Climax was a British motor engine manufacturer, successfully powering Formula One cars between 1958 and 1965?
Did you know that the Coventry Climax engine was originally designed for use in fire pumps?
@@bassetdad437 And forklifts
"Jones, working with limited intelligence and his own brilliant mind." Pick a horse.😅😅😅
I take it to mean intelligence resources from the Air Ministry.
@@whalesong999 Duh
The Luftwaffe dropped approx. 10 percent of the bombs tonnage that Britain dropped on Germany later in the war. And Britain's relentless night bombing did not break Germany, so Britain was never in any real danger of defeat from Nazi bombing.
Great example of what Dark Skies can deliver. Thanks.
The saddest thing about WW2 was how the Brits Treated Australians and New Zealanders after 1947, and then how it smashed them economically when the Pomes joined the EEC in 1973! Stabbed in the back!
If the British Empire, German Empire, French empires etc had set a Free Trade Agreement within them selves and their colonies. The worst evil was the Communists….or war itself…
I can’t understand why Britain and France were so anti German and not Anti Communist? I am prepared to be enlightened!
They say the "Allies" won the war, but there were only two actual winners... and Britain was not one of them..
I don't really think that is the "saddest" part of a world war that killed millions.
@nameless4270 True, other crimes against humanity committed by the British during WW2 are far worse... particularly the abuses and destruction of native indigenous cultures in Africa and Asia...
Even more repugnant is recent UK polls showing that up 68% of British people are generally proud of their country's colonial conquests and think that these first nation people were actually better off under British Rule.
Not only Aussies and New Zealanders The treated India and especially Rhodesia which they gave to commies.
I appreciate your use of all Engish in everything and i kont believe how much Alyoumineeum was used during WW2. ❤😂
Courage to carry on!
Motörhead frontman Lemmy had Luftwaffe memorablia from it.
I dont think there is an L in Knickebein
Myself and my family wouldn't be here if not for the advancements to stop the German bombings. My Great Grandmother and my Grandmother only just survived before moving to Australia in the early 50's.
Never did the Luftwaffe put the UK in its knees. The UK won the Blitz snd the war. Game over.
*There were only two winners in WW2*
*Britain was forced to surrender in September 1940, it remains a United States protectorate and is still occupied by American military forces*
Almost forgot about this and well I swear I'm not praising the people who employed it this was a 1940s version of GPS and had it had gone unnoticed this could have put England on death's doorstep in the war but thankfully it was figured out and it was stopped
One thing that didn't help is that aircraft using the system had to have a dedicated Black box in the cockpit the show the radio signals
The more things change, the more they stay the same ! Sadly mankind will always be at war because of greed.
Ludicrous title. Britain was never on its knees during WW II, even during the major setbacks. As for the night bombing, it killed a lot of people, created a lot of damage, but had no real affect on the course of the war.
What about Dunkirk? 🤔
@@michaelwicks7680 I said it wasn't even on its knees after major setbacks, which included Dunkirk, the fall of France, Crete and defeats in North Africa. Losing a battle doesn't mean you are on your knees. Being on you knees means being unable to fight on and resist. There is a huge difference.
To be on your knees, means complete capitulation, and the country never was in that position. The definition in Mirriam-Webster is "to completely defeat or overwhelm". At a national level, which is what is relevant here as it refers to Britain, that never happened.
Germany actually was within two weeks of losing the RAF's ability to fight effectively against Germany.
@@jamesmcdonald5026 you might want to re-write that so it makes some sense.
If you meant, the Germans came within two weeks of stopping the RAF being able to put up meaningful resistance, then no they didn't. Fighter production and pilot trading in the UK just about kept up with losses. That was not the case with the Luftwaffe. In any event, the RAF was able to maintain and even increase effective resistance and the Luftwaffe had unsustainable losses. The RAF ended the BoB with more operational fighters than it started with. The Germans most certainly did not.
@TheEulerID the German attacks were only focused on RAF targets. The Germans attacked a British city by mistake and England responded by attacking a German city. Hilter switched all bombing to English cities.
That allowed the RAF to recover.
I did not know how bad navigation was, or that Nazis developed the radio beams first.
The UK was never on it's knees. There were times it was going that way. My parents and siblings were there.
0:36
Hope that there were no casualties.
The RAF found an intact Knicebein on a downed German bomber and reverse engineered
But not before it had been swamped by the incoming tide. Delayed the work somewhat drying it out.
Also no L in nickebein
This makes me wonder - why couldn't the Germans use the locations of various radio towers (BBC) to gain precise location information?
Shear Determination! 😅
That’s the origin of the term “ keep on the beam”
Without those Technical Illustrations of.....sort of a
#1: leading esge Slats that Opens for Hydrogen Fuel Cell
#2: Full Pallets underneath Eing of DryCell Plates
#3: Fiber Carbon Rear Igniter Nozzle
If has to be; Basic Oxygen Electric Ignitor Generator/ Nitroys
Crooked leg
Knickebein was the name of the beam system used in the early stages of the German night-bombing but the British discovered the frequency and it was the same frequency that the diathermy sets worked on in the hospitals so by modified medical diathermy sets transmitted interference signals and bent the beams sending German planes to the wrong location
It didnt put them on their knees , or they would have won the war . They didnt in either case .
Nothing put that UK on its knees. Its a very different place now sadly.
*Germany did,*
*Britain was forced to surrender in September 1940, it remains a United States protectorate and is still occupied by American military forces.*
Germans were ahead at that time point.
A smart people !
The more advanced system could have been defeated before Coventry was attacked, had it not been for an over zealous British soldier. A German bomber with the equipment force landed on a south coast beach. The soldier was told to stop anyone touching it until the experts arrived. The tide started to come in threatening to swamp the aircraft. People were offering to help push it up the beach to keep it out of the water. His response was to threaten them with his gun if they touched it. And yes, the aircraft was eventually partially submerged by the time Jones’s team got there. With the equipment no longer operational, it took quite a bit longer to figure out counter measures against the system.
Interesting video, I'd never known before that the "Covrntry blitz" raid was the result of radio navigation.
Where is Covrntry? English not your first language?
The Battle of the Beams
RVJones book Most secret war is a great read
Finest flavor, nowadays, of even the Rum !! CCSR, $20 per gallon
Alarmingly Zangy ( ZingTahoe), Slight LemonLime with Ginger
Carbonated Pressurized w/ Cork
Silver and Steel Electrolysis Brewed into the Vat !!
Sugary, thick in a Potatow Vodka base flavor
0:52
Early B-17s ?
Background audio is WAY TOO LOUD!
Lots of duff pix. There were no four engine German bombers in WW2.
So the image of the aircraft in the title has nothing to do with the story?
Dates are out by a year, the Battle of Britain was over, Britain was also trying to develop the very narrow beam radio signal, it was 2 radio beams and Germans would follow down one radio beam and when the second one cross, they drop their pay load, then came more radio beam signals, only good thing about it was it told the beaut fighters how to find the German planes, but to combat these radio signals Britain set up their own that cross the tracking beam the German bombers followed, these narrow radio beams was very clever tech back then, because if you use a standard ariel the signal would go in very direction, use a standard beam ariel even low you get that concentration of the signal it would still be a wide signal and get wider the more you moved away from the transmitter, so dish antennas were used, but it was not one on its own it was 3 dish antennas with in one, the radio signal would bounce of the first dish onto the second dish then onto the third dish, the signal would only be as wide as the dish with only about 0.8 % spread and the spread would die off quickly
All of this happened in May 1941
Coventry was destroyed by blanket bombing, they were after the Rail Works
Hollywood! Pay attention!
Why do people look up in underground bunkers when they hear something dropping, as if they can see through the ceiling, so dumb.
Same reason people walk around it total darkess with their eyes open.
The expression is 'brought to its knees.' Your caption means..... something else entirely. 😒
Geraet ( can't type an umlaut with my keyboard.) is pronounced Gerayt
Great Britain was never on its knees during WW2.
As has been said above, the battle of the Atlantic with the U boats was touch and go with serious rationing of everything because so much of what was being sent to the UK by America went to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Maybe someone else has identified the clickbait image for this experimental Nazi weapon as a version of the Bachem 349 "Natter" aka the "Viper." If so, I second this ID.
From the wiki: "The first and only manned vertical take-off flight, on 1 March 1945, ended in the death of the test pilot, Lothar Sieber."
Like the Me 163, this aircraft exacted a heavy cost in lives relative to its value as a wonder weapon. If I'm wrong about its identity, at least acknowledge my admittance of this possibility.
That's not a "Natter." It's hard to tell, but its wings appear larger than the short, stubby ones of the Natter. Also, the Natter had a nose-cone full of rockets, not what appears to be the intake of a turbojet. And the Natter's cockpit was up front. It was designed to separate from the rear propulsion unit and parachute back to the ground. And NO weapon "Put the UK on Its Knees." The V-2 could have, had it been equipped with an atomic warhead, or maybe, a radiologic one, or one loaded with Sarin or Tabun. Hitler didn't have the former, and no doubt feared the Britts would retaliate, in kind, if he employed the latter. This is CLICK-BAIT!....CLICK-BAIT!....CLICK-BAIT!....
@@Pootycat8359 Sorry, but my reverse-image search turned up the Natter, and thought I'd throw it out (or rather "up," appropriate for clickbait) for fun. The stubby wings did kinda conform to those of the Bachem and the crude attempts of Dark Dics (sorry again for the typo, Dark Docs), to find/mutilate something under the heading of a "Wunderwaffe." I'll try again for another possibility. Or not...
❤😊❤😊❤😊❤
😊
The UK was not on its knees!
Angela Rayner is often!
So much fluff in this video. They should edit out from 2 minutes to 8 minutes and leave the meat and potatoes of the story.
Welcome to Dark productions.... fluff is there stuff
Dark click bait
Sensational news there (as if)….. but it got you 700k hits.
Interesting subject, but over dramatic, which isn’t needed as the subject is compelling enough, but please drop the distracting and intrusive loud music .
Click bate title. The only thing that brought us close to being on our knees was the U boat threat to supply convoys and we got a grip on that reasonably quickly. Nothing else even came close.
My dad was born in 1923 and served in the RN along with his brother.
We discussed the war a lot when I was growing up and at no time did he or anyone else think we wouldn't be victorious. So not on our Knees at all.
Could you please use A.I as voice? The good thing is, you don‘t speak too fast anymore….
Tune in at the same time tomorrow. At station zzbc For the continuing story. So the germans did.?