Cpt. Wladyslaw Kaminski at his Spitfire fighter. "Chailey", June 1944.

uncle and spitfire

The Nutall Flamethrower;
The Home Guard was,among other things,notorious for its home made weapons.One of these was the Nutall flamethrower.In the early summer of 1941 the area commander came to a demonstration in a field at Wightwick.The flamethrower worked amazingly well,shooting a fearsome 75 foot flame that lasted for 3 minutes.The 50 gallon tank containing the mixture was mounted on a Austin 7 chassis,which was towed behind a car.Quote from the Commander:'Its operational site was under the bridge at Dam Mill and we felt sure that it would have dealt the enemy a deadly blow!' Oh Gallant and Brave Men.Greetz,Brummbar

'Invaders beware!'

tippin At first V1's were shot down by gunfire. Optimum range was inside 200yds, which was marginal for survival. Many planes were damaged and quite a few pilots killed. Basically at such high speed and low altitude a plane had to fly though the explosion and hope.

With the high risk of being blown up some of the best pilots started tipping the V1's wing, because of damage to wing tips they later developed a tactic of disrupting the aitflow by placing their wing very close to the V1's wing, causing it to topple.

Not every pilot did this. At night this was not possible, the flame from the V1 blinded the pilot to everything else, though some Mossie pilots flew past closely in front of the V1, again causing it to topple. The thought of doing this at 450mph, 4,000 feet above the ground, at night and being blinded gives me the willies.

