Subject: Re: silly week
From: "Submissions for ARC" <[email-masked]>
To: "Gaute Sakshaug" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:35:38 -0800

Hi,
I just wanted to let you know your article went on ARC today.  Thanks again for sending it in.

Steve Bamford
Aircraft Resource Center
http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com

Live like there is no tomorrow;
Love like you've never been hurt.
Work like you don't need the money.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gaute Sakshaug 
  To: [email-masked] 
  Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 7:18 AM
  Subject: silly week

  Gallery Template #04

  "Project Daisy Cutter"

  1/72 Blenheim and Hurricane 

  by "Ole A. Hoel"
  --------------------

        Steve Bamford will insert full sized version of photo 01.jpg here  

  During the summer of 1940 the British military was in a terrible plight: The army had lost most of its equipment at Dunkirk, and only a small force was available to receive the dreaded cross-channel invasion by German forces. To stiffen the invasion defence many plans and schemes were devised to stop the Germans on the beaches. Many were not feasible, some were downright ridiculous. One of the lesser-known ideas dreamt up in Britain were the Daisy-Cutter Project. Using the Blenheim bombers against enemy shipping had been tried since 1939, but results were mostly disappointing due to the small bombs carried. Against a massed invasion fleet such attacks would be little more than pin-pricks. Aware that the German invasion forces would be forced to use lightly converted (and mostly unarmoured) river barges as assault craft, a novel idea was proposed by the ever inventive aircraft designer Wally Barnis. To get enough power to sink such a naval target, one would cram as much explosives as possible into every available space in a light bomber and let the whole aircraft crash into the German barges, an idea later used with horrible success by the japanese Kamikaze. As these would be packed with unprotected soldiers, horses and equipment, it was thought that even a near miss by the explosive aircraft would be an effective weapon. It was thought to be even more effective against the German troops if they got onto land, as the beaches would be packed with soldiers and equipment dumps for many days after the landing. 

  The idea was found to be worth investigating, and a few Blenheim I Fighters were drawn from Operational Training Units (OTU's) and hurriedly converted at the Secret Project Establishment (SPE) stationed at Upper Mudderick Wallop, Scotland: The ventral gun pack and the turret were removed and the hole covered by an easily detachable cover, making room for a lot of explosives. The cockpit interior was mostly removed to make more room, and the cockpit glazing replaced by metal sheeting to make it more durable during loading of the explosives. A rig of steel tubes was erected in front of the aircraft to carry the detonator so the explosion would occur above the troop barge (or above ground). The explosives were to be surrounded by thin shrapnel-producing casings to maximize the anti-personnel and anti-horse effect.

  To deliver the weapon a second aircraft would need to tag along, and as the British had experience of this kind from the pre-war Short composite flying boats, the idea was to attach a small aircraft on the Blenheim's back. A system for steering the bomber while attached to the smaller aircraft was devised using cables locked to the fighter's controls with explosive bolts managing the break away of the bomber during release. There was no radio control of the bomber after release, so the aiming was very inaccurate, but used on a crowded beach head it was thought it could do a good deal of damage anyway.

  Click on images below to see larger images

         Steve Bamford will insert a click-able smaller version of photo 03.jpg here.  Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 03.jpg   Steve Bamford will insert a click-able smaller version of photo 04.jpg here.  Clicking on that photo will bring up the full sized version of photo 04.jpg  

   Because of the limited power of the Blenheim, it was originally proposed to use a light aircraft such as a Miles Magister, but because using such a slow, unarmed aircraft in a battle area would probably be suicidal to the pilot, it was decided to try to fit a Hurricane fighter on top of the Blenheim. As much weight as possible was removed from the Hurricane by retaining only two guns and all other non-essential equipment such as armour and radios. The missions were envisioned to be short range so most of the fuel tanks were discarded in both aircraft. The Blenheim's undercarriage was strengthened and locked down. By these measures they managed to make it work but only just. The pilot of the Hurricane had to be extremely careful during take off or the undercarriage would collapse, as it reportedly did on several occasions (in one lucky incident it even crashed without the explosives detonating). Landing the combination was impossible so training flights were costly in aircraft and therefore very limited. It also proved to be very slow in the air and difficult to fly and aim towards a ground target; hitting a barge at sea would be pure luck. Nevertheless, a few combinations were made up and transferred to an airfield close to the expected invasion beaches. As any sorties in the vulnerable combination would have been done under the cover of darkness, they received an all-black finish with the yellow fuselage roundel ring mostly blotted out.

  Luckily for the pilots that would have flown these combinations, the project was abandoned. In the cold winter of 1940-41 most of the documentation was used for insulation and lighting the stoves of the Nissen huts housing the ground personnel at Upper Mudderick Wallop. Only a single picture is known of this project and that probably survived only because it carried on the back the telephone number of the station commander's girlfriend, or Secret Woman Acquaintance (SWA). 

  The models are the venerable old Airfix Hurricane Mk-1 with quite a bit of detailing in the cockpit (invisible here of course) and the Frog Blenheim Mk-1 (in one of its Russian reincarnations) on which I rescribed the panel lines. The cover over the turret hole and the rigs for the fighter attachment and the detonator were of course scratch built.

  Making models should always be for the fun of it.

  Ole 

        Steve Bamford will insert full sized version of photo 02.jpg here