The Untold Story Of The RAF's Flying Boats | Royal Air Force | Timeline

my name's dan snow and i want to tell you about history hit tv it's like the netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit tv you can either follow the information below this video or just google history hit tv and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video [Music] a nimrod is on patrol keeping the vast coastal waters of the british isles under surveillance in order to keep the sea lanes open for up to 12 hours at a time this huge aircraft can cruise at 500 miles per hour using its search water radar system to pinpoint any potential hostile activity it is the eyes and ears of the royal air force [Music] in the early 1900s britain had one of the most powerful navies in the world protecting her interests at home and throughout the empire flying was seen as nothing more than a rich man's sport and of no interest to the navy besides the english channel was the finest form of natural defense then in june 1909 louis very old took around 40 minutes to fly across the channel in an airplane he had designed and built himself now the royal navy and indeed the army began to take notice [Music] [Applause] [Music] naval concerns were to be increased by the development of the submarine they called it underhand unfair and unenglish but the submarine was here to stay [Music] then it was realized that it was easier to spot a submarine from the air than from sea level soon a number of naval officers were learning to fly [Music] in 1911 the first naval flying school opened the army had also begun to see military uses for aircraft and in 1912 the naval and army flying units were combined to form the royal flying corps the idea was to cut the cost of trading and equipment but the services couldn't agree on who did what nor which aircraft they should be using or how pilots should be trained and as a seat beam pilot we had to be very much more very much better trained in navigation and in various other requirements related to the water having said that i can only say that i did enjoy flying seaplanes and spent most of my time flying over the southern north sea navigation of course was essential because very quickly art one became airborne one was out of sight of land or any sea marks so the use of compass bearings and timing and wind direction were vital to plotting your course and getting home eventually within two years the admiralty had created its own air force the royal naval air service as a result when the first world war broke out britain had not only one but two air services during the first years of the war the navy searched hard for a road for its aircraft at first recognizing that britain's ports could be vulnerable to attack by airships they felt they needed the protection of fighters but the first german zeppelin raids of the war proved that the aircraft of the time just couldn't fly high enough to attack the zeppelins so the rnas began to look at ways of turning its aircraft into bombers to attack the zeppelins in their sheds and prevent them ever getting airborne to do the job properly however a new aircraft was needed one that could carry a big enough payload of bombs the hanley page 0-100 and later the o 400 provided the solution the hand and page came along and um increased the scope for for night bombing enormous it could carry more bombs for one thing needed more crew needed a crew of four at a minimum but um it was a big stable airplane and as there wasn't very much effective defense people got away with it by flying handed pages but many people wondered whether bombing targets well inside germany was really practical or considering the likely civilian casualties that would result desirable two years later in 1917 germany resumed her bombing campaign against london this time using her own long-range bombers and the moral doubts about bombing were swept aside in a tidal wave of public outcry within months the two services were merged into one independent force and on april the 1st 1918 the royal air force was born [Music] at a stroke the navy lost control of nearly 3 000 aircraft plus 55 000 officers and naval ratings they were left with only their ship-borne aircraft and even these were to go to the raf two years later for almost 20 years the navy made repeated attempts to regain control over the aircraft they seem to be getting somewhere in 1924 when the fleet air arm of the raf was formed it was agreed that so-called fleet flights normally controlled by the raf would be given over to the navy when they were flown from aircraft carriers apart from this maritime aviation suffered from government under funding always losing out to the bombers there were of course some new maritime aircraft manufacturers who had developed a relationship with the navy during the war continued to build for the raf although in much smaller numbers the super marine southampton virtually saved the concept of a flying boat from extinction after a number of expensive failures get out on the ring and put a starting handle into a cargo as you did the ancient motor cars and turn it around to start up the engines and climb back a board again and open cockpits too in in southampton yep fine solid airplane its day-to-day role was reconnaissance of britain's coastline but it was most famous for its long-distance flights in 1927 four southamptons went on a flag waving 27 000 mile trip around the mediterranean and the far east blackburn was another major supply of flying boats the iris was an enormous three engine flying boat with a range of up to 500 miles it had all the comforts of home with sleeping accommodation kitchen and canteen for the crew while on long-range reconnaissance missions blackburn also built a number of land or carrier-based torpedo bombers for the fleet flights the darts was the first entering service in 1923 its top speed was only 107 miles an hour but its landing speed of around 38 miles an hour made it a natural choice for aircraft carrier use the ripon introduced in 1929 was the natural successor to the dart and it set the standard for british torpedo bombers until the arrival of the beaufort in 1939 the poor level of maritime development can be seen by the fact that the fairy swordfish which became the fleet air arms standard torpedo bomber of the second world war had a performance little better than that of the ripon in 1934 winston churchill warned of the growing power of hitler's germany and finally defense expenditure began to increase [Music] but as priorities moved backwards and forwards between bombers and fighters naval requirements tended to get lost in the rush in 1936 as part of a wholesale restructuring of raf organization the old coastal area was renamed coastal command only one area saw any expansion and that was the fleet air arm the rest of the command had to struggle on with its obsolete biplanes indeed the last biplane flying boat the supermarine strand ra didn't come into service until the following year i was very fond of the stranger actually it's a really good airplane very very solid and uh i took the squadron out for cruises we used to do what we call the med cruise we used to go out to land at lisbon which is a bit hairy as a matter of fact because the takers seems to run very fast and the boys we had to tie up to were large metal ones not the rather nice rubber ones which we've been used to and if you had made a mistake on approaching your metal boy you could either take your float off or take a wing off or do a lot of damage in 1937 the royal navy had one final go at taking over the fleet air arm this time they won raf coastal command was left with only the land-based squadrons and a few flying boats at their disposal the theory behind the virtual starvation of coastal command's development was that german surface ships seen as the principal threat could be dealt with by the navy therefore coastal command's aircraft would be used purely for reconnaissance by 1939 it would become clear that most of coastal command's aircraft were unfit for the tasks ahead and that their offensive weapons were totally unsuitable for attack some new aircraft and weapons were on the way the majestic sunderland developed from an imperial airways c-class flying boat added a strong long-range anti-submarine capability and in 1939 the lockheed hudson was bought from america to boast of the command's offensive capability even so coastal command entered the wall woefully short of aircraft at the outbreak of war coastal command had only 19 squadrons some were receiving newer sunderlands and hudsons but most were equipped with aging avro ansons soon to be taken out of front line duties there's an old lady which waddled along and could take you from a to b but other one that i don't think it served any useful purpose uh once the wards started anything which could only carry out a hundred pound as bomb wouldn't do any harm really to a submarine which is his main target i suppose and when it came to dropping it on any land base it was just putting pilots at risk unnecessary too slow too fragile in fact quite useless coastal command had to be reinforced with aircraft from other commands bomber commands supplied wellingtons fitted with huge magnetic rings to explode german mines laid in the approaches to ports they also supplied handy page hand and light bombers in the early months of the war then a whole range of heavy bombers were diverted from their main role in order to carry out attacks on enemy ships probably the best known of the stop-gap aircraft was the bristol blenheim originally conceived as a light bomber in the mid thirties the blenheim was already virtually obsolete by the outbreak of war heavy losses of denims in early raids and during the german invasion of france somewhat overshadowed the sterling role they played in spearheading bomber command's fight back after the dark days of almost constant defeat in february 1940 venom mark iv fighters were transferred from fighter command to help with convoy and fishing fleet protection they were followed by blenhm4 bombers used for daylight raids on channel shipping they pressed home their attacks at mast height braving the flag to drop their bombs almost horizontally in fact when you attack shipping you flew towards the ships below the decks height to the ship you pulled up over the mast to toss the bomb into the side of the ship and it had 11 seconds delay which enabled you to be about a thousand yards away when it burst it was no good dropping it on top of the ship because it would just bounce off and the fuse didn't go off for another 11 seconds so you had to fly very low pull up over the mast and push down the other side [Music] the bravery of the blenheim cruise cannot be underrated they never faltered in their duty however difficult the target but unescorted as they usually were they often fell prey to marauding german fighters [Music] at zero feet they had no room to maneuver and they had the speed to run away [Music] [Music] britain had always relied heavily on the sea lanes to bring supplies from all over the world now isolated from europe she was almost entirely dependent on the convoys coming from america if these routes weren't kept open the second world war would inevitably be lost became obvious when the battle of the atlantic started that we quite apart from the bomber campaign that hadn't really got off the ground at this stage we would possibly lose the war because we would be asphyxiated our supplies would be interdicted we would not get the supplies necessary to sustain life i mean essentially it was the siege of the united kingdom i mean this is just like the same sort of old battle that you see in the middle ages you know of laying siege to an enemy fortress uh that we were going to be starved out not only could we not fight because we'd run out of war materiel uh we would also essentially starve our population ultimately that would have been quite persuasive i suspect so at that point it was clear that the raf was going to have to contribute more and more and more to success in the atlantic throughout the war convoys to and from the usa russia canada and other far-flung outposts of the british empire had to be defended from enemy attack the germans attacked the atlantic convoys from above and below [Music] [Music] and coastal command working closely with the navy was at the center of the struggle when we're in on convoys doing uh you had a creeping line ahead of the convoy where you went out i was about about five miles and it turned 45 degrees down at ryan angles to the the track you were heading in originally the convoy and then back to the convoy and you did that all day uh now and again you do talk about the single aircraft and normally a single aircraft on convoy in those days the aircraft were pretty scarce and we'd occasionally do a circuit around the convoy and then back onto on this patent again and occasionally you go down down the rear of the convoy and a few miles behind because there's some rooms you used to chase these things all day and then attack them at night from the very first days of the war german u-boats and surface raiders prowl the atlantic sinking merchant ships and strangling britain's lifeline to the outside world in the first three weeks alone almost 150 000 tons of shipping was sunk yet coastal command had no effective weapon to counter the problem [Music] standing patrols kept watch on german ports and when a u-boat was sighted bomber command would send aircraft to attack invariably they were too late the problem grew more acute after june 1914 when the german capture of french channel ports gave them a much shorter route into the south atlantic the sunderland was the one aircraft with the range to patrol more than 500 miles from shore it could carry two thousand pounds of bombs and it bristled with so many machine guns that the germans called it the flying porcupine but there were never enough sunderlands to cover the vast expanse of the atlantic in march 41 the sunderlands were joined by an american-built flying boat the consolidated catalina the catalina had earned a reputation in the u.s navy for rugged reliability and impressive endurance together the sunderlands and catalinas patrolled a wide area from the frozen north atlantic areas around iceland to the warmer climates of the west african coast the expanse of the atlantic ocean meant that there was a gap beyond the range of coastal command aircraft it became a rich hunting ground for u-boats and even more powerful aircraft was needed to bridge the gap the liberator was the perfect solution another aircraft from the consolidated corporation built as a heavy bomber the liberator entered service in june 1941 and immediately revolutionized britain's defensive patrols flying mainly from bases in northern ireland liberators could range 2 000 miles from british shores massively extending convoy protection coastal command was playing a vital and decisive part in the battle of the atlantic but life for the air crew could be very tedious patrols lasted for many hours often flying over heavy seas and bad weather and a lone u-boat was a difficult target to spot despite the tedium of mile after mile of empty water they struggled to keep alert and when a u-boat was spotted they had to act fast before it submerged they're difficult difficult things to find um in a rough sea in particular and mostly the atlantic was always the surface was broken one way or another when you spotted them they're they're well ahead of you well not ahead of the they're they were normally spotted of course and uh they they'd obviously seen you and they're on the way down by time you got to the spot they'd gone and with a broken sea there's no hope of seeing them beneath the surface anyhow the atlantic's a pretty mucky bit of water anyhow and in the best conditions the visibility down through the water was practically non-existent the one i got i spotted them and i got them before he had gone down and i didn't know where he was i i dropped dropped my stick of 450 pound naval depth charge on where i thought it was and hung around for a bit and nothing happened and went on with my patrol and the next day an rf aircraft was out there in the same area and there was a submarine sitting on the surface which they credited me with one that i damaged the bombs were too small which meant that the chances of making a successful attack were reduced in the first two years of the war 245 attacks brought about only one confirmed u-boat destroyed one surrendered and 12 damaged it was not until 1943 that specialist radar and better bombs reached the squadrons in sufficient quantities to improve their hit rate all this time however the crews had to be on the lookout for enemy aircraft on long range patrols classic calm down no wind of course and i was flying eastwood on this um on this search we're looking for submarines of course so anyhow we're i was flying along and one of the one of the crew members spotted this thing behind us the west airplane and the visibility was good and it turned towards us it was quite a long way away it must have been 20 20-30 miles away and the technique in those days was going to be attacked was to get down on the water as low as possible so any aircraft couldn't get underneath you and also the fighters diving at you they just like to forget their height and go straight in which happened quite a few times i was hurtling along the water because it put on quite a bit of power which didn't get me anywhere because uh we'll build built-in headwinds over the sunland a lot of power didn't mean a lot of difference really and this aircraft attack stood out of our range because we had cannon where the 303s which were useless really unless you got the airplanes close in and the bullets were in the starboard main plane and the surface ones were coming over the top and hitting the water alongside me when the water was boiling with a with these uh cannon shells hitting uh it felt a little bit uncomfortable really you know because we didn't have any armor plate or anything like this as i whacked their power off the sunlight and almost students tracks and what happened down behind because the navigator gave me a description of what was going on as well as dividing the guns we held our fire apparently until he was a wingspan away from us and he came right in he couldn't stop himself and the tail gun put two thousand rounds under him at that range and uh then the navigator said we can break starboard now he's broken off and he's around that way so i broke a turn starving and that was my first glimpse of him really and he was well and truly alive until this time the sunderlands had been effective only in denying the u-boats time enough on the surface to aim their torpedoes at their intended victim now better equipped they actually began to sink the u-boats increase u-boat losses from this point persuaded the germans to withdraw them from the north atlantic to an area south of the azores never again would they pose such a great threat to britain's lifeline as 1943 was a turning point for the struggle against the u-boats so it was for the war waged by the strike aircraft against shipping early attacks in the channel and the north sea have been carried out by torpedo carrying bristol beauforts and the american hudsons [Music] so [Music] both aircraft had had some success but because of its lack of speed and maneuverability the beaufort in particular had suffered unacceptable losses the beaufighter from the same stable proved to be a very successful night fighter and was now used to solve coastal command's strike problem armed with a lethal cocktail of rockets torpedoes and cannon the bow fighter revealed what a fast heavily armed aircraft could do against even well-defended enemy convoys and with fighter versions acting as escort against marauding german fighters the strike wings had finally found success [Music] [Music] the arrival of mosquitoes and the strike wings was more good news these versatile aircraft had already proved their effectiveness in the other commands and now added their power and speed to anti-shipping sorties coastal command was to play a pivotal role in the allied invasion of europe by the summer of 1944 the command had grown to 71 squadrons ready to protect the massive invasion fleet gathered in the ports all over the south of england d-day was imminent after the normandy landings u-boats tried to get in among the fleet but were generally weeded out by the big patrol aircraft in july alone beaufighters made 500 separate attacks sinking 22 german ships 10 of them in a single convoy the german navy was virtually imprisoned in their ports the invasion had deprived the few remaining u-boats of their french ports and the coastal command strike wings held sway over all surface shipping [Music] throughout the wall probably the single biggest problem for the raf was the loss of experienced aircrew flying from bases on lakes all around the british isles coastal command made every effort to save those shot down over the sea [Music] the success rate was already one in three but better organization could improve even this figure in june 1941 control of air sea rescue services was handed over to coastal command it is hard to imagine the pilots fears shot down possibly wounded and floating far from shore the sea would have been bitterly cold with the prospect of the weather turning bad imagine his relief when from over the horizon came the aircraft that would save his life the pilot would have to brave heavy seas to land and taxi towards him there'd be no time to waste as enemy fighters would be nearby and the aircraft would be a sitting duck the cold soaking pilot would have been quickly plucked from the water so that the aircraft could immediately take off again another pilot rescued over 10 000 people were picked up by the air sea rescue squadrons during the war and every single such rescue boasted the morale of all involved one of the most famous rescue aircraft was the little supermarine walrus amphibian or shagbat as it was affectionately known designed as a catapult aircraft for use on battleships it entered service in 1936 its new life in coastal command air sea rescue squadrons began five years later the trouble of the walrus was that it was designed in about 1920 and it would have faded way back for the war it was a very strongly built amphibian which was meant to have a crew of three and when you even flew the crew of two and landed and picked up eight americans because they were always the heaviest they were big cladding lots of clothing which was soaking wet and by the time they got onto the airplane you had to shut the windows stop the sea coming in because you literally only had 18 inches above the surface before you came to the window and with all these 10 people on board i remember trying to take off once like then and i got as far full throttle for about 10 minutes and i was doing four knots and eventually we taxed it all night and were picked up by boat by motor gumbo who transferred all the americans on and then i couldn't take off because i was so full of water so we taxed it on into england with some fuel brought over very wet very cold not dangerous but we had lots of fun later the walrus was replaced by the sea otter a longer-range version the last biplane ever to see service with the raf sc rescues continued after the war the remaining flying votes and amphibians continued to work together with marine launches until the first air sea rescue helicopters arrived in the mid 50s the ability of the helicopters to hover literally added a new dimension to rescue activities and despite their principle service role the all-yellow westland whirlwinds and wessex became a familiar sight rescuing civilians from the sea cliff faces and from other inaccessible places i think there is a belief in any form of warfare that you want to have a safety net that you are prepared you are prepared to commit yourself and fight to the utmost if you feel that somebody will come and pick you up if you are wounded or if you are downed in your aircraft and i think that's an important psychological tool a psychological reinforcement of your own position so before you go into war you think yes i will be picked up and it's important that people do realize that that is there and people therefore feel remotivated as a result of it the post-war period brought new challenges for coastal command and in line with the rest of the raf substantial cuts reduced the force to a shadow of its former self the long-range liberators that had done such a sterling job over the atlantic were returned to america under the terms of the len lease agreement so too went the catalinas leaving a glaring gap in anti-submarine capabilities with no new replacements in the offing the sunderland was expected to soldier for the foreseeable future the only new arrivals were a number of converted lancasters which at least had the operating radius to help with reconnaissance duties by 1950 it was obvious that the short-lived peace could come to a dramatic end at any time the soviet union was rearming at an alarming rate and the berlin blockade had proved once again that they were prepared to back their communist ideals with force known soviet expansion plans included the building of a substantial surface and submarine fleet for this reason therefore the role of raf coastal command was at the top of the defense agenda during the setting up of nato it was agreed that britain's responsibilities would include the provision of more forces in the eastern atlantic this inevitably meant more aircraft and arrangements were made to bring in a number of lockheed neptune medium-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft from the united states what the neptune lacked in performance was made up for with strong search and attack radar systems it proved to be a worthy stop-cap aircraft until new british designs were available throughout the post-war years the raf was regularly called on to help out in a number of localized conflicts around the world two squadrons of sunderland played an important reconnaissance role during the malayan emergency as part of a substantial raf force communist guerrillas originally armed by the british during the war were now supported by a large community of chinese sympathizers in their struggle for independence the emergency lasted until 1960 tying up scarce raf resources that would have been welcome in the defense of europe the proof that the raf was stretched to the limit was their minor role in the korean war the same squadrons of sunderland's now became britain's only contribution to the conflict giving support to the united nations forces they flew more than a thousand missions amassing thousands of flying hours while helping to blockade north korean ports but by the 1950s the age of the flying boat was finally over there has never been a better example of classic design and adaptability in the raf than the sunderland throughout its 20 years of service it had performed magnificently on every task it was given and they were many and varied [Music] during the war liberators had proved that long-range land planes could be as effective as flying boats at maritime patrol on these grounds the obvious replacement for the sunderland was the avro shackleton when the shackleton entered service in 1951 it had been in development for some years now new navigation and radar equipment had to be tested and then there was a long period of retraining for the crews but the aircraft passed all the tests with flying colors except one one of the distinctive features of the shackleton was the roar of its rolls-royce griffon engines it was a sound that stirred the hearts of the british public bringing back memories of the griffin engine spitfires of the war but that inspiring noise did little for the crews who had to spend up to 22 hours on each patrol listening to it which some ineffective muffling apart they did for the next 40 years in 1957 a defense white paper made huge cuts in the raf as a whole but coastal command came out of it better than most the lesson of trying to asphyxiate the supply lines to europe was not lost on the russians who bought themselves vast submarine fleets and it was perfectly clear during the late 40s and the 50s that the west was going to have to do something to stop submarines from being deployed now to the north of britain there is a gap the greenland iceland uk gap called the great gap and all soviet submarines virtually all soviet submarines had to deploy through that gap and so it became clear that the aircraft by being used at long range could possibly close that gap to the submarines and therefore prevent them moving out into the mid-atlantic area but there was a weakness of course in submarine design at the time and that was that they were all conventional submarines and what i mean by that is that they required diesels and batteries to actually uh provide the power the diesels will be used to recharge the batteries and then the batteries could be used for quiet running underneath the water without the use of air but because they were battery powered they had of course to come to the surface to get air to recharge the batteries from the diesels now while they came to the surface they used snorkels and the snorkels were capable of being detected by the radars on aircraft and so you saw in this period an era in which the aircraft using a radar device could spot a submarine snorting on the surface and go and attack it very quickly and effective the continued build-up of the soviet fleet had shown the government that a strong maritime defense force was vital with the added strike capability of a newly developed homing torpedo the shackleton was an important part of nato's plans nevertheless the demise of the sunderland and the planned phasing out of the neptune would leave the shackleton as the only fixed-wing aircraft in the command there were just ten squadrons of shackletons to take on all the maritime responsibilities they patrolled the atlantic they took part in combined exercises with the navy and the us air force and three of the ten squadrons were permanently tied up in the mediterranean to counter the growing soviet presence one squadron even took on a bombing rule dropping over 300 tons of bombs on oman in 1958 this diversity of roles continued throughout the 1960s until the shackleton had well outlasted its intended life by 1969 each of these old piston engine aircraft had flown thousands of hours and it was time to replace them with a more modern jet aircraft the old command had also outlived its usefulness being merged into strike command in 1969 it was replaced with the newly designated 18 group it seemed that everything was going to change under the new system but the shackleton wasn't going to be killed off that easily in the early 1970s the raf was a tight-knit slim down force flexibility of response was the order of the day but there was one glaring gap in the raf's arsenal they had no airborne early warning aircraft to locate incoming intruders the 1957 cuts had foreseen the demise of the aircraft carrier as a weapon of war the carrier fleet was disbanded and their fairy gannet airborne early warning aircraft went with them the planned early warning nimrod had not yet taken off from the drawing board in the interim the raf turned again to the good old shackleton [Music] in 1972 a new shackleton squadron was formed with 12 aircraft to work up this aew concept now these 20-year-old aircraft were fitted with forests of antennae and sported a new bulge under the nose to carry the radar the old workhorse had learned new tricks and was carrying out one of the raf's most important jobs their state-of-the-art radar could spot potentially hostile intruders many miles away they would vector air defense fighters to an intercept and watch them carry it out on the screens these old-timers found themselves working with the phantoms brought in to bolster the strike capability in the mid-seventies they went on sorties over the north sea in the atlantic controlling the latest arrivals to the raf's tactical arm [Music] the shackleton had returned from extinction to be at the forefront of operations after five years what was intended to be a temporary arrangement until the nimrod aew was ready was still going strong in 1986 it was decided not to use nimrods in this role at all instead an american aircraft the boeing century e3d was ordered finally the shackletons were scrapped the 12 aew variants had performed 38 years of service 18 as maritime patrollers and 20 in their reincarnated role an aviation record which will probably never be beaten [Music] in fact the raf had received its first maritime reconnaissance nimrods back in 1969. developed from civilian de havilland comets the nimrod reflected the very latest in technology and was the first four jet maritime reconnaissance aircraft to enter service with any of the world's air forces these new aircraft gave the raf a much improved range and endurance at more than a thousand miles from its home base the nimrod could spend six hours on patrol in the danger area from 1980 uprated mark twos began to arrive with the vastly superior emi search water long-range radar generally regarded as the finest system in the world it was the falklands war in 1982 that turned the nimrod into a powerful force sidewinder missiles were added for self-defense they were followed by the destructive harpoon anti-shipping missiles capable of being launched from a range of 75 miles for 20 years nimrods have patrolled the iceland uk gap and the western approaches with consummate skill its surveillance capabilities ensured early warning of any soviet shipping and submarines since the soviet threat is diminished the nimrods are still employed in watching britain's national waters defending the fishing fleets and the oil fields i think the nimrod has proved itself over the last 25 years to be a very capable airframe and that so whereas the fastest aircraft have been required to keep aggressive technology in the airframe side as well as the uh the equipment side the uh the platform that we require is basically a strong steady reliable platform nimrod has shown itself to be that and with improvements of technology with the navigation equipment acoustic and radar equipment we can actually fit the new equipment into the older airframe without incurring the horrendous development costs of a completely new airframe the threat if you like is still there they still operate their submarines and until the day they don't then we must maintain our own defense against that type of submarine and catch up or maintain the same level of technology that they are producing [Music] if the price of peace is eternal vigilance then nimrod's future is secure although other enemies may appear on the international horizon nimrod the mighty hunter will be there watching listening providing the eyes and ears of the raf you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, royal air force, raf, ww2, flying boats, royal coast guard, aviation documentary, the battle of britain

Id: yu2Z6GsqWtc

Length: 48min 8sec (2888 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022