Latest news with #JonathanGlancey
Telegraph
02-08-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The majestic bombers that used to defend Britain
It's ironic that the finest hour of Britain's V-Force of strategic nuclear bombers came long after it had been stripped of its nuclear capability. On April 30 1982, a lone Avro Vulcan carried out what was then the longest bombing mission by any air force – and only surpassed recently by the US's raid on Iran's nuclear facilities – when it flew 16 hours and 6,600 nautical miles from Ascension Island to the Falklands. The target was Port Stanley airfield (then in the possession of the Argentinians, who had invaded the islands a month earlier). Dropping 21 1,000-lb bombs, Flight Lieutenant Martin Withers was able to cause enough damage to the runway to prevent Argentine fast jets from using it, if not transport planes. Jonathan Glancey describes this raid in detail – and the fact that another V-Force bomber, the Victor, played a significant role in both the Falklands and Gulf wars – in his impressive new history of Britain's nuclear bombers, V-Force: Britain's Nuclear Bombers and the Cold War. But, he tells us, that raid was the bombers' last hurrah. The Vulcans were taken out of service in 1984, the Victor nine years later. The original V bomber, the Valiant, last flew on operations in 1964. The meat of Glancey's book explains how the V-Force was developed originally as nuclear bombers, up until 1968 when the deterrent was transferred to the Royal Navy's Polaris-equipped submarines. With previous books on Concorde, the Harrier and the Spitfire, Glancey is an aviation nut who's interested as much in the technical wonder of these planes as he is in the legacy they leave in the public consciousness. His book, he writes, 'looks at these winged Cold War warriors – warts, rivets and all – through the lenses of invention and engineering, of rivalry with fellow Nato countries as well as with the Soviet Union, and of popular culture too'. It is, he continues, a 'story of success, with compromise and failure along the way', and might serve as a universal parable for most defence procurement. The author provides plenty of context. We get potted versions of the history of strategic bombing (the 'bomber will always get through,' as Stanley Baldwin said in 1932), the development of the atomic bomb, and even the technical capabilities of rival US and Soviet nuclear bombers. Glancey is at his best, however, when he sticks to the story of the V-Force, which began with Britain's decision in 1946 to build its own atomic bomb (and later hydrogen bomb). Once we had the bomb, we needed a way to deliver it. Hence in 1947, six aviation companies were invited to tender designs for long-range jet bombers. The two eventually chosen were Handley Page's reconfigured crescent-wing HP80 (Victor) and Avro's striking Delta-wing 698 (Vulcan), both marking 'new territory in terms of design and engineering'. The Victor, with its swept-back wings, high tailplane and giant air intakes, had the appearance of a 'deeply strange fish'; the Vulcan left 'elongated delta-shaped shadows' on the ground as it flew overhead with an 'unearthly howl'. The first Valiants, Vulcans and Victors were delivered to RAF squadrons in 1955, 1956 and 1957, respectively. Though less advanced technically than its sister planes, the Valiant 'carried out the entire gamut of tasks asked of V-Force, short of dropping a live nuclear bomb on an enemy target'. That included conventional bombing raids (over Aden in 1956), testing an A-bomb over South Australia that same year, and, too, Britain's first H-bomb over Malden Island in the Pacific in 1957. Ultimately, V-Force would be 'the front line of aerial cavalry' were the Soviets to ever fire the first shot of World War III. Its shelf-life, however, was relatively brief. The beginning of the end was the development of the Soviet Union's surface-to-air missiles, which could intercept enemies from the ground. Particularly the S-75 Dvina, which shot down high-altitude American U-2 spy planes in 1960 and 1962, and triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis. This forced V-Force to switch to low-level attack methods, which in turn revealed weaknesses in the Valiant's airframe. After one near-fatal accident when a rear wing-spar fractured, all 50 Valiants in service were grounded for good. There was a plan to equip them with a US-made nuclear missile, Skybolt – but then America grounded that too. Glancey has written an engaging and affectionate account of the V-bombers, not least the figures who made it all possible: the brilliant British engineers who designed the planes; the pilots who were prepared to risk (and most often sacrifice) their lives to accomplish their missions. He also explores the political chicanery that prevented many other superb aircraft designs – military and civil – from ever becoming a reality. There is, ultimately, a whiff of nostalgia and regret in these pages. Britain's nuclear deterrent has become increasingly reliant on US politics and technology; this is, says Glancey, partly thanks to an 'almost wilful deindustrialisation'. France, by contrast – with a smaller economy than Britain's – retains an independent nuclear deterrent, and makes its own multi-role fighter, the Rafale. It's not about money, 'but rather a lack of will, or interest perhaps'. Does this matter? Yes, argues Glancey – and he's right. It's not a question of guns over butter, but more about 'considered self-defence, of Britain being a dynamic Nato partner'. Such arguments have never been more timely. ★★★★☆ Saul David is the author of books including Sky Warriors. V-Force: Britain's Nuclear Bombers and the Cold War is published by Atlantic at £22. To order your copy at £18.99, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books
Telegraph
23-02-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The secret British operation to protect Venice – from our own bombs
Jonathan Glancey's Operation Bowler purports to be about the Allied bombing of the Venice dockyard in March 1945, and in a small part it is. It is really, mainly, a perspective on the Italian campaign of 1943-45, of which there have been numerous accounts, and it might have been less deceptive to present it as such. The story of the bombing raid itself is interesting, and parts of the rest of the book concern the wartime careers of some of those who took part in the raid, notably Group Captain George Westlake, who led it. But the author, who has mainly (but not exclusively) in his long career written about architecture, diverts frequently into the glories of Venice and other masterpieces of Italian heritage to illustrate what was lost in the war (such as the monastery at Monte Cassino) and why Venice in particular required protection. Yet it was deemed that Venice, or at least an important part of it – the dockyard – had to be bombed if the war against Germany were to be shortened. It was held to be important for German supply lines; yet it was important also that the treasures and fabric of the city were preserved. The author reminds us that precision bombing was not exactly perfected – in one raid on a city the bombs landed 17 miles away – and the Nazis had already tried to exploit the damage to Monte Cassino to show what 'barbarians' the Allies were. Destroying even a part of Venice would provide a tremendous propaganda coup to Goebbels. The raid itself took place in March 1945, less than seven weeks before the end of the war in Europe and a little over a month since the bombing of Dresden, about which it has ever since been argued that valuable heritage sites were unnecessarily wrecked. Everyone, from Eisenhower downwards, recognised the necessity to preserve Italy's culture, unless it would cost unnecessary lives to do so. And the raid was called Operation Bowler after its progenitor, Air Vice-Marshal 'Pussy' Foster, said that if it failed – if La Serenissima were damaged – he and others responsible would soon be wearing bowler hats: by which he meant they would be civilians again, having been thrown out of the service. Glancey gives some interesting background about the first aerial attack on Venice, launched by the Austrians in 1849; and writes about the Futurists in 1910 who wanted to blow the place up and start again, apparently because of their disgust with all the tourists and the refusal to bring the city into the 20th century. But what follows until very near the end of the book is a re-heating from almost entirely secondary sources of various aspects of the war: not just the Italian campaign but also the RAF's activities in Africa and the Middle East, tracing Westlake's career from when he was a de Havilland pilot before the war to leading Bowler. Much of this could have been condensed without harming the book. The author is right to imply that Bowler is little known about, and that the operation deserves more recognition because of the cultural damage that it managed to avoid. Both those things are true: but he never adequately makes the case that Bowler shortened the war. Perhaps that's why it's not more widely known. It's depressing to realise just how much Italian culture was obliterated by the fighting, and through acts of spite: such as when a vast collection of archives covering the history of the whole of southern Italy were destroyed by the Germans as they retreated from Naples. The author cites this and numerous other examples of cultural vandalism – almost exclusively, with the exception of Monte Cassino, committed by the Germans – as part of his argument of why preserving Venice was so important. Although the rest of the Italian campaign is much more interesting and important than many people recognise, Glancey appears to come up with nothing new. There's a lot of pornography of violence in the book, with explicit details of the hideous tortures the Nazis inflicted not merely on partisans, but on various Allied airmen whom they captured, and whose astonishing bravery cannot be remembered too often. Much of the story is told through the actions of individual actors, which certainly brings it to life, and Westlake himself is not someone who will be familiar to most readers. It's interesting that his logbook is one of the few primary sources about the raid itself that the author has used, and it suggests that the book might have been improved had he used more. He's also rather wedded to the verbless sentence, which is guaranteed to irritate those of us who are not. This book will be of interest to those with a passion for Venice, or who are concerned by the effect of conflict on the world's heritage, and those who know little about the Italian campaign. Otherwise, it's a firm reminder of how little there appears to be about the military actions of the Second World War that's actually worth writing about, and that hasn't been adequately done before.
