Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterPanPan
Hi Viking,
Sweden in the 70s sounded fun! Yes, I think the Germans were much better equipped in terms of SAR at the outset of the war. Interesting you mention the superior German life vests. Brian Kingcome (RAF Spitfire pilot, 92 Sqn) wrote about how he visited the crash site of a German bomber he downed and helped himself to one of the crew's life vests as he knew it was better than RAF issue. He wore the German vest on all subsequent sorties I believe.
PPanPan
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Yep, I have pictures of him in said vest. Another pilot, Eric Lock, did the same thing.
But oh the greatness of hindsight! They were, in fact, slightly silly to swap. Despite the liftwaffe vest using newer technology (it was CO2 inflated) it had no head support, and so a lot of the time it would cause the pilots to tip onto their front head-first in the water (especially if they were unconscious). Despite this, the technology was much better than that used in the British 1932 pattern mae west, which relied on 3 sets of kapok pads (tied together) and a self-inflating 'stole' made from natural indian rubber.
Ironically, the british had used the CO2 technology in vests prior to the 1932 pattern (I think a type developed in WW1 used the technology) so I don't know what the decision was to drop it for oral-inflation.
Anyway, the British pilots only had flourescene dye marker in and around December 1940 as far as I have been aware. having said this, I have a picture of a pilot with such a dye marker on his 1932 pattern mae west, and he (sadly) died in September 1940 so in this sense it may have been trialled by a few pilots.
It's usually best to model straight out FACTS in a game/film etc so I'd say no dye marker for the British pilot as clearly only a few might have used it.
Again, though, the Luftwaffe was ahead in terms of technology, and they did use dye-markers. I have a picture of a luftwaffe-fighter-pilots schimwestte (or whatever it's called
) that has stains from such a marker.
I don't even think many RAF pilots had whistles. Most took the kapoks out of their vest, but after a few hours in the drink they soon decided this was bad (if indeed they survived).
Again, I don't think many RAF pilots had the function of mirrors either. I've read an heard that apparently there were trials for a mirror addition to the 1932 pattern vest, but I don't know if this is true.
I could ramble all day
