Re: The Macintosh is a girl's computer!

sigvaldi <sigvald@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

J. J. Lodder wrote:
Graeme Wall <Graeme@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In message <1hw1faj.vak72ey6advN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (J. J. Lodder) wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Graeme Wall <Graeme@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

My father was a Met Air Observer flying out of Iceland over the
North Atantic, he was producing the reports that were compared
with the enigma traffic. Probably the youngest person to be
cleared into the Ultra secret.

<stunned> I'm astonished that they let someone like that into it
- what if the other side had caught him? Always a risk on that
kind of job.

How would the Germans have gone about capturing him while flying out of
Iceland over the North Atlantic?

What is surprising about the story is that he would have been told.
Why not just collect the weather reports and send them to Bletchley,
where the comparing was done?


Having got some more info out of him, he was actually cleared for
Ultra while working with the PRU squadrons based at Benson. That was
a non-flying post.

That makes more sense.

Flying out of Iceland was not a great risk from the security point of
view. The main risk was being shot down by either a U-boat or a FW
Kondor. He was lucky, he never saw either. Nearly depth-charged a
whale on one occasion but that's another story.

U-boats never shot at planes.
When they spotted one they went under water as quickly as possible.
(A good crew could do it in thirty seconds)
German planes near Iceland were very rare indeed.

German aircraft flew over Reykjavik and other places in the west of
Iceland on numerous occasions, often bombing and strafing, German
planes near the east of Iceland were almost a daily occurrence.

(Wow! Almost a plane a day!)
Even if what you say is true
that would still make encountering a German plane
on a meteo flight a very rare occurrence.

Reasoning from the other side:
the air bridge from the US to England
by way of Iceland didn't suffer many losses
to German aircraft.

Jan
.

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