The Blackburn Botha
Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:43 pm
The dog contrived to wake me up in the wee hours of the morning so I sat and watched a most affecting programme showing home made cine film taken during the war. The one story that really gripped me was the recently discovered colour cine film taken by a pilot in the Coastal Command who had been based in Northern Island during the war, he having joined the RAF in 1938. The story was narrated by his granddaughter who said her grandfather had found watching the film too painful after the war as so many of the bright smiling men young shown therein had been killed, a large number dying needlessly due to inadequate aircraft, and he had hidden the film until it was rediscovered recently by the family. His story was a sad one altogether, he having been haunted by the loss of a passenger ship (he had been escorting as a reconnaissance aircraft, flying an Avro Anson) which was torpedoed soon after he was forced to turn back due to the short range of the Anson. Hundreds of Italian civilians had died in the sinking (I assume this ship would have been the SS Andora Star).
Clearly the Coastal Command was the forgotten wing as it was proposed to replace the Ansons with the awful Blackburn Botha (who ever thought of linking honourable South African General Louis Botha with such an abomination of an aircraft should have been shot). Anyway the pilot noted above was sent to evaluate the Botha and retrain members of his squadron in flying this manifestly poor aircraft.
So many young trainees were being killed learning to fly the Botha that the pilot in question noted to his superiors that while he was prepared to fly the aircraft himself he would not train any more young pilots to fly the dreadful beast. For his honesty he was removed from active service. He never wore his service medals after the war and was tortured by the thought that he had survived only due having been shamed in this way.
Clearly the Coastal Command was the forgotten wing as it was proposed to replace the Ansons with the awful Blackburn Botha (who ever thought of linking honourable South African General Louis Botha with such an abomination of an aircraft should have been shot). Anyway the pilot noted above was sent to evaluate the Botha and retrain members of his squadron in flying this manifestly poor aircraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_BothaService testing of the Botha showed that the aircraft had serious problems. It was considered to have poor lateral stability, while the view to the side or rearward was virtually non-existent owing to the location of the aircraft's engines, the poor view making the aircraft "useless as a GR [General Reconnaissance] aircraft" and the Botha was underpowered. Although the Botha passed torpedo and mine-dropping tests, the aircraft's poor performance resulted in the decision in April 1940 to issue the Botha only to four general reconnaissance squadrons equipped with the Avro Anson, rather than the torpedo bomber squadrons previously planned.
So many young trainees were being killed learning to fly the Botha that the pilot in question noted to his superiors that while he was prepared to fly the aircraft himself he would not train any more young pilots to fly the dreadful beast. For his honesty he was removed from active service. He never wore his service medals after the war and was tortured by the thought that he had survived only due having been shamed in this way.