I was looking for this recording online, and had some difficulty finding it. So when I did, I recorded it, and here it is.
Recorded on the night of 19 May 1942, when BBC engineers visited a wood in Surrey to record nightingales singing. The microphones also picked up the approach of the Bomber Command force heading for Mannheim, a raid by 197 aircraft including Wellingtons, Stirlings, Halifaxes, Hampdens, Lancasters and Manchesters, of which 11 failed to return
In 1986 they US bombed Libya from UK air bases. I grew up in Norfolk. I remember the planes making a lot of noise as they flew over our house that night (we lived next to an old windmill which they probably used a waypoint). The never usually few at night so as soon as we heard them we knew something was up.
ReplyDeleteThis soundtrack takes me back to childhood and the bone-shaking experience of propeller driven planes en mass.
ReplyDelete197 of them.. oh my, what a drone.
The BBC folk must have been more than a little peeved if what they had wanted was the birdsong! Amazing to be able to find such a recording.
Thank you so much. How did you know it existed?
Halle
Where we visit in France we can often hear the nightingales mixed with the sound of propellors. Our propellor sound is the plantation of windmills in the next valley.
ReplyDeleteCaroline xxx
I remember that, Rachel. Didn't the F-111s have some sort of potential falling-out-of-the-sky issue?
ReplyDeleteI was doing some research on nightingales a couple of years ago, Halle, and I found this in the same sort of place as the moree famous recording of Beatrice Harrison duetting on the cello with a nightingale... my favourite memory of this sort of thing was out in the North Sea one summer evening, as the sun was setting, and there came a distant rumbling followed by an Avro Shackleton which overflew us and banked round... it was like a ghost from the past.
Must be an odd sort of noise to live with, Caroline. Is it restful? -the sound of the turbines, that is... the first time I ever heard a nightingale was when I was biking down through France and I stopped in the hills north of Limoges for a bit of a stretch (it had been a very long trip from Brittany and it was around midnight) -and when I switched the engine off, I heard the nightingale sing. It was wonderful.
You might have thought so but no it is orrid! The flashing lights bouncing off low cloud not nice either.
ReplyDeleteCaroline xxx
I knew about Beatrice Harrison and her broadcasts, but from what I've read this was made when she'd moved from Oxted but not broadcast.
ReplyDeleteIt really is an excellent recording in so many ways.
@ Dru
ReplyDeleteI seemed to recall a problem with F-111's staying airborne too, so I did some goggling. According to Wikipedia: In 1968 a contingent of six F-111's were sent to Vietnam for testing under combat conditions, and in a little over a month, 3 were lost due to problems with the rear horizontal stabilizer, causing an uproar back home. Apparently the problem was discovered and fixed, because by 1972 F-111's were back in Vietnam, and went on to fly over 4,000 combat missions, with only six combat losses.
I loved your BBC recording. What a wonderful piece of history! I always loved the old piston engine planes over jets. I flew from Frankfurt am/Main to Jerusalem and back on a DC-6 back in 1966. The lower altitude flying is so much more entertaining from a passenger standpoint. I was even allowed into the cockpit to talk with the pilots, the night we flew home. Their instrument panel had red back lighting, so as not to affect their night vision. There was also an active radar screen, displaying the weather out ahead. Great fun for a seventeen year old.
Melissa XX
I'm afraid I can't get excited so much about the planes. The nightingale is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't it put it all in to perspective? He just continues singing with all of that history passing overhead.
I think the two sounds do seem to go well together in a strange and probably terrible way.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard a nightingale sing. Isn't it beautiful? Thanks Dru.
What an spine chilling mix of sounds. Beauty and the Beasts. I was transfixed. We live near the Elvington airfield in East Yorkshire and often hear one of the few ( it may be the only) Lancaster bomber flying overhead when there are air displays. That steady drone is unmistakable. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure, Bobbi. Sadly, we rarely hear Merlins round Bristol these days, though the sound is enough to get me dashing up onto the roof.Look! -here's your local Lancaster, paying us a visit. http://www.flickr.com/photos/belvedere/749361058/in/photostream/
ReplyDeleteStunning recording. Captivating, beautiful and thought provoking. Have been trying to track down since hearing excerpt on Desert Island Discs. Thank you, Dru.
ReplyDeleteMarvellous to hear this again. One of the old stagers on the CBC here in Canada used to play it. I was born in 1943 so i'm sure I heard similar sounds. ps. Bristol is my home town.
ReplyDeleteGlad to help, Stewart!
ReplyDeleteAs a Bristolian, Peter, I'm sure you must have heard plenty of aeroplanes! -I did a bit of research not long ago about the various aircraft that have flown under the Clifton Suspension Bridge.... apparently it was quite a popular thing among RAF pilots at one time, but it is rather frowned upon, such that there was a hoo-ha a couple of years ago after a hot air balloon went through...
Interesting.I had a quick check and found the story of the Vampire pilot who flew under as a protest against the disbanding of his squadron, and crashed against the side of the gorge near Pill. Also some wartime bods in a training squadron made it a point to fly under the bridge.
ReplyDeleteOoh, do you have a link to the wartime chaps? -I found anecdotes about Gloster Meteors and a Canberra that did it, over on PPRUNE, and wrote them up with authentic (cough, cough) pictures of the incidents, here
ReplyDeletehttp://dru-withoutamap.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/low-pass.html
There's this one: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=113205
Deleteand this is a good site for Bristol history etc.:
http://brisray.com/bristol/bagorge2.htm