How many geniuses...?

I WONDER how many of us remember the fine Australian actor/comedian, Bill Kerr.

He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1922, but his home used to be in Wagga Wagga.

He was extremely successful in the UK, particularly on radio, featuring in such programs as the BBC’s Variety Bandbox in the post-WWII years. He had a catch-phrase, as was the fashion of the times, “I’m only here for four minutes”, said with an accent that I came to appreciate many years later.

He played the part of a dim-witted Australian lodger in the brilliant 1950’s TV series, Hancock’s Half Hour. Tony Hancock was one of my heroes when I was a uni student at the end of the 50s.

Bill Kerr comes to mind because we’ve recently had the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the German dams, the subject of the epic Dambusters film.

In that film he played the part of a bloke called Harold Brownlow Martin. Martin, later Sir Harold Martin, was a member of the famous No. 617 Squadron, the “Bouncing Bomb” squadron led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

He was the pilot of a Lancaster bomber, AJ-P “Popsie”, in the first formation that attacked the Mohne Dam and other industrially important dams a little over 70 years ago. He survived that raid despite being hit by anti-aircraft fire and went on to complete many other bombing operations.

There can’t be that many people who haven’t seen The Dambusters and even fewer who haven’t heard Eric Coates’ Dambusters March.

It is hard to avoid that music at any fly-past or most England football matches. The film starred Richard Todd as Guy Gibson and Michael Redgrave as Sir Barnes Wallis and it topped British box office sales in 1955.

I think I first saw it in 1956 at the Astoria Cinema in Ashford, Middlesex, accompanied by a girlfriend who didn’t ask me whether I thought the film was historically accurate. But, there again, there were plenty of things I didn’t ask her. Wikipedia has a great article about that; the historical accuracy, I mean.

Barnes Wallis, who died in 1979, was the genius who invented the concept and design of the Bouncing Bomb. He didn’t look at all like Michael Redgrave, but that doesn’t matter.

It’s said that his bouncing bomb idea came from Horatio Nelson who apparently bounced cannon balls into the side of enemy ships. In fact, in a 1942 paper, Wallis referred to bouncing balls during the 16th and 17th centuries, but Nelson didn’t specifically get a mention.

I know Barnes Wallis didn’t look like Michael Redgrave because I met him when I was a final year undergraduate at Bristol University. One of his structural engineering genius mates was my undergraduate professor, Sir Alfred Pugsley.

Sir Alfred resembled a misleadingly gentle historian, but had worked with Barnes Wallis on the design of the famous Wellington bomber.

He had invited him to talk to us about swing-wing aircraft and other stuff he was working on at the time.

At this distance I can’t claim to remember much of the content of the lecture. I do, however, remember the highlight of his performance.

It was the joint inability of these superb engineers to discover how to switch off the auditorium lights when Barnes Wallis wanted to show some slides.

There was a hurried discussion between the two before it was agreed that the task was beyond them and Sir Alfred suggested they should seek help from a technician.

The technician quickly identified a plastic rectangle on the wall adjacent to the main door, the “on-off” switch it embraced and the relative ease with which it enabled a lecturer to control the lights.

We were all greatly encouraged...