4) Two one million candlepower lamps pointing downwards at an angle to estimate height above the forest canopy, using a similar principle to that adopted for night flying during the 617 Squadron Dams raids in World War 2 and developed by Barnes Wallis (for whom the machine was named),
The earthquake bomb, or seismic bomb, was a concept that was invented by the British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis early in World War II and subsequently developed and used during the war against strategic targets in Europe.
Barnes Wallis, inspired by his earlier experience with light alloy structures and the use of geodesically-arranged wiring to distribute the lifting loads of the gasbags in the design of the R100 airship, evolved the geodetic construction method (although it is commonly stated, there was no geodetic structure in R100).
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A geodesic (or geodetic) airframe is a type of construction for the airframes of aircraft developed by British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis in the 1930s.
His wife—Mary Eyre Wallis, later Mary Stopes-Roe—was the daughter of the noted engineer Barnes Wallis.
Sir Barnes Wallis, father of the UK computer industry Sir Maurice Wilkes, and the Fellowship’s first President, Lord Hinton, who had driven the UK’s supremacy in nuclear power.
Wallis, a distant relative of famed British engineer Barnes Wallis, had developed a workable plan for harnessing a gas turbine to a race car.
Immediately after the war (1949) Barnes Wallis had started work on variable geometry to maximise the economy of supersonic flight.
On 15 September, after repairs, 27 Avro Lancasters flew with Barnes Wallis' 5-tonne Tallboy bombs and experimental 500-pound "Johnny Walker" underwater "walking" mines.
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Barnes Wallis used the base to test his bouncing bomb on the coast at nearby Reculver prior to the Dambusters raid.
Among the weapons filled and assembled by ROF Glascoed were the bouncing bomb, designed by Barnes Wallis and delivered to the Ruhr area of Germany by the Dambusters, RAF 617 squadron.
The biplane Vickers Type 253 design, which used a radical geodesic airframe construction that was derived from that used by Barnes Wallis in the airship R100, was ordered by the Ministry and tested against the specification along with the Fairey G.4/31, Westland PV-7, Handley Page HP.47, Armstrong Whitworth A.W.19, Blackburn B-7, Hawker P.V.4 and the Parnall G.4/31.