Jul
20
5:00pm
Sir Barnes Wallis: Engineer Extraordinaire and Father of Myths
By RAF Museum
At 6.00pm on Thursday 20 July 2023, Dr. Iain Murray will lecture on Barnes Wallis and the myths surrounding him. This lecture will be live-streamed via Crowdcast.
This free lecture is part of the RAF Museum's Research Lecture Programme. If you'd like to support the RAF Museum, you can make a donation at: https://support.rafmuseum.org/Donate-Now.
Talk Outline
Barnes Wallis is one of the most famous engineers of the 20th century. One result of this fame is that people who worked with him, knew him, or even just met him, tend to remember him – but not always accurately! This mis-remembering (or mis-telling, if the story is passed on) has contributed to many myths surrounding his life and work – a modern equivalent of the pervasive “Mary Queen of Scots slept here” meme.
Although Wallis’s work was often secret at the time (contributing to the mythical aura around it), his personal fame was secured by his central role in The Dam Bustersmovie of 1955. Although Wallis himself is implicitly given credit for some aspects of the weapon and mission which were only partly his (if at all), the movie generally manages to stay close to the truth in most respects - and more so than many other war movies.
Myths which persist about Wallis’s work include: geodetics in airship R.101, the ability of the Vickers Wellington to return safely, the concept of attacking the German dams, the technical details of the “bouncing bomb” and its use on the Dams Raid, the genesis of the “earthquake bombs” and “swing‑wing” aircraft, and his contributions to both the cancellation of the Miles M.52 and the success of TSR.2 and Concorde.
This talk will examine some of the myths surrounding Wallis and his work, have an interactive section where the audience can test their own knowledge about aspects of his work, and consider whether the legends are likely to fade or grow with time.
About Dr. Iain Murray
Dr. Iain Murray studied Electronics at the University of Dundee, later undertaking a PhD on the subject of speech synthesis. He has been a lecturer in Computing there since 1991, still with an interest in speech synthesis and communication technology. He is a Member of the British Computer Society and is a member of their academic accreditation team.
He has been interested in the work of Sir Barnes Wallis for many years, and has researched the detail of Wallis’s work for over 15 years; this work led to the recovery of two Highball “bouncing bombs” from Loch Striven in 2017 - both are now in museums. He is the author of Bouncing-Bomb Man: the Science of Sir Barnes Wallis, the Dam Busters Manual and the Vickers Wellington Manual (all published by Haynes) and several papers about Wallis’s work. He is a Trustee of the Barnes Wallis Foundation and regularly gives talks about his work.
hosted by
RAF Museum
share