We present a sample of 30 wide angle tailed radio galaxies ( WATs ) that we use to constrain the jet speeds in these sources .
We measure the distribution of jet-sidedness ratios for the sample , and assuming that the jets are beamed , jet speeds in the range ( 0.3-0.7 ) c are obtained .
Whilst the core prominence of the sample , which ought to be a reliable indicator of beaming , shows little correlation with the jet-sidedness , we argue that due to the peculiar nature of WATs core-prominence is unlikely to be a good indicator of beaming in these sources .
We further show that if the jets are fast and light , then the galaxy speeds required to bend jets into C-shapes such as those seen in 0647+693 are reasonable for a galaxy in a merging or recently merged cluster .