Winged Heroes

[PanBiker]

The commercial airfreight firm our Dan used to work for at Coventry used to maintain two and still used them for UK wide freight operations.

[Stanley]

While reading about the Barnes Wallis bombs I was reminded of the Avro Lincoln bomber which came into service late in the war but was never used in WW2. Here's a LINK to a Wikipedia entry.

[Wendyf]

Nice low flypast this afternoon as i was muck collecting in the field. 2 planes about 5 minutes apart flying in a north easterly direction. Not sure about the first one, though it could have been a Dakota, the second was possibly a Hurricane.

[Stanley]

That's a captivating image. The peasant working in the fields at a job that is as old as the hills and modern technology catching the attention..... (Nowt wrong with being a peasant Wendy!)
I saw a single engined plane with an eggbeater on the front passing over Barlick two days ago heading SW. It had a fixed tricycle undercarriage so may have been modern....

[PanBiker]

I came across a small local history book I bought when we were up in the NE last year on our bucket and spade holiday with the grandchildren that I hadn't got round to reading. "Spitfires Over Northumberland", it chronicles the roles of the numerous RAF bases up in the area during WWII. I learnt something new about Spitfire operations that I wasn't aware of before. Some of the bases were used for training as well as the operational defensive bases.

They trained aircrew, both pilots and other ranks (bomber crews) over usually 16 week courses before transferring them to operational squadrons in other parts of the country. The main thrust was fighter pilot training culminating in the handling and flying of the Spitfire and Hurricane. Although the Spitfire was an excellent aircraft in the main it did have some disadvantages. The undercarriage was quite narrow which made it quite unstable on taxiing and landing. Another was it's long sleek nose that gave no forward vision until the tail wheel came off the ground , not easy for taxiing, take off or landing as all these manoeuvres are predominantly nose up. The fix for taxiing was to weave from side to side. Once centred on the runway and power up the take off was not that bad.

Landing was a different matter entirely and it's this aspect of the handling that was something I learnt. Pilots were taught to use a curved approach to the runway, this allowed them to have some sight of the target. Effectively they had to approach from the side and simultaneously execute a controlled curved descent, levelling out just before final touchdown. To assist this approach they used what was called the Drew lighting system (developed at Drew in Scotland) ground lights that gave the pilots a curved approach corridor to the runway. The training bases had quite a high attrition rate of both men and machines, on average one pilot per month was killed during training, take off with wrongly pitched propellers, misjudged landings and mid air collisions all took their toll.

One of the aircraft transferred and used at Eshott a Mk. IIa Spitfire P7350 is still flown by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and is the oldest flying example of this type and the only Spitfire still surviving that flew in The Battle of Britain. It was the 14th of the 12,129 Spitfires produced by the Castle Bromwich works throughout the war. It was also used in the 1968 film Battle of Britain. An interesting little book.

[Tizer]

That's good information, Ian, thanks for posting it. Until recently we lived a couple of miles from the site of Westonzoyland airfield. It was used by RAF then, later in WW2, US aircraft especially for training and it too had a terrible high attrition rate. There's a row of airmen's graves in the small cemetery at Westonzoyland village.

The undercarriage problem with the Spitfire, due to the wheels lifting up outwards and therefore narrow, was why the few we had couldn't be used much in France during the phoney war - the airfields were grass and too bumpy. But at least it prompted the RAF to lay concrete runways quickly at home! The forward vision was a particular problem when they started putting Spitfires/Seafires onto the navy's carriers and the weaving trick had to be used by FAA pilots too.

[Stanley]

[Tizer]

`Patrouille Suisse: Fighter jet display team fly-by misses town' LINK
This is shocking. It sounds funny - displaying by mistake over a yodelling festival - but it's a big lapse in safety. I'd like to think it would never happen with the Red Arrows. They have a man on the site in constant contact with the lead pilot and I'm sure their planes have GPS - which the Swiss planes didn't!

[Tripps]

Here's a 'winged hero'. Oh boy is he a hero. . . .

Not attracted much press attention perhaps because it's in a Russian cornfield, not the Hudson River. To land an Airbus within minutes of takeoff, with full fuel tanks, without the wheels down, and not a single casualty is miraculous.

All them corn fields . . .

Quote from my favourite Peter Sellers film. Quite irrelevant.

[Tizer]

And with engines shut down, gliding!

[Stanley]

I saw that report as well and was astounded to see that everyone survived. I agree, if it happens in the Hudson River it's a miracle and awards all round. A hard ground landing is an entirely different kettle of fish and it says a lot for the skill of the pilot, the construction of the plane and the amount of luck involved.
What would the betting odds have been?

[Tizer]

I still remember a journey to Czechoslovakia in about 1980 and the plane landing at Prague airport in a sea of maize. Farmers cultivated the ground right up to the runway edges. It was maize as far as the eye could sea, in all directions. It's a wonder the pilot could find his way to the airport building!

[Stanley]

My airport memory is my first flight into the old Hong Kong airport on the way to Oz. We were looking up at the washing lines just above our wing tips! And that after what felt like a crash dive together with a steep bank. Kept you on the edge of your seat!

[Tizer]

While looking for information about a new Hercules variant I also saw this web page...
`XQ-58A Valkyrie expands flight envelope and safely recovered in fourth test' Valkyrie
and now I know what `attritable' means (one to add to your list, Tripps!)

[Stanley]

Couldn't even find attritable on the web! Is it the same as disposable?

[Tizer]

`Subject to attrition', i.e. aircraft you can better afford to lose, such as small, cheap robotic craft.

[Stanley]

I think I understood that Tiz. I sometimes think that inventing a new word is meant to add weight to a statement. If so it isn't cutting it for me!

[Tizer]

`First of RAF's new UK submarine hunters due in Scotland' P-8A Poseidon
There's a good annotated graphic on this web page showing all the features of the aircraft: LINK

I notice in passing - to accommodate the Poseidon £75 million has to be spent on resurfacing runways at RAF Lossiemouth. Perhaps I'm behind the times and/or out of touch with values but isn't that rather a lot of money for spreading a load of tarmac? Maybe it's diamond coated tarmac?

[PanBiker]

It looks like re-purposed twin engined workhorse that you would go on holiday in, not much different anyway. Any news on a fleet of gunboats to protect our sovereign waters fishing grounds that Boris is banging on about?

[Tizer]

We could lend the navy the old Gay Archer from Watchet harbour

[Stanley]

"Joe Kennedy, who flew on Nimrods for more than 30 years, said the decision to scrap the planes and not immediately replace them with new maritime patrol aircraft still felt shocking almost 10 years later."
I remember at the time this was seen as a disaster. If I remember correctly we spent millions on refurbishing them before we scrapped them.
Never mind the patrol boats, If the true picture of serviceability of the whole of our naval fleet was made public it would reveal a story of incompetence and error that would rock the nation. The same applies to all defence spending and the armed forces. A well hidden secret....

[Tizer]

There is an episode of `David Jason's Great British Inventions' TV series where he looks at the development of the jet engine. Watching it last night I was puzzled when he referred to the Germans having developed jet aircraft early in WW2. I know they did so but the bit of film accompanying it seemed all wrong. After running back the recorded programme I took a few screen shots on my camera and shown below. The first thing that caught my attention was the the shape of the tail in my first screenshot and then the fact that the aircraft didn't have a Nazi swastika but had the emblem of the post-war Luftwaffe. The second photo clinches it - the plane is a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star which is obviously American and also wasn't in use until after 1945. The final photo confirms the shape of the aircraft. Having checked it in a book on `Aircraft of the USAF' I can be more specific and identify it as a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star which was a training aircraft made by lengthening the P-80 fuselage by 3 feet, adding a longer canopy and a second seat. This model was first flown in March 1948 and was in production until August 1959. I guess the aircraft in the TV clip had just been delivered by the Americans to the new Luftwaffe and were having the patches peeled off to reveal the Luftwaffe markings, sometime from 1948 to 1959. All in all, nothing to do with German jets early in WW2!

[chinatyke]

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story!

[Stanley]

China is right! Research leaves a lot to be desired!

[PanBiker]

It isn't as if there is no footage of the ME262 or the other early variants. Sloppy research to say the least.