Apologies for absence

[PeterW]

Hi all,

First, apologies for absence over the past week or so, I’ve been rather busy with John putting together a picture library website which we hope to have up and running by the end of the year. My head has been spinning with HTML coding and trying to figure how to incorporate a self-contained search engine. We think we're winning, but still a lot of bugs left to sort out.

I've dropped in from time to time but haven't really had time to post any replies to some of the wonderful pictures and interesting threads, but even though it's now the small hours of the morning I'd like to comment on Mickeys picture of the Lancaster in the Competition thread.

First, wonderful old aeroplane the Lancaster. My late brother-in-law who was a Squadron Leader during the war completed three tours over Germany flying Lancasters and had nothing but praise for them.

Mickey, I'm guessing that your picture was taken in the Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa because I think that behind the starboard wing of the Lancaster is an ME 163 rocket-powered fighter. I think it's the only one in Canada. After the war I got quite friendly with an ex-Luftwaffe pilot who flew ME 163s, and he had a fund of stories about them.

Behind the Lanc's port wing I think that's a Lysander, and further back is a folding-wing Swordfish but I can't identify the other planes in the picture.

Anyway, I'm rambling, and the small hours are getting a little less small, so I'm off to bye-byes.

Goodnight everyone.

PeterW

[Randy]

Thanks for checking in Peter. AFA

[daveh]

Peter, it's good to hear you're back.

You must keep us up to date on the picture library website.

Dave

[mickeyobe]

PeterW,

Sorry. No sleep.
Please keep on rambling.
Please.

Mickey

[mickeyobe]

Sept 20, 2010 20:32:13 GMT -5 PeterW said:

Mickey, I'm guessing that your picture was taken in the Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa
PeterW

Evidently we Canadians are incapable of assigning permanent names to things.
eg:
York = Muddy York = Hogtown = Toronto
Elk = Wapiti
Buffalo = Bison
Pickerel = Walley
The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay = The Hudson Bay Company = The Bay and HBC
Waskana (Pile of Bones) = Regina
The Canadian Imperial Bank of Canada = CIBC
Brian Mulroney = #@*%(^&)
and so it goes.

The museum has been variously named:
Canadian Aviation and Space museum
Canadian Aviation Museum
National Aviation Museum
Canada Aviation Museum
and the same names in French.

It seems its latest name is Canada Aviation Museum.

But who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Mickey

[PeterW]

Mickey, you wrote:

Sorry. No sleep.
Please keep on rambling.
Please.

OK, Mickey. I decided to have an evening off from programming, so your wish is my command. On your own head be it.

Going back to the threads on classic aircraft, which interest me almost as much as classic cameras and classic cars, I'll ramble a bit if I may about reminiscences and conversations with RAF pilots and ground crews who served in the early 1940s before I joined the RAF, and ex-Luftwaffe pilots and ground crews I met and talked with after the war.

I have to say that for me the Spitfire was the most aesthetically beautiful aeroplane ever made, especially the earlier models before they clipped its wings and added various extra things to improve its fighting efficiency. R. J. Mitchell who designed it, was an artist as well as a talented engineer.

Watching a Spitfire "cutting the grass" in a low, high-speed pass over the airfield and then pulling up in a climbing turn always sent tingles up and down my spine to mix with those from the unique sound of a Merlin engine at high revs.

Ironically, one of the most graceful formation manouvres to watch, the "peel off" stemmed from necessity.

A peel off is when you have four or five fighters flying in tight echelon - a close line staggered from right to left looking from the ground. After giving the command "peel off" the leader would drop his port wing , push the stick forwards and scream down in a curving dive, closely followed by the others.

I was told by an ex-Luftwaffe bomber pilot that watching this happen above and in front of his plane was, at the same time, the most graceful and un-nerving sight he had ever seen.

The peel off came about because the Merlin engines in early Spitfires and Hurricanes, including those in the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, had carburettors with float chambers. If the pilot just pushed the stick forwards to dive the sudden g-force would pull the float up to cut the fuel supply and cause the engine to stutter or, in extreme cases, cut out for a few seconds. Pilots discovered that with a peel off this didn't happen.

Later Merlins were fitted with diaphragm carburettors and didn't suffer this indignity but the peel off remained a popular attacking manouvre even though I don't think it was ever in the official fighting tactics book.

The Me109 had a fuel-injection engine and didn't suffer in this way. The Spitfire had a tighter turning circle than the Me109 and could often get behind it in a one-to-one dogfight, but in 1940 the 109 could usually escape from a Spitfire on its tail by diving. I imagine Me109 pilots later in the war got quite a shock when they found that the Spitfire could follow them and stay on their tail down into the dive.

The slower less agile Hurricane was no match for the Me109 in a dogfight but it was a stable, excellent gun platform, and it could take a lot of punishment and still stay in the air, so the Hurricane's main job in 1940 was to attack the bombers and leave the escorting Me109s to the Spitfires. Consequently, despite what you may gather from movies, more German bombers were shot down by Hurricanes than by Spitfires.

Spitfires usually joined in attacking bombers on their homeward run after the escorting Me109s were forced to break off and hi-tail it for home before they ran out of fuel. By the time they reached south-east England the Me109s had enough fuel for about 8 or 9 minutes - at cruising speed - before they had to turn back. If they got into a dogfight and used the engine's full power, cut that 8 or 9 to 4 or 5.

An Me109 pilot told me that over south-east England he had to keep one eye on his fuel gauge and the other looking out for RAF fighters. Some of them ran out of fuel and didn't make it back across the Channel. They had to bail out and hope that a German E-boat would pick them up.

Early in the war the Spitfire gained an unwarranted reputation for being tricky to land. There were quite a few landing accidents in 1940, partly because of its narrow track undercarriage, partly because of the acute shortage of pilots and hasty training which meant that many 19-year-olds were sent into combat with only five or six hours experience on Spitfires, but mainly among often experienced Continental pilots, French, Polish, Czechoslovac and so on who had escaped to the UK.

When they flew a British aircraft they found that the throttle lever on the left of the cockpit worked the opposite way to that on most Continetal military aircraft. On a British plane you pushed the lever forwards to increase revs and pulled it back to decrease revs. The opposite applied to most Continental planes.

Desperately tired, physically and mentally, after maybe five or six sorties in a day some of these pilots would make a perfect landing approach, relax (always a dangerous thing to do on landing), push the throttle forwards by instinct and expect the Spitfire (or Hurricane for that matter) to sink gracefully to the ground. Instead, it suddenly accelerated across the field. If a wheel of the narrow-tracked Spifire touched the ground when this happened the landing leg was liable to collapse and the plane would ground-loop. The Hurricane, with its wider-tracked and slightly stronger landing legs was more likely to bounce and, in most cases, the pilot regained control to make a a circuit and second landing approach.

The pilots no doubt gave thanks for their escape (there are very few atheists in a fighter cockpit), but their ground crews weren't so happy with them. The plane had to be given a "heavy landing check" which involved stripping out the landing leg and could take two airframe fitters four or five hours on top of their normal work.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for one evening. Hope I didn't keep you awake too long, Mickey.

PeterW

[daveh]

Peter,

Wonderful.

Tell them about the dried peas to simulate the rivets on the Spitfire. All right I shall. It was much quicker to build a plane with round head rivets rather than using flat, level rivets. The boffins took a Spit built with all flat rivets and then stuck dried pea halves over the rivets so they were like a round head rivet. They could be added or removed at will. It was found that the most important part, in terms of the speed, was the leading edge on the wings. While those elsewhere made a difference it was relatively slight - so only the wings had flat rivets.

(Done from memory - needs rechecking - someone can do it for me!)

Dave.

[PeterW]

Dave,

I seem to remember that the "glued split pea" airflow tests were made by people at Supermarine in Southampton very early on, partly to cut costs but mainly to make the plane easier and faster to produce in the Birmingham "shadow" factory by people who had never heard of flush rivetting. The Supermarine factory at Southampton just couldn't cope with the large numbers of Spitfires ordered by the Air Ministry.

I bet they would have loved a huge wind tunnel like aircraft constructors (and even some car makers) have today.

As remember the Spitfire, but memory is a very fickle thing, it had round head, or rather mushroom head, rivets along the fuselage panels aft of the cockpit but was flush rivetted on the wings. I also seem to recall that, except for the access panels for the engine which were held by Dzus fasteners, all the nose panelling on the fuselage was flush rivetted

But don't take my memory as definitive. In any case, I was an engine fitter not airframe fitter so I was more familiar with the Merlin than the airframe. That engine was sewn together with small nuts and bolts. I think there were about 30 holding down each camshaft cover. We cursed them in cold weather when fingers got numb, but at least we didn't get oil leaks.

Here's pic of a Merlin, looking from the back, I took at the RAF museum in Hendon a few years ago. Time was when I knew every nut, bolt and washer on that engine.

But that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - or so it seems now.



PeterW

[SidW]

Sept 21, 2010 17:22:36 GMT -5 PeterW said:

...An Me109 pilot told me that over south-east England he had to keep one eye on his fuel gauge and the other looking out for RAF fighters. Some of them ran out of fuel and didn't make it back across the Channel. They had to bail out and hope that a German E-boat would pick them up.....

Maybe he was the one who chased me home from school one day. The siren went just as school was ending and clever me was going to get home before anything happened. The others went into the school shelter. He must have been watching his fuel gauge and escaped the wetting I wished him.

[daveh]

Several of the ponds near to where I live were made by jettisoned bombs, I believe. The bombers would apparently come over the Merseyside dock area and then turn south over the Dee estuary to head home, jettisoning unused bombs as they did.

[mickeyobe]

Thank you PeterW, Dave and SidW.

This thread has become the most interesting and exciting on the internet.

More, please.

I must get some sleep now. Toronto had a rather sleepless night with violent thunderstorms keeping many awake through much of the night. There was damage but I wont know it's extent until I get the newsszzzzzzzzzz.

Mickey

[daveh]

My uncle Frank was an engineer at Cammel Laird, the shipbuilders in Birkenhead. At one point fairly early in the war he had to do a month's Home Guard training. He went off to Blackpool for this. The family went to wave him goodbye. As the train was leaving Lime Street Station (Liverpool) he was apparently hanging out the window, waving and saying "I'm off to fight for you". A few days later the blitz started. He was having the life of Reilly while his wife and three young children were sheltering under the kitchen table or the stairs as the bombs dropped all around them. (They lived in Tranmere, which is where the shipbuilders yard was.)

[John Parry]

Dave - the most famous ship launched at Lairds (Jonathan Lairds in those days) was the Alabama. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it!

Peter - Always nice to hear from you again old friend. The 'other' Lanc was at Hamilton when I saw her, and when my Dad went aboard. I know the flight engineer is a Hamilton businessman.

Regards - John