Surely not just me?

What a pity, only the Shirrell Heath sigs clerk has noticed its Sept 15th.

There was after all 86 Canadians together with 139 Polish, 98 New Zealanders, 84 Czechoslovakians, 29 Belgians, 21 Australians, 20 South Africans, 13 French, 10 Irish, 7 Americans, 1 Jamaican, 1 Palestinian, 1 South Rhodesian and 8 unknowns.

Grateful thanks to them all.

R.

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

I trust the flypast went as planned?

Originally posted by Geoff Winnington-Ball
I trust the flypast went as planned?

Indeed so.

I've been having my own flypast; of rubber donut.

A 12" diameter device that takes the 80HP of Herr Klockner, Herr Humboldt and Herr Deutz and passes it on to Mssrs. Ingersoll and Rand for air squeezing duties.

Its been flying past my ear on its way out of the bell-housing inspection aperture.

Never mind, I only have to splt the compressor from the diesel engine after removing the truck sized air/oil cooling rad and the donut is but a trifle at £480.73 + VAT (at 17.5%), of if you will, CAN$1,163.87

R.

[Jon Skagfeld]

Originally posted by Richard Notton
What a pity, only the Shirrell Heath sigs clerk has noticed its Sept 15th.

There was after all 86 Canadians together with 139 Polish, 98 New Zealanders, 84 Czechoslovakians, 29 Belgians, 21 Australians, 20 South Africans, 13 French, 10 Irish, 7 Americans, 1 Jamaican, 1 Palestinian, 1 South Rhodesian and 8 unknowns.

Richard:

I certainly did remember the date, but bless you for posting it here.

WRT the list of the participants, it has always irked me greatly that, in the movie "Battle of Britain", the final scroll of the personnel includes "1 Israeli"!

I need not remind anyone of the status of Israel in 1940!

Originally posted by Jon Skagfeld
Richard:

I certainly did remember the date, but bless you for posting it here.

WRT the list of the participants, it has always irked me greatly that, in the movie "Battle of Britain", the final scroll of the personnel includes "1 Israeli"!

I need not remind anyone of the status of Israel in 1940!

Its very disappointing when these gaffes appear in major film works. The plastic bell push on the right hand door pillar of Sqdn Ldr Skipper's house is another item which exploded the reality for me even though the Spanish Hispano Buchõn is just about acceptable as a ME 109.

The TV was covered with BoB documentaries yesterday, even the hyped first showing of the new work on the Spitfire by the History Channel was rather off the mark implying as usual that this aircraft won the battle and commenting that K5054 was perfect (their words) from its maiden flight since Mutt Summers said so.

In fact his comment "don't touch anything" was a statement that evaluation was in progress and he didn't want any variables; good it was but far from perfect even in the developed last production marks with 10 litre bigger engines. Indeed some experienced pilots say the Griffon Spitfire is a bit of an axe compared to the Merlin powered scalpel versions.

They have all overlooked and underplayed the endurance feature of the BoB with the distance anomaly that continuously hamstrung the German fighter effort.

Now, I must find the only decent jacket and trousers I own since I seem to have a wedding to go to, so that's this Saturday written off putting on a façade for a heap of people I have no real interest in. My daughter would be more than miffed though if I copped out, better find the brave face too I suppose.

Normal service will be resumed on Sunday.

R.
Not looking forward to it.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Also, september 15th, it is 90 years ago the first tanks were deployed in the last stages of the battle of the Somme.

Someone sent me a link to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about an Australian tank pioneer, Lancelot Eldin de Mole, who claimed prior art to the British tank invention. He came up in 1911 with an idea for a "travelling caterpillar fort".

The SMH article has more details and photos of a model de Mole made of his invention; it actually looks more modern than the British 1915 tank, having its track laid on road wheels!

http://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives//006310.html

[Jon Skagfeld]

Originally posted by Richard Notton
In fact his comment "don't touch anything" was a statement that evaluation was in progress and he didn't want any variables; good it was but far from perfect even in the developed last production marks with 10 litre bigger engines. Indeed some experienced pilots say the Griffon Spitfire is a bit of an axe compared to the Merlin powered scalpel versions.

Wasn't there a quote somewhere about it being GOOD to have the Spitfire, but we HAD to have the Hurricane., during BoB?

The ratio of Hurries to Spits was something like 5 to 3, or so, IIRC.

So, history tells us that the Hurricane did the job, but the Spitfire got the glory.

Originally posted by Jon Skagfeld
Wasn't there a quote somewhere about it being GOOD to have the Spitfire, but we HAD to have the Hurricane., during BoB?

I believe so. The Hurrie was far easier to build and to fly moderately well; experienced pilots report the Hurrie as a more stable gun platform and so without the ultimate manoeuvrability of the Spitfire, you can't have it all ways.

The ratio of Hurries to Spits was something like 5 to 3, or so, IIRC.

I think that's right and the general tactic of engaging Spitfires with the fighters and the Hurries with the bombers was well-founded.

So, history tells us that the Hurricane did the job, but the Spitfire got the glory.

That's about it, much like D-Day too with the Americans vis-à-vis the British and Commonwealth forces.

The Hurricane of course became something of a multi-role fighter, which the Spitfire could never do, having bomb racks and huge cannon fitted.

We should remember though that the Merlin itself had a difficult birth and was nearly scrapped, RR aren't as necessarily cute as the vaunted folk-lore image would have you believe. Prototype engines were dreadful and readily self-destroyed with all manner of fundamental problems, cracked heads and rod throwing mainly. It is true to say RR developed themselves out of trouble, but it was a close thing.

RR was also a cottage industry compared to the major motor manufacturers at the time and it became quickly obvious that they had no hope of making Merlins at the required rate. Bear in mind Henry Royce was somewhat idiosyncratic and lived in Brighton with a small team of draughtsmen who drew up his ideas for the factory to make almost as a hobby projects. Royce also did the quality control, his habit was to wander the factory with a small hammer and fetch a good whack to anything he didn't like so it had to be scrapped.

The govt demanded RR pass the drawings to Ford and others for serious quantity production and much to RR's chagrin they were returned in days with a curt note pronouncing them as unworkable. Big industry of course makes things with semi-auto tools to tight tolerances and minimum scrap whereas RR hand selected everything for median tolerance.

Of luck too just at the outset of the BoB was the chance finding that the Hamilton Standard two pitch propeller was a fit for the Merlin reduction shaft, we would have been hugely out-classed with the original fixed wooden jobbie. However, many pilots had ground crashes by forgetting to engage fine pitch before take off and were left with an under-revving and under boosted Merlin that couldn't pull the aircraft off, even Bader managed this

Also remember the chemists finally figured out why our 100 oct fuel worked so much better than the US stuff coming over that barely performed as well as the standard UK 80 oct AVGAS. With the spec re-written the first tanker load of the good stuff arrived in the USS tanker Bunker Hill just in time and this is still a reference fuel now and known as "Bunker Hill 100."

I think we can see the tweaks happening to the Spitfire and the Merlin through the rapid succession of mark numbers and this shows that neither were perfect or anywhere near it. The Merlin, and RR, benefited hugely with the engagement of (Sir) Stanley Hooker fresh from Oxford University where he proved to be a whiz at fluid dynamics and within weeks at RR saw the supercharger as frankly crap.

His re-design released another significant shot of Merlin power (I'd call 30% significant). Indeed he who flows the most air through any IC engine gets the most grunt and RR's lead through Hooker kept the Merlin and Griffon in the race and subsequently gave RR the lead on jet engines where mass flows are absolutely fundamental to performance.

Stan Hooker was the person who saw the Mustang's Allison as a similar package size to the Merlin and asked to borrow one of these training aircraft, as they were then, for a trial installation of the Merlin; the rest is truly history.

Hooker's autobiography is a fascinating read, "Not much of an Engineer" is highly commended. ISBN: 1853102857

We can't leave without mentioning Miss Shilling's orifice and its contribution or her biography "Negative Gravity" ISBN 0954616502

Also too is the sorry episode of some, fortunately un-named, prat in the Air Ministry who received a lumpy parcel from the European underground containing a DB 601 fuel injection pump; which he promptly put on a shelf and forgot about until war's end.

Oh dear.

If you can find it, and Hampshire has one copy held by RAE Farnborough with a lengthy library service waiting list, then this is for the aviation petrol heads among us:
LJK Setright: The power to fly: the development of the piston engine in aviation. Allen & Unwin, 1971.

R.

[Mike K]

Melbourne here in OZ, has a busy airport located in the S.E. suburbs that most people know as Moorabbin airport . But, it is marked on most maps as Harry Hawker airfield ; go to this link and find out why .

http://aviationboom.com/pioneers/harry_hawker.shtml

Mike

[Gunner]

This year's national BoB parade at the Aviation Museum in Ottawa included, for the fifth time, the S&P Museum's 40mm Bofors to remind the boys in baby blue that they weren't the only ones there!

Ubique! Mike