Flight Gallery/Science Museum – 06Oct11

Spitfire, Hurricane & S-6B speeds

Of course the S-6B was fast. But if you look closely at those three I mentioned they would have been alot faster if they would have paid better attention to the rivets, joints & blunt edges. Look how smooth the Gloster is.
Remember all those aircraft that were polished & waxed, or used flush rivets to gain speed. The Mustangs wing for example.
Of course its 60-70 years later but look what the Air Racers do to gain speed, not just power.
But, its a fantastic collection with beautiful aircraft. Fun to look closely and study such famous aircraft.
Every time I’am in London I drop by.
Did you all see the late mark Spitfire (in pieces) on the wall?
My friends and I found that most interesting. Good idea from the museum.

I spent most of the afternoon in the Flight Gallery on the third floor doing a bit of experimenting with my Sony A580 camera. Unless I want a close up detail shots, I don’t use flash in a museum much preferring manual settings.

Great results ,
Tried to photogragh the gallery various times over the years ,but always with disapointing results.
specialy `the bouncing walkway`

Johan

Great pics, Brian! I found I got good results (though not as good as Brian’s) with a fag packet sized digital, minipod (and full sized tripod on one occasion, before I discovered they weren’t allowed!) and patience. If you could wait for the walkway to stop bouncing as people walked by (or ran…)

Colours:
There was a note talking about the damaged original paint on the S-6 when I last saw in in 2008. IIRC, there was some repainting, but there is still ‘original’ paint.

Working from memory:
The Hurricane was restored during the war.

The Vimy relatively recently.

The SE5 was refabriced and had the Savage type smoke exhausts and birfurcated rudder redone (in part by Skysport, IIRC) in the 1980s replacing the original inaccurate ‘wartime’ colours.

The E28/39 has refurbished colours from either the RAF or Glosters before insertion, so probably period paint, but not period painting. It has a mixed scheme of early camouflage and later style roundels. It had flown later war in green / greys.

‘Jason’ was smashed up in landing by Amy in Australia, so some of the structure and fabric must post date the historic flight.

HTH.

I would guess that some of the other aircraft will be the same, the S6B and ‘Jason’ certainly appear so.

I may be wrong (my ex wife often says that I am… :rolleyes: ) but I remember an article/letter in Flypast some years ago mentioning that the S6 had been painted in ex RAF colours or at least with ex RAF paint, it’s just a distant memory but I am sure that was the claim.

My understanding is that the Gloster E.28/39 is in original colours, having passed straight to the Science Museum at the end of its flying programme just after the war, and not being restored/repainted since.
I would guess that some of the other aircraft will be the same, the S6B and ‘Jason’ certainly appear so.

Spitfire, Hurricane & S-6B Its fun looking at these three and seeing how “crude” the workmanship looks. No fast speeds here with all those open joints, rivets and blunt edges!
Great collection but as noticed by others very dark!

They must have got something right, the S.6B is described thus, ‘Not only did the plane win the 1931 Schneider Trophy, but also, two weeks later, became the fastest vehicle on earth, setting an absolute speed record of 407.5 mph.’

Great photo’s Brian, the colours are really good. It’s amazing to think that there are so many historically significant aircraft in that one gallery. Are any in original paint?.

Very interesting pictures thanks for posting .

Great pics, as always. As much as I love the WW2 stuff, I like seeing the skywriting SE5a. Very different.

Your “technique” seems to have paid off!!!

Great pictures, thanks for posting.

It’s very dark in there, so sharing the steps taken to overcome this is very useful.

DD

Spitfire, Hurricane & S-6B

Its fun looking at these three and seeing how “crude” the workmanship looks. No fast speeds here with all those open joints, rivets and blunt edges!
Great collection but as noticed by others very dark!

Very impressive photos!

I was there in July with my basic digital and got basic results….

It was great to see the collection again, and to reflect on just how significant most of those incredible airframes are!

Excellent images of some very unique aircraft, thanks for sharing and nice to see the Science Museum getting an airing here:)

Many thanks for those Brian, (as usual) very nice indeed 🙂

Cheers
Peter D Evans
LEMB Administrator