A tip-off tracing back to a comment made by the late Fred Ballam of Westland fame had me enquiring about cast parts for the Whirlwind (fighter) at the Wheal-Martyn China Clay Museum in Cornwall.
They did indeed have this one piece of cast metal attributed to Westland and a purchase order for 52 tons of part extracted alu from the Ministry of Aircraft Production on behalf of Westland Aircraft.
This part doesn’t immediately jump out as recognisable in any Whirlwind drawings or photos – that’s not surprising. Nor can I place it on my fairly close inspection of a Lysander not too long ago. However, I wasn’t really looking for this.
It’s a shot in the dark but does anyone have any ideas what this might be for?
It’s about 8″ at it’s longest and the markings read:
8741(?)/1
FB
By: Creaking Door - 20th September 2012 at 00:39
Let us know if you do find-out! 😉
By: Matty - 19th September 2012 at 12:09
Thanks guys. It’s looking more likely to be Lysander I guess.
I’ll see if I can get hold of anyone at Shuttleworth or try ARC at Duxford again. I don’t remember seeing this part but it was quite stripped back…
By: Creaking Door - 19th September 2012 at 10:45
I thought possibly part of the flying controls; it doesn’t look like an engine part?
By: TempestV - 19th September 2012 at 10:26
It looks like a bell crank arm, pre-machining.
By: Creaking Door - 19th September 2012 at 09:09
Bristol aero-engine part numbers contain the letters ‘FB’ near the start.
In the Bristol part numbers these letters stand for Fedden (Chief Engine Designer) and Butler (Chief Draughtsman). The format of this number is also correct for a Bristol part; the numbers typically contain five digits following ‘FB’ and then sometimes a slash and one (or two) more digits:
FB8741?/1
This is an unfinished casting (that hasn’t been machined yet)?
How about e-mailing a photograph to the engineers at the Shttleworth Collection; I’m sure from working on their Lysander they’d recognise it in an instant.
By: Wellington285 - 19th September 2012 at 05:03
Hi Matty
I was wondering if the FB was related to Filton Bristol?
Ian
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September 19, 2012 at 12:42 am