Replicas and reproductions

The C-119 centre section was slung in the pile and I guess it ended its days at Sandtoft . The Lancaster was civil registered at North Weald – acquiring a civil registration is no guarantee that any work has been carried out to start a rebuild ! It often just adds a little flavour !

Not just a flavour, but a very good start to getting all the paperwork and approvals in order. A necessity for any project.

EN in the context of WW2 stands for Emergency Number, being, particularly, steel alloys rapidly impressed into wartime service without the delay occasioned by a committee considering the materials classification under DTD (Directorate of Technical Development of the Air Ministry) or British Standard. Most of your Stirling would be composed of BS and DTD materials as well as EN. So you would be right using EN materials and most folk over the age of 65 think of steels in ‘EN’. Euro norm, that’s something different again….

Found this among our collection – from a wartime ‘Aircraft Materials Ltd’ catalogue
– shows that there were different names for the same thing.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]233213[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]233214[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]233212[/ATTACH]

I hadn’t encountered EN in this context before, I was wrong.

The C-119 centre section was slung in the pile and I guess it ended its days at Sandtoft . The Lancaster was civil registered at North Weald – acquiring a civil registration is no guarantee that any work has been carried out to start a rebuild ! It often just adds a little flavour !

re:

There was/is a Lancaster cockpit which was in the hangar at Waddington, years ago. A disabled lad was able to sit in the cockpit, which would be impossible in a complete a/c. It had lights in it and radios. I wonder what became of it?

I can’t remember the exact specification now but have a vague idea that it was to be mounted on a trailer as a display item. I would have loved to have given it a go.

“it may have been intended somehow to be used with the Lancaster fuselage”?

One can only wonder how that might have turned out, la box ca-ster! got a ring to it though……

I remember being contacted by somebody/organisation about making a Lancaster front cockpit section out of plywood as he had the flight instruments, seats etc. Nice idea and i would have loved to have given it a go but with limited working space at the time it was just not practical to do it.

Hopefully not too far off topic; I vaguely recall someone mention (maybe it was David Burke) a year or so ago, the existence of a C119 “center section” in one of the UK museums acquired for use in a Lanc project! anymore details?

I recall Davids post as it related to the then holdings of Lincoln and Lancaster parts by the Imperial Aviation Group / David Copley at Sandhurst who had previously had stated ambitions of restoring examples of both types (and I think had reserved a civil registration for one to be airworthy?)

Of course the holdings were well short of that outcome, the Lincoln RF342 was less cockpit, engines or undercarriage, and the Lancaster was a very derelict and damaged fuselage as a hybrid of KB994 and KB976 sections, but with no centre section or wing outers etc.

I never saw any evidence of the C-119 centre section but assume it may have been intended somehow to be used with the Lancaster fuselage?

Regards
Mark Pilkington

I think David might have over egged it, not a double decker more like a single decker but a big enough chunk of metal whichever way you look at it:cool:

Thank you for explaining EN. Going back to the Stirling project and David’s response that you realise the scale of the task in hand. I thought my Spitfire was a big project to undertake, but a front section of a Stirling being the size of a double decker bus. An amazing project.

Re:

Could anyone involved with the Stirling project get in touch with me [email]nickhalifax@yahoo.com[/email] thanks would love to hear from you.

Hopefully not too far off topic; I vaguely recall someone mention (maybe it was David Burke) a year or so ago, the existence of a C119 “center section” in one of the UK museums acquired for use in a Lanc project! anymore details?

Blimey! I live and learn 🙂 Thanks.

Different ‘EN’ to the ‘European Standards EN’ numbers.

Steels…..ah, EN8! Happy days!

Emergency Number

No En, Thanks for that, that’s interesting. What metal standard do they use in aircraft?

EN in the context of WW2 stands for Emergency Number, being, particularly, steel alloys rapidly impressed into wartime service without the delay occasioned by a committee considering the materials classification under DTD (Directorate of Technical Development of the Air Ministry) or British Standard. Most of your Stirling would be composed of BS and DTD materials as well as EN. So you would be right using EN materials and most folk over the age of 65 think of steels in ‘EN’. Euro norm, that’s something different again….

Just keep going…….eventually you will be asking yourself if you should do the rudders as well !

To my mind it IS a Stirling. To quote Sir Thomas Sopwith, a ‘late production’ example.

As far as i am concerned if I make a Plum Duff to Mrs Beeton’s 100 year old recipe, it is a real Plum Duff, not a replica:)

Hi Beermat,

I’ll reply on behalf of John, who usually updates our dedicated thread. Yes the Stirling Project still continues to grow…slowly, and we are making progress. It is being done by a working group of 4 regular, and a few more part-timers (myself included)

The full and realistic outcome of this would be a section of forward fuselage highlighted in the attached cutaway. This would incorporate the already restored nose turret, bomb bay, bomb aimer, navigator, flight deck, coupe canopy and flight engineer/radio operator positions.

It’s not decided yet if it will go back as far as the wing spar, or just to the radio operators station, but even this section is comparable to the size of a double-decker bus!

We are now at the stage where much of the detail work on the flight deck is nearing completion, so thoughts have been turned to making the bomb bay structure. This forms a keel to the fuselage, onto which the sides and flight deck attach to. Some steel girders have been aquired to form the fuselage jig, and final refinements are due to be made to the CAD fuselage model that have given 3D “life” to the 2D drawings already prepared.

The exodus of usable engines has been for a few years to Australia for Beaufighter projects -early marks . As to ‘airworthy’ engines -I imagine the Noratlas in France is the best example of a flying Hercules engine -there are a number in the U.K which are ground runners or good engines suitable for reuse. They are however later marks – like the 216 and 264.

‘obvious lack of airworthy Hercules engines’ -they are down in Australia !

Okay, how many are regularly flying in the UK?
How many are overhauled and ready for flight in the UK?

Not many…compared to Wrights, P&Ws, Merlins, etc.

I’m sure a Shorts S.31 replica would be a possibility …