The Last Complete Tiffy.

I’d pay a rather handsome amount just to see and hear a real Sabre roar! Wow! what a rush that would be! Tim

A Ju-390, Now that would be Interesting Jerry!!!!.

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Comes down to how authentic you wish to be. IIRC, the new Me262’s use modern turbo jets, not Jumo 004’s. I’d guess they’ve reworked the structure to modern standards and materials, added modern avionics etc. You can be sure the wiring will not be insulated with rubberised cotton etc.

So what compromise is acceptable? Towards the end of the war, the typical service life of a Luftwaffe aircraft was six hours. From Summer 1944, they started building them on that basis. Bit worrying that people are digging up bits wrecks that were barely airworthy before they crashed 60 years ago and putting up again?

Build anything that there is a demand for if you can capture the spirit of the aircraft safely.

Anyone for a Fw200 Condor?

Hi,
How about a JU-390 ..
they could use it to fly from europe to the US air shows !!
cheers
Jerry

Cannot forget the Tiffy again, I feel a strong link with this aircraft!!!

More Pics of Tiffys anyone.

If anyone has any Photos of Tiffys 🙂 , Please post them here, The other Tiffy thread is now a bit full, Has any one out there got a Pic of Flight Lieutenant Peter James Nankivell 84930 609 Sqdn RAF, Hopefully next to the tiffy he died in, Wish full thinking on my part :rolleyes: , Snapper is on holidays so I can not ask him, Cheers for now, Tally Ho! Phil. 😎

Lets Get Richard Branson and some of his rich English chums to finance 5 new rebuilds, A collection from the World warbirds movement, To help things along, They can not take there money with them, So we have to make them proud to bring a bit of old England back from the dead, Cheers for now, Tally Ho, Phil.

The sound files for a Tempest are on the Tempest website:
http://user.tninet.se/~ytm843e/tempest.htm

Were there not a few Centaurus engines removed from aircraft in the US for pylon racing?, do any of these survive for use ?.

As for Kermit Weeks – well he has the second prototype Tempest II
and the Tempest V at Booker . I have a feeling he might be content!

I think you may very well be correct there David.

Simple economics apply. Think of say five Typhoon’s at £4 million a piece after
you have carried out all the tooling up and new engine build. Then compare that to a restored Spitfire at just over £1 million which is identifiable to most
of the population even at a guess and you can see why its never going to happen.
If you want a ‘Typhoon’ looking aircraft you simply buy a Tempest II
and bolt a nice Griffon on the front. This was seriously considered by a friend
before his unfortunate demise.
As for Kermit Weeks – well he has the second prototype Tempest II
and the Tempest V at Booker . I have a feeling he might be content!

I think the potential demand for full size reproduction warbirds is often over estimated (I am not talking about the kind of thing that Daz likes BTW).

All it takes….is money

Anything mechanical can be remanufactured. But in order to get any sort of financial sense out of it there has to be a large enough market to spread the costs…witness the price tags of modern combat jets. Development and technology costs are going up, while production numbers go down.
Our friends in the vintage car world already know this. There is a firm in Argentina that makes faithful replicas of Bugatis (they say even the unique bolts are interchangeable). Why Bugs? Well, there’s a international demand for them so it makes financial sense to go into production. Low South American labor costs probably help. I believe a new Type 35 goes for $135,000, about 1/2 or 1/3 the cost of an old one.
There’s enough of a demand for Me-262s (and the availability of “cheap” ex-Learjet engines to power them helped), but would there be for Typhoons?
One problem is the type is not very well known in the U.S. (where some potential customers would be…but I’m sure Kermit Weeks would buy one!!!).
But if they can make a one-off Vimy replica with auto based engines (Nissans or BMWs….I forget), I guess anything is possible.
So if you want to see a Typhoon fly, ask all you Spitfire flying chums to start demanding Typhoons and I’m sure somthing will happen.
As for the FW-200, maybe Lufthansa could foot the bill as a “heritage” aircraft.

Typhoon part-replica

Those that went to RIAT at Fairford last weekend would have seen a Typhoon part-replica fuselage in the ‘D-Day airfield compound. it is owned by a guy in Shropshire who discovered the original cockpit of a Typhoon ina scrapyard and has been rebuilding the rest of the fuselage, so we have now got an authentic-looking fuselage and tail fin. He plans to build new wings and then consider a powerplant, which will be the hardest part. It really looked authentic and knowing the cockpit area is, at least it will only be a part-replica. Did anyone see this and know any more, as it is the first time I have seen it?

‘Lowtimer’

Welcome – its nice to have a new member here who clearly knows what he is talking about.

Post war many companies tried to convert war production to civil use with varying results. Some engines were not suitable but soldiered on, the Merlin being an example where as much development time went into the Merlin to get it reliable as had previously been spent during the war to get it to produce more and more power. P&W R2800 was an ideal post war civil engine and today many Corsairs etc have historically incorrect, but practically correct Civil R2800’s in them. Civil operators did not want 2 stage superchargers and Turbo superchargers, so many engines did not find favour due to high operating costs. Perhaps Bristol should have mad more of the Hercules and Centaurus.

Hi, TN,
All quite correct and fair comment – my point was simply that on other engines such as the Merlin, R-2800, R-3350 etc. the development work did continue for a long time, not only in military service but also in post-war civil aviation, with the result that today’s vintage aeroplane operators can benefit from all of that expensive experience and development work – which surely makes running one of those more fully developed engines today a very much more practical proposition as a result, both operationally and financially.

The Sabre was a remarkable engine in many ways but its short operational career and lack of post war civilian applications denied it the opportunity to grow to full maturity.

if you look at the development time line you will see that all the other high powered piston engines had problems equal to if not greater than those of the Sabre. Think Vulture, or the Wright R3350, development of which started in 1936 and it was still unable to produce any sort of reliability in 1942/43.

If that provided a way to get it signed off, I’d be well up the front of the queue to see, and especially hear such a thing as a flying Typhoon. I’ve always been fascinated in that high-revving H-24. There’s a sound file I once found on the Internet of a Sabre Tempest taking off and perhaps it’s imagination but to me it is a bit like two flat-12 Ferrari Boxers in close formation perhaps?? quite extraordinary.

Hello everyone, I’ve been lurking for a while and hope it’s OK if I join in.

It is highly unlikely that anyone will ever put a new-build sleeve valve engine into production. Even Napier, who designed the Sabre in the first place, never really got the hang of building them. The TBO that they were set for squadron entry was only 25 hours, and the sleeves very often failed even below that minimal life, until manufacture of the sleeves was switched to Bristol, the only company who ever started to come to terms with this technology. Even then, Sabre lives were short though spectacular, and the only sleeve valve engine to be truly fit for aviation, in the post-war era, in terms of reliability and serviceability, was the Centaurus. But in the end, overhead-valve radials became the dominant and most-evolved form of high powered piston aero engine. (The R-2800 family and the Vedeneyev / Ivchenko M14 family are arguably the most succesful of their type.)

I can’t imagine the CAA ever being happy for a new Sabre-engined aircraft to fly in the UK, such is the engine type’s reputation for unreliability. And it’s hard to see what could substitute for it while still enabling the aeroplane to look reasonably original. The FW-190 and Me 262 reproductions use modern engines of appropriate configuration, in the case of the 262 they are encased to make them resemble the originals.

However, if someone becomes extremely rich and wants a new warbird with a difference, all is not lost. Building a series of new Tempests II or Furies would be a lot easier, because even if it upsets some purists, you could use a known quantity like the R-2800.

Much misinformation has been written about the Sabre. It has sometimes become fashionable to over play the issues and their impact on the course of the war. In fact if you look at the development time line you will see that all the other high powered piston engines had problems equal to if not greater than those of the Sabre. Think Vulture, or the Wright R3350, development of which started in 1936 and it was still unable to produce any sort of reliability in 1942/43

The main difference with the Sabre is that it actually got into production in 41/42, out of necessity, whilst many of the other projects were shelved or had to wait until the end of the war to be reliable. And no other production Piston engine managed the phenomenal output of the Sabre. Only specially prepared racing Merlins using all the post war goodies and huge helpings of ADI exceed the Sabres production level outputs. I’m talking here of power to weight, frontal area ete etc and not total gross output, although a production Sabre was run with ADI at 4000hp. So given time and no money Napier could get there. And don’t forget that RR’s last production piston engine the Eagle was like the Sabre and Centaurus a sleeve valve engine.

No company had a monopoly on design or manufacturing during the war, but sometimes companies refused help, whilst others refused to help. Bristol at first refused to help produce Sabre sleeves, until vast amounts of political clout was brought to bear. Likewise in the US Wright Aeronautical refused to acknowledge the problems with the R3350 and nearly caused the failure of America’s Strategic Bomber program. Much attention was diverted to fire fighting a poor design rather than fixing the root cause. So no country has a monopoly on industrial stupidity either.

I have firsthand accounts from a family friend who flew Typhoons in 44, and he, whilst acknowledging the reliability issues, never had an engine fail on him causing an accident or need to abandon the aircraft. He did mention to me that some pilots needed a neck massage after each flight as they would fly across the channel with one ear turned towards the Sabre, such was the engines reputation.

Hi, DaveR,
I was making those comments in the context of a new-build Typhoon replica with a new-build Sabre replica engine. I agree that if you owned an aeroplane and engine with historical provenance you would be in with a shout. Although not capable of getting a C of A, a rebuilt Typhoon would in principle be eligible for a CAA Permit to Fly in the ex-military category. But completely new one would not, because of not being an ex-military aeroplane. Nor would it be eligible for a PFA Permit to Fly because of being way outside the PFA criteria.
This may seem peculiar but it is analagous to the situation with Yaks,for example. I am allowed to fly a fairly elderly Yak-52 on a CAA Permit because it is an ex military aeroplane. I am not allowed to run a newly manufactured Aerostar Yak-52TW on a CAA permit because it has no military service. However, if I have my old 52 subjected to a major mod by Yak UK / Termikas to convert it to a similar tailwheel configuration, I can have it on a CAA Permit because it’s still regarded as an ex military aeroplane. May not make a lot of sense, but that’s the way they run things.

Back to a Sabre powered aircraft…why would it not be allowed to fly? Many people I have spoken to have said that as long as you do things correctly then they will have no reason to stop you flying it.

Well thank You, There still might be hope after all, I became more interested in the Tiffys after I found a chap related to me from my original stock of Nankivells from Corwall, I my self come from Robert Rodgers Nankivell, GGGGrandfather, Who was a surveyer, Who helped settle N.Zealand when Whites first arrived, The tiffy Pilot was Peter james Nankivell from 609 Sq, Died in combat Feb 43, Aged 23, Buried Staden communal cemetery, Belgium, Got his bio from Mark (Snapper), Cheers every one for now, Tally Ho, P.J.N.

Sabres…

Sabres were rushed into manufacture without the luxury of the rigorous testing the Merlin had. Given a complete test routine then the Sabre would have entered production with reliability that was at least the match of the Merlin. Such was the need at the time there was no choice. By the end of the war Sabres were run to 50 hours before check (what were other engines at this stage?). They were of course used in Tempests right into the 1950s!!

As for the CAA…if you are involved with them then you may well know that they are not as bad as they are made out to be. All they ask is that you work with them every step of the way. If you go to them and say that you have just finished building your plane can you have a certificate please then they are going to get you to pull things apart to look at them!!! Back to a Sabre powered aircraft…why would it not be allowed to fly? Many people I have spoken to have said that as long as you do things correctly then they will have no reason to stop you flying it. One of the reasons people quote for not letting a Sabre engined aircraft fly is its early failure rate. I could be corrected here but I believe failure while on operations is not counted in the CAA statistics therefore failure during testing and in peace time was a low as Merlins, I believe that those still fly 🙂 You also have to look at the life that they had at the beginning, flying flat out to catch the 190s and later the V1s which must have ‘hurt’ the engine.

I would love to be able to work with the CAA to get a working Sabre, unfortunately I have been trying for the last 6 years to find a Sabre suitable to rebuild and have failed…anyone know where I can find a decent one (that is available)? 🙂