I very recently just repaired a snag on WT333’s tail incidence actuator. It’s a beast of thing, with a high and low gear motor (though only one motor was actually ever used). When you see a Canberra tail and elevator assembly removed from the aircraft, you can see why such a big actuator was required – its is a single piece affair with a weighty spar forming a flat web running through the middle which occupies the famous “see through” portion of the tail cone..real engineering!

Our fault was just a crusty connection..the tail was stuck in the dangerous fully up trimmed position..a real issue even for us fast taxy types as it tries to lift the nose off the ground at the very earliest opportunity. Rectified by a quixk disconnect and blast with some moisture dispersant, trimmed back to neutral then associated fuse duly removed to prevent the same thing happening again!

And to think I was born a rigger…don’t tell my Airframes TM I’ve been flirting with wiggly amps for goodness sake!

There is a RAF WWII Watch Tower style building at Twynning near Tewksbury Glos. It is on the edge of the village. It is a long way from any airfield… So could any one out there shed some light on it….? What is it and why is it there.

I drive through Twyning a fair bit and can’t say as I’ve noticed it! A friend of mine is local so he will be the man to answer the question. Defford is not a million miles away, buy far enough to not be mixed up with Twyning..

To be honest I was joking and taking the opportunity to remind people of the Anniversary Display. Hence the :diablo:

I understand that if there’re sufficient volunteers around that it might be open throughout Cokcpitfest!

hehe don’t worry, I was just playing along! 😀

Indeed the B(I)8 did only have two small pylons mounted under each wing capable of carrying 1×500 or 2×250 lb bombs. on each. One of the major factors limiting further pylons I believe was the presence of the airbrakes in the mainplanes on our UK Canberra’s, whereas your B-57B’s had the airbrakes moved to the fuselage increasing the area available for further stores (and effectivity of the airbrake apparently)

Isn’t this awful, we’re having to admit that the US may just have improved upon one of our most time-served and faithful designs! :p

As for crew (dis)comfort, it has to be remembered that the original design had intended for a lot of the workload to be taken up by the planned radar installation. When this didn’t materialise a bit of lateral thinking saw the crew stations being put into production in the form we know of today, and due to the interchangability design I mentioned before, all subsequent UK variants had to work around that awkward offset position of the pilots station to allow everything to align in the event of a front end change. whilst the PR9 didn’t suffer particularly with this issue due to it’s completely revised Navs station and opening canopy negating the need for a crew access door, the B(I)8 with its fixed canopy and “back seat” crew had to ram all this into basically the same space as the earlier B variants. I’ve clambered into Newarks hybrid B2/8 which has essentially a B(I)8 cockpit layout, and I can assure you, it ain’t a nice place to be 😮

Ah, the Canberra…arguably one of the most loved military airplanes ever built.

Nice to see that as an opener to Canberra post, well said! If only it were true for the UK…the 60th anniversary went by with barely a mention in any of the aviation press over here..not so much as a single line in Flypast 😡

Anyway…I don’t know the first thing about the B-57B, other than that it’s tandem cockpit arrangement did seem like a rather more sensible approach to housing it’s crew than the distinctly un-Health and Safety conscious layout of the B(I)8.

Aside from that, I gather the B-57B program was plagued with development setbacks and supply issues with wings from Kaiser, along with engines which filled cockpit with noxious smoke.

On the B(I)8 side of things, again, not much of expert on the operational effectiveness side of things, but on reading through the service history of this particular mark it did seem to suffer a high degree of loss, presumably due to the types well documented asymetrical handling difficulties..just looks disproportionate when compared to other marks built in greater numbers.

Not much of a discussion from me I’m afraid, but as a Canberra fixer rather than historian I’m not too well versed on operational virtues, only on how broken they were when they came back :rolleyes: