Unless you are to believe that German WW2 bomber aircrew were so stupid as to not know how to synchronise engines, then one has to accept that the desynchronisation was deliberate.
IIRC the engines were deliberately desynchronised in order to confuse sound locators on approaching enemy airspace and then resynchronised on the way home.
Any fool can be uncomfortable -and they certainly weren’t fools.

As a kid in the early 50’s I seem to recall the name was used as a descriptor on RAF bases. Long red conical extinquishers, bracket-mounted vertically with the name on a gold background as per the van.
It brings back memories of frequent escorted visits to the station guard room , which had one on the wall outside………

The swept wing F-86 wouldn’t come along until 47-48

….when German swept wing aerodynamic understanding had had time to be assimilated into USA industry under “Paperclip”.

Interesting to note that with F-86 versus MiG 15 combat in Korea , that both owed so much to a second generation German “1946” design philosophy.
Both very good aircraft for their time nevertheless, and certainly with no British equivalent in sight.

Depends on how much importance you attach to Horatio Phillips’ flight on April 1907. He took off on level ground and remained aloft for maybe 500-600 feet, which at 30mph means about 12 seconds or so in still air.
This is what the Wrights managed in their first flight of December 17 1903, certainly in terms of time aloft. They, of course, managed a total of four flights that day, the lost being nearly a minute.
Phillips was unable or unwilling to repeat his brief flight, and if you think the Wright configuration was a dead-end, then have a look at Phillips’ contraption:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0232.shtml
He deserves his place in history as a little bit more than just a footnote, even though Roe can rest safe in the knowledge that he was the first Briton to fly in a practical British aircraft – inasmuch as any aircraft of that era could be considered practical.

I forgot that one Scouse and fully agree he deserves a mention. Apparently Phillips’ “Venetian Blinds” were very stable (one of the original aims in Victorian Aviation.
Also the B.E.2 deserves recognition as being the first really controllable, practicable series aeroplane and the ancestor of a fully successful design configuration norm. Look at the Tiger Moth and appreciate its origins!

Incidentally, I notice that somebody from across the Atlantic has already confused the concept of configuration with that of available contemporary powerplant : probably failing to appreciate incidentally, in so doing, that the practicable jet engine was another primarily British (and German) contribution to overall aviation development.

Was it Neil Williams whose Zlin wing started to fold up? He rolled it against the fold and flew inverted until near the ground when he rolled level again and got down safely.

Roger Smith.

It was indeed.

Thanks Stirlingsteve.The L4 mag story sounds about right with reference to the spring. (Memory plays tricks and the SLR wasn’t my personal weapon in any event.)
The other “automatic” mod we were told was not to be used because of barrel life/ammunition wastage issues. I actually never heard an SLR used as such – but there again, I wasn’t in the Army.
The EM2 (thanks SLL) was apparently preferred in 1953 over the FN -because of its layout, which apparently combine a long barrel length with a comparatively short overall weapon length. The FN design was, according to our RAF Regt instructors at least , basically flawed structurally regarding the stock/barrel arrangement. This was nearly 40 years ago and was light entertainment for most of us,so I’m probably off track a bit as well on this issue.

One of the more unusual Photo Interpretion tasks in the U.K. in WW2 to analyse this type of imagery in order to establish the constitution of enemy air defences. It was quite an art apparently, but fairly succcessful.

Wasn’t the SA 80 an update of the original (Lee Enfield?) weapon preferred in the 50’s by the U.K. armed forces ?
We got the SLR instead ,which was a b*ggered up F.N. weapon by all accounts.
Incidentally: Could you strip the SLR and move the selector round to ” Fully Automatic” as indicated -or was this a just a legend?

Then of course there was the game of putting Gimpy mags in them to make them look a bit like A.K. 47’s….. The Rocks went into tears of rage at that one.
I’d be interested in the comments of somebody better qualified on all this .