JogloI think you’ll find that a few hundred Harvards arrived in the UK during 1938, Mr C.
JogloI almost don’t want to ask but….
What did you do?
I turned my hobby into a business, servicing and repairing VW Beetles in north London.
Final workshop base was in St Jame’s lane, Muswell Hill, underneath the old railway arches.
I named the business Beetlemania in 1975 and it was almost an instant hit, with punters flocking to the door to pay 50% less for parts and labour than they had to at the VW main agency.
Had to employ some other mechanics to help out and trained up a few juniors.
Sold up in 1988 and moved to sunny Spain in Jan 90, haven’t worked since.
JogloI almost don’t want to ask but….
What did you do?
I turned my hobby into a business, servicing and repairing VW Beetles in north London.
Final workshop base was in St Jame’s lane, Muswell Hill, underneath the old railway arches.
I named the business Beetlemania in 1975 and it was almost an instant hit, with punters flocking to the door to pay 50% less for parts and labour than they had to at the VW main agency.
Had to employ some other mechanics to help out and trained up a few juniors.
Sold up in 1988 and moved to sunny Spain in Jan 90, haven’t worked since.
JogloIt’s 60 years this year since I first successfully flew a rubber powered, Keil Kraft kit, it was a Hurricane!
I’d hope to mark the occasion with a r/c flight, but my batteries are dead. 🙁
JogloAccording to Bill Gunston ‘So in 1935 Rolls-Royce followed the US lead and went for ethylene glycol cooling.’
😀 I did say, “After a quick search.”
😮
JogloAn appeal to the forelock tuggers out there —- Doesn’t that seem to be a rather silly way to honor the thousands of combat crewmen doing their duty at the time. The ones who truly deserve those forelocks are those responsible for the design and production of the Mosquito, the aircraft that finally won the Air War for us. Many photos of the 8th Air Force in action at http://www.b17sam.com
Aww c’mon Sam, it was a team effort and no one airplane won the air war, in my humble opinion.
Your comment reminds me of public feeling about the Spitfire during the Battle of Britain. Because it had lots of publicity and was a pretty beast, it was hailed as the saviour, while the Hurricane did most of the work and took a backseat, out of the limelight.
Had the P-82 been produced earlier, you might have been praising that as the air war winner?:D
Anyway, what’s left of my forelock is still being tugged for you and many other guys like you, such as my old buddy, Col Elmer Blackie Black, of Pensacola, FLA, an ex P-38 pilot who fought his war based in the UK.
I’ve downed a few beers with him and eaten many of his excellent, freshly trawled Gulf of Mexico shrimp.
Have a good one!
JogloLongshot, thanks for the photos I hadn’t seen before!:)
The point about cabin pressurisation has been raised many times in many places, as have all the other bones of contention mentioned throughout this thread.
Pressurising a slab sided fuselage would be a challenge, but it could be done or the slab side could be done away with, as it has been in later designs.
There are some similarities between Burnelli’s later designs and a couple of others here.
http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Canada/Canada_Car/burnelli_designs.htm
It’s worth noting the differences in time scale!
In the 40s, pressurisation wasn’t an issue, so his aircraft would have been a viable workhorse at that time, probably good as a bomber also and able to carry much higher payloads.
It had no known faults at that time, in fact it was better than anything else in its class that was flying then.
The whole truth is that politics had everything to do with it not being produced, there is no other acceptable reason.
It was much easier, cheaper and quicker to build than anything else.
There are some interesting blended wing concepts on these pages, although some may think they look more like flying wings:
http://www.twitt.org/bldwing.htm
http://aero.stanford.edu/BWBProject.html
JogloAfter a quick search, it appears that the first aero engine manufacturedto use ethylene glycol cooling, was the RR Merlin B engine:
Thus the Merlin B became the first to use ethylene glycol cooling system;
http://www.spitfiresite.com/history/articles/2007/08/rolls-royce-merlin-engine-development.htm
Ethylene glycol was first prepared in 1859.
JogloA fairly comprehensive double web page with some details and pix:
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/place/gdg18/battleofbritain.shtml
Jogloa lifting body is not a Burnelli.
Others appear to disagree with that:
http://www.airbornegrafix.com/HistoricAircraft/Burnelli/OtherBurnelli.htm
It may well be unsuitable as a modern jetliner configuration as we know it, probably because the design wasn’t built as such and consequently wasn’t improved over the years.
We’ve had to settle for the tube and wing configuration for so long, we’ve become accustomed to it and anything different now looks odd and out of place.
JogloIf you will permit a Yank who flew 35 missions over Germany on a B17 in tight daylight formation to dip his oar in on this discussion, I will TESTIFY that it is impossible to maintain formation flying at night.It might be possible for 2 or 3 ships to hold formation for a brief period (3 or 4 minutes), but never in combat operations.
I remember clearly the many times at Bassingbourn when I’d look skyward at dusk to see a flight of Lancasters in trail flying eastward on a mission.
I’d like to doff my cap and tug my forelock in awe of someone who flew more missions than he needed to.
I looks towards you, I catches your eye, I raises my glass and I likewise bows.
Here’s to your very good health, Sir!
JogloMy choice would have been a Hurricane, if only for its wider spaced u/c.
Some interesting reading here, although the two seat Spit isn’t mentioned:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWspitfire.htm
Congrats on finding the Rose Parakeet!😀
JogloThen we’re back to slow cruise speeds and which airline would want that? And just exactly what is “ESTOL” as opposed to “STOL”? What kind of takeoff and landing distances are we talking about?
No, we’re not back to low cruising speeds, as I explained earlier in the thread, ESTOL = Extremely Short Take Off and Landing, which Burnellis designs were ‘extremely’ excellent at achieving, are not relevant to cruise speed.
Apparently, NASA are exploring and researching the possibilites.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17554580
So we’re talking about an immature design then?
Are we and how do you arrive at that conclusion?
Somebody, if not Burnelli, would have had to address this problem to make it viable! And by the way, a “securely mounted” seat does not necessarily absorb energy!
ESTOL reduces the need for energy absorption.
“When the cabin of a plane stays in one piece the passengers stand a chance in any crash.”
Copied from one of a few interesting pages to be found here:
http://www.aircrash.org/burnelli/n23d.htm
PLUS:
What about landing in the water?
Conventional tube and wing airliners DO NOT land well in water:
Burnelli designs even as-is would ditch far more safely into the water and FLOAT so passengers would not drown and die of exposure in the water before rescue.
http://www.geocities.com/equipmentshop/goodbyeftr.htm
Possibly, but you’re missing my point. Nobody copied his lifting body design – in practice and succesfully! Why?
That and many other questions are beyond the scope of my knowledge, but my ongoing investigation may uncover a reason for that oversight.
It’s understandable that most replies on this thread have been of the negative variety and I agree that it’s certainly healthy to question everything and anything to do with safety. That’s why I’m doing as much research as possible, within certain restrictive parameters, to get to the bottom of this long term, ongoing mystery.
José
JogloI don’t.
Not only fire kills people in accidents, the force of the impact is also a factor. The Burnelli designs don’t adress the latter problem.
Just for you, ESTOL, again.
As we all know, most accidents occur during take-off and landing and it’s easy to see that much slower speeds at both ends, alone produces a major automatic safety device?
A big problem with these short aspect fuselages is where to provide a sufficient number of emergency exits enabling all passengers to egress in the required minimum time. Burnelli didn’t adress this problem and the modern blended wing body designs are struggling with it as well.
Burnelli didn’t have to address this problem, production of his aircraft never reached that stage.
At the time, he was happy with the fact that passenger seats were securely mounted, so had no reason to do further studies.
Burnelli obtained more than 70 patents up until the mid-sixties (the last ones granted to his estate in the name of his wife). A patent is freely available to the public and the basic lay-out of his aircraft was disclosed in several patents granted well before and even during WWII. So why didn’t anyone copy it whenever this was possible, if the design was so brilliant? He only obtained US, British, German and French patent and there wasn’t much chance of a US infringement lawsuit being filed in Germany during WWII anyway.
Many of his patents have been copied, otherwise winglets wouldn’t exist, until someone else had designed them.
Burnelli is credited with 92 US and foreign patents; among them, besides the lifting body principle, a leading-edge design combined with high-lift flaps, end-plated wing-tips (now known as “winglets”), the first multi-engine aircraft with retractable landing gear, and the first American aircraft to use flat metal stressed-skin construction.
JogloAll brave or reckless, adventurous, dutiful, but unassuming to a man!
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