Looks like it will be a good meeting then! Geedee and I will be coming up in my Lotus Elise replacement – a white cabrio smart car with roundels- no missing us!!!

I will be bringing some photos if any one is interested.
The walk to Hannants and restaurant could be good for lunch victuals.

I thought the BoB Hall opened at 10am too? Anyway that RAFM ‘restaurant’ should be open then too.

I will get Geedee to bring his tripod for a group photo near something vaguely aviation. 🙂

You mean you can get two people in one of those ?

Did I sense a veiled criticism of the recovery group by the accident investigator? He seemed to imply there was no way of knowing where on the crash site previously recovered debris had come from?

Roger Smith.

He might just have been using that as mitigation for any inaccuracies in his deliberance; as 682al has said you would have thought that a dive at speed sufficient to tear the wing tips off, would have resulted in a higher impact speed, not consistent with the condition of the recovered engines.

Could it have been that in the process of recovering from a high speed dive, on levelling out, the load on the wing tips was sufficient to tear them off, at which point the A/C crashed, at a more horizontal angle, and a much reduced velocity?

I know what your thinking, “did he fire 5 or 6 shots?”, the question you gotta ask yourself, is “do you feel lucky?”, well do ya punk?

The reason tyres are filled with gas is that when load is applied (ie. landing) the gas will compress thus absorbing some of the shock. If the tyre was filled with water you would simply pressurise the liquid, making it act like hydraulic fluid and blow the tyre apart.

Although not if the A/C was flying at altitude, as the contents of the tyre would be,… ice!!

Skip bombing I understand, skip bombing with nukes….. surely not?

What low-level roles?

The aircraft (with the Hunter) was conceived and developed as an interceptor, which at the time meant get quickly to high altitude where the ‘Bears’ played, dodge the radar-laid guns, deal with any fighter escort and shoot the bombers down. Swift could do none of the above. The tactical recon role was assigned because the Swift was there and vaguely suitable. It was soon replaced by PR versions of the Hunter which would have been developed anyway. Swifts may have won ‘Royal Flush’ but most agreed that RF was pretty useless as an indication of ability in the field.

TAC R is a fairly narrow role for an aircraft that cost the taxpayer rather a lot and was ‘super priority’ as an interceptor. There was no suggestion of developing the Swift for strike or ground attack which Buccaneers and Hunters later excelled at.

Swift FRs were an attempt to make the best of a bad job, which to be fair was what was achieved.

The 535 looked good in ‘The Sound Barrier’ though.

And yet everybody says what a wonderful A/C the Buccanneer was in the low level/high speed role; possibly the Falklands conflict, and Desert Storm, have shown a need (if only in the eyes of the RAF top brass), for that very type of A/C.

The Swift suffers from the DH Comet syndrome, it was a first, and it had faults, (some of those brought about by the RAF top brass rewriting spec whilst the A/C was being developed) and all the Comets crashed because of square windows……

Just a footnote to the Swift/Avon discussion ,which has probably been running longer than the play “mousetrap”

The root of the problem (pun not intentional) was thought to lie in the design of the intake duct, it was discovered that one of the manufacturing sub contractors had introduced a “seemingly trivial” modification in the way that the blades were machined, all affected engines were from the same (un named) manufacturer; I would have thought that the problem with the re-heat on the 105 had to be an engine problem, which, as no other A/C used the 105, was never fully investigated/resolved.

Apparently Sheppards are willing to swap the swift for a Harrier? (plenty of old GR3’s and Sea harriers about?).

Or has this been gone over as i would have thought somewhere would want it even if it was not greatly successful it is a piece of aviation history and i would have thought that the RAFM’s collecting policy would say they should have one for the sake of it at least?

curlyboy

Probably about 10 years ago they did; I tried in 2002, and they didn’t!