lmisbtnTo try and clarify the mixed answers that are being given here:
Yes, statistically speaking the back is marginally safer than the front or mid-section.
I’ve heard it posited that sitting over the wing spar is a good spot too as it’s one of the strongest parts of the airframe – but, clearly, good luck on the day is the most important factor.
Funnily enough, I always head to the rear on flights without allocated seats – I’m 6′ 4″ so I like emergency exit rows too.
Wasn’t there a study, after Manchester and other crashes involving evacuations, that concluded 7 was the golden number?
ie: the chances of people sitting more than 7 rows away from an emergency exit getting out were the lowest of everyone aboard – makes sense really.
lmisbtnIncredible given the way he used to throw a F27 Troopship around the skies.
Do the Dutch not throw their planes around at RIAT anymore (haven’t been in years)? Has the HSE caught up with them?
That Troopship display was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Kon Marine were at it too… I’ll always remember queueing in the traffic jam one year and seeing a Dutch P-3 right above us, standing on it’s wing as it went ’round the corner’ – happy days…
lmisbtnUnfortunately and I stand to be corrected, I think we are out of time on the Viscounts, I don’t think any more are servicable.
Personally I would love to see a Caravelle flying!
we need our very own John Travolta on this side of the pond…
lmisbtnMight there still be one or two Viscounts soldiering on in Africa?
I’d be very conflicted about stepping aboard but I’d love to just see one in the air again…
lmisbtnDublin – huge hike to Terminal D – a new terminal with too few seats that already looks a bit shabby around the edges if you look hard enough.
Speke – ever since a passenger was killed when he was car-jacked the parking has been a disgrace. It’s one of the few airports I’ve used where you’re not allowed to drive to the terminal to make a drop-off (you have to go into the car park and if you linger for a few minutes you’ll be charged handsomely). A nice little money spinner for the airport that sees people with kids and luggage tottering across a busy car park and two roads to get to the terminal – a lot safer obviously – moronic 😡
Charles de Gaulle – I’ve spent wa-a-ay to long here waiting for Air France to get their act together to like this place.
I do have a soft spot for some of the shabbier, old-fashioned aspects of some airports, the portacabin-type buildings at Speke, Dublin (freezing) and Glasgow and having to walk across the tarmac to the planes – a more visceral experience than skybridges or whatever they’re called and a lung-full of burnt avgas if you’re lucky.
Copenhagen is a nice airport – nice wooden floors and hassle free transfers.
Most European airports I’ve passed through are perfectly ok, if bland, generic and all selling the same expensive crap. When I’m in one of the busier ones (LHR, AMS, FRA) I just go into trance mode as a coping mechanism for the frustrations).
I’ve travelled to quite a few developing countries at this point and many of those airports are chaotic but make up for it with an inadvertant but inevitable floorshow.
lmisbtnHere is an interesting article, what do you guys think? Have any Air Marshalls ever stopped a terrorist attack? :confused:
Pretty boring job if you ask me , can’t even have a beer, or as they say hours of sheer boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror.
Hard to say – perhaps their deterrent effect forestalled some attacks even before the bad guys left the house… but we’ll never know about it…
I’d say they’d be next to useless in preventing a competent suicide bomber.
Very useful for aggressive drunks and other thugs, but perhaps their heyday was back in what must now seem like the ‘good old days’ – when terrorists actually wanted to escape with their own lives and sometimes swapped hostages for relatively minor concessions instead of taking everyone with them…
mind you El-Al have a fairly heavy security presence onboard don’t they and they seem fairly incident-free?
lmisbtnNice looking bird!
lmisbtnI think the real issue here is that neither side can predict with any certaintly what is going to happen… in the meantime some scientists seem to be carving out very lucrative careers in the field (very useful for buying the catamarans they’ll need when they evolve gills and become ocean nomads no doubt).
Sure, I remember having real winters when I was a kid where, now, there is barely a flake of snow… I’m pretty sure I remember the scientists talking about the next ice age too…
One poster from the UK wildlife trust mentions micro-changes in the environment that are of concern. I’ve noticed a few changes too – it seemed to me, when I was a kid, that the world was populated with millions of sparrows and starlings and then, quite suddenly, they all seemed to disappear. Now they’re back again – bleeding great swarms of them. The point is, that I think global warming may well be, like the birdies, a natural fluctuation.
Funny thing extinction. When it comes to wildlife – my God don’t we just have to save all those endangered species… as far as I can tell, extinctions have been going on since the dawn of life on earth. Humans are also animals and therefore part of the equation – adapt and survive baby – some species are doing very well out of us (rats, cockroachs, pigeons etc… all those animals at the cuddly end of the spectrum).
Plenty of other things are killing species – habitat destruction because we all want an Ikea and somewhere to park the family truck within slouching distance for one.
ps: I’m not advocating reclassifying pandas as vermin and hunting them with dogs – just making a point that species do have to adapt and evolve and we’re part of that too…
I’m not saying global warming isnt a reality (it may well be – the melting polar ice-caps look scary to my un-informed eye) but I’m not convinced the human race is entirely to blame.
That said, turning off the plugs at night is common bl**ding sense pure and simple and always has been – any tube who doesn’t is simply swelling the coffers of the gas companies.
lmisbtnI think the real issue here is that neither side can predict with any certaintly what is going to happen… in the meantime some scientists seem to be carving out very lucrative careers in the field (very useful for buying the catamarans they’ll need when they evolve gills and become ocean nomads no doubt).
Sure, I remember having real winters when I was a kid where, now, there is barely a flake of snow… I’m pretty sure I remember the scientists talking about the next ice age too…
One poster from the UK wildlife trust mentions micro-changes in the environment that are of concern. I’ve noticed a few changes too – it seemed to me, when I was a kid, that the world was populated with millions of sparrows and starlings and then, quite suddenly, they all seemed to disappear. Now they’re back again – bleeding great swarms of them. The point is, that I think global warming may well be, like the birdies, a natural fluctuation.
Funny thing extinction. When it comes to wildlife – my God don’t we just have to save all those endangered species… as far as I can tell, extinctions have been going on since the dawn of life on earth. Humans are also animals and therefore part of the equation – adapt and survive baby – some species are doing very well out of us (rats, cockroachs, pigeons etc… all those animals at the cuddly end of the spectrum).
Plenty of other things are killing species – habitat destruction because we all want an Ikea and somewhere to park the family truck within slouching distance for one.
ps: I’m not advocating reclassifying pandas as vermin and hunting them with dogs – just making a point that species do have to adapt and evolve and we’re part of that too…
I’m not saying global warming isnt a reality (it may well be – the melting polar ice-caps look scary to my un-informed eye) but I’m not convinced the human race is entirely to blame.
That said, turning off the plugs at night is common bl**ding sense pure and simple and always has been – any tube who doesn’t is simply swelling the coffers of the gas companies.
lmisbtnSpeaking as a nav/rad, who extremely fortunatly for me, served after the war, I’ll add my twopennorth.
We were taught on AI Mk 10 as used in the later stages of the war, and were taught head on interceptions. however this entailed turning through about 210 degrees at a range of about 5 miles, hoping to fall in just behind the target at about half a mile range. A very hit and miss procedure as too early a turn would bring you ahead of the target, and in any event the target was lost from the tubes until the final stages of the turn, if then.
So a front gunner would never see us, but in a busy bomber stream this would be a most unsafe procedure.
Interceptions were generally practised at 90 degree crossing, which was what the GCI attempted to set up. Properly carried out one approached in roughly a curve of pursuit but generally ending up about 1000 feet behind the target.
Fascinating stuff Peter – may I ask what you were flying in?
lmisbtnPardon? Don’t think so.
I do remember a work colleague of my dad’s many many years ago regaling us with stories of his time as a Lanc pilot and he said he didn’t think the front guns on his plane were ever used in anger, just the usual test bursts to ensure they were working on the journey out to the target.
Sorry Paul, thanks for the answer. I knew they flew in huge bomber streams of course – it’s just I’ve read so many accounts of missions where they never even glimpsed another plane so the feeling of being alone seemed palpable.
Also, I’m not sure RAF night bombing doctrine included the USAAF notion of rigind boxes and interdependent arcs of covering fire – hence the operating alone bit.
lmisbtnI don’t know if they gave a comfort factor to the crew, and the gunners as look outs were surely of value? Then again how much higher/faster could a bomber go with a few less crew and no turrets, enough to avoid JU-88’s etc? The Halifax mid upper with 4 guns must have had quite a concentration of fire, but still .303 which would bounce off many night fighters and had limited range.
Thanks for the replies guys (it was an academic question if ever there was one)… until now I didn’t know about the subtleties of planning a mission.
I had just assumed, for instance, that a Lanc had enough oomph to carry it’s max bomb & fuel load on each mission – in fact, of course, fuel & bombload was varied depending on the remoteness of the target and many accounts state that the bombers returned from the longer Germany raids with almost bingo fuel.
I can’t help thinking that if they’d got rid of the front turret (quite weighty things I think) and gotten a few more gallons to ensure they got home it would have done wonders for morale.
lmisbtnNot aviation-based but… ‘The Forgotten Soldier’ by Guy Sajer would make a great movie – one of the best WWII autobiogs (that may or may not be fictional) with a very moving ending.
I think the British film to make would have to be about Bomber Command. The public need to be made aware of just how awful it was – start out with the Blitz, angry young men signing up, training accidents, ops, death, burns, glory, evasion, the camps… how many hours would this film need?
With their losses, I guess Bomber Command is the British analogue of the U Boat crews – this could be the British ‘Das Boot’. I’ve even got a name for it – ‘Men of Air’ or ‘Doomed Youth’ (apologies to authors).
I’d like to see it done a’la ‘Peep Show’ (with obviouly less comedic content)… first person camera work and inner monologues to let the viewer step into the shoes of the terrified aircrew… to my mind you could focus on the day to day missions and throw in a bit about Harris and the upper echelons – hopefully it might make the revisionists squirm in their shoes a bit when they contemplate the awfulness of the choices he had to make and the orders he had to follow – not that they’d watch the thing to begin with I suppose 🙁
Oh, and I’d turn the heating off in the cinema so audiences had to sit in the cold and dark!
lmisbtnIs the warthog ok?
lmisbtnAnd Ryanair can use the Herks for their planned ‘standing up’ routes 🙂
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