I agree that manufacturing technology and practices have improved over the ensuing years but also bear in mind that Ford completely re-drew the Merlin to motor industry standards before they started production. They said what seems obvious to us now, “any part must be interchangeable in any engine”. Apparently despite their reputation for engineering excellence, that wasn’t the case with Rolls-Royce components.

27 litres of Merlin more or less kept on equal terms with much larger DB (44+ litres?) engines for most of the war. That’s not too bad for inferior engines is it?

I can’t lay my hands on the THE Mosquito book at the moment, it got “tidied up” last week :). I think there are some more in there.
My line of thinking is if you’ve got a couple of 30-odd foot joints to make, the more rigid the half shells the better.

I notice a fairly major change from the way that DH constructed the fuselage halves. DH built the fuselage under the wings and the bomb doors as one piece with the rest of the fuselage and cut them out later, after joining I believe.

I’m sure there must be a perfectly good reason for the change but it would seem to give a much less rigid structure to work on.

One of the reasons the Gnat lost the NATO Light Fighter deal was because Teddy Petter refused to change his original design to have low pressure tyres for grass strips.

From that, I would guess that a Gnat can’t.

There doesn’t seem much to say about Church Broughton. Following comes from Action Stations (number 3) . It was a bit disconcerting finding it in that volume as it’s supposed to cover Wales and the North-West.
It was a satellite for Lichfield and replaced Tatenhill in August 1942. Based units were 27 OTU, 1429 Czech Operational Training Flight and 93 Group Screened Pilots Pool. Military flying ceased on 22/6/1945.

The Trent-Meteor EE227 first flew on 20/9/45 piloted by Eric Greenwood. It was the worlds’ first turboprop aircraft to fly.

Bearing in mind what I know about aircraft of that era could be written in VERY large letters on the back of a postage stamp – it looks like a Bristol Boxkite to me.

….and I think dhfan’s mother and wife may also be suffering somewhat after being ‘Haydn-ed’ for a solid half hour… 😀

They didn’t say anything when I returned to the table but there were two “looks”.

Spoke volumes…

A very enjoyable time at the Red Lion, I just wish it wasn’t the thick end of two hours from home.