JB Wrote ‘ I believe the Hurricane and Dominie have this type of construction, as well as many light aircraft types.’
Yes the Hurricane has a fabricated substantial steel tube fuselage and centre section with aluminium wings, and you are right many light aircraft also have welded steel tube fuselages, Tiger Moths, Auster’s, Cub’s for example, although in a lighter form to the Hurricane’s, but mostly with wooden wings. The Norseman and Anson were also built like this. The Dominie on the other hand was an all wood ply box fuselage with wooden wings, the only steel was used for fittings and engine mounts.
The Wessex Archaeology underwater film does look very much as if it is a B24 which was an all metal airframe with very little fabric covering just the flying control surfaces.
In that film at 0:23 an engine appears which has been reduced to just its high strength/stainless steel components, cylinder liners, firewall and exhaust collector ring, all the aluminium has gone. High strength steel can last well in salt water.
At 0:40 another engine appears in a similar state but this one is lying in front of its tubular engine bearer frame, this is a mild steel welded structure that I would have expected to have rusted away in sea water, but it obviously this has survived.
Then at 3:07 a prop hub, blade and a engine nose case appears followed by a section in monochrome that shows what is captioned as ‘Fabric around the main Hull’ and the ‘Hull of the bomber’ but as only the control surfaces were fabric covered makes me wonder if this is something else. One possibility I put forward is that it is a decomposing rubber fuel cell, the B24 had these spaced out all along the wing.
Richard
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