Great pics Mondariz – always liked the X-15

I think it always give the impression of being a large aircraft and it’s only when you see people around it you realise it’s not.

Another thing…. I’ve long been curious about the fin – why it is wedge-shape? The tiny amount I know about aerodynamics screams “wrong” but it obviously wasn’t.

Roger Smith.

No.1 Squadron team members in Canada, 1934
I can’t give you any information on Donaldson, but Foster Hickman Dixon was my father. I have a copy of the certificate of the Freedom of the City of Toronto given to each member of the team.
My father went on to be Chief test piolt for Fairy Aviation and was killed in 1949 whilst testing the Gyrodyne. If anyone has any more information about his early flying career I would be interested.

Prudence – welcome to the Forum.

You might do well to start a new, dedicated thread on your father – it may attract members/viewers who may have bi-passed this thread. If you are a complete newcomer then expect what is known as “thread drift” (posts going off at a tangent) but I’m sure you’ll get a better response.

Roger Smith.

Plus the fact that I heard a lot of Lottery money is going towards funding the Olympics

Roger Smith.

😮 christ…

I’ll second that – did he keep the helmet??

Roger Smith.

I wonder if a name was ever proposed for the Armstrong Whitworth AW.23 which was a ‘bomber/transport’?? (only one built).

Roger Smith.

…… in much the same way that Armstong-Whitworth didn’t bother calling their product the Whitley Bay …….:D

as steve_p points out the AWA factory in which the prototype and a few early production Whitleys were built was located in the Whitley area of Coventry (although the village of Whitley may have still been outside the city boundary in the 1930s).

It is too much of a coincidence to suggest any other place called Whitley was used and, by that time, Sir W.G.Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Ltd. had long been seperated from the Armstrong Whitworth engineering concern in the north-east – indeed AWA were part of Hawker Siddeley.

Roger Smith.

Apache into Mustang or vice versa?

………..The A36 Apache was armed with more machine guns in the nose, and also had a set of air brakes while the fighter version the P51A Mustang didn’t……….

Haven’t I seen a news item recently about a new restoration of an A-36 and referred to as “A-36/P-51B”?

By coincidence yesterday I picked up a copy of Robert Jackson’s 1992 book “Mustang – the operational record” yesterday (99p :)) have glanced, but haven’t got to reading it yet.

So, who can tell me which came first? Was the A-36 already designed for the USAAC and the ‘new’ fighter for the RAF adapted from it or did NAA design the P-51 (and if they didn’t want it when was it given a USAAC designation?) from a blank sheet of paper (as Jackson suggests) and the A-36 followed on?

It is interesting that Jackson writes “the most pressing requirement was for a fighter aircraft which could also undertake the ground attack role” so did the A-36 actually come out of the same RAF requirement and which did they evaluate first?

Roger Smith.