Gee if they don’t get it after that one, they should hand in their Junior Captain Aircraft Spotter badges, 😀

The non-returning ones are a bit more than sticks though in design, they have the same basic “Boomerang” shape, and are thrown much the same way, but the aerofoil/blade is only used to ensure a straight line path from the thrower, rather than to create lift and turn.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

So did the Aboriginal Air Ministry have an assistant to the Deputy CAS who was responsible for planning and development of airborne sticks? And given its construction could the Mosquito be seen as the ultimate development of the airborne stick?

But above all the question remains was any Finnish timber used or was that all a veneer put on it at a later date for propoganda purposes. 😀

Ummmm…… has this thread become irretrievably silly? 🙂

Note bold text….

Hardly independant of other services.

RAF on the other hand on the 1st April 1918 subject to CHIEF OF THE AIR STAFF and AIR MINISTRY, not Chief of the General Staff and War Office.

Ah yes but it is a little known fact that the first CAS of the RAF’s Great great great great grandmother had a Finnish friend.

😀

There was a trend some years back to show WW1 roundels as a pale to medium blue. I have long thought that this was a mistake based on the wide use of orthochrome film. If one has a look through books like J. M. Bruce’s British Aeroplanes 1914 – 1918 most of what one night call “official” (for want of a better term) pics of factory fresh aircraft e.g. Sopwith, Airco etc. have roundels with the typical ortho effect.

IIRC ortho was popular because it gave a very clear sharp image.

The B/W tone in the second indicates that orthochromatic film was used. This lightened blues and darkened reds so, based on the similarity of the dark toned red with the fuselage squares, leads to the conclusion that they are red. But because of the darkening effect if we took only that photo then black cannot be ruled out. However the first pic is panchromatic which basically show reds and blues in their right hue relationship, and in that pic the only red is under the wing in the shadows so we get an optical distortion which makes it seem lighter than the fuselage squares. Again, and admittedly we cannot be 100% about this, I would opt for red and white.

Pardon me for saying it but the fuselage looks too short to my untrained eye. Nothing proportionate about it atall. Still they seem to be popular so I guess they fly OK even if they do look weird.

Well the company that produced them started out making lawn mowers. 🙂

Took flying lessons in the Air Tourer – no don’t worry there is no danger. Instructors and myself agreed I wasn’t quite the Right Stuff. The cockpit shot brings back memories.

May I take issue with one strand in MM’s posts? #189: The public believed what it was fed by government as did the lower levels of the military. The conspiracist stocked in every UK High St. is N.Chomsky: he even has one of those Understanding primers. So: Deterring Democracy,Verso,91,P21: “the military-industrial complex (is a) welfare state for the rich (. It ensures) a guaranteed market for waste production (. The) Cold War had a functional utility for the Superpowers: one reason why it persisted.”

“The whole art of war consists in getting at what is on the other side of the hill.” Duke of Wellington. Ike proposed Open Skies; Krushchev declined. Saddam boasted of his WMD – unserviceable/exhausted; Hitler lied to UK Ministers in 1936 on “parity” with RAF; USSR at Tushino Show, 1955, circled their sole serviceable flight of Badgers to imply Squadron strength. We know now that all these were cases of deception-in-weakness…but Ministers’ duty is to defend the Realm on the evidence of the day.

I prefer: A.Schlesinger (advisor to JFK) in M.J.Hogan(Ed),The End of the Cold War,CUP,92,P56: a “lesson to be drawn from the Cold War is that more things in life are to be explained by c@ck-up (not by) conspiracy.” Wilson had the option, and in 1964 had campaigned on (an ambiguous) pledge, to delete Deterrence. But I presented at #203 that he met TSR.2’s intended roles with other kit…because you never can tell…what lies on the other side of the hill. There has been no Cold War conspiracy-to-squander, Bomber-gap, Ike; or Missile-gap, JFK. The same deception point now arises, affecting 3G SSBN/FBM. UK Ministers and their Opposition would gladly today seize the savings of deleting Trident/Vanguard follow-on. But only the less credible LibDems are mooting that. Other jobs (which are few, near-term) could be invented cheaper. But, so long as Iran, N.Korea, who knows next, adhere to deception as policy, then let us discuss role, kit, quantity, solo-or-coalition…but let us bustle, caparison, buckle.

AlertKen you may propose that understanding of the Cold War, but unless you can come up a coherent means of expressing that belief then I am afraid that I do not quite understand what you are saying. I apologise if you find that offensive, which it is not intended to be, but the narrative style of writing with proper explanation rather than shorthand referencing is easier for older chaps like myself to follow.

That said I can only surmise that, and I may be wrong, that you are promoting Schlesinger’s views over those of the others. However it is in essence no different to mine if you read my posts carefully, The major misunderstanding in the Cold War was our lack of firm knowledge about Soviet arms development and production. We equated nuclear tests with actual possession of the resulting deliverable systems. In response we, who had far greater economic capacity, were able to match what for the Russians was experimental technology with production weapons, this then forced the Soviets into a response which then created a response from us – yes it is a **** up, but it is a product of misunderstanding and having the wrong information has never prevented anyone from acting. Satellite technology was the key to clearing some of the fog.

That was the problem which then influenced how our politicians acted and why in the case of the TSR2 Britain painted itself into a financial corner and found that the only way out was to cancel the project. But that of course ignores the real problem which was that the expensive system was not necessary in the first place. The Americans had their White Elephants – YF12A, B70, B58 and the F111 in its original role, Britain had 3 V bombers and the TSR2. All of which were in effect rendered redundant by better systems based on ICBMs or nuclear armed submarines.

The Russian equivalent of those, of course, was its out of control defence budget which saw nearly 35% of its economy diverted from domestic production to what became a fundementally redundant military systems.

Make no mistake, I am not talking conspiracy, unlike the TSR2 supporters, I am simply talking about how both sides managed to fuel each others’ misconceptions. We can see now with the release of so much secret documentation just how far those misconceptions were allowed to spread simply because dialogue became impossible. The TSR2 was rightly cancelled – far better schools and hospitals than an answer to a non-existent threat.