Ki-43 Oscar.

When I was a kid all my gliders eventually finished up on the roof.

Sources I’ve got say sliding.

HTH

Well I checked the calendar and it isn’t April the First. However this is moving towards being a champion silly thread.

I am surprised that no one has sprung up to defend the validity of the fabled German bases in Antarctica. After all if some people believe in the possibility that the Germans had secret bases in Britain during the war (notwithstanding fairly constant flyovers by Allied aircraft none of whom spotted them) then they’ll believe anything.

So we have large fields in Norfolk, or fields bigger than the normal ones. Some credulous locals, probably speaking in broad accents, and unable to accept that a field can be larger than normal decide, after much scientific enquiry at the local pub, that this can only be explained by them being secretly constructed by Germans in order to help their invasion of Britain.

But there are actually no German aircraft sighted so they must obviously be heavily disguised as Hurricanes. However still being somewhat sceptical I would have thought that the Luftwaffe personnel mounting guard at the gate would be a dead giveaway unless, and here’s the thing, they are disguised as good honest yeomanry. This disguise extends as far as language training so that they speak in the local dialect, and have been given strict instructions not to call each other Hans or Wolfgang when they visit the pub where the real locals are hanging about getting drunk, talking about these Germans, while the authorities are totally ignoring the whole thing.

Now if it is viewed this way then the idea is certainly more believable. However at the time there were a very large number of airfields in Britain. British ones in fact owned by the RAF. If I was a German I would have thought the simplest thing would be to land my invading air armadas on one or two of these. But I know that everyone will say but that’s the reason the Germans lost because they preferred landing on Dutch beet fields rather than good top quality RAF airfields.

Which brings us to the subject of crop circles and the role of agents Scully and Mulder in “The Great Beet Feld Conspiracy of 1941” :rolleyes:

I’ve checked again and it still isn’t April the First. 🙂

Now, just because I’m a good sport, I’d like someone to postulate why the Germans might have created these airfields.

I’d like someone to provide ANY supporting evidence for their existance.

The bona fides of ‘the researcher’ (no name) who supported the story.

I could go on. :rolleyes:

The real problem is that 99.9999999999999999% of “information/facts” posted on that wonderful tool the net is neither peer reviewed, double-checked or even plausible. And I use “plausible” in the same way as my old archaeology Professor would use the term – One eyebrow raised and a weary tone in his voice.

I still maintain that it was chaps in tights who wore their undies on the outside of their tights, :rolleyes: who built these bases. After all the Nazis always claimed to be Supermen 🙂

There was a somewhat bizarre WW2 movie (American of course) which featured a secret Bomber Command airbase which in the daytime was a farm, but at night the haystacks, farmhouse, sheep etc. were rolled back to reveal an ultra top secret squadron of bombers (IIRC Hudsons) which would wreak havoc on the Nazzie hordes by night.

I place this whole idea of secret German airfields in Norfolk in the same category. I also have a bargain for the people who believe this yarn. I have for sale right now the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Pay me $20,000,000 in cash and it is yours.

🙂

You can have fun with this wing sweep game…

Short Sunderland – Wing swept back as Sir Arthur Gouge (he of the patent flap design) had got it wrong, and it was a quick fix, resulting in Sunderlands having outboard pointed engines…

Now there’s a thought, a supersonic Sunderland :diablo:

A bit like a Handley Page 0/400 fitted with Speys, The engines take off and the rest of the aeroplane arrives by truck a week later. 😀

It is now pretty much accepted that the F86 went supersonic during a dive in its test program prior to Yeager’s flight in the X1. The US kept a lid on it for security reasons. However the ability to do it in a dive while handy is not the same as normal straight and level flight.

Of the production aircraft, not experimentals, it is probaly a toss up between the prototype F100 and the Mig17. Both had similar performance with the edge of manoeverability going to the Mig17.

IIRC closest a propellor aircraft came was a recon Spitfire that dived to around 690 mph. However it did a lot of damage to itself.

The Me163 and Me262 were incapable of it due to wing design basically – also in both cases the area rule principle would have done the same to them as it did to the XF92 and the XF102, which is stop them dead around Mach .92.

The Me262 wing whilst having an apparent sweep in plan view is IIRC not a true swept wing because the (I hope I have this technical bit expressed correctly) centre of lift on the wing does in fact not sweep back in accordance with the actual shape of the wing itself.

Only my 2 Kenyan coffee beans worth.

At last, here is the photo. It did scan reasonably ok in the end without wrecking the 65 year old binding.

That is a pre-war Spitfire that has crashed, but not at the site where it is. Note the lack of disturbed ground. It has a De Havilland propellor. It almost looks like it has been taken from the crash site and has been prepared for salvage.

Alternatively it could being prepared for a fire drill – note the three fire extinquishers placed close by.

Of course I could be completely wrong about its placement. 😀