Re tankbusting cannon, there is a degree of truth here. 6 Squadron’s Hurricane IIDs allegedly destroyed the equivalent of two panzer divisions in the Western desert in 1943. No doubt that they were fearsomely effective, but the old Hurris would have been horribly vulnerable in Europe in 1944-5.

…whilst at slow speeds it can turn very tightly utilising the automatic slats.
The thing is most German pilots were not prepared to push the 109 too hard in turns due to a fear about the structural strength and unpredictable stall characterisics at slow speed. Most average pilots would back off from the turn thinking the aircraft was about to stall despite the fact that slats hadn’t yet deployed and they still had plenty of leeway. On the otherhand the average Spit pilot would get stick judder prior to entering a stall in a tight turn allowing them more leeway to perform tight manouvres. German aces were more prepared to push hard allowing them to out turn the British types.

I’ve heard this and I still think it’s myth put about by a few ‘experten’ who don’t like to think that their aircraft had flaws. The slats were an anti stall device. They deployed automatically and invididually, and the pilot had no control over them. They worked on negative air pressure and popped out when the wing was about to stall. In all probability, one would deploy before the other leading to ‘grab’ and the aircraft being thrown off aim. It would take an incredibly skilled pilot in my view to turn so precisely that the slats deployed at exactly the same time and then keep it on that knife edge before they retracted again. And even then I’m not sure the much more highly loaded 109 could stay with, let alone outturn, a Spitfire or Hurricane.

I’ve never seen any stats to bear this out, just one or two accounts. Erwin Leyhauf, for example, who says ‘this advantage soon changed when improved Spitfires became available’ – despite the fact that no changes to the Spitfire’s turning ability were made while the original planform remained and if anything would be eroded because of increased weight. He also smugly points out that ‘The English later clipped the wings of the Spitfire’ to copy the 109, evidently forgetting that the Germans later added elliptical tips to the 109’s wings.

Squadrons in France and later the RAE tested 109s in mock combat with Spitfires and Hurricanes and kept coming back with the same result – the 109 cannot turn as tightly. In a turning fight, the 109 will more or less always lose. Luftwaffe tactics bear this out – high speed ‘bounce’ and get out of there before your enemy can lure you down to low speed when they will have the advantage.

As far as the ‘high energy’ turns are concerned, didn’t the 109’s elevators start to get incredibly heavy at higher speed meaning it could turn even less tightly?

I remember a Sea Fury racer (with an R-3350) a few years ago being modified to run on Alcohol- thats got to be the way to go!

I don’t know. I was modified to run on alcohol at around the age of 18, and I haven’t worked as well since

Excellent stuff. Is this an early Demon or one with the Frazer-Nash ‘lobsterback’ turret? Now that would be a sight…

How about the Vulcan in Thunderball?

We know the Vulcan is a sturdy piece…but landing on the ocean at over 100mph (what is the landing speed of a Vulcan anyway?) with no damage…then lowering its landing gear once it’s in the water…

Could we say the same for the 747 in ‘Airport ’77’? Without the u/c of course, but retaining its structural intregrity enough to let no water in.

I seem to remember that in the Vietnam ‘flashback’ scenes in the film ‘Firefox’, every time they changed angle Clint Eastwood was flying a different aircraft. It was a long time since I saw it, but there was definitely an F-4 and a F-105 at some point, possibly an F-101 as well.

It’s a shame makers of films like this seem to think that a jet is a jet and we won’t notice. Mind you, these days they’d just do the whole thing in ropey CGI.

Mind you, even animation doesn’t presuppose accuracy. A recent Korean film called ‘Welcome to Dogmakol’ (otherwise rather good by the way) about the 1950 war, which shows the USAAF flying razorback P-47s in European theatre markings. I suspect they used flight sim animation.

Don’t know if any of you have seen the Sci-Fi film Serenity, a movie made at the end of a Joss Weedon series called Firefly, but in one of the scenes, the crew with Serenity come into land on a planet they are visiting and clearly seen in the picture flying past them is an SR71 Blackbird!

This program isn’t even set around Earth and although stuck in the picture as a possible spaceship passing by an SR71 just didn’t look right.:D

I’ve seen Firefly many times and I completely missed that!

In the episode ‘Ariel’, the crew quickly renovate a surplus ‘ambulance’ in order to carry out a heist at a hospital – the ambulance is obviously based on a Mil ‘Hind’ or mockup thereof.

I think in answer to the original question, a certain number of people are stone cold heartless and a bit sick in the head, while a much larger number have never been affected by the consequences of something like this taking place so genuinely don’t realise how heartbreaking it must be for those who have.

My day job is connected to the media and I believe an unusually large number of the first category work in that field. Essentially, they are doing what this ebayer is doing – making money out of images of death.

Only this morning, big colour pictures of the crashed Luscombe in several of the dailies. The other example that springs to mind is the gallery of pictures and film of the Shoreham Hurricane crash on the website of a local newspaper.

I went to a talk by Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell once, and he referred to some of the more graphic and grisly pictures of the first Gulf War (those who have seen them will know which pics I am talking about) that were splashed all over the front pages as ‘pornography’. I cannot but agree.