It’s not Peter C. Smith the author is it? If so his website is http://www.dive-bombers.co.uk

If not, sorry!

Not sure if this has been mentioned before (a lot to wade through in 4 pages!) but there was a noticeable gap between the back of the prop and the front of the cowling on early Hurricanes… so it may not be a difference in diameter but a bit of ‘windage’ between prop and cowling (later closed up with the oil collector ring). This would seem to rule out a later airframe with an earlier prop because the ‘tolerance’ would not be apparent.

>From the way I interpret the published material…NO aircraft was built by
Blackburn to the N.8/39 spec. I quote…..

“The main difference between N.8/39 and the alternative N.9/39
specification was in the matter of gun installations, the former calling for
four fixed 20 mm cannon and the latter a power-driven gun turret. In the
light of operational experience with the Blackburn Roc, N.3/39 was
re-written the following year to exclude the turret, becoming N.5/40 met by
the two-seat Fairey Firefly, which was ordered in quantity.”

Quite right, but designs were produced – designs to the revised N.8/39 would have been quite hurried. Although the Firefly had its own specification (F5/40) it was initially ordered as ‘the modified Fairey N.8/39 with Griffon’. Somewhere along the line the Blackburn design had gone from being aerodynamically relatively weak for the original N.8/39 to the revised version (Firebrand) which was rated as the best aerodynamically. This time two seat and single seat versions were apparently submitted. 25 revised Blackburn single seat F.8/39s were ordered to test the flap arrangement which at the time was radical. These became the Firebrand F1s and TF2s.

What I’d like to know is how the design evolved between what was originally developed from the Skua and what became the Firebrand. When the 25 aircraft were originally organised the design still had a Hercules engine.

But again by the late 40’s jet technology had moved on and the J47 was an American design only descended from previous generation fairly different GE engines with direct British input. It had no real relation to German engines at all. That statement seems to lead further off base than the orginal one implying the F-86 relied on British engine technology in any way comparable to Nene’s adapted to the MiG-15…

Joe

It’s not even necessarily true that the Germans were leaders in axial flow technology. Don’t forget that the Metrovick F2 flew in 1943 and was similar in performance terms to the Welland. The difference with the Jumo engines in the Me262 is that the British had the option of reliable and adequetly performing centrifugal flow engines while the axial flow technology was perfected. One of the compressors in Meteor testbed DG206 shattered, destroying the aircraft and killing the pilot early in the programme which probably had an influence on the reliance on centrifugal Halford and Whittle engines for the immediate future.

The J47 was developed closely from the J35, both of which had a back end that was directly related to the Whittle engines. The J35 had a centrifugal compressor, the J47 an axial one. Both were directly developed from Whittle designs, though highly improved.

Both General Electric and Allison had free access to both the Whittle/RR engines and the Halford H1 and H2 (later de Havilland Goblin and Ghost). General Electric later licence-built the Armstrong Siddeley (Metrovick) Sapphire.

The German fleet had a well practiced manouver of doing a “whole squadron” 180 degree turn on a sixpence too which saved them.

Ali

It was just as well they had this up their sleeve – Scheer very nearly led them into a complete pasting. Twice.

Going back to the now-tenuous aviation connection, the remains of the Short 184 seaplane that was dispatched to look for the German fleet is in the FAA Museum. I think this was the first use of an aircraft in a sea battle.

I seem to remember a doccumentary where they dived these Jutland wrecks, and showed that the ‘flash’ doors between the turrets and magazines had been wedged open to enable the gunners a faster rate of fire, but thus negating the protection these afforded to the magazine, and so enabling them to explode!

Steve

This is quite well documented. The emphasis in the Battle Cruiser Fleet was on rate of fire, based on an idea that the more you shoot, the more you hit and also on misunderstanding German tactics at the Battle of Dogger Bank – basically the German technique for finding the range was to fire three rapid salvoes not adjusted for fall of shot where the middle salvo was the estimated range. The range would then be adjusted for fall of shot depending on whether it was short or long. This was much more effective than the British ‘bracket’ system but the British battlecruisers misunderstood and thought that the rapidity of the German fire was the reason for their effectiveness. This led to sloppy flash procedures, doors being propped open, cordite charges being stored in the turrets and even in some cases flash screens being removed. This all meant that a hit on a turret could take a whole ship with it, and in at least three cases, this is exactly what happened.

Also the German battlecruiser Seydlitz had a narrow escape from this (if you can call it that) at Dogger Bank when a hit on one of the rear turrets caused a flash fire which wiped out both turrets and magazine. The ship survived (partly because of a British tactical error) and the German fleet learned the lesson, implementing much better flash procedures.

The thin armour of the British battlecruisers came in for a lot of stick after Jutland but if flash procedures had been better, three battlecruisers and thousands of men might not be on the bottom of the North Sea.

I’m well aware of the British Hurricane, but there is no US Hurricane, and since they wouldn’t call it a Cyclon or a Typhoon then Hurricane seems appropriate, and would be a new name for a US fighter.

As for Chimera, well it is a mythical monster, which was explained in detail by Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2. Maybe it’s a bit evil though.

I thought Fury was an okay name till they nixed it, or something along those lines.

I’ve got it, the F-35 PENETRATOR …Sounds masculine!:P

I don’t know, it’s such a non aggresive looking jet that it really doesn’t matter what name it gets, it looks like a little bird to be honest, maybe f-35 chicklette or battle budgie.

Doesn’t have the look of a killer does it? But the bird idea keeps coming back… I know – Ostrich. It sticks its head in the sand and thinks you can’t see it.