Quite a few of these going for around £25 now… Worse, so are some of the Xtradecal sheets!!!

Good post, and I’d agree on most of it. As for the Firefly, I might have been being a bit harsh. Great aircraft, and as you say, did do well.

As to the Harrier / Sea Harrier, one of the greatest aircraft of all time.

JDK, great to have got our posting back on a more harmonious note! Not that constructive argument isn’t fun… it’s just difficult to defend the Blackburn Firebrand when you’ve got an F4U sitting in the background, taunting.

True as regards the SHAR and, as Sharkey Ward tells it, this was one of the few examples of modern warfare where the service actually learned how to fight before having to do so.

They will be sadly missed, and not just by dewy eyed aviation enthusiasts.

I had it on good authority from a serving RAF Harrier pilot at the time, that one of the Falklands Blackbuck Vulcans broke it’s refuelling probe off while topping up from a Victor and headed for Brazil.
On the way, it was pursued by Argentine Mirages and dropped to sea level, going supersonic on the way down, it apparently cleared the Brazilian coast at very low altitude and very high speed before landing at Rio? and being impounded for a while. After the weapons were removed ( must have been a failed mission ), it was allowed to leave.
I bet someone on here knows the registration number and whether it has survived.

It was a ‘Shrike’ anti targetting radar missile that hung up despite numerous, and vigourous, attempts to get rid. There’s an account on http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk – several of the Shrike missions didn’t result in any target being destroyed but forced the Argentinians to swtich the radar off, therefore giving more freedom to the SHARs on bombing missions.

Not sure about the supersonic bit, but that would have been one hell of a sonic boom.

And was filmed at Chilbolton. This is now a radio telescope installation but whenever I fly by I waggle the wings and say “Buffeting, buffeting . . . “

In case I ever go flying with you Melvyn, please resist the urge to pull out of a dive by putting the stick forward. 😀

It happens. I’ve got into the habit of a quick ‘Control A’ + ‘Control C’ before posting, so if it dumps the lot I can repost from the memory.

It’s a pity, because I like your posts as a rule. In this case, we disagree, which is much more fun. 😉
Regards

Agreed… As you said before, ‘it’s a thesis’ – in your case, not yours, and in my case, half-formed, probably half-baked and overridden by emotional factors… I got away from my original point and into tit-for-tat.

Before I get too far in, my initial point that war improves capability was mainly based on first world war fleet thinking, with elements of Falklands 1982 for comparison. Basically although (in the first instance) Britain went to war supremely well equipped in terms of equipment (not perfect, but then neither was the German High Seas Fleet – Beatty’s assertion that ‘there is something wrong with our bloody ships’ was over simplistic and betrayed a lack of understanding in the battlecruiser concept) but very badly equipped in terms of procedures and ‘action principles’, effectively the ability to operate in a ‘war’ situation – the effect of too many long years of Pax Brittanica.

These lessons were learnt, but only put into effect after the war. 1982 and all that taught us how poorly equipped we were in terms of physical capability but that some of our officers knew how to fight, despite forty odd years of more-or-less peace.

The lessons of the second world war were learnt as well, and would have been learned (or put into practice) faster had it not been for the FAA obviously being second priority. We started the war with Skuas and shortly after it we had Sea Furies. Lesson learned, if not quite in time. The US Navy was lucky in having priority in equipment, and a sensible procurement policy. For evidence that making a balls of procurement was not limited to the FAA, look at the USAAF’s handling of the Vultee Vengeance, screwed because the Army did not want a dive bomber despite the Navy showing them how effective they could be. I don’t doubt that the US Navy had some superlative aircraft, and the FAA benefited no end, there were also some stinkers.

The one thing I must take issue with is your opinion of the Firefly, which could out turn and out punch a Seafire, did shoot down Japanese fighters and had the capability to be turned to night/all-weather fighter duties as well as being a platform for other uses. I would contend, if you look at the specification, that it did everything it was intended to. Moreover, it was prescient of the future fleet fighter/interceptor model.

The Skua was a potentially good aircraft, used badly. It was arguably as good a dive bomber as the Dauntless but suffered from needing to be used as a fighter as well. This was a lesson that wasn’t learned too well (in fact it was turned backwards for the Firebrand) but you can’t have everything.

You’re all wrong

Anyway, you are all wrong. It is quite clearly the Ridgefield Model 902 ‘Prometheus’ VV119.

I saw it on David Lean’s ‘The Sound Barrier’.

(Pic BFI)

Yes and no. It’s interesting that an examination of RN FAA equipment from 1939 – 45 shows that Britain (Fairey’s in particular) didn’t actually improve capability in any useful way with a 6 year run. Without Grumman products and the desperation to use Corsairs on decks, the FAA would have been even less capable, not due to the brave men and tough ships, but because of useless aircraft. The fact that 1945 saw the Barracuda and Firefly, as well as the risible Firebrand puts the Lordships in the camp of learnt nothing forgotten nothing.

Really? The Firefly was IMO the fighter/recon/strike aircraft that the FAA needed since the Osprey was retired, and one of the most capable aircraft of the late war and postwar period. The Seafire had given the FAA the fleet fighter it needed since 1938 (and which Churchill had barred several times) and the Barracuda was hobbled mainly by an excess of equipment rather than any deep rooted problems. The F4F was no better than the Sea Hurricane, the F6F no better than the Seafire and the Corsair did more damage as a fighter bomber than a fleet fighter.

It’s a myth that the Firebrand thinking was as flawed as people make out – sure, the aircraft was terrible but the reason for turning it into a strike fighter made a lot of sense, given the enormous success of the Typhoon in that role. However, if their lordships had chosen the Sea Typhoon instead of the Firebrand it might have been a difference matter.

Interestingly, the best Navy for Carrier force in 1939/40 was actually the USN. Kind of goes against the air-power advocates who demand an independent air force. If Trenchard hadn’t got his way, perhaps the RFC would have fought as good a Battle of Britain, while the RNAS might have had a chance against the Japanese.

With wooden decks, Vought Vindicators and converted colliers? Are you serious?

It’s all very well to bang on about how the Me262, Me163, Spitfire, P47N etc etc etc all COULD have gone supersonic. But there is no way that anyone is going to try it now to prove it, and no-one ever MEASURED the thing doing it. Without good evidence like that, what are we left with? Richard Pearse, first man to fly? Clement Ader, first man to fly? 😡

Adrian

Quite right. I’d be interested to see the proof that the XP86 went supersonic. Without all flying tail surfaces and with unpowered controls I imagine this would have been some feat of flying to get the aircraft down in one piece (unless it was one big flat piece).

There also seems to be a debate about supersonic in level flight as well. Lots of aircraft could go through the sound barrier in a dive but this was pretty rare in level flight (in production models anyway) until the 60s. I’d say experimental DH108 (in that it was the first to do both take off and land under its own steam and break Mach 1, but in a dive) or X1 in level flight, and production, either F86 (I always though the D model was the first to be capable of going supersonic in anything like control anyway) or MiG 17 or F100 – but which went supersonic in level flight first??

In Britain I’d have thought the first aircraft to go supersonic in level flight was the Fairey Delta 2 or English Electric P1? But stand to be corrected. And production, must be the ‘Frightening’ (again, in level flight).