Two of my favourite acts of the year

Clacton Airshow

Farnborough Airshow

Fingers crossed we’ll see more of the latter in 09

Didn’t Corsairs have serious issues? Was it the Brewster built aircraft? And didn’t they end up in a training role or were they shipped to the FAA?

I’m at work so doing this from memory!

I believe all Brewster built F3As were used in non-operational roles, probably due to the same manufacturing issues that kept the Buccaneer/Bermuda dive bomber from doing anything other than towing targets.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0198c.shtml

For those who havent read this account of Hans Guido Mutke’s flight on 9th April 1945 flying an Me 262 it may throw a spanner in this debate. Further referencing can be found on the net including information released by the Americans on this and other debriefed pilots of the German jet. It pre dates the bell aircraft and one has to ask if the Americans knew this why did they continue telling the world that they got a first?

I don’t follow – this account says “In light of this information, it seems very unlikely that Hans Mutke broke the sound barrier in 1945 while flying the Me 262. If he had, he would not have lived to tell the tale. Mutke probably reached speeds closer to Mach 0.85. It seems probable that he experienced the sudden changes in flight characteristics that often occur in transonic flight and believed he had flown faster than was actually possible.”

Also bear in mind that the linked report says that Mutke did not come forward with his claim until the characteristics of transonic flight were well known – and claims even he did not think he had broken the sound barrier until later. So how could ‘the Americans’ have factored this dubious claim in even if they had wanted to? In any case the Bell and Miles designs were not really influenced by German tech as they pre-dated most of that information being available to the Allies.

I think claims that Mutke exceeded Mach 1 as he claimed are generally regarded as extremely unlikely, and in any case are impossible to prove. The Me262 did not have good transonic characteristics and probably did not contribute much to postwar supersonic research as the Messerschmitt P.1101 and Focke-Wulf Ta183 designs were already far more advanced and the Allies had this to draw upon after the war.

There are a number of factors in the cancellation, any one of which would have been enough and taken together mean it would have been a much greater surprise if the M.52 hadn’t been cancelled in 1946.

1. Problems with the engine – the proposed afterburning turbofan was apparently experiencing difficulties with power output and reliability and there were serious doubts that it could be made to work
2. Frank Whittle – Whittle was overworked, stressed and ill by this stage. He resigned from Power Jets just before the cancellation – coincidence? Proceeding with the project without Whittle’s input seems unthinkable
3. Aerodynamics – it was certainly realised afterwards, though it is open to debate whether it was known at the time, that the annular intake was not very efficient
4. Power-drag curve – according to Barrie Hygate it apparently was known that to exceed the speed of sound, the M.52 would have been required to dive very steeply from high altitude, unlike the Bell which could exceed Mach 1 in level flight
5. ‘Putting the cart before the horse’ – the end of the war and the apparent ability to use ‘easy’ and ‘cheap’ pilotless models to test the concepts involved must have looked attractive to the Air Ministry
6. Money 1 – Miles had spent a lot of time and money (IIRC around £60,000) between 1942 and 1946, and while they had undoubtedly made a great deal of progress, a flying prototype was still some time and approximately £250,000 away
7. Money 2 – Britain was bankrupt and Atlee had been elected on the promise of the welfare state. An expensive, impractical and potentially dangerous research aircraft probably seemed like something of a luxury at this stage

Vickers (I hadn’t heard about the Barnes Wallis connection but this makes sense given the company that took on the work) took on the pilotless aircraft project, based on a scaled down M.52, after which it became clear that this was actually a much more expensive and complex proposition than had previously been considered. The simple rocket engine would not fire at altitude, or blew up when it did so, so had to be redesigned and improved. The guidance and telemetering systems also took more work and became more complex than had been anticipated. By then it was too late to turn the clock back.

Ironically, when a successful launch was finally made, over a year after the first attempted launch, it proved Miles’ thin wing and all-moving tail to be right on the money. The model reached around Mach 1.4 and was last seen heading for the sunset at a rate of knots. By then of course the Bell X-1 had flown and a lot more was known about the problems of supersonic flight.

Equally ironically, now Britain finally had a proven system of pilotless, high speed model aircraft, it too was cancelled. Who knows how many layouts could have been tried using this scheme? For me, this is the real tragedy of the M.52 story – that a successful system of supersonic research was cancelled just after it had been proven to work.

Those who say it cannot be done
Need to get out of the way of those who are doing it

-Confucius

Not the Konigsberg – this Skua, L2963, was shot down in the June 12/13 1940 raid on the Scharnhorst in Trondheimfjord. It was flown by Lieutenant Cecil Filmer and Petty Officer Anthony McKee of 803 Naval Air Squadron, and was ditched by Filmer after pursuit by fighters. When his TAG was hit, he put the aircraft down rather than risk losing another crew member in a hopeless fight. (Filmer’s earlier TAG had been killed during a battle with He111s over Alesund). The Skua was recovered by the Germans and is believed to have been scrapped. The restored/recreated cockpit section at the Norsk Luftfartmuseum in Bodo bears the ‘nose art’ of L2963 but it is made up of parts from a number of different airframes.

The raid was a complete disaster, with more than half the aircraft involved being lost and a number of crews killed. Only one bomb hit the Scharnhorst, and that failed to explode.

The earlier raid against the cruiser Konigsberg in Bergen harbour was, by contrast, a complete success. A number of direct hits were scored and the ship sank after approximately two hours. Only one aircraft failed to return.

I think the most reasonable choice would have been to develop a small daylight fighter as addition to the heavy two-seat Phantoms, something like a supersonic Hunter (as competition to the rather primitive but successful Mirage). The Brits had engines and resources to do it, exportability was definitely given.

We had our own Mirage – the Fairey Delta 2. If only there had been some official interest in it beyond pure research.

Putting the Spey into the Phantom was – from the industrial point of view – a reasonable idea, besides the fact that the Spey Phantom was better in most regards.

Weren’t the Spey engined Phantoms known as the most powerful, most expensive, slowest and least capable of the whole family? Enlighten me if I’m mistaken, this isn’t really my area.

Overlord is currently out on DVD with some useful extras like a commentary by the director and interviews with some of those involved in the productions. The lengths they went to to blend contemporary and modern footage was very laudable, including sourcing 1940s lenses for the cameras. They also tried hard to get the best quality contemporary footage, so rather than nick from newsreels, went back to source wherever possible.

There’s some great footage (modern) of PA474 and (contemporary) of Douglas Bostons heading out on a low level mission.

It’s an interesting and unconventional take on the war film (the ending was so sudden and unexpected it had me shouting ‘what?!!’ at the screen and replaying the last few minutes to make sure I hadn’t missed something) but so much better than more modern ‘sexed up’ versions.