Are there any known drawings of the Fairey Battle fuselage/ wings in existence?
I have had contact with people who have drawings of some of the minor assemblies.

We have hit a brick wall with our Center Section, especially where the wings attach.

Waynne
Sth Aust Aviation Museum

Waynne, you should ask Dave Gibbins at AgustaWestland. They have a few bits of Fairey stuff in their archive.

I agree – if there is one thing I have learned is that the ‘scientific community’ (recent coinage, but there always was something like this) cross-fertilise ideas and don’t really think in terms of national borders – it is narrow-minded nationalists and governments who do that, the latter sometimes preventing the free flow of ideas that would be the utopian ideal of actual research scientists and engineers.

So, something I do know a little about – aerofoils. Who ‘invented’ ‘laminar flow’ sections? An American with an agenda would say ‘NACA’ almost as a knee jerk reaction, as they were the first body to come up with a method to generate some theoretical sections from applied mathematics. This codification of a series had the side effect of putting the NACA name on a lot of aerofoils subsequently used.

However, there were more-or-less identical sections in existence many years previously. In fact, these sections, in symmetrical form as ‘modified RAF sections’, were used for the tail-planes of designs that pre-date the existence of NACA laminar-flow sections even as theoretical ideas. Nobody knew to call them laminar flow at the time (though experiments on delayed boundary layer turbulence on these pre-existing sections were happening around the globe), and they probably weren’t as they were too rough to really harness the effect (as were the wings of the P-51 and P-63). But they were all thin sections, low drag, and had max thickness at 40% of chord or more.

Until the advent of World War Two, US, UK and German scientists were all reading each others technical reports. Researchers in two of those three countries were permitted by their governments to continue to share after 1939. In fact, a lot of these scientists were from other countries, but the best research facilities were in these countries, and these attracted the best brains. So, who (which country) invented ‘laminar flow’? No-one, and everyone. In this light, is it not a little odd – puerile even – to say that scientists working in one particular place were somehow not coming up with any innovations/ideas/inventions, or that those in another were somehow coming up with all of them?

PS – First successful airborne radar interception – July 1940

Really interesting Jerry! I can’t help thinking they – whoever they are – should have talked to us first. Unless they have the missing Westland drawings, they would benefit from the work we have done. What is the source of the rumour? Stu, are you able to come in for comment here?

Why do you reckon that, Jerry?

Without feeding the troll, would people please restrict themselves to topics they know something about? And I don’t mean parroting Wikipedia.

Ah, yes – that is the work of Ray Wood, who is now no sadly no longer with us. It is on display, along with a nose section, at Norwich Museum. Both sections are replicas, and the shape of them is a little off though it was the absolute best that could have been done with the information and resources available at the time. I wonder whether Ray was both the ‘quiet project’ and the owner of the two chests of components. Can anyone help?

Robert W, thank you very much for the clarification as to Lindy’s Lad’s identity. I am glad that it is someone we are already talking to!

All I need now is to hear from Vega ECM – Oh, and Graham, can you get in touch on a couple of things – one of which is Hurricane related?

A zombie thread, but I have just found it..

Peter, we have never found that quiet project. Who was it? It would be daft to be duplicating effort. Vega, you have a PM. Graham, please come aboard!

Matt