ResmorohLion Rock, Hi,
Wikipedia seems to be a copy of the info in Willis & Hollis. Culham didn’t open until 1944 so it’s a fairly late-ish WW2 airfield when almost all of them (at that time) were built with the 3 bog-standard hard runways. One of the Wiki links will give you a WW2 aerial pic before it was cluttered with the Nuke Boffins buildings.
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohJust to bring you up to date on this thread.
Some information at last beginning to trickle in!
The RAAF Lincoln crews apparently carried out the Met Recce flights in their ‘summer uniforms’ (= UK KD?). They were dressed similarly when carrying out the post-explosion debris sampling!!!!! Some a/c were heavily contaminated. Ground crews (dressed only in shorts, socks, and boots!!) attempted to decontaminate the a/c with hoses and brushes. Some of the heavily contaminated airframes were shipped out to deep water and dumped overboard.
After the RAF Shacks took over the purely Met Recce aspects the sampling was done by “Canberras”. Presumably UK Canberras? How were they decontaminated? – and where?
An aerial survey was carried out after one test to find areas of contamination on land. How was this acheived? I was, for a few years, the UK Met Office representative on the UK Home Office Civil Defence Cttee which concerned itself with such matters. We had to rely on persons pointing ‘Tickometers’ at bits of ground to find out if (and how) radioactive it was. But apart from ‘how’, the survey was carried out by a ‘Varsity’! Who’s Varsity?
The picture is beginning to become clearer – but not much!! The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) have responded with 6mm of A4 sheets of paper. There is even an interview (done a few weeks ago!) with one of the Oz meteorologists actually involved. There are also more References (to the Royal Commission Report) than you could shake a stick at tom-cats in a fish market on a Sunday!
Well done BoM. The RCR was done in 1985. A lot more stones have been turned over since then. Some of what is underneath is not, possibly, very palatable and does not reflect very well on the decision-makers of the time and in the place. But they were being driven by the dreaded Politicians – t’was always thus.
When I’ve read ALL the References (I’ll be about 105 yrs old!!) I’ll keep you up-to-date. Old Nick might allow me an e-mail address if I am assiduous in reading the temperatures of The Fiery Furnaces every hour, on the hour!!
Resmoroh
ResmorohChox is absolutely right (see post #33). It’s strange that They don’t have the manpower, time, or money, to save this Comet but They do seem to have time and manpower to have committee meetings to decide the most opportune moment to release the news of impending scrapping in order to frustrate attempts to save it!
Resmoroh
ResmorohTo All Who Have Replied,
Very mni tks for all yr inputs. I had expected to see most of the ‘reasons’. My intention was to try to find out which of “the usual suspects” came top of the list! Tks also for the reading list (my local library will love me!!)
Yrs Aye
Resmoroh
ResmorohWeb Pilot,
Tks for that. I don’t wish to complicate matters, but did not the Hunter have problems when, if it fired all its guns simultaneously, the airflow into the intakes was so disturbed that the engine quit? (compressor stall?). Had several instances of that at Wattisham about the same time. I can tell you I was glad to be posted to El Adem for my last 18 months NS (and not many would care to say that!!!) to get away from the frenetic Fighter scene to a place where most of the aeroplanes had fans on the front (as god had intended!!)
Resmoroh
ResmorohI’m apparently having a bit of computer trouble. I don’t seem to have seen Altsel’s apology on this thread. Have I missed something?
Respectfully,
Resmoroh
ResmorohNow there’s a rebuild project for somebody!!
And – as an irrelevant aside – I’ve just discovered that Rommel stayed in Room 312 at the Palace Hotel in Tobruk. That room was part of my RAF Hiring when I arrived at El Adem/Tobruk, en famille, in the mid-1960’s.
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohIt would seem, therefore, that there are differing legal requirements in different countries with regard to the restoration/rebuild of vintage aircraft – whether or not the ultimate aim is to produce a “static” airframe, or a “ground runner” – and in this context I include the “fast taxi” area (with its recent highlight at Bruntingthorpe).
It would also seem, therefore, that regardless of where, or when, or how, vintage aircraft restorers, carers, enthusiasts, etc, etc, wish to pursue their hobby they have to abide by the Rules & Regulations in The Place and at The Time.
It can’t be done on The Cheap! If you haven’t got the money to do it properly then DON’T DO IT – even if they (and fellow enthusiasts) would very much like to see an X Mk 7b(1) Whatever under max power down some runway!
It may come as something of a shock to the committed enthusiasts, but the Govt (and its Agencies), and the Insurance Companies, are NOT vintage aviation buffs!!
Get it right now, or see the ‘sport’ of flying (or ground running) vintage aircraft in UK extinguished for ever.
Not enough people taking the problems seriously enough. Too many enthusiasts and not enough level-headed thinkers.
Regretfully
Resmoroh
ResmorohForget Webber for the music – not good enough. John Williams is your boy. I’ll bet he could write the musical score and (like whoever wrote the music to the Morse detective series in UK, include the name in Morse characters in the music!) include just a few notes of the Eric Coates!!
However, having said that, the reason why there are so many ‘re-makes’ is that the modern “luvvies” don’t have a clue how to produce a decent film/TV-series. I’ll be surprised if it ever sees the light of day (and if I’m still here to see it).
HT doesn’t H,
Resmoroh
ResmorohIn response to Post #1 on this thread.
As far as I know there is little, or nothing, at the original crash site (although there may be a marker/stone/memorial of some sort).
The airframe was severely stripped and souvenir hunted before the Libyan Govt recovered the remains and took them to a secure (police/army?) compound in Tobruk.
Some hardy souls from RAF El Adem/Tobruk are organising their 3rd nostalgia/reunion visit to the area in 2010. In their internet site advertising the trip is included the phrase ” . . and a visit to Lady Be Good in the compound.”.
So presumably what little remains of it is still there. It is possible (assuming the trip goes ahead) that some member of the party might be able to photograph what remains – but the local Police/Army/Govt “Minder” do tend to get a bit nervous at the sight of cameras!! If anybody wants a contact then PM me.
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohCreaking Door,
Well said that man!!
Resmoroh
ResmorohAppalling!
We all know that air transport could have been found if it was decreed to have been “important”. The fact remains that somebody decreed that this was “not important”. Who actually was this person? What position does (s)he hold? This is NOT a security matter. It does NOT come under the “need to know” criteria. Who dunnit?, and why? If one makes decisions then one has to be publicly accountable. If I’m told (on good authority) that the Standby Herc at Lyneham blew the Floggle-Toggle on No2 as it started up, then fair enough. Over-secrecy breeds distrust.
Rgds
Resmoroh
ResmorohAs junior Met Asst at Wittering when the Valiants were there we used to have to go out to read the instruments past a number of parked Valiants. On a calm night you could hear the fuel dripping out of them into some sort of 40-gall receptors, strategically placed under the major “Drip Points”. I always thought that if fuel was dripping out of an aircraft then it wasn’t dripping directly from the tanks or fuel lines. There must have been a quantity sloshing about in voids in the wings, and other places.
When I queried this fuel leakage I was told that in order to reduce production costs, and to get the Valiant into service PDQ, the fuel lines had plastic sleeves at various points. These sleeves took up the expansion/contraction of the fuel lines from surface to high-level. However, on the surface they attracted grit/dust which – as they moved in and out – scored the sleeves and allowed the subsequent leakage!
And you will have no idea of the problems of (meteorologically) getting a (or some!) Valiant(s) from Wittering to Oz for the Tests. In some respects what we did was fall-about material, but at the same time it was all Top Secret and nobody knew (or dared to admit they knew) what the hell was going on!!
I could write a book!
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohJust to put it in perspective, the amount of money required (at the time) to keep the TSR2 going was chicken-feed (even on a pro-rata basis) from that we are all going to have to stump up in the next 10-20 yrs for the current financial mess(not that I’ll be around!). So the verdict has to be (1) not aeronautical, (2) not financial, but (3) foreign political (and we know where from!) interference.
Watched the videos with some considerable interest. Anything that had Mountbatten’s finger-prints all over it is immediately suspect! The UK Govt (of whatever colour) regarded him with some considerable distaste (he thought he should have been King!!). Just look, at the end of WW2, who they gave him as his Chief-of-Staff – none other than Gen “Boy” Browning (Arnhem failed). As a couple of prima donnas they deserved each other!
Not, strictly speaking, aviation – but certainly political!, and where there is politics (particularly international politics) logic and reasoned argument goes out of the window! And logic and reasoned argument is what a vast amount of this very interesting thread has been based on. False premise!
Who, I ask, is going to write (and publish) the definitve paper on this? Or should some young, unsuspecting, Uni UG (or MA, or PhD candidate) be asked to sort it out for a Dissertation or Thesis?
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohDarnsarf, Hi,
Yes, they did in my day in the mid-50’s. At Wittering the junior Met assistant had to deliver the Local Area Forecast to SHQ, Ops, and ATC. ATC in them days was a greenhouse on top of one of the hangars. I asked, on my first delivery, how one got to ATC. “Up the stairs on the side of the hangar” was the reply. I set off and was presented with a set of vertical ladders up the end of said hangar. I climbed up said ladders and ended up on the roof of the hangar by a method only used by the MPBW engineers. The ATC staff were gob-smacked to see this young, fresh-faced, youth bearing a copy of the Local Area Forecast approaching them from the vertical ladders when they had gone on duty by the wide steps up the side of the hangar!
There has to be a Thread (one in a series of a Thousand) of such incidents for these stories. Most will be apochryfal, but – nonetheless – we’ve all gone through it! Nowadays you’d do 20 years in Dartmoor for even suggesting what went on then. But it actually happened.
Look forward to embarrassments!!
Resmoroh
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