The Boost Motors (bar filling) were made at the Aerojet Factory between Locking and Banwell just off Locking Moor Road which is the road that the museum is entered from. Directly on the other side of Locking Moor Road was RAF Locking were most of the Electronics Technicians who worked on Bloodhound did their Trade Training. The missile they have got is the former gate guard from RAFM Hendon.
That is its official name and has been so since the Flight’s formation (Please tell me where it says Battle of Britain on the unit badge (it doesn’t BTW)).
I’ll hold my hands up and say I know diddly squat about jet engine fuel systems, but what I don’t understand is why the large range of engines being included in this proposal? What problems have the Goblin, Ghost, Viper and Derwent had that justifies their inclusion?
Rob
Because the bits that perish (seals, gaskets, diaphragms and glands) are made of the same stuff no matter who designed the engine (in a lot of cases most likely made by the same sub contractor(s)) and have to deal with the same fuels and lubricants.
Well it’s easy to compute the interception of an SR-71 “down to the last second” if you already know the time and route of the of the spyplanes’s arrival (as they did for many SR-71s flying off the Kola Peninsula). Captain Myagkiy can say what he likes about his aircraft and missiles’ capabilities against the SR-71 – but I ask one question: has the captain ever seen, or ever met someone who has seen, a MiG-31 shoot down a Mach 3 target? BTW, plenty of US military pilots may certainly practice a lot of wishful thinking when it comes to the abilities of the F-35 – that doesn’t necessarily mean all of this wishful thinking is true, though.
In the case of the SR-71 v Mig 25 / 31, a Mig 25 successfully got an intercept well within the AA-6’s no escape zone on an SR-71 over the Baltic during the 1980s and was seen to do so by a NATO long range radar located in West Berlin. B-70 was canned because there were cheaper ways and more efficeve ways of doing its mission (ICBM, SLBM, B-52 at low level, Etc.)
To answer the original question, the Type 17 fuze and ZUS 40 would have been removed normally as the ZUS didn’t arm until the bomb hit the ground. The ZUS 40 striker was locked in place by spring loaded arming pin retained by a ball bearing. When the bomb hit the ground the ball bearing was released by the impact which caused the arming pin to be withdrawn and the ZUS was then armed. As for the Type 17, it was an electric fuze as it was armed the same way as most German impact fuzes as the bomb left the aircraft and it was the operation of the electrical part of the fuze on impact that allowed the clock to start. Just got my hands on Danger UXB and was wondering how the ZUS 40 was made safe as well.
Those dreadful special effects in the original Dambusters won an Academy award for best Visual effects, I think that todays best CGI will seem rubbish in ten, twenty years time when it will be possible to recreate any actor from the past and interact with actors on screen without it looking like “Who Killed Roger Rabbit” the only thing will be how they pay the voiceover guys, as for the remake I hope they just re-master it in Colour and get rid of the flying scenes and CGI new ones.
It was nominated for best visual effects but didn’t win. The winner that year was very much aviation related though (The Bridges at Toko-Ri).
I suggest you do a bit more research and read about Klaus Fuchs, and a good few other American, and British spy’s that were working on the bomb at Los Alamos and sending every thing they could about the Manhatten project back to Russia, who did not know what would happen when these Bombs went off? well the Americans did on the 16 July 1945, so you can bet your house that the Soviets did not long after.
Stalin knew about it before Truman did!!!! Plus Truman told Stalin that the US had the weapon on 17 July 1945 while at Potsdam. There is one thing that almost everybody forgets about the employment of the Bomb. Internal US politics!!! Truman as commander in chief had the option of using the bomb to shock the Japanese into surrendering. Failure to use that option with the deaths of thousands of Allied servicemen in the following period until the Japs actually got around to surrendering would have at best killed any chance of Truman being re-elected in 1948 if it didn’t get him impeached first. Did the bomb cause the Jap’s to surrender??? well the fact that the Emperor mentioned it in no uncertain terms in his broadcast to the Japanese people suggests that it was a major influence in the Japs throwing in the towel.
Anybody who thinks that the Atom Bomb didn’t play a major part in Japan surrendering is reading to much revisionist BS. Yes, There was a peace faction within the Jap government, but they couldn’t push the surrender option too hard if they wanted to keep their heads. A sizeable majority of the Army were totally against surrender and those in the army who were for a conditional surrender were looking for conditions that the Allies would never have accepted. The army’s surrender faction were only going to support those terms to the Allies after the first landings on Operation Olympic, where the Japs planned to hit the invasion force with everything they had in as short a period as possible with the hope that the allied losses would open up the chance of an armistice. The Russian entry into the Pacific war also had an effect which complemented the A-bomb in the fact that the Japs were now faced invasion by an enemy who didn’t really give too hoots about losses as long as the objective was taken. By the way, it wasn’t just Truman who decided to use the A-bomb, as the Manhattan project did have UK and Canadian input and both the British and Canadians OK’ed the weapon’s use. As for the Jap army not having a major say in the matter, why was there an attempted coup on the night that the Emperor recorded the message to the Japanese people saying that they were going to met the terms of the Potsdam deceleration when a number of army officers found out that they were going to surrender (which of course is how the whole thing started from 1931 onwards due to the fact that the Government couldn’t control the army and anybody who tried to oppose them risked assassination). As for keeping the Emperor after the Allies walked in, that was using a bit of common sense.
James Garner’s character in the Great Escape had USA flashes and a Eagle Squadron badge on the uniform, thus he was just right for the role (plus he had done the scrounger role in real life when he was in the US Army during the Korean War. In fact they could have had shed loads of Americans in the Great Escape movie as in real life the camp did have a lot of USAAF Officers in it when work started on the three tunnels and a number of Americans were involved in the escape organisation, though they were moved to another compound before the actual escape.
The reason the REME missile is not on the BMPG website is because its a Thunderbird which is not a Bloodhound in any shape of form (it was a totally different missile built by a different company). The Haywood did pay for the restoration and it will be going back to Neatishead in the very near future. The markings are totally authentic for a Mk 2 out of the Factory and were based on photos supplied by the Swiss Bloodhound museum and measurements I took on a trip over there in June of last year as I did the master graphics for it (shown below). All of the Bloodhounds at Chelmsford were sold to the same person. I know who’s got them, but cannot say on here who has them or where they have gone.
The Nazi party discouraged Aryan women from working prewar but as the war took men from the factories, necessity took over from dogma and women did work in all the areas of the economy. As slave labour became available, this did allow the release of some german women. However by 1944 the german aircraft industry was more or less on a par with britain and the U.S. in the employment of women
In the case of 1944 only because RAF and 8th AAF Bomber Commands were too busy bombing French railways and other Overlord related targets for best part of 6 months.
Excellent. We can only hope that the restoration goes well and that one day it will prove possible to connect the LCP and the missile.
Very unlikely as the thing is also stuffed full of interlocks that will not let the Computer run up in ‘operational’ mode which requires power on all the racks in the cabin and all of those racks to be working. To do that the air conditioning plant and a quite powerful 400hz generator is required and we have neither. 3 phase 415 v supply would also be required.
There is indeed a working Argus 700 computer in a Bloodhound Mk 2 Launch Control Post currently which is under restoration, though there a few problems that need solving as regards making the thing work with a more modern hard disc drive than the original one fitted which is very much on its last legs. The role of the computer in the LCP was to basically work out the intercept geometry, the launcher bearing, direction that the dish in the missile had to point, the doppler shift of the target that the missile needed to track and the required trajectory mode it had to fly to intercept the target and the time to launch / time to impact / time to start terminal homing calculations and act as an interface between the system and the operators. It also allowed the system to interface with air defence center systems so that the bosses that were directing the Air battle could mark a target on his scope and that information was instantly show on the missile operator’s display. It also had a simulator function that included the sound effects of missile launch. Will it eventually go on display, yes, but is only likely to be run on special occasions. Will it steer a launcher, unlikely, though the only working Bloodhound Launcher in the world will be in the same place, there are no cables to connect the two and there are a number of other items in the LCP that need to be powered with special voltage supplies that are not available. What does it look like? basically this….
Indeed, Guardian take on it here (full of errors), though they are total correct in that had any of the flew from operational sites in the UK it would have very probably been ‘Game Over’ within the next few minutes to days. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/02/nuclear-missile-launcher-history-now-hayward-gallery-london The important thing here is the missile and launcher have had some very required restoration work done to it, there is now a Mk 2 in the original finish it came out of the Factory in the UK (and its the only one of 2 Mk’s in the world to be in that finish with the correct markings, the other one is in the Swiss BL-64 Museum) and the missile will be going back home after all this.
The Missiles were all brought by the same person according to the seller. From what I’ve heard on grapevine, I suspect that the new owner is looking at building a good missile out of bits of the four. Locking Moor Road would be a good place for one seeing most of the guys that worked on it did their trade training literally just up the road (including myself).
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