RE: Pictures to discuss

The Canadian Swordfish is still airworthy and yes it’s the same as was at the Abbotsford show last year.She’s based at Muirkirk,Ontario,but is not seen all that much because she is not flown on a regular basis,only for special occasions or other short periods.

RE: UFO (Unidentified Flashing Object)

Thanks guys,either the light refraction or the Venus explaination would make sense,although I’m inclined to think it’s the light refraction as there was another one not too far away doing exactly the same thing.
Thanks again…:)

RE: B-29 losses in ww2?

Hi Cromig,
The main problem the Japanese had with intercepting the Superforts was the altitude the B29’s were operating at,usually well in excess of 20,000ft.There were relatively few fighters in the Japanese arsenal that could fight at these altitudes,and some would fail to reach them altogether.It’s also quite a well known fact that Japanese fighters were quite lightly armed,so it was a question of finding fighters which could both reach the bombers and also carry enough punch to knock them down when they got amongst them.This meant that your average Oscar or Zero was out of the running for these missions.
Even those fighters such as the Mitsubishi J2M Raiden or the Kawasaki Ki84 Frank,which did have the right mixture of performance and punch, were still operating pretty close to thier cielings,which meant that they could be ‘bounced’ relatively easily by the fighter escort. There were also massive problems within the Japanese aviation industry,and one aircraft would not perform like another.Whereas one Raiden might be able to reach the bombers,another might shake and rattle it’s way to 20,000ft and then refuse to go any further,the main reason for problems like this being the poor quality of the engines,somthing which affected most Japanese types toward wars end.
The Japanese also used a number of heavy fighters and night fighters against the American raids.One of the most successful B29 killers was the Nakajima Ki45 Toryu “Nick”.This was originally designed as a twin-engined daylight heavy fighter,but it adapted well to the night fighter role aswell.Some were fitted with an array of upward firing canon in the fuselage,almost identical to the Schrage Musik installation on Luftwaffe night-fighters.There was no haven for the B29’s in the darkness over Japan.
Although the Superforts are remembered today as the bombers which raised hell over Japan in the war’s closing months,the earlier operations in 1944 were not always a great success,particularly those launched from China.The B29 was an immature aircraft at the time with a number of teething troubles,not least engine fires and failures.There were times when losses through mechanical failure outweighed those in combat.If you were one of these early B29 crewmen,you weren’t expected to survive your tour,it was as simple that,and very few did.This would all have been easier to take if the raids that were being mounted were doing serious damage,but unfortunately they weren’t doing that either.The bombers would drop thier loads from extremely high altitudes on these early missions,and bombing accuracy was accordingly abysmal.What wasn’t appreciated at the time was that the bombers flying at such extreme altitudes were flying up in the jetstream,facing winds of incredible speeds which the bombsights couldn’t compensate for,hence the woeful accuracy.It also put extra strain on the already dubious reliability of the B29, which contributed to the poor reliability these early 29’s experienced.All this makes it very hard to come up with accurate figures for the number of bombers the Japanese brought down,and how many were lost,atleast in part,to mechanical failures.
Hope this is of some interest and help 🙂

RE: Pic: Crocodile

Well this one’s got me!My best guess is that it’s something from the Russian division of Junkers,this guess being based on the corrugated construction and the Russian lettering.Although it was originally set up to licence build German Junkers designs,the Russian division started designing thier own rather obscure types,some of which were only produced in ones and twos.Perhaps it’s one of these?I’ve had a sift through Bill Gunston’s Encyclopedia of Russian Aircraft and can’t find any diagrams or pics which match this machine,so if it is a Russian Junkers,it must’ve been a pretty obscure one,even by thier standards.

RE: what does Cricket mean ?

Hi Geedee,
I’ve no idea what it directly translates into,but I think Cricket was originally an Indian word,which would explain why it doesn’t make any sense in English.

RE: F-84F Thunderstreak

Hi Phantom,
Sorry for the delay in posting the info you wanted.It’s actually been harder getting hold of some of the armament info than I thought.
Although the Thunderstreak had six hardpoints,in practice,only four were usually available.The entire Thunderjet family had an extremely small internal fuel capacity,so underwing drop tanks had to be carried on the inboard pylons for almost all flights,and certainly operational ones.These were either 375 USgal/1429Litre (the ones with the tailfins) or the smaller 191.5 USgal/727Litre tanks.
I’ve actually been having problems assertaining how many underwing hardpoints the Thunderstreak had.I haven’t been able to find any specific info on this,some sources saying there were only two outboard pylons,but I’ve seen pictures showing four.As far as I can tell,the 2,000lb tactical nukes would have been carried on the pylons just outboard of the landing gear legs,rather than the ones near the wing tips.
The Thunderstreak also had the 1,000lb Mk84 HE free fall bomb and 0.5Inch HVAR rockets in it’s arsenal,and these could be carried on any of the outboard pylons.I’ve seen a picture with all six pylons crammed full of HVAR’s-pretty awesome (don’t forget,this meant taking the external tanks off,which couldn’t really be done for operations.)
I’ve just found a website devoted to the F84 family,so I hope this will clear things up a bit.
http://www.f84thunderjet.com

I’m also including a picture of an F84 with it’s canopy open to try and illustrate the point I made in my previous post about the canopy arms.
Hope all of this is some help 🙂

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RE: Part of Concorde tail ‘fell off’

Having seen a brief bit of the news footage,it appears that an upper part of the rudder assembly came away,rather than the lower.Different cause to the problem than the earlier incidents??