Yes, they were attached to the remains of the spar, but that would be of little use except for curios after all this time.

Bruce

I agree, but some airworthy Spitfires have been “resored” from less!
Sure, there is a ready made industry able to process any identity these days, and a Mosquito would be starting from scratch, but the Spitfire does set a precedence!

I’ve got its nose leg and a number of other bits (were they the engine frames you passed on to me David?)

One part is about to be delivered to Duxford for the T11 nearing completion there.

Bruce

Yes, they were the ones.

This Vamp has been well recycled. 😀

got this fragment of the p/s dv window frame and the wooden bit (where does it fit?), plus the ggs amplifiers on their crate from the nose section 😉

I saw these parts at Newark at the weekend. Were you the seller, or did you buy them?

…. oh yes, and to the point of this thread: I had the engine support framework from this Vampire and passed them onto another project about 2 years ago.

There’s too many myths about the Vampire / Venom construction and history, especially in regard to simply using the front ends of Mosquitos and Hornets.

I would have to see good tangible evidence regarding the Gloster connection to put too much faith in it being a ‘Gloster’ airframe design, the twin boom layout was naturally suited to the low powered single jet engine, as SAAB also found to their benefit when they adapted the piston engined J21 fighter to the jet powered J21R, various other companies also used twin booms on lower powered jet aircraft.

Hi Pagen01,

You are absolutely correct stating that: “There are too many myths about the Vampire / Venom construction and history, especially in regard to simply using the front ends of Mosquitos and Hornets”. How many times have I heard that a Night fighter Vampire was simply: “the nose was cut off a Mosi and grafted onto a Vampire!” etc.

Also, I wouldn’t read anything into a “Gloster connection” for the origins of the Vampire. A twin boom pusher layout concept is a perfectly natural solution for a single engined aircraft that requires short intake and exhausts. The fact that Gloster may have rejected a twin boom layout at an early concept level would have been perfectly normal in a design process, if there were too many concerns attached to it based on their experiences to date.

This is “business as normal” in design. You have a target specification. You then come up with a number of layouts to achieve this specification based on: performance, range, manouverability, cost, ease of maintenance, ease of manufacture, etc. Different layouts will meet the specification to variing levels of success.

de Havilland were very well suited to create their Goblin engine and Vampire together in the same company. So quickly did the Goblin become a viable engine, that the Gloster Meteor first flew with this de Havilland engine, instead of the Rolls Royce/Power Jets Welland that was intended for it.

In the pictures I’ve seen of T.7s (inc G-BWMF) the two sections of the rudder operate together with the same amount of deflection, using a straight edge of paper as a guide the leading and trailing edges seem to be perfectly in line to me.

The pic in the 2nd post seems to show both sections linked by a torque tube, as does the attached diagram which comes from the Meteorflights’ ‘Meteor in detail’ webpage here, http://www.meteorflight.com/A55D74/meteor.nsf/pages/meteor_design

You may be right in that the top half can be trimmed or ‘set up’ differently from the bottom half.
Without seeing the pictures you mean, I wonder with the rudder deflected that the movement of the bottom trim tab could cause it to give the impression that the two sections of the trailing edges aren’t lined up?

Meteor T.7 tail by jamtey71, on Flickr
Both sections slightly deflected to port.

The upper and lower parts of the rudder are connected together with a torque tube. They should line up together. What you are looking at in this photo above the lower portion of the rudder is the tail fairing which is fixed, and fits between the upper and lower rudder parts.

That can be an interesting point of discussion, because the P-38 and the P-61 had the engine nacelles extended to form the tail booms that retained the rudders and tail plane, which given what you’ve said, probably helped those aircraft in that respect, namely the P-38. And like the Hornet, the P-38 used handed engines.

If the engine nacelles caused some areo issues, other than extending them, was there much else that could be done?

And did this buffeting have anything to do with the seeming lack of agility that the Hornet had when it was tested after WWII, or is it simply a deal of it being a twin engined aircraft–after all, the P-38, especially late versions, could out turn and out roll Me-109s and FW-190s, in spite of the P-38 being larger and having a high wing loading. And the Hornet, of course, was about the same size and the same type of long range aircraft.

I think that I’m getting the gist that a lot of this might have to do with the Hornet having unforeseen compressibility issues, and if the P-38 had changes to it’s control surface hinges in addition to power boosting of major controls to battle comprehensibility, maybe answer lies in what could’ve been done to try and control the issue. I’ll try and brush up on the DH engineer’s comments on the aileron tech, and I’ll get back with a summary of his comments, but it seems that what he may’ve said may’ve been issues with compressibility.

Hi ChernKStewfan,

You seem to be drawing lots of comparisons between the Hornet and P38 in your postings. Apart from the fact that they were both twin engined long range escort fighters, the similarities end there.

The P38 used Allison engines, and all of the primary structure was aluminium. Its design was started in 1937, and first introduced in 1941, with over 7000 being made. It seems the P38 experienced a lot of compressibility problems in its protracted development, but had the resources of Lockheed and peacetime to develop it in. The twin boom layout of the P38 is likely to have accentuated its aero problems. The trade off between extending a nacelle to smooth airflow is that your skin area, and skin friction increases.

The Hornet by comparison, first flew in 1944, and entered service in mid 1946.

From what I have read and in discussion with former DH engineers, the Hornet’s design achieved most of what was intended for it. It was developed by a small team, during war time, and only had a projected production run of 1000, in which less that 400 were actually made. It was de Havillands second fighter design (the first being the Vampire) and it shared the same high speed aerofoil with the Vampire too. It is remarkable that its performance was so good, considering most of its primary structure was made in wood from dispersed “furniture factories” with final assembly only taking place at Hatfield, which was well within bombing distance of the Luftwaffe.

The aerodynamics on the Hornet were excellent, and it is only a minor point that one of these DH engineers commented that they could have made it even better given more time and resources. The fact is that when a design has radiators embedded in the leading edge of the wing, the air has to be exhausted somewhere. The best place to do this is on the underside of the wing, as the main spar would prevent you from ducting it further back. The minor down side of this is that the radiator exhaust flap would have the effect of making the airflow slightly turbulent. This was mostly overcome by clever radiator flap shape and extending the engine nacelle. The Hornet achieved its design targets of long range, climb rate, speeds at all heights, and manouvrability.

Which Hornet book is this, please?

Hi John,

I’m not supposed to advertise on this forum, but if you send me a pm I can tell you all about this book.

Hi ChernKStewfan,

Both the Mosquito and the Hornet experienced buffet around the rear of the engine nacelles, especially around the inboard flaps. Both aircraft ended up with a longer rear fairing on each engine nacelle accordingly, to try and reduce this buffet.

Also, it is difficult to compare the aerodynamics of these two aircraft directly as the opposite handed engine on the Hornet, really did change its overall flying characteristics.

Other details like the aileron hinges between jets and prop aircraft may also not be directly comparable, as the airflow over the jet airframe is much cleaner, and less stirred up by a prop wash.

Hi ChernKStewfan,

The Hornet aerodynamic issues were mostly resolved, but as with the other few prop-driven aircraft that were pushing the achievable speeds to the limits a few issues still remained, that could have been resolved given more development time.

The specific aerodynamic issue that was never fully resolved was the partially turbulent airflow between the engine nacelle and fuselage, from the lower lip of the radiator flap and the main wing flap itself. No aircraft design is perfect, and merely the best comprimise to achieve the goals for the type.

If you look at the evolution of the DH twin engined wooden tail-dragger “family” The Hornet had better aerodynamics than the Mosquito, and the Mosquito had better aerodynamincs than the Comet racer, so it can be seen as an improvement/evolution on those particular types.

Comparing the Lockheed Lightning and de Havilland Hornet is an interesting study that could be made. They were both concieved as long range escort fighters, but executed in different ways, using different materials. There are outstanding features on both, but neither is the perfect flying machine.