link

Hi,
came across this by accident & remembered this thread.

http://chat.carleton.ca/~jnoakes/ram/cc/cclibstd.html

Cheers
Jerry

history

Hi
quote ‘ the introduction of the larger Merlin would not have been practical’.

Strange ………. :confused:

This given that the main historic UK archive has a letter from Westland’s dated Jan ’41 , to the RAF, stating…

We are now able to, because of the solution to the undercarriage retracaction problems , to offer the install in the whirlwind of twin merlin XX engines, thus overcoming the difficulty of continuing to supply peregrine engines ..

From the horses mouth , as they say, in 1941, and preserved for history..

Maybe the account on the builder site is written in the 90/00’s without the availablity of the old correspondence preserved in the many archives.
Researching this a/c over 30 odd years gives a slightly
different story.

Also a by beaverbrook/dowding letter, that implies westlands had earlier than oct ’40 , offered to fit american engines to the whirlwind.
Presumably the V-1710’s of the P-38, this is one of a few areas I am still researching.
As is the Usn/Usaaf whirlwind.
The whirlwind is no doubt a subject that will take up many more years of my research time …

Slightly O/T , but whilst we are on whirly’s ,
Anyone come across the code letters ‘BT’ , as unit codes, or ‘ Y-BT’ as personal codes.

Cheers
Jerry

As I’ve already stated, the Peregrine was designed specifically for the Whirlwind with a design output of under 1000hp. Rolls-Royce discovered that reverse rotation of the engine itself was a total pain in the a**e. This paid dividends later when designing the Hornet powerplants but..

What has the Whirlwind got to do with a potential shortage of Merlins?

Hi,
Not sure on the peregrine was designed for the whirlwind, thought it was the other way around,Petter designing the P.9 around the smallest available in line engine.
But agree with the :-

What has the Whirlwind got to do with a potential shortage of Merlins?

Cheers
Jerry

cannons

Hi Setter,
You might be able to answer a question for me ,

Could a Oerlikon be fitted in place of a hispano ?
I imagine at least all the mounts would be different, any ideas if this was feasible ? or a no go ?
Did something like shell feeding make it impossible.
It’s just something I was told years ago that some were fitted to a typhoon, but I can’t see any advantage, and never been able to prove / disprove.
Cheers
Jerry

female ferry pilots

Hi,
Often wish there was more written on the female pilots in WW2, Anyone know any decent books ?
The female ferry pilots apparently delivered such a/c as lanc’s / stirlings / whirlwinds, even tiffies … as I understand it the guns were un-armed on all a/c.
I understand [not wishing to do go too much o/t] that the russian had front line female pilots.
Cheers
Jerry

Four or five years ago I collected some Lancaster URLs. One of these was for a German sub-aqua club (in Thuringia) had a link to the crash site of (they said) JA 973 “JO-O” of 463 Squadron, which crashed into a lake in the vicinity of Merseburg in January 1944 (I expect someone else here can verify this). They implied there may be another Lancaster in the same lake. The site now comes up as “404 datei nicht gefunden” – it was http://www.tthdf.de/flugzeug.html at the time. If anyone knows whether this group still has its page I’d be interested to know what it is now. Googling pulls up the same URL and the same 404s.

I seem to recall a French group pulling large chunks of Lancaster out of a lake in France too.

Rob / Kansan

http://www.tthdf.de/index2.html

under

tauchbergungen

the fun party looks interesting !!