In one of my “other” lives I indulge in a little bit of amateur dramatics and operatics. When doing one play (Shakespeare’s “Richard II” as it happened) about ten years ago I discovered that one of my fellow thesbians was an ex-Royal Navy air traffic controller. He had been with them in the 1950s and he said that the Attackers had a dreadful safety record. At one point he said they were losing a couple a week.

What did it for tailwheel jets was the fact that the jet efflux had the nasty habit of melting the tarmac!

What strikes me about British jet design of the 40s and early 50s was how conservative it all was. The aeroplane manufacturers seemed to want to progress in tiny incremental steps rather than take bold steps forward. The airframe design of many early British jets were less efficient than some of the more advanced piston engined designs.
On the other hand, the Americans and the Germans seemed to grasp much better the whole new world of aerodynamic possibilities offered by the new technology.

The requirement to dab the brakes on the 262 was probably more to do with the positioning of the tailplane rather than the fact that it was jet powered. I think that airflow over the tailplne was partially blanked by the wing making the elevator ineffective. Dabbing the brakes brought the tail up out of the turbulent airflow coming off the wings.

Propellor powered designs suffer less from this “blanking” effect as the propwash makes up to some extent for the disrupted airflow coming off the wings.

Or am I talking rubbish?

I don’t think many people who are interested in Bomber Command and it’s campaigns in WW2 ever “forget” the sheer devastation they were able to cause. WW2 was probably the only absolutely “total” war in that the participants applied hardly any restrictions to their activities (there were some exceptions). Area bombing of civilian targets by the RAF would have been virtually unthinkable in 1939, although the British fully expected the Luftwaffe to carry out such raids on Britain – presumably because of their behaviour in the Spanish Civil War. However, as soon as the limiitations of finding targets by night became obvious, the RAF fully embraced the notion of hitting city centres as a valid strategic objective.

I would highly recommend Max Hastings’ book “Bomber Command” for the background behind the political decisions to give the RAF the go-ahead to start striking what had been originally “off limit” targets.

Interesting pics. I took some Video 8 footage of that Canberra shortly before it was broken up. Some day I’ll have the technology to post video on my computer.

As an aside – the old Apprentice Hangar (which is just out of shot to the left of the Canberra in the above pictures) was demolished only last week.

Although of dubious architectural heritage, it was historic in that it was used as the UK operational base for Richard Noble and his Thrust SSC team in the mid 1990s.

I was wondering about the picture of the Nimrod and the Comet. Is the Nimrod saying to the Comet – “Can I have my tail fin back now?”

My favourite aviation/space related book of all time is “The Write Stuff” by Tom Wolfe. A gem of modern English literature. It should be on all “A” Level English courses – and much more enjoyable than “Pride and Prejudice” (especially for blokes).

I also read all of Richard Bach’s books (although a long time ago now) which feature lovely descriptive passages of flying and they serve to remind me whu I fell in love with aircraft in the first place.

I also enjoyed Eric Brown’s book on test flying the captured Luftwaffe exotica at Farnborough. Exciting stuff.

I have that B-25 documentary on video. The film was made in 1978 and shown on TV in 1982. I think it was called “B-25s Do Fly in IMC”.

The DC-4 had Pratt & Whitney radials and, as I said above, the exhaust flames were pretty obvious.

During WW2 most aircraft used at night had their exhaust stacks covered in shrouds or blocked by plates. The purpose was two fold, to prevent the crew from being blinded by the glare and to reduce the visibility of the exhausts to enemy night fighers. I don’t think the exhaust glow could be blanked out completely as many ex-German night fighter pilots will testify.

Der – the song was titled “Theme from Harry’s Game” and there are no English words in it. It is entirely in (very badly enunciated) Gaelic.

I’ve never been a great fan of having music accompanying air displays. That was something that came into vogue in the 1980s.

However, I do associate music with some aviation related matters – such as all those great Ron Goodwin scores (“633 Squadron”, “Battle of Britain”, “Where Eagles Dare” etc). I also have a tenuous mental link with Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” and a spotting trip from Dublin to the 1979 RAF Valley Open Day for some reason. Maybe a trader was playing it on his stand or something. I can’t remember now but in my mind, red and white Hawks and a strong saxophone solo are somehow connected.