JDKBig, cool and neat that I’ve seen – Antonov An 225 and Martin Mars. Few aircraft can claim to have effectively done the same job for half the period of the history of heavier than air flight, as the Mars team have.
JDKAbsolutely, Kev.
I think one of the key things to consider is that mental and psychological issues varied from individual to individual, and while external factors were the drivers, the individual’s ability to function, cope or even remain oblivious to risk was almost impossible to predict in detail, in the short term. On the other hand, physical decline due to poor food (e.g. on Malta) disease and illness is generally much more quantifiable with a number of inevitable symptoms which would affect their combat efficiency.
Interesting thread!
JDKIn modern warfare, where women can now be at the sharp end, is this trait likely to be reflected in the fairer sex?
Good question, the answer’s obvious, I suspect, in that it won’t be much different; training and tasking defining a lot of how people cope, irrespective of many other factors like gender.
But why do we always forget all those Russian women fighter and bomber crews of W.W.II? Women in aerial combat is not new – it’s just new to the west.
Regards,
JDKInteresting thought.
Most aircrew were very fit (compared to the rest of the population) throughout the war as they left training.
Malnutrition, illness and disease had a far swifter and more fundamental effect, in places like the Far East and on Malta, on the physical health of people in combat.
The mental strain and wear and the possible psychological effects were enormously variable from individual to individual, of course, but despite claims to the contrary by or for some people, mental decline of various kinds (concentration, acuity, ‘piece of mind’) was inevitable for all eventually.
Another example of all of these factors would be the photos of ‘Screwball’ Berling after his wounding and at other times.
Also worth bearing in mind that most of the Western Allies were able to rotate aircrew out of combat for periods. The Germans famously only got occasional leave, and fought until their end…
Regards,
JDKTo be honest, I just am wary of trying to calculate on data only without a better basis on actual gun behaviour – no offence, of course! It just all is a bit similar to the infamous case of the scientist who ‘proved’ prior to Brunel’s Box Tunnel that ‘humans will suffocate in railway tunnels above 20mph’. I wonder what Tony (or another air-gunnery expert) may have to say?
The whole exercise was really to demonstrate that firing these cannon wouldn’t ‘stop the Lysander dead’ but I must admit that I hadn’t realised until I just looked it up that the Lysander was quite so slow with a maximum speed of only 212mph.
Um, really, the Lysander had a ‘remarkably high’ top speed at introduction, similar to that of a medium bomber and 2/3 of the top speed of the front line fighters of the day (Hurricane, Spitfire) – not bad for a big army co-op type carrying two men and a fair amount of gear. More critically it had a remarkable speed range, far better than its contemporary the also remarkable but much slower (and lighter) Storch.
Obviously I have a bias, but it really is a unique and remarkable aircraft.
Regards,
JDKI can’t argue that it’s a remarkable aircraft but I was a little surprised that the top-speed wasn’t higher.
A little unfair to compare it to the Storch (or the Storch to it) but it is the comparison that is most often made it seems; isn’t its real contemporary the Hs 126 (which is equally ‘slow’ with similar power ;))?
Yes, a better ‘peer’ is indeed the Hs 126, which was also discovered to be vulnerable in the role when the shooting started. The Storch was found to be better at the job of army co op – artillery spotting in the main, than the 126, in the same way that the Auster was.
However I still can’t see that 200+ mph in a 1936 army co-op design is ‘slow’. The issue for the designers was achieving a reasonably high speed for transit flights – i.e. the lowest requirement priority as against slow speeds for working and what we now call STOL performance for operating out of smaller, rougher fields than everything else was operating out of at the time.
The RAF and Westlands may have over egged the speed range and performance of the type in contemporary publicity, but given that the world speed record in 1936 was 440mph, half that for an aircraft doing the job previously undertaken by the RE-8 isn’t dusty, I’d suggest. (The Blenheim I, which needed speed clocked 240mph, the Fokker G-1 clocked 295mph. The early Hurricane was one of the first fighters to do 300+ mph. All contemporary 1936 designs.)
Regards,
JDKI dropped Tony an e-mail, and he very quickly replied (thanks, Tony!)
Hi James,
Some data on the Hisso: propellant weight 32.5 grams, average escape velocity of the gas from the muzzle is taken as 1,200 m/s (all high-velocity cartridges). Projectiles weighed c.125 grams and were fired at an average of 870 m/s. So using normal calculations the recoil impulse was (32.5×1200)+(125×870) for each shot. However, in the case of the drum-fed guns the recoil from the gas will have been significantly less than this because they were fitted with a “recoil reducer” or muzzle brake which allowed much of the gas to escape sideways rather than forwards, probably reducing the effect of the gas by about a third (the belt-fed guns had this removed because the recoil was needed to drive the belt feed).The perception of lost speed is usually greater than the reality: if you briefly take your foot off the accelerator of a car which has been travelling quickly in low gear the deceleration will feel quite sharp, yet the speedo reading will hardly drop at all. That’s probably where the “stopped in mid air” stories came from.
Tony
JDKInteresting discussion!
Propeller is interesting in that the main usage is maritime and aviation, although not exclusively, as Slipstream’s said. However, most aircraft propellers should be called airscrews (a word with no maritime connection) a propeller technically only being used on pusher engines, airscrews being fitted to tractor types. It’s alleged that the change from the correct ‘airscrew’ to ‘propeller’ was officially made after an order for airscrews got a bunch of aircrew instead. Unlikely, but it’s a good story.
I’d draw a distinction between maritime terms in use on maritime aircraft as against maritime terms used on landplanes. In most cases the use of nautical terms in marine aircraft is driven by their environment – and isn’t a ‘new’ use.
Punkah louvre is of courser derived from the Raj’s human operated fan for Sahibs – the Punkah operated by a Punkah Wallah. While I agree with WL745 it probably came to aviation via nautical use, it was originally from the Indian (Hindi) term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punkah
JDKIf the project has stalled, wouldn’t it be a great idea to finish the build for display in one of the UK’s major aviation museums (and providing funding as well of course). Pity that such a nice project is gathering dust in a corner of a hangar.
It’s actually a ‘sister’ replica to the recreation/restoration by Skysport of the essentially identical Westland Wallace II fuselage now in the RAF Museum.
http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/collections/aircraft/westland-wallace-ii.cfm
JDKHmmm.
First, thanks for sharing the pics!
My opinion, based on viewing aircraft in museums in over 15 countries on three continents (at last count) is that large areas of the RAF Museum’s Bomber Command Hall and Battle of Britain Hall are too dark to see the exhibits clearly by the naked eye.
This is quantified by the fact that of the photographs I’ve taken using the same camera, only the RAF Museum shots from these areas are too dark to reproduce.
I’m well aware of artefact protection criteria, having done a bit myself, and given parts of the Defiant’s canopy glazing had curled off, lighting protection wasn’t working. I’d be interested in what Phantex is advancing as a reason specifically.
Moggy’s comments fit under the famous “You are the thousandth person I’ve told today there’s no demand for it” of logical absurdity. Museums do well to act on the perennial response to their content. Get it on the agenda and address it, don’t just ignore or deny (current approach). I’m also aware of people who’ve never been on this forum commenting (unprompted) about the appalling lighting in areas. I could be lying of course. But I’ve got better stories to tell.
I returned to the RAF Museum on a world trip in 2008. Of the dozen or so museums I saw or revisited in Europe and the UK prior to the RAFM, it was the shabbiest, poorest lit, untidiest (with junk all over the place) of the lot. The Sunderland and the upper gallery was closed (again) and I could go on.
It is a great collection appallingly mis-managed.
Regards,
JDKW.W.I Survivors by Ray Rimmell would perhaps be your best start.
JDKHi Rob,
As it’s a dissertation, did you get photos of the hatch and Comet model of Yoke Peter in the Science Museum’s Making of Modern Britain exhibition? I’ve got some if you need them.
Cheers
JDKOne point not made so far was the actual damage and numbers of deaths that the first atomic bombs were capable of when dropped on a city were actually lower than some of the larger mass bomber raids on German and Japanese cities*. Due to the shock effect of ‘one bomber with one bomb’ causing the damage it did, this is often misunderstood to mean the destruction was significantly greater than a conventional raid. It wasn’t.
And Tokyo was very heavilly attacked with conventional (firebombing) weapons.
*Numbers of deaths and measurements of destruction in all cases are disputed to some degree.
JDKIt’s currently OK. The thread originated in early January when it was down for a few days.
Warbirdz website down. That would be nothing unusual
Welcome to the forum, B17. Your point?
Regards,
JDKHi CD,
I don’t think we disagree, it’s just looking at the same story’s facts with different expectations – so…
If Poland was truly ‘liberated’ by the Russians then how could they have a grievance?
How indeed? :rolleyes: However, sarcasm aside, it wasn’t an ‘invasion’ in the way it had been in 1939.
Churchill should not have made such rash promises.
Yes, tsk, tsk. Point is, AFAIK, he did.
How can he have failed if he had no choice?
See above, re- rash promises.
I’m not sure of the wording but did the original treaty actually say Britain would ‘guarantee Poland’s sovereignty’ or was that promise made by Churchill later?
That was the treaty, as I understand it:
The German assault was originally scheduled to begin at 04:00 on 26 August [1939]. However, on 25 August the Polish-British Common Defence Pact was signed as an annex to the Franco-Polish Military Alliance. In this accord, Britain committed itself to the defence of Poland, guaranteeing to preserve Polish independence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish-British_Common_Defence_Pact
The Second Polish Republic was a creation in part of the Versailles treaties of 1919, specifically the Little Treaty, so there is also an origin of the works of Britain, France and the USA in that beginning, as well.
Looking through the Wiki page on Poland’s W.W.II history, I can’t find any details of a cessation of a state of war with Russia after 1939’s invasion, but apparently Churchill attempted to bring about talks between the two nations. Soviet propaganda certainly played the ‘liberators’ story as they went through Poland – and they were fighting occupying Germans at that stage, I understand.
And then there’s this interesting paragraph:
The attitude of the Polish population towards Soviet entry was generally hostile, while some cases existed of welcoming them, they soon turned into hatred and despise as Red Army soldiers engaged in plunder, rape, banditry, while NKVD implemented a reign of political terror. In the eyes of Polish society which wasn’t yet under the Soviet occupation in 1939-1941 the Soviets became a new occupiers, and soon protests and demands of their withdrawal have spread among the country. A popular belief was that Western Allies will soon defeat Soviets using atomic weapons and free Poland from the Soviets.[74]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_%281939%E2%80%931945%29#Yalta_and_the_Soviets
At this point, as I’m definitely at the limits of my insight and understanding, I’ll defer to anyone more knowledgeable.
Regards,
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