during the Battle of Britain there must have been a large amount of spent ammunition falling to earth was anybody hurt by this?

Movie “Dark Blue Sky” illustrates that, as spent cartridges fall around the characters.

A…….r is it?

For you & Jayce (NO e-mail) – this is not some modesty thing. If you take snippets of a career, yes, you can make it sound great. Like dancing with the Raratonga Dance Champion of the year, while on the H Bomb trials.

Like having the canopy shatter over Everest when in shorts, shirt & peaked cap.

Like failing to win the freckle faced Ambulance girl while she was cutting my trousers off.

Like landing wheels up in a Shackleton at night.

But this is not what I was paid for – ie to dispose of the enemy. Or, later, to inspire others. With my abysmal gunnery record, & the fact that opportunities were lacking, despite like for like hours flown, I was not likely to be an ace. Add to this that I was not a born leader/commander & you have nothing to be proud of.

And then the point of memory comes in. I was naive – didn’t really appreciate the seriousness of the situation, or what my responsibilities were – so better not said. And, the one thing that I hold against the Service, no one ever took the time to point the way.

And even IF – I do not have the power of recall that is vital to the reader.
I only have to read such as Geoff Wellum to have confirmed the need to be grateful for survival & leave it at that.

Does that make sense??

= Tim

Tim, you don’t need to be an Ace to be a hero.
Or to even shoot, for that matter.

I am a pilot and putter and flutter around the skies in small airplanes, advanced safety procedures, modern navigation, radar, 24 hour radio communications, now even a fancy gadget called an iPad that has the entire world in its memory. I am incredibly spoiled.

A few years ago I had the fortune to fly in, as well as fly for a spell, a B-24 at 5000ft and 200mph. Compared to todays aircraft, it was the equivalent to riding a horse and buggy. The average Joe has absolutely no idea how easy and safe it is to fly these days. Sure it was just the way it is, but there was every possibility pushing that throttle to full power for take of was the last thing you ever did, let alone even getting off the ground.

Accidents was no less an enemy the the one behind a gun.

Salute!

Good movies marred by some horrid air combat scenes.

one instance it appeared
to be complete ‘fiction’. One instance was where a Bf 109 appears to
do a sharp rudder kick, the plane does a u-turn in mid-air and is
suddenly flying the other way destroying the pursuing plane? This
was seen again later in the film with a P-51D doing the same move.

I think it is entirely possible to do these maneuvers, but conditions have to be just right, certainly not the way portrayed.

If the airspeed droops to near stall region one can initiate some amazing snap maneuvers, as seen plenty in aerobatic performances. The Mustangs laminar wing does have a higher stall speed, I read.

The down side is if you are near stall speed you are a sitting duck, and an enemy could also escape.

Main landing gear strut internal.

For its size there is very little it can be used in, and weapons are not one of them, nor an engine.

The way the slot is cut is most telling.

Awesome!

Certainly not early 111.
Spanish, maybe if dual control.

The fact this mounts on a tube greatly narrows down for what it is.

2SAD was at Abbots Ripton adjacent to Alconbury, and was responsible to the 1st Air Division, so the photo seems to fit too.

All the best,
PB

And the date is early enough to put effort to do this.

Still made me think of a reverse of the Manchester -> Lancaster evolution. :diablo: