I know it’s way past time to reply to this thread, but I just got here. The issue of why the Supermarine Type 179 6 engined RR Buzzard powered aircraft was abandoned in 1932 should be discernible to anyone who remembers the history of the UK and the World economy at that time. The World was in the midst of a fearsome depression, and the UK had been suffering through the post Great War period due to the vast cost of the War, and the ridiculous idea that Germany would pay everyone for it. John Maynard Keynes eventually left the Paris Peace Conference having told the British and the French and everyone else that there was no money for the Reparations they wanted, and that the world economy was in a very fragile state. No one likes a kill-joy at a party which is what, having read Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919, the Peace Conference was, a chance for various governments and their ministers to have a ripping time in Paris, and to fantasize about what they were going to do with all that imaginary Reparations money. It is a very sad and rather depressing reflection on the wilful blindness of political and civil service figures.

I gather the Buzzard, despite giving rise to the R engine of the Supermarine S6 and S6B, was a very unsuccessful engine. Whether it was that it never found the right aircraft to employ it (which seems odd if it were reliable) or simply that it was in need of further development as was the case when a junior version became the Merlin, and the full 27 litre engine was re-worked to emerge 10 years later as the Griffon is beyond our ability to know at this late stage.

I was reading that the Luftwaffe regularly made reconnaissance flights over Britain during the war which were usually individual aircraft flying very high to try and avoid interception. If this is the case, could anyone point me in the right direction to find out a bit more (any books or articles etc)?
Many Thanks
OG

The trouble for the Luftwaffe was that their missions were not sufficiently regular. After the BOB they essentially lost interest and concentrated, naturally enough, on Russia and other areas of their advance and/or retreat. R.V.Jones in Most Secret War comments that the British were able to spoof the German tracking of V-1 damage by reporting through “tame” agents the times of shorter explosions connected to farther bombing damage in West of North West London. This caused them to suspect that most of their V-1’s were running a bit long, and therefore to shorten the timing of the fuel shut off, causing the V-1’s to fall in South Eastern London and Kent. There had been virtually no Photo reconnaissance done after 1941, but there had been “Tip and Run” Raids as well as the Baedekker Raids which left lots of choice for previously un-photographed craters.
I did have a book showing some Luftwaffe aerial recce photos, but it has disappeared, nor do I recall its name.