@Propstrike – It’s still not the right place.
@Planemike; ‘Censorship’………who said anything about censorship??????? Threads on websites like this attract all sorts and plenty of silly comments. Mostly, it doesn’t matter a toss. However, actual incidents involving real people, alive, injured or dead are not the ideal material for uninformed comments or speculation. The AAIB reports are there by the thousand for anyone to see. Clearly, I wasn’t speculating on how well the reports were written, but on how they were read and understood. At least we are now reminded how to spell ‘Gipsy’. That’s really important. :sleeping:
@Newforest;- Glad you are interested. They are all there to read, going back to the Ark. Get stuck in.
…….and no, this still isn’t the place to start picking-apart AAIB reports.
;- For those who don’t know – the AAIB’s brief is simply to establish the facts. Inevitably, when discussed outside of that framework, this inevitably gets translated into a discussion about blame, which is a different matter and why, out of context it is singularly unedifying. Will that distinction be made is the average open internet forum? Of course not.

An astounding fact, which also implies that fighter pilots, were also probably not trained on inverted spin recovery.
I don’t see how they could have been!

I can’t think of a two seater capable of inverted, until the two seat Spit, of which there were very few, so perhaps this was never done.

It means that in combat, in later machines, it must have been possible to get into a whole lot of inverted trouble.

You seem to be making a lot of presumptions…… Why do you presume that the engine needs to be running to get into an inverted spin..? It doesn’t, – which is why aerobatic gliders can spin inverted. I’m sure there were many RAF two-seater training a/c that were spun inverted, – intentionally or not…!
You are then presuming that the pilots in combat were unfamiliar with the flight dynamics of inverted flight. Plainly, they were not. Neither is it even necessary to be inverted to enter an inverted spin. In some machines a botched recovery from an erect spin can translate directly into an inverted spin. This is quite normal behaviour. Any pilot flying an aerobatic machine will have been trained/briefed on what to expect, thus, given an awareness that he/she is in an inverted spin, – and there is sufficient height, recovery is routine.

I’m not an expert on the Merlin, but in common with just about every military a/c of the time – and probably most civil a/c, it was dry-sumped. (It’d be catastrophic to have an installation with inverted fuel and not oil.). Normally with engines of that period with heavy airscrews, at aerobatic speeds, the airscrew would windmill, and, although the engine isn’t producing power, all of the ancillaries are still being (Mechanically.) driven, thus it is normally being lubricated. Were this not the case, the handbook would note this and the a/c would be appropriately placarded. They aren’t, so they were.

Were the Spitfires wheels, tyres and brakes unique….? Surely not… Not exactly a ‘Spitfire Factory’ then, more of a ‘man-cave’ – well sort of…
I think that the controversial ‘Druine Theory’ of the evolution of the Spitfire is frankly riscible, when most ‘experts’ agree that ‘le Spitfires’ wing was a straight crib of the Emeraudes. I mean, tis obvious, innit….

Having just watched it again, not sure they’re Proctors, do they not have fixed undercarriage?

Clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny1XpmOhbac

Thought they were 108s(are Nords 108s?), I’m probably talking tosh (again)

I think we were speaking

Baz

Aaah, I think we were talking at slightly crossed purposes. I haven’t watched the film in many years, but there was, I think a scene with a ‘crashed German a/c’ with a decomposed body in it in some bushes/trees…… That was the ‘German’ a/c that I was thinking of. Hmmm…or was that in ‘Mosquito Squadron’…? Much of the same flying footage I think. Anyway, that was a Proctor for sure. S. I always presumed the aerial shots of ‘German’ a/c were ‘108 Taifun’s.

For me, all the real Percivals were wooden and designed before EWP left his company. After Huntings take-over, it really became a different firm. That’s not a criticism, it was just the end of an era where composite wooden aircraft had spanned the gap between largely fabric-covered aircraft through to largely metal, aluminium-skinned a/c. Whilst EWP was clearly the driving force in the company during those halcyon days – and would have formulated the concepts, all the evidence points to Bage as the key designer. Indeed, the whole approach to, as well as the look of the designs, starts to change as soon as he arrives.
Even today, if one looks at, for example the Vega, one can see an aircraft that easily out-performs all the equivalent spam-cans still prevalent in GA. True, being wooden, it needs to be hangared, but the Vega was a 170mph full four-seater machine on only 200hp, with a range and load-carrying ability that can still embarrass many modern a/c. This was wholly down to Bage, who took the Gull Six, – only a three-seater, – stretched the design to carry four (In comfort.), and yet cleaned the airframe-up so that it was only very slightly slower. It’s also worth remembering that the wings could also be folded. All that performance and without retracts.
What a pity the RAF opted for the Rapides over the Q6 – or we might have still had a number of Q6’s flying. All power to Rex for getting the last of her breed flying again…! 🙂

DH donks were all normally painted black before the war. During the war many were green. After the war, they went back to black for a time. Then, and into HS days, they became grey. I’ve always presumed the odd colours used on some display donks were just for display only.

If you want an accurate ‘DH’ blue (The pale shade used in their literature.), you can do little better than get hold of an old original DH enamel badge, as these never fade.

Not so. If I would in my current project, it would not be allowed to fly at all.

Technically, that may be so, but I was referring, rather, to the conceptual state of the a/c. It’s a given that some mods cannot be reversed for airworthiness reasons.

Now that’s a very nice sight to see….! 🙂