ScouseI think it’s two MiG 23/27s and two An-2s on the Google Earth image, or (on a second look) maybe an Su-20 rather than a MiG on the left of the image.
The left hand aircaft seems to have the tailplane well separated from the wing, a change in sweepback on the trailing edge wing root and maybe fences where the Sukhoi would have the edge of the inner fixed portion of the wing. Judge for yourselves.
‘Chester’ airport (aka Broughton or Hawarden), BTW, is just on the Welsh side of the border, so the guide book is technically right.
William
Postscript: try this site for pictures taken a decade or so back. No mention of any Sukhois, though.
ScouseBut then why the need to do the same in 1908- almost four years later?
The Wrights weren’t perfect, and as you rightly say their configuration was something of an aeronautical dead end. But in the second half of 1908 their machine and their flying ability was so far ahead of those on this side of the Atlantic as to be almost embarrassing.
The reason why the Wrights went from pioneers to virtual has-beens in barely a decade could be the subject of a book in itself. Obviously Wilbur’s death in 1912 was a factor. So too was the long argument between both Wrights, (later Orville solo), and Glenn Curtis over his claims that Samuel Pierpoint Langley’s 1903 machine was capable of flight.
Ultimately the point is that they showed the way for all that followed, and were at their very peak in 1908.
William
Scouse“Before their experiments had progressed far in 1904 the Wrights saw that a better method of launching the machine was needed. They decided that a derrick with a falling weight would be the simplest and cheapest device”
Fred C. Kelly The Wright Brothers
(The authorised biography)
I wouldn’t disagree at all with this. By the autumn of 1904 the Wrights didn’t have to prove anything to themselves, so they could adopt the catapult as a simple and sure-fire way of getting to take-off speed consistently and quickly in an aircraft that didn’t have any wheels.
William
ScouseI think this point is debatable. Many in the European community at the time pored scorn on the fact that the Wrights were still having to use a gravity catapult to get airborne!
The first point is that the Wrights didn’t have to use a catapult. Theychose to for the sake of conveinece, which is not quite the same thing, I would suggest.
All the 1903 flights were without a catapult. Between May 26 and December 9 1904 they made around 100 flights, with the catapult first used on September 7. By this time they were flying from near their home in Ohio, which did not have the reliable and constant winds of the coastal site used for the first flights.
European experimenters were at first sceptical of the Wright claims, based on the limited information that had crosssed the Atlantic. Wilbur’s first flights in Europe, though, were dramatic proof that at that time the Wrights, by then, were in a class of their own.
To put it in context, Henri Farman had flown the first circuit in Europe in January 1908. finally equalling the Wrights’ achievement of September 20, 1904.
By mid-1908 a European pilot, Louis Delagrange, had managed to keep his plane aloft for 15 minutes. Orville had managed that in September 1905, while Wilbur made a two-hour flight (1hr 54 mins to be accurate) in front of witnesses in France in December 1908.
All the key European experimenters were gracious in admitting that the Wrights had done everything they said, and had frankly humiliated the Europeans.
The Wrights’ all too visible superiority spurred the Euopeans to greater things, though, and as the Wrights faded into the background established a long period of European leadership in matters aeronautical.
At this point I rather think I’ve drifted off-thread!
William
ScouseAs it happens a similar question came up in the local pub quiz last wek, in the shape of “What is the oldest airport in continuous operation in the EU?”
My answer would really be “Please define what you mean by an airport?”, but in the end assumed that what he meant was a civilian airfield with scheduled flights and (possibly) customs facilities.
We took a wild stab at Berlin Templehof, but the answer required was Schiphol. I’m going to ask for my money back next week…
Is there still an airfield at Hunaudieres, near Le Mans and the scene of the Wrights’ European triumph in 1908, BTW?
William
ScouseBut this time it will be done EXACTLY how it was really done.
Ali :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Alan W Cooper’s footnote on page 16 of The Men who Breached the Dams, speaking of the Ministry of Aircraft Production’s Air Attack on the Dams Committee reads as follows:
“The Committee played a helpful role in subsequent events and must not be confused with the fictitious and very hostile committee portrayed in the ‘Dambuster’ film.”
Maybe we are tending to see The Dam Busters – marevellous film though it was – through slightly rose-tinted glasses? I’d be as livid as anyone if the new film was introduced as a work of fiction inspired by the Dams raid, thus allowing the makers to play fast and loose with the original story. Think Enigma…
But my point is that the story of Barnes Wallis, official indifference, Churchill’s over-ruling of Bomber Harris, Guy Gibson and 617 Sqn is strong enough to merit being retold many times. And if this can be done in print, then why not on film?
William
ScouseAli:
The alien archaeologists would probably conclude that we worshipped a god called *******. So many lines of dialogue would be found along the lines of ‘what the *******’s going on’, ‘what in *******’s name’ and so on. Yuk!
Hurrifan:
It’s just a rumour that we eat babies for breakfast served up on stolen hubcaps rather than dinner plates. I pay good money for my hubcaps! 😀
Besides, Bob Hutchinson, Gibson’s wireless operator, was a Scouser. His name was on the war memorial plaque at my old school (Liverpool Institute). Don’t think ED932 ever lost its wheels? :rolleyes:
Everyone:
I’ve double-checked against Alan W Cooper’s book, The Men who breached the Dams. For the sake of accuracy, from Cooper’s detailed appendices, it looks as if the oldest pilot was Robert Barlow at 31 (ED927) and the oldest aircrew member was Robert Patterson, Cyril Anderson’s flight engineer on ED924. He was 36, and the old man of the Dam Busters by a good four years or so.
There are a few aircrew that Cooper doesn’t give a year of birth for, so it’s possible that one or two may have slipped through the net. But the overall picture is of group of men nearly all in their mid-20s.
Cooper’s book, incidentally, illustrates that point that there’s more than one way of telling the Dams Raid story. It doesn’t have the immediacy, atmosphere or pace of Paul Brickhill’s book or Gibson’s own account, but it is packed with hard facts and details.
William
Postscript. Curse these automatically generated asterisks! I meant to write an ‘f’ and then four asterisks, but it wouldn’t let me even do that. I’m sure you all know WTF I mean. :diablo:
ScouseHmmm… Glossy camo, bubble-canopied Merlin-engined Spitfire (Mk XVI, I think), bushes in the background, possible gate guardian.
At one time in its career TD248 ticked all those boxes at Sealand. Anyone got some contemporary photos?
On a note of complete whimsy, the chappie in front of the Spitfire seems to have a toothbrush moustache. German boots…surely not!
William
PS I agree there’s summat about the body language that sets my antennae quivering.
ScouseI think we’ve all got to remember that a new film retelling the story of the Dams raid (I hesitate to call it just a remake of the Dam Busters) will, inevitably, see it from the perspective of 2006 or 2007, 60-plus years later when there are only a handful of survivors.
The original film was made about ten years after the raid, when it was fresh in the memory of those who flew on it and the public at large, who were still in the first flush of victory in Europe.
Try as Peter Jackson or anyone else might, you just can’t recreate that atmosphere and, besides, why should we try to improve on that film?
So it follows that a new film will – has to, even – come at it from a different angle. I hope very much that the different angle is compatible with the historical facts, and I’ll be disappointed if it isn’t. Not half as disappointed, though, as anyone who turns up to see the new film expecting to see the old one simply reshot in colour with more spectacular special effects.
As for casting, I reckon only one flying Lancaster (step forward PA474) will be needed, and computer-generated imagery will do the rest.
The human casting needs to emphasis the youth of all concerned. As far as I recall, not one pilot was over the age of 27, and no other aircrew were over 35.
Gibson was a little man. If Tom Cruise could do a convincing Englishman I’d put him forward for the role were it not for his age. How about Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins) – young in face, diminutive in stature and a long-time collaborator with Peter Jackson? If he’s got the versatility to do it then he’d be my man.
Following the Jackson rep company line, how about Ian McKellen for Wallis?
William
ScouseInteresting combination of postwar roundels on the wings and wartime style roundels complete with yellow outline on the fuselage.
What era would this combination date from?
William
ScouseHurrifan, I reckon JDK has pretty well summed up the military thinking (or lack of it) behind the lack of direction behind the Graf Zeppelin project.
I suspect that if she had been completed and then attempted a break-out into the Atlantic then she’d have been given the Tirpitz treatment, bottled up in a fiord and then disabled/sunk by a combination of midget subs and 617 squadron.
The prospect of the GZ out roaming the Atlantic in 1941/42 (supposing her complement of aircaft was ready) is a rather spinechilling one, though. But again I suspect she would eventually have fallen prey to a determined Royal Navy (and US Navy from 1942) hunt.
William
ScouseI heard that there were a lot of the task force who wanted their carrier to come out to play as we had flogged it to them in the first place. It stayed home. 🙁
Although the Veinticinco de Mayo was indeed the former HMS Venerable, built by Cammell Laird just too late to see WW2 service, it was actually the Dutch who flogged her to the Argentines, not ourselves.
She went to Holland as the Karel Doorman in 1948, and thence to Argentina in 1969 after a refit in Rotterdam. She was eventually boken up in India in 1999.
William
ScouseI take my hat off to any Pilot who has landed a heavy military Glider at night into an unlit field especially after a long and tiring Aerotow (also really difficult at night) !!!
I’ll pass the message on – a friend up here is an Arnhem veteran glider pilot was was taught to fly in the US by Jackie Coogan, Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Kid’ and the Addams’ Uncle Fester.
William
ScouseTwo questions wander into my mind.
First, what was used to provide the engine note for the ‘Stukas’? I understand the RAF’s Stuka was run up and maybe even taxied, but not flown for the film. Was its engine sound dubbed over the ‘Proctukas’ used for the flying sequences?
Secondly, did the version shown on More 4 tonight have a revised sound track? The closing sequences used the William Walton march rather than the Ron Goodwin music.
Walton’s music was nearly all abandoned by the studios and only resurfaced in the 1990s with, as far as I’m aware, only the aerial ballet sequence towards the end being used in the original issue.
William
ScouseOh, all right then, here goes.
One is of me in my hairier days, at Duxford with the late Don Bullock. Surely I don’t need to name the plane! Late 1970s.
The other was last September. When I’m not on this forum, I can be found lurking in a couple of forums (or fora?) relating to BMW motorcycles. I’ve always found there’s a fair bit of crossover between planes and bikes – in my case it goes back to a mate’s Norton Commando at Filton in the early 70s, plus a co-share in a Villiers-engined Berkeley three-wheeler that one day actually made it from Filton to the centre of Bristol before expiring. But that’s another tale.
William
Sign In
