Spitfire video

[mandrill]

Those were the engines that spun on their axis, right?

There was a cool show on how those radial engines affected the way pilots
flew planes. Apparently they threw the centre of gravity off and planes with
these engines had to be flown a special way.

Many of the pilots who couldn't figure this out ended up crashing.

The propeller generates a force to the (IIRC) opposite side of the direction the prop spins. If you increase throttle or if you rev throttle to take off, you need to apply hard rudder to counteract this force.

 

[benstt]

My personal favourite aircraft of WW2 is the Grumman Hellcat. I loved those big ugly planes with their honking radial engines! It took balls of steel to fly from the carriers, especially in the days before satellite navigation and GPS. If you ditched in the Pacific your chances of survival weren't great.

I'm with you. The Grumman carrier-based aircraft were built damn tough, out of necessity.

They continued the tradition into the jet age. Remember the Prowler that cut through a ski lift line in Italy? Something like 400feet off the ground, 540mph, clipped two cables (one was two inches in diameter and the other 3/4 inches) with its wing and kept on going.

(Not a good moment, 19 people killed.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalese_cable-car_disaster

There's a link to a newspaper story in there:

"On the front edge of the right wing, which had evidently sliced through the cables, were two gashes several feet apart, each about six inches deep. Electronic equipment under the wing was sheared off. And serious damage was evident on the tail, caused, investigators believe, when the heavier of the two cables snapped across the tail like a whip."

 

[benstt]

Funny thing, I play Microsoft air combat and I get way more kills in a spit than I do in a mustang even though the 'stang is supposed to be "the" plane of WWII. I know I know a sim isn't anything like real life but the flight characteristics of both planes is supposed to be accurate.......

One of the fun planes I used to fly in sims was the Mosquito. Strap on some plywood and a couple of large engines, and go in for some lovely high speed bombing runs.


An interesting Mosquito story -- they used one to fly Neils Bohr out of Sweden in 1943. They put a makeshift cabin in the bomb bay, complete with oxygen supply, but had a miscue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr

"He was evacuated from Stockholm in 1943 in an unarmed De Havilland Mosquito bomber (carried in an improvised cabin in the bomb bay) sent by the RAF. The flight almost ended in tragedy as Bohr did not don his oxygen equipment as instructed, and passed out. He would have died had not the pilot, surmising from Bohr's lack of response to intercom communication that he had lost consciousness, descended to a lower altitude for the remainder of the flight. Bohr's comment was that he had slept like a baby for the entire flight."

 

[Aardvark154]

One of the fun planes I used to fly in sims was the Mosquito. Strap on some plywood and a couple of large engines, and go in for some lovely high speed bombing runs.


An interesting Mosquito story -- they used one to fly Neils Bohr out of Sweden in 1943. They put a makeshift cabin in the bomb bay, complete with oxygen supply, but had a miscue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr

"He was evacuated from Stockholm in 1943 in an unarmed De Havilland Mosquito bomber (carried in an improvised cabin in the bomb bay) sent by the RAF. The flight almost ended in tragedy as Bohr did not don his oxygen equipment as instructed, and passed out. He would have died had not the pilot, surmising from Bohr's lack of response to intercom communication that he had lost consciousness, descended to a lower altitude for the remainder of the flight. Bohr's comment was that he had slept like a baby for the entire flight."

Read the book mentioned in post #17

 

[benstt]

Read the book mentioned in post #17

I'll look into it, thanks. I first came across the Bohr story in Richard Rhodes' 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb'. Good book.

 

[Aardvark154]

I'll look into it, thanks. I first came across the Bohr story in Richard Rhodes' 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb'. Good book.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfrid Freeman is extremely underappreciated. It was he, perhaps more than any other single figure who was responsible for the RAF being in the position together with the U.S.A. and forces from the Commonwealth to be able to achieve air supremacy in Europe.