John B (Sc)

I couldn't the relevant solicitor's letter to open. Since I don't like or trust lawyers anyway as a general rule, especially ones who give unsolictited opinions, maybe my computer has read my mind ! This in any event nothing new. If you are viewed in law as a 'man of substance' (or person in these PC times), then your signature has legal weight. You can be taken to task if what you havwe signed for is not correct. All chartered engineers are aware of that. I believe all licenced aircraft mantainers would also be viewed in the same way. It IS a very responsible job. I entirely agrree with sooty, you should always refuse to sign for what you haven't done or directly witnessd. Once when pushed, I asked the person involved to give me a signed note to the effect that he required my compliance and signature. That stopped it fast. Guess why. What is more of a worry, IMO, is the recent Italian court decision to jail two pilots who ditched an aircraft after a double engine failure, caused by a technical problem. It was argued they could possibly have glided the aircraft to a succesful onshore landing. That seems to me to second guess the pilots, from the comfort and safety of a courtroom. That is unreasonable. The pilots made what they felt was the best judgment at the time with the information they were faced with. A very dangerous precedent. Now lawyers feel they may question our judgement, not just our truthfulness and accuracy. But then, when a coroner (!) can make statements about the airworthiness from design stage of a successful aircraft and not be shouted down, what idiocy will lawyers not indulge in ?

Sorry Danny - PBI = "Poor Bloody Infantry" . Not sure when or where it originated, though I think it is British Forces. Certainly in use in WW2, posssibly WW1. Has fallen out of use?

Quite agree. Being a hero or running a squadron or other outfit isn't about popularity - it's about getting a job done. Not that either of these guys would have viewed themselves as heroes. They were necessary. Even if Guy Gibson was a nice guy underneath, that gets put aside for the duration. And folk who tear them down mostly have no idea what is required - also hindsight makes criticism dead easy. Of course few pilots have a low opinion of themselves - it rather goes with the territory. Needs a certain arrogance to assume you can survive where others fail. Every pilot in any sphere who has done it for a while will have lost friends - and there is subtle feeling they were the slightly less competent or just less lucky. " It'll never happen to me" Yep, it will always be the other guy (or girl). Danny - I didn't realise DB was that bad. Very very silly view. Without the maintainers the 'drivers, airframe' are just PBI. And probably not very good PBI. We did have one ex RAF chap, who thought that cleaning aircraft and putting them away was beneath him. That didn't last long. A wet sponge where it would do some good sorted that idea quickly.

Yes, of course Guy Gibson was a very young man, in a very difficult and dangerous job. So being a nice guy and popular wouldn't help. You'll just kill more of your own folk. To be the boss of an outfit planning to do that sort of near suicidal caper, you must have needed to be a bit of a b*****d. Even if it was an act, at first. In fact popularity is no part of being the leader of anything worthwile - a fact our ruddy politicians would do well to understand. I wonder to what extent Gibson's uncompromising style was forced development in the circumstances, and how much was his natural behaviour? Nature or nurture? He was very young to have such responsibility. That has to weigh on you. Especially when life expectancy is so low. In contrast the evidence suggests that Douglas Bader was a rather arrogant character from an early age who screwed up playing silly showing off games at low level - and never really learned his lesson. Very brave, very tough, very biased and thoroughly unpleasant to those who didn't please him. A friend who met him said he could be impressively charming - or bloody minded at the drop of a hat. No doubt useful in war on balance, though still an expensive liability in many ways, I think.

You mean they don't mean our wild light & dark blue ? In gliding I did meet one of the Goodhart brothers, who were FAA pilots, and later senior officers. One or both of them was involved in the mirror landing sight system and angled deck invention. A superb soaring pilot too. Charming and quietly impressive.

Hilariously silly

I'm intrigued this is only now coming to the attention of the press. It has been commented about in aviation circles for a long time, though seldom confirmed. The FAA, being a smaller tighter outift, was always very professional about the use of its aircraft. It's also the case that many RAF pilots viewed the FAA as their toughest adversaries. Inter-service rivalry has its uses ! Of course the FAA has tended to be less publicity conscious than its light blue cousin, which might be why the story hasn't been much heard of. And the FAA had some very inventive characters at that time. Many naval aviation advances came from them.

Thanks Graham. Wasn't aware the sections were that far off. Or that full tests had been done. Mind you, given how valuable all the German reserach and ideas were, for many years after WW2, I suppose that shouldn't surprise me. Intrigued at your Spitfire comment - I'd have thought the Tempest section was better for very high speed. Cheers, John B

I think they were mostly retreads from elsewhere. So probably mostly green -dark earth given the timing. Some may have been in FAA colours - hence grey green also feasible. Remember, there was not much point camouflaging them. One launch then ditch. So why camouflage? In theory a pale grey overall woudl have helped, to make it harder for the enemy aircraft to see them... (No, I am not suggesting they did that - neither time nor benefit) John B Ah - (edit). Sorry Perry, yours went up while I was writing ! Overlapped.

Good grief. Outstanding imagination. I think two would be plenty - four looks like way overkill ! Though given the weight of a Hawkeye, plus two cut down Harrier fuselages, two might be tight for VTOL. OK for STOL. Perhapa if you assume the use of more composites in the Hawkeye structures.....

I think you are right Mike, if my recollection of a discussion long ago with some Victor maintenace guys is right. Unfortunately the safe life design philosophy (Which if I recall was the HP standard by then) does make it hard to eake extre life out with a few mods ! The RAF wrung just about all they could out of the Victor. The Iraq war. part 1, really used up their flying hours.

True, not that Chuck Yeager would have known anything about it, or wanted to. Very much just a driver, airframe, unlike some of the excellent enginering test pilots that the USA had - and still has. There was some disappointingly underhand stuff done by US Administrations after WW2. On several scientific & engineering matters they said we'd all share data, got all of ours, then claimed National Security wouldn't let them release info back. Grrrr. And they were our allies ! Of course it turns out now that their security was realy just as leaky as ours. Daft. Ah - the FD2. Beautiful machine. Of course there is an aeroplane which we gave away as well. Friends at Dassault could not understand why we let them outrun us with the Mirage III series, which has strong similarities to some aspects of the FD2. They were allowed close access to that machine. But of course, manned fighters were going out. Thanks, Duncan Sandys. Widely held to have been a pompous prat in wartime and a prat in the Fifties too. I think the FD2 looked best in its late form , with the ogival wing form, testing for Concorde.

I did the yellow surround using decal strip cut from solid sheet. Needs to be a fairly pale yellow, almost beige colour I think. I used to hand paint those until I got fed up of the wavery linmes - though a wooden cocktail stick was great for gently smoothing away excess squiggles. Masking would / will be a real chore? Good luck if you try that.

Agree. Beautiful machine. I'd rather see a Victor preserved in flying condition, though I understand the attraction of the tin triangle. A shame that the MoS (or whoever it was by then) couldn't see that Sir Frederick had darn good resaons not to want to be forced into amalgamation.

Oh that is nostalgic. Super.

Boxes with bungeys in aeroplanes. Shudder ! Shame on them. A classic way to get loose objects floating around. It does look like a box for a hand held radio. Missed that first time I looked through those pictures. And that Pup in Australia, Point Cook. The panel looks lovely, but must be a much later fitting at restoration time. John B

The sooner the better.... Rather too many of these flag of convenience machines are rather dubiously maintained too. Gives us all a bad name.

I think it is fairly clear that the P-86 was the first turbojet powered aeroplane which we can prove broke the sound barrier. Certainly the first aircraft capable of taking off and landing on its own which exceeded the speed of sound, provably, is the P-86. I think it is 'officially recorded' as such. There is an argument that the P-86 may have done this before Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1 flight. The telemetry from the X-1 suggests going past Mach1 happened much later in the test flight sequence than is sometimes claimed. The P-86 however didn't have verifiable telemetry data at all at that time. Another snag was since no-one had any clear picture beforehand, the sounds effects and aircraft buffet effects were presumed to be evidence which with hindsight they wre not. There was much rivalry between groups and individuals. George Welch flew the P-86. Several articles and books on the early Muroc days implied that there was much more doubt than some histories suggest. Brave and very wild characters it seems. Pity the UK effectively chickened out on the Miles 52 and DH108. It is quite possible that German aircraft exceeded the speed of sound towards the end of WW2, though probably not jets. Quite unprovable of course. They had other things on their minds. Not relevant to your question since it was rocket propelled, but the Me163 could well have gone supersonic I think. Adequate structure and power. All the stories about Spitfires, Mustangs, Thunderbolts going supersonic are now understood to be hooey,I believe. Not possible - not with the wings & tail still on anyway. Pitot error made pilots travelling at very high speeds think they'd gone supersonic. Compression wave buffet and control buffet etc. must have been very frightening - would make anyone think they'd goien in to a barrier zone ! (I'll stick to the low end of the Mach scale thanks)

Yes, once I got over my surprise (!) and realised the best thing to do was leave well alone, accept the out of trim state and land as soon as possible to find out WIHIH, it went OK. Lots of red faces. And we'd spent ages suppposedly sorting it out ! ( Because the aircraft had an all flying tail, the stick feedback loads were very low so I felt it was safer not to tweak further in flight. New pilots had had the occasional PIO surprise. ) I do like the oxygen oleo recharge idea - definitely red faces time that too. Given the grease around oleos, that would need lots of care, or plan to duck quickly ! Sounds like you have had some fun. There are usually a few good giggles afterwards if no-one is hurt and nothing too seriously dinged. I guess - "If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined" - is a fairly standard view in aviation most places. BOTH ailerons disconnected. Wow. Not fun. "Umm - Now we shall explore the secondary effects of rudder, Bloggs!" I once saw a Libelle flying when one aileron disconnected in flight - also a lady pilot. (l'Hotellier style mis-connection IIRC). As she came around the circuit the wings were doing impressive flailing oscillations in opposition to the free aileron. You could hear the whooshing noises right acroos the airfield. Most impressive. The fuselage was bouncing up and down in the middle. As she flared, the vibrations stopped. A fine landing and a swift whisky very soon afterward. As you say there are old but no........

Bob. Thanks. Yes, this check , as with most of these things, specifies a height band. Friends who fly these beasts - not necessarily this particular variant - have commented that their habit has been to add a bit more altitude for mother. This is not the first time pilots have had a wee surprise. It is, in a way, why the military used to expect the relevant maintainers to fly with them on post maintenance test flights where possible. Concentrates the mind. Boeing does indeed build them tough. Not quite the Grumman Ironworks of happy memory but close. Most aircraft will go well beyond the limit speeds without break-up, if you are lucky in the conditions, as I once found out. I sympathise with the drivers. Seems to me this is one of these things were you take a deep breath, then switch to manual, see what happens. On the qui vive. Before anyone thinks I'm just being rude about maintainers, it's dead easy to get things wrong during maintenenace, despite the best of intentions. I still vividly remember a flight following rerigging of a trim system in a sailplane with an all flying tail. We had had a long series of discussions about the correct way to reconnect everything - with hindsight it was rather more complex an arrangement than was strictly necessary. After all present agreed, including some very senior professional maintenance types, I flew a check flight. Very carefully in the event, because when just off the ground it became obvious we'd got it backwards.

And a coroner knows how much about aircraft design, construction and maintenance ? The fact that the RAF has allowed a temporary mod to remain in place from over 20 years ago has nothing to do with the design which he critricised. It has a lot to do with appalling standards of management and command. Mind you, they are only trying to emulate the astonishing competence of the MoD and our thundering government - politicians and civil (hah) servants alike.

Apparently this particular check has caused exciting (understatement) moments before, because until you switch everything off, you can't be sure what the true trim state is. Some folk who been involved as post maintenance pilots on 737s have said they do this check as high as feasible. I'm rather surprised that if this was a formal post maintenance test flight there were superfluous bodies aboard. The CAA used to frown on that. Bet they wish they hadn't been there ! Change of shreddies time. Slightly over vertical left roll. whoops. Not normal airline habit, that.......

I knew it had a high approach speed , but 200 knots, wow. That must really test your judgment, not to mention those rather small wheels and tyres ! Hence the fairly large drag chute. I imagine it was quite a test of nerve being an instructor on those beasts. Stuck down the back, peering around the front seater, white knuckle stuff, especially in poor weather. Boy it must have been great to get a ride in one though ! John

I can't see any good reason to mix nuclear and conventional weapons in an attack on the USSR. I'd have thought the V force would have been briefed to use laydown style attacks on USSR targets, spreading the effect as widely as possible and making up for navigational inaccuracy. I don't think there was any pretence that we'd be hitting military targets specifically. Carrying conventional weapons would surely just reduce the effectiveness and make recovery to any notionally neutral point outside the USSR's borders even harder. Fairly crazy stuff all round. Estimating damage effects and radiation damage and exclusion areas was very interesting - some of the material and information used from trials suggested there were a lot of unknowns. Much guesswork. The information on that weapons website also shows how crude some of the safety features were. I think I'm glad I was young and naive then. Believed the BS fed to us by our 'older and betters'. Hmmm. Would have been horible, all round.

Sounds like Barney is the man to tell you that properly ! The earliest C-1 seats had downward ejection - only on v early 104s. Snag with the C-2 was not enough upwards vertical velocity, although it was rated down to 120 knots, level flight. (Edit - another source suggests later versions were good down to 80 knots at 50 feet. Closing on, but still not zero/zero.) Apparently it was also apt to tumble after exit. Not ideal. A 104 with engine failure developed v high descent rate rapidly, so a failure when slowing to circiuit speed requred rapid exit. That small wing was a real drawback then. Not much of a glider ! This cost a lot of Luftwaffe pilots their lives. If you hung on in to try a restart, could be outside parameters quickly. If you were at a tactical v low altitude already - typical in European ops and weather also much more marginal. Less time to play with. The RCAF had some Starfighters equiped for recconaisance with the Vinten pod, inevitably a low level game in Europe. A fine plane to see but quite a handful to operate well I believe. Only the best...... I had a lot of respect for the Starfighter fliers.