Jump to content

72modeler

Recommended Posts

Yowzah! Found this one during my weekly trolling for Hurricane photos- not a view you see very often these days, but absolutely luvverly. In Mk IIb Hurribomber configuration. A nice detail photo for finishing those Arma IIb kits you have stashed away. See the link to her history. In my opinion, I think converting her to a two-seater is blasphemous, but I understand selling rides is a good way to underwrite the tremendous expense of flying her.

Mike

 

This one's for @tonyot and @Troy Smith

 

airfighters.com/photo/147275/M/Privat

 

https://flyaspitfire.com/hurricane-be505

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Mike,....  I`m with you re the 2 seat conversion,.....  I think that it is a shame that it had to be altered just for money....... I suppose you can at least say it allows people to experience it,.... but there is no way I would ever be able to afford it! 

Edited by tonyot
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, tonyot said:

Thanks Mike,....  I`m with you re the 2 seat conversion,.....  I think that it is a shame that it had to be altered just for money....... I suppose you can t least it allows people to experience it,.... but there is no way I would ever be able to afford it! 

WHy is it a shame? it is totally reversible and enables many people to fly in a Hurricane who would never, ever be able to do so otherwise, including veterans

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hardly a fair comparison, actions being carried out for national need as opposed to merely feeding human vanity.  I can see it both ways: that aircraft had a part, a bit part true but still genuine, in history.  There was then considerable effort and emotion put into restoring it, and using it to celebrate another part of history.  (And provide pleasure on the way.)  It has now gone to be bodged for commercial gain.  That's kind of a shame.  On the other hand, doing this does allow these machines to be seen more than otherwise would be possible, there are other examples around in (closer to) original state, and in the end they are only Things.  Their only value is what people put into them - and I can see that there is room for more than one view of that.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Work In Progress and @Graham Boak,

 

Like both of you, I can understand the rationale behind converting the XII into a two-seat airplane. WIP- in my opinion, what was done to this Hurricane is not the same as a TP/TF-51D, Spitfire TR9, TP-40N, Sea Fury T20, or Hunter T7/8, as they were all purpose-built as two seaters for training or familiarization at the factory, not a dedicated single-seat  variant with all the armor plate, radio, fuel tank, etc. taken out to put a rudimentary jump seat or even a cockpit with dual controls in behind the pilot. I'm not a fan of the P-40E/N's, P-51B/C's, P-51D's, F6F;s, and F4U's that have had a second seat fitted behind the pilot, but  I certainly understand the reasoning behind the modification, and if I had the kind of  money it takes to restore and fly one of these vintage fighters, I guess I could pretty  much do whatever I wanted and paint it however I wanted.  The Collings Foundation P-51C is used for paying passengers as well as providing the necessary hours for a pilot wanting to get certified for the Mustang, so it's not quite in the same category- plus there were numerous two-seat P-51B conversions made on war-weary airplanes for use as hacks and taking ground crew up, 4th FG razorback Mustangs come to mind, so it's "legit." Just my personal  feeling regarding restored WW2 fighters. Wonder what Sir Sydney thought of those two-seat Persian Hurricanes? On a P-51D or P-40E/N, unless you notice the absence of the armored back plate and headrest, you often cannot tell they have been converted into a two-seat configuration.

Mike

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, 72modeler said:

In my opinion, I think converting her to a two-seater is blasphemous,

The Soviets made two seat conversions during the war. 

hurr2-5.jpg

 

and

https://massimotessitori.altervista.org/sovietwarplanes/pages/lendlease/hurricane/hurricane2seat/plator/2seat in service/2seathurricane.htm

 

this one was a profile in the PSL book tied in with the 1/24th Airfix kit,  and somewhere there is a better copy I hope, 

Hurrcane%202seater_white5.jpg

 

 

 

there are others detailed in the link.

 

including

brit.jpg

 

This Hurricane is LB640, which was being operated as a target-tug with the P-39-equipped 346th Fighter Squadron (FS), 350th Fighter Group (FG) of  USAAF in Sardinia in early 1944. 
It was converted into a two-seater as a liaison plane by the unit's crew. 
Two further Hurricanes were converted to two-seaters, flying with the 345th and 347th FSs, and operated for more than a year. 

 

 

And, if I had the cash, I'd go for a flight in the two seater tomorrow.... 

 

  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, 72modeler said:

a TP/TF-51D, Spitfire TR9, TP-40N, Sea Fury T20, or Hunter T7/8, as they were all purpose-built as two seaters for training or familiarization at the factory

No they weren't, apart from the Sea Furies which is why I didn't mention Sea Furies in my list.

 

All the Spitfires and several of the two-seat Hunters were originally built and sold to their first customers as single-seat airframes, and later converted into two seaters after re-purchase by the factory. Many of the factory TP-40N were converted from single seat airframes and most if not all of the TF-51D were converted by Temco from P-51D airframes, from design work done by North American. The Iranian Air Force Hurricane two-seaters were post-war factory conversions from surplus Hurricane IIc airframes.

Edited by Work In Progress
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, 72modeler said:

Wonder what Sir Sydney thought of those two-seat Persian Hurricanes

Dunno, but nobody made him do it. He's the one who oversaw the contract: his employees sold them, built them and took the money.

Edited by Work In Progress
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

bodged

This is an unfortunate choice of word IMO. No airworthy historical component was damaged in order to convert, and nothing removed was historic, being merely the wooden doghouse components and a few fittings which were all completely new in the 2005 restoration done by the same company, Hawker Restorations, which did the recent work. As I said earlier this is a 100% reversible mod enabling any future owner to convert it back over a winter of easy work. It is a MUCH lighter-touch change to the airframe than any two-seat Spitfire or Hunter.

Edited by Work In Progress
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

On the other hand, doing this does allow these machines to be seen more than otherwise would be possible

^^

If that reversible conversion helps pay the mounting bills of keeping 80 year old aircraft running with CAA approvals, I'd say a win. 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Work In Progress said:

WHy is it a shame? it is totally reversible and enables many people to fly in a Hurricane who would never, ever be able to do so otherwise, including veterans

Just my opinion,... obviously not yours,..... take it or leave it....... like a bottom,.... we all have one!  I was simply answering Mike when he directed a post towards me! 

Edited by tonyot
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Work In Progress said:

This is an unfortunate choice of word IMO. No airworthy historical component was damaged in order to convert, and nothing removed was historic, 

I think you misunderstand: I was entirely aware and sympathetic to the attitude of this conversion.   I chose the word carefully to represent one extreme of the range of views on the subject.  I suspect someone holding this kind of view would not consider it an unfortunate choice at all.

 

You might be interested in knowing that I encountered a very similar situation this weekend in the latest copy of British Archaeology.  It  discusses the new film The Dig, about the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo.  An archeological advisor at the film mentions the differences between the film and the history, and ends with the comment "... it is OK to change stuff if the route back to the original is clear."  Personally I would agree, with the proviso that history seems to demonstrate that this link is all too often lost.  Simple myths become embedded in public memory where more complex history is ignored.

 

PS There is of course the even more "extreme" position that the actual historical value of the aircraft ended when it was dug up, and even the restoration of it to flying condition was a destruction of a historically valuable artifact.  If you think this an unlikely attitude, this is precisely what I was told by a well-known historian at the time regarding the Halifax wreck in the RAF Museum.  In my opinion, this is a tragic waste:  the original people who created it were still alive and available for consultation on a restoration  As happened with the slightly later restoration of the (first) Canadian example, where even some original Halifax cushions surfaced and were donated. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, I took you literally, but now understand your point of view.

I think the bigger picture is an interesting debate with respectable arguments on both sides, especially in the cases of airframes whose recreation has for legal reasons required the excavation of archaeological scraps mined from 70 years of jungle decay or deep holes in the salt-soaked sand.

 

My understanding in the case of BE505 though is that it's never had to be dug up, having always been largely intact and not crashed. It's not a Russian steppes example but went from CCF delivery to military use in Canada, then straight into private Canadian collector hands before eventually coming to the UK as an extensively weathered but comfortably upper-tier restoration project.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, so a legitimate piece of Canadian aviation history has been removed from its context and inappropriately restored?  Same basic positions, I feel.

 

My real disappointment at this change is that I thought the representation of it as a fighter-bomber illustrated an important part of the history of the aircraft type and the Service.   Something which was totally ignored in the previous historic aircraft scene and is now lost.  Now that is a shame.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, alt-92 said:

If that reversible conversion helps pay the mounting bills of keeping 80 year old aircraft running with CAA approvals, I'd say a win

One of the factors which I think people under-estimate is the economics of keeping an aircraft like this going in what is now largely a post air-display world. Once upon a time it was possible to keep an aeroplane like this going from display work, even to earn a living at it. That is vastly harder now and we aren;t going back to the glory days of the '80s and '90s.

 

There have been successive large reductions in UK flying display volume, starting with the large scale reductions in flying from UK RAF basis in the 1990s and 2000s, and then the withdrawal of the USAF-occupied bases from public display activity post 9/11.  Post Shoreham, the economics of privately-displays have been further badly affected by insurance costs, and then COVID has been a further blow. In the last 25 years the availability of film and TV work has also been affected by the rapidly reducing cost of CGI.  And then we have a missing year, probably two years, from COVID.

 

If you set aside the BBMF and the work they commission from the private sector to maintain their aircraft, then really the sort of business that the two-seat fighters have been able to drum up is really the only income that most of the warbird operators and support industry have had in the last year. The number of people who have the combination of financial wealth, willingness to shovel it in, and the appropriate skills to run these things purely out of their own pockets as weekend toys is extremely small in the UK. If we want to see them in the skies at all, rather than exported or permanently parked in museums, we have to accept that they need to bring at least part of their costs back in.

 

 

Edited by Work In Progress
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

the representation of it as a fighter-bomber illustrated an important part of the history of the aircraft type and the Service

Yet was never authentic to how that actual airframe served in its military ownership, having never seen a theatre of war, let alone fired a gun in anger. It's hard to see anything it ever did in Canada as historically significant.

Complex issues indeed, there is no answer which will suit every interest.

Edited by Work In Progress
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed, but they could have converted it to a 2-seater whilst retaining this particular aspect.  Which is why it as a shame - not an outrage, nor the end of the world as we know it.  If I owned a warbird, I'd paint it as I liked too.  Getting a warbird truly representing the individual aircraft's history is the peak of the pastime, and cannot be attained in every case. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...