144 replies to this topic

[Mallory Dan]

Railway Station, surely Robin, NOT Train station...Fully agree though with the idea of living near Heathrow or Northolt in the 50s/early 60s.

[Robin Fairservice]

Railway Station, surely Robin, NOT Train station...Fully agree though with the idea of living near Heathrow or Northolt in the 50s/early 60s.

Sorry that I confused you. Out here (British Columbia) passenger trains and their facilities are quite rare! Anyway; quoting from Wikipedia:
"A train station, also referred to as a railway station (in Commonwealth English) or a railroad station (in US English) and often shortened to just station, is a railway facility where trains regularly stop to load or unload passengers and/or freight."

[Odseybod]

Don't wish to reopen old wounds but ... I recorded the programme when it was shown and have only just had a chance to watch it - and I have to say I didn't think it was as bad as some are making out. Yes, it was slightly 'sexed up' in places but I'd blame the editor or director for that, rather than the presenter who I thought came across well as an aviation enthusiast who happens to be in a wheelchair, as opposed to "Aren't I great - a person with disabilities who, wow, can fly." After all, he is restoring a Piper Cub, so can't be all bad, and I thought had proper respect and awe for the aircraft and the crews who flew it. Also enjoyed the contemporary footage, most of which I hadn't seen before, especially that of the Tsetse version with that socking great gun in the nose and the description of operating it. And unlike some, I thought Max Hastings' contribution was interesting, especially suggesting the Mossie was at least as important as the Lancaster, due to its Pathfinder role.

Now I admit I'm don't have the in-depth Mosquito knowledge of some here, so wouldn't have been as outraged as they were by some of the apparent howlers - but I have been to Salisbury Hall half a dozen times over the years, to gaze in wonder at the Prototype and its descendants, and have also been privileged to meet three (PRU) Mosquito 'drivers' while they were still with us, so have a profound admiration for the aircraft, iits crews and their exploits. I thought that in the time it had to play with, the programe did them all justice - if you haven't already seen it but have decided not to bother, on the basis of what you might have read here, can I suggest you change your mind and catch it while you can?

I will now retire to my bunker to await the Incoming ....

[mfd]

if you haven't already seen it but have decided not to bother, on the basis of what you might have read here, can I suggest you change your mind and catch it while you can?

I agree for one

[alansart]

I agree for one

I've just watched it on 4OD. Much as I like the Mosquito, I can't claim to be an expert so have no idea how technically correct it was, but I enjoyed it and it was certainly no waste of my lunchtime. The presenter was an obvious enthusiast who came across well and his disability is probably irrelevant.

It's a bit like some of the recent motor sport documentaries that have been shown on UK TV over the last year or so. Quite well made but having to appeal to viewers who have no knowledge of the subject, so in that sense I thought it was ok.

Edited by alansart, 24 July 2013 - 14:04.

[Mallory Dan]

Slightly O/T, but I've just seen that Bill Gunston's died. I used to love his books when I was younger.

[Doug Nye]

Slightly O/T, but I've just seen that Bill Gunston's died. I used to love his books when I was younger.

Me too. I have many of them. A gentleman I never met but one whose work I greatly respect. RIP.

DCN

[PJGD]

I for one particularly enjoyed his biography of Sir Roy Fedden; a book about a great man by a highly knowledgeable biographer. RIP Bill Gunston.

PJGD

[MCS]

Oh, didn't know he'd passed away. I still have some of his books. A prodigious writer!

[Alan Baker]

Slightly O/T, but I've just seen that Bill Gunston's died. I used to love his books when I was younger.

Sadly Bill (William Tudor) Gunston died on June 1st at the age of 86. I am surprised that there have been no obits in the so called quality papers. My favourite Gunstonism was when he made a reference to Sir Stanley Hooker, "in his autobiography, which I much enjoyed writing".

[Alan Baker]

Sadly Bill (William Tudor) Gunston died on June 1st at the age of 86. I am surprised that there have been no obits in the so called quality papers. My favourite Gunstonism was when he made a reference to Sir Stanley Hooker, "in his autobiography, which I much enjoyed writing".

I stand corrected! Obit in the Telegraph on Tuesday July 23rd.

Edited by Alan Baker, 25 July 2013 - 09:59.

[Nick Savage]

I have to agree - I must have re-read it several times. Roy Fedden must have been impossible to work for but his single-minded dedication to engineering and metallurgy development in particular laid the ground for piston engine development in WW2.

I saw Bill Gunston lecture at the London 'Air Britain' meeting a few years ago. Along with Winkle Brown, his was one of the three best lectures I have attended. His books were fascinating - I have a shelf-full. Goodbye, Bill, you will be sorely missed.
Nick

I for one particularly enjoyed his biography of Sir Roy Fedden; a book about a great man by a highly knowledgeable biographer. RIP Bill Gunston.
PJGD

[Philip Whiteman]

I'd didn't know he'd gone: years ago, when I first worked on Pilot magazine, I got to know Bill quite well and was invited down to his home near Haslemere a couple of times (among other things I remember with pleasure, he was then finishing off a unique bas-relief 'wall art', made up of beautiful, hand-carved aircraft half models, all finished in white and mounted on a sky-blue background). Bill was great company.

I'd admired - and still do admire - his clear, authoritative technical writing, and the initial visit was to prepare a 'Pilot Profile'. This ran in the magazine and I will now with some sadness be revisiting it for an obituary. 86 isn't a bad age, but what a shame his voice is now lost to us.

[Jack-the-Lad]

Presumably this thread is going to replace the Blood Pressure thread?

(Don't mention the war!)

[Cargo]

Like others here, I recorded the show and after seeing comments here, decided to give it a miss. But just before deleting it I gave it a quick look. I watched the first ten minutes (which was a waste of ten minutes of my life) and then fast forwarded through to the end. Just drivel. Pure, made-for-children cobblers. It beggars belief that any proper grown-up or adult can say anything good about such bollocks. Note, if you fast-forward at exact 5 minute intervals you always see the screen entirely filled with the grinning presenter's face chirruping witless platitudes to camera. Who wants to watch that? The scheduling was wrong also. It should have been broadcast earlier than 8pm - in the slot between the teletubbies and cartoons.


Of course, I couldn't fail to notice that the presenter was in a wheelchair. Speaking generally (and with particular reference to the BBC) it seems that the only way you can front a TV doc' nowadays is if you are from an ethnic minority, have a speech-impediment, are gay or lesbian or have some kind of visible infirmity. I believe that the BBC now has a children's TV presenter who has no arms. She was selected because (in PC-talk) to exclude her would be limb-ist!

Bring back Alan Whicker and David Attenborough.

[Tony Matthews]

^

[kayemod]

It beggars belief that any proper grown-up or adult can say anything good about such bollocks.

Seeing as we're discussing this sorry excuse for a documentary on TNF, this is the thing that's troubled me most on this thread.

[TecnoRacing]

Thought some of you Mosquito fans craving a more technically oriented perspective might find this very interesting, if you haven't watched it already...

DeHavilland Mosquito Tour

This guy's airplane tours and takeoff walk-throughs are generally fantastically revealing re: the more esoteric mechanical details...

Edited by fer312t, 29 July 2013 - 22:07.

[elansprint72]

Thought some of you Mosquito fans craving a more technically oriented perspective might find this very interesting, if you watched seen it already...

DeHavilland Mosquito Tour

This guy's airplane tours and takeoff walk-throughs are generally fantastically revealing re: the more esoteric mechanical details...

Thank-you so much for posting this link; for years I have been wondering why Kermit managed to get a serviceable Mosquito across the Atlantic but left it in Canada, rather than completing the final sector to Florida. Fully understand that now; great to see that he will get around to it, when he can.

The only thing I struggle with is the "changing seats" comments; presumably this was not while they were flying? One has to admire his enthusiasm and knowledge; coupled with the honesty of a bloke who has many projects on the go.

Here, hopefully is the departure:
Strathallan Mosquito leaves...

Edited by elansprint72, 29 July 2013 - 21:56.

[Allan Lupton]

A bit OT but George Aird, who appeared in or was mentioned in those videos had a lucky escape in a previous bit of flying:


That's George, about to land in those greenhouses!
The aeroplane was never the same again.

Just thought you'd like to see the photo again!

Edited by Allan Lupton, 30 July 2013 - 08:13.

[Doug Nye]

When Kermit Weeks bought his Mosquito at the Strathallan Collection auction he was interviewed by Scottish TV. Question: "Mr Weeks - What are you going to do now with the Mosquito?".

Answer: "Ah'm gonna fly the ass off it".

One of us...

DCN

[RTH]

Anyone see the programme last night about recent airliner incidents ? - the 787 battery fires , - the A380 engine explosion caused by a batch of oil line connectors machined off centre - repairs to the single Quantas aircraft they said cost £100M !! and the emergency landing in California of the airliner with the nose wheel jammed at 90 deg to direction of travel with broken location lugs, all got down safely but the point was made that modern airliners buy in parts from right around the globe now with literally many hundreds of major suppliers and quality control has become far more difficult than decades ago.

[D-Type]

I don't think the quality control has got more difficult - it's simply that complacency has set in and the culture of 'get the documentation right' has superseded 'get the product right' (and use the documentation as an aid rather than an end in itself).

[Tony Matthews]

A bit OT but George Aird, who appeared in or was mentioned in those videos had a lucky escape in a previous bit of flying:

Amazing! All the years I went to Farnborough, I never saw a Lightning take off tail first!

[BRG]

This is something to make you think. This was obviously a sudden & unexpected event, yet someone (and back in the days of chemical photography too) had a camera to hand and managed to take an admirably clear & sharp picture. Yet to this day, and despite everybody in the world seeming to have a camera with them at every moment, nobody has ever managed to take a clear and sharp image of a flying saucer.

Probably because there ain't no such thing...

[kayemod]

This is something to make you think. This was obviously a sudden & unexpected event, yet someone (and back in the days of chemical photography too) had a camera to hand and managed to take an admirably clear & sharp picture. Yet to this day, and despite everybody in the world seeming to have a camera with them at every moment, nobody has ever managed to take a clear and sharp image of a flying saucer.

Probably because there ain't no such thing...

"Yes, hold it like that, it'll make a fine photographic rendition for the ad to sell your tractor in Farmers' Weekly, keep still... Oh bugger! What's that getting in the way? I'll have to throw that one out now, how damned inconsiderate."

[elansprint72]

I am afraid that I did not believe that photo at the time and I don't believe it now. MB seats do not, and never did, fire their occupants forward of the aircraft. I'm not sure that the seat is even in the photo and a human, even without a parachute, is not going to fall faster than a much heavier machine, even if the power was off. The mechanics of "happening to take a sharp photo of something falling so fast, and unexpectedly" are against it too.

Retreats; to howls of derision.

[Geoff E]

Found somewhere else:-

For what it's worth, from the Daily Mirror 9 October 1962 (via the reproduction of the article in Martin Bowman's book on the Lightning).

" Jim Meads is a Mirror reader who was trying to amuse his two children, Paul, 4, and Barry, 3, by taking a picture of them as the Lightning was coming in to land at the De Havilland airfield near their home at Hatefiled, Herts.

The idea was to picture the children against the airfield background.

But at 300 feet, the jet was roaring nose-first to its destruction at 200 miles an hour.

Pilot George Aird, 34, pressed the button of his ejector seat [sic] ... [in orginal for dramatic effect, not an edit!] an explosive capsule [sic] shot him out and up. The cockpit canopy flew away to his right.

The he began the headlong dive for earth, the seat trailing behind him with its half-opened parachute.

One Hundred and Fifity Feet to go...

And reader Meads pressed his button releasing the shutter of his camera at 1,000th of a second at an exposure of f.8 [:8 ]

He captured the astonishing moment of life of death for George Aird as a farmworker on a tractor jerked his head round to watch.

<snip>.

Reader Meads took his pictures to the Ministry of Aviation for use in an inquiry into the accident.

Yesterday they released them, thanked him for the "excellent photographs" and for his eye witness story of the accident. It was on September 13."

[Doug Nye]

I believe this famous photograph was taken by a Jim or John Meads who was a friend or neighbour of one of the De Havilland test pilots, not George Aird, and who he thought was in the hot seat on this particular flight. The shot is slightly misleading in that the aircraft has actually been captured tumbling side-for-side towards the right of the camera axis, rather than diving straight down in-line into the ground. A fire onboard had weakened the tailplane elevator jack anchorage and when it collapsed during final approach to land, the pilot found he had no pitch control whatsoever. So he 'banged out', and lived to fly another day. The same cannot be said of the Lightning in question.

DCN

Edited by Doug Nye, 30 July 2013 - 21:28.

[elansprint72]

I believe this famous photograph was taken by a Jim or John Meads who was a friend or neighbour of one of the De Havilland test pilots, not George Aird, and whom he thought was in the hot seat on this particular flight. The shot is slightly misleading in that the aircraft has actually been captured tumbling side-for-side towards the right of the camera axis, rather than diving straight down in-line into the ground. A fire onboard had weakened the tailplane elevator jack anchorage and when it collapsed during final approach to land, the pilot found he had no pitch control whatsoever. So he 'banged out', and lived to fly another day. The same cannot be said of the Lightning in question.

DCN

This explains why I did not believe it at the time, I am (yet again) obliged to Doug for clearing up something which, due to the crap reporting in whichever broadsheet I read it (not The Manchester Guardian) told me that "Pilot survives 1000mph vertical death-crash horror" or something pretty close.
The story just did not make any sense, based on the laws of physics and (I have not seen the photo for a very long while) now, given a different set of circumstances, it does.

Edited by elansprint72, 30 July 2013 - 20:04.

[elansprint72]

I think that, some way back up this thread (or did I dream it?) mention was made of the Tsetse Mosquito (both killer flies) which basically carried a field gun in the nose, in order to knock holes in tough steel. Here is a photo from the Mosquito museum which shows their preserved gun. In the background is the prototype aircraft, which was partially dismantled for serious restoration work.

[PCC]

The story just did not make any sense, based on the laws of physics...

Just one further point: my admittedly feeble understanding of these laws tells me that a lighter object (pilot) will not fall to earth any less quickly then a heavier object (Plane) - the acceleration due to gravity is 10m/sec² on both of them. So, the plane would not fall any faster than the human - unless, of course, the plane's engine was propelling it downward or air resistance was a factor. But which was heavier or lighter is immaterial. I think.

[elansprint72]

Just one further point: my admittedly feeble understanding of these laws tells me that a lighter object (pilot) will not fall to earth any less quickly then a heavier object (Plane) - the acceleration due to gravity is 10m/sec² on both of them. So, the plane would not fall any faster than the human - unless, of course, the plane's engine was propelling it downward or air resistance was a factor. But which was heavier or lighter is immaterial. I think.

Complex, eh? It appears now that the aircraft was tumbling, rather than falling and, of course, the pilot and seat had been fired out of the aircraft with an explosive charge but was subject to retardation from the partially-deployed parachute.
Photography is indeed the work of The Devil.

[Doug Nye]

Regardless, I bet the after effect upon the pilot didn't half smaaaarrrtttt.

DCN

[JtP1]

Just one further point: my admittedly feeble understanding of these laws tells me that a lighter object (pilot) will not fall to earth any less quickly then a heavier object (Plane) - the acceleration due to gravity is 10m/sec² on both of them. So, the plane would not fall any faster than the human - unless, of course, the plane's engine was propelling it downward or air resistance was a factor. But which was heavier or lighter is immaterial. I think.

Your physics only works in a vacuum. A human body has a terminal velocity of around 120 mph. With cats it's even lower which is why they can survive a fall from any height, unless of course a fence gets in the way.

[PCC]

Your physics only works in a vacuum.

That explains why it worked in my mind.

(That said, wasn't there a bloke who tossed some detritus off the campanile of Pisa Cathedral to demonstrate just this point?)

[twotempi]

There was a rumour ?? that the cancellation of the TSR2 was a condition of a loan to the British Government by the American Govt.

 

And that the Concorde only just missed being another casualty  by virtue of being a joint British/France project..

 

Any truth in this ??

[Allan Lupton]

There was a rumour ?? that the cancellation of the TSR2 was a condition of a loan to the British Government by the American Govt.

 

And that the Concorde only just missed being another casualty  by virtue of being a joint British/France project..

 

Any truth in this ??

There were and remain many rumours and conspiricy theories, but this is not the Forum for that, and certainly not the thread.

 

Here's a good thread in the right forum:

http://www.pprune.or...ocumentary.html

 

PS what happened to our ability to have a short title for our links?

[Tim Murray]

PS what happened to our ability to have a short title for our links?

 

I had to be told how to do this. First type into the reply box the text you want to use as the link, then highlight it, click on the 'link' icon and type the link URL into the box that appears.

[elansprint72]

Funny how we can accept threads about Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Vulcans but not about the TSR2.

Anyway, I had an Uncle at English Electric and he told me that many electrical parts of the aircraft were obsolete as it was being built. A few years ago I was lucky enough to be able to examine the two remaining aircraft and got a good look at the crates of antique electronics. He was absolutely correct.

 

 Back to the wooden wonder: some interesting recent in-flight footage here:

 

http://blog.forces-w...d-the-mosquito/

[Allan Lupton]

My redirection suggestion was because TSR-2 was (a) off topic and (b) well-covered in the thread I linked, by some who had done the research .

 

Back to the DH98 those within easy reach of Hatfield (Herts, not Yorks) might like to know of a local Royal Aeronautical Society branch lecture:
“Flying the Mosquito” by Peter Henley. 16 Oct commencing at 7.00pm in Room A166 in the Lindop Building, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield.

Peter is a former BAe test pilot who flew RR299, the BAe-owned Mosquito which was the last airworthy example.

[Option1]

Allan, thanks for the link to the TSR-2 thread.  It is extremely interesting, and I certainly didn't take your link to that thread as anything other than attempt to provide more info on the aircraft in question.

 

Neil

[Cargo]

but this is not the Forum for that, and certainly not the thread.

 

 

Certainly?? My underline. You decided, huh?

 

You really know some stuff.

 

Thanks.

[examateur racer]

 

Are you talking about this one?

[Allan Lupton]

Back to the DH98 those within easy reach of Hatfield (Herts, not Yorks) might like to know of a local Royal Aeronautical Society branch lecture:
“Flying the Mosquito” by Peter Henley. 16 Oct commencing at 7.00pm in Room A166 in the Lindop Building, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield.

Peter is a former BAe test pilot who flew RR299, the BAe-owned Mosquito which was the last airworthy example.

That lecture was well up to expectations: Peter Henley speaks well, with a suitably light touch and had some interesting things to say which held the attention of audience, consisting mainly of DH old boys and current University students, easliy.

Edited by Allan Lupton, 17 October 2013 - 08:36.