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Name that bird
- Thread starter skywords
- Start date
mikephillips
Donation Time
1 Sea Hornet
2 Westland Wyvern (sp)
I think....
2 Westland Wyvern (sp)
I think....
mikephillips
Donation Time
Aaah, should have known from the tail, it's another Westland product, the Welkin. But you have to admit, other than the tail it and the Hornet do bear a resemblance to each other.
Nickodell
Donation Time
Hey, I spent several hundred hours travelling with my "back to the engine." In the Victor, all the "odd bods" (Nav/Radar, Nav/Bombadier and Air Electronics Off.) travelled backwards. I was the only one with a (6" dia.) window, which was somewhat irrelevant as it was either night time or all you could see was clouds, and in any case I spent 90% of my time airborn peering into a radar display or at the inertial navigation readouts. And the other two, without a window, didn't have any reference as to which way was forward at all.
Which all reminds me of a favorite unintentionally humorous headline in a British newspaper in WWII:
MONTGOMERY FLIES BACK TO FRONT
(a simple "the" before "front" would have fixed it)..
Which all reminds me of a favorite unintentionally humorous headline in a British newspaper in WWII:
MONTGOMERY FLIES BACK TO FRONT
(a simple "the" before "front" would have fixed it)..
mikephillips
Donation Time
That's part of the reason I initially said Hornet. Look up a picture of the DH hornet or Sea Hornet, except for the tail they're very similiar.
skywords
Donation Time
Nick could you make your way up to the office in the Victor and did you ever get any hands on the yoke time? What did she fly like?
Nickodell
Donation Time
Rick, we were all in the "office." The only difference was that the two pilots sat in front and had ejection seats, and the other three sat a few feet farther back, three abreast, facing aft. Nav/Bombardier (me) was on the left (looking aft) with the NBS (Navigation and Bombing System) Mk.1 PPI (Plan Position Indicator) display and controls; Nav/Radar was in the middle with a bunch of electronic, radio and intertial nav stuff (with weird code names like Blue Satin and Orange Putter), and the AEO (Air Electronics Officer) sat on the right, looking after all the inverters, fuel and hydraulic pumps etc. We other two always referred to them as Electricians, which pyssed them off (but they got the last laugh; see below).
Behind the instrument consoles we were facing was the "plenum chamber," a compartment the size of a small bathroom, full of the "calculators," as they were called. Each one was the size of a dustbin, and contained banks of electron tubes mounted on long boards (no solid-state!) As you can imagine, reliability was not great as filaments burned out or broke through vibration, and I often spent half a trip with a blank screen. And the heat generated was immense, so the loudest noise in flight was the fans carrying this away, plus more heat from the inverters and motor-generators. Cabin heating from the engines was quite unnecessary and we often sat in a pool of sweat. Today, the calculations performed by each of the "dustbins" would be done faster and totally reliably by something the size of a hard-back book. Beyond that was the bomb bay, but as there was no access to it from the cabin you couldn't play Major Kong and his "YEEE HAAA!!"
To my left elbow was the panel we all referred to as the War and Peace Panel, containing a Yale-type key and a switch marked Heavystore Ejector Selector that could only be operated when my key and an identical one on the co-pilot's console were turned simultaneously. In an actual attack (assuming that the Russkies had allowed us to fly that far), that would have triggered the NBS to release the Heavystores - two nukes - with the correct Forward Throw, i.e. at the appropriate moment and distance back on the track to ultimately impact where my joystick was centered on the display. Luckily, the only ones I ever flew with were filled with concrete, which we only dropped occasionally on the bombing range at Wainfleet Sands, off the east coast, to test the Forward Throw, or trajectory, of different designs.
All other bombing practice was with a simulated bomb release that two ground stations with computers (more dustbins) would triangulate to indicate where the phantom bomb would have landed. We had annual bombing and navigation competitions with the USAF, which they generally won, having more modern stuff than the NBS.
The only time I even remember the Victors (and Vulcans on the same base) being loaded with real nukes was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the only time I was really scared silly. We slept by the planes in trailers and practiced several times a day jumping in, starting everything up and waiting for stand-down [we hoped!]. The plan was; airborne four minutes after the klaxon went off. Other than that, it was pretty much routine days at the office, except the last 15 months when I was at the OCU (Operational Conversion Unit), RAF Gaydon (where the motor museum now is) doing instruction, which was occasionally hairy with crews converting from the sprightly English Electric Canberra (made under license in the US as the B57) to the 80-ton Victor.
You asked the time and I told you how to build a watch. No, there was a clear distinction between the "Drivers" and the other three crew members, so the idea of any of us getting our hands on the controls (in the air) was never even contemplated. I must confess to occasionally sitting in the left seat of an evening, in a parked Victor, all by myself, holding the control spectacle and dreaming of wearing the full wings of a pilot instead of the half one of a nav. Pilots said that the plane handled very nicely, which had much to do, I imagine, with the crescent-shaped wings unencumbered with engine pods (they were wing-root mounted).
The Victor B1 had four Armstrong-Siddeley Sapphire engines. The government initially ordered 100 or so from Handley-Page, who began work on the B2 version with four R/R Avons with 40% more push. Then a new Labour (socialist) government came in and forced all the famous old aircraft manufacturers into two government-controlled combines, Hawker-Siddeley and BAC. Handley-Page, an old family business, said no dice, and the gov then cancelled further orders and gave the business to Avro and the Vulcan. I saw one B2 version, briefly, during a refuelling stop, and the takeoff and climbout angle was enough to make a B1 pilot weep.
The final irony was that all of us, pilots, navs and aeo's were told on joining that we would be walking into prestigious and high-pay airline jobs on separation. The pilots all did, of course, as did many of the "Electricians" (!!! as flight engineers) but between my joining and separating, airlines eliminated navigators almost totally. To the extent that, today, when an occasional overseas charter flight needs one, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone with a Master Air Navigator's cert. So there I was, fully qualified in buggy-whip manufacture.
And so, back to college and chemistry again.
Hard to think that was all well over 40 years ago. I'm beginning to sound like Father Time.
Behind the instrument consoles we were facing was the "plenum chamber," a compartment the size of a small bathroom, full of the "calculators," as they were called. Each one was the size of a dustbin, and contained banks of electron tubes mounted on long boards (no solid-state!) As you can imagine, reliability was not great as filaments burned out or broke through vibration, and I often spent half a trip with a blank screen. And the heat generated was immense, so the loudest noise in flight was the fans carrying this away, plus more heat from the inverters and motor-generators. Cabin heating from the engines was quite unnecessary and we often sat in a pool of sweat. Today, the calculations performed by each of the "dustbins" would be done faster and totally reliably by something the size of a hard-back book. Beyond that was the bomb bay, but as there was no access to it from the cabin you couldn't play Major Kong and his "YEEE HAAA!!"
To my left elbow was the panel we all referred to as the War and Peace Panel, containing a Yale-type key and a switch marked Heavystore Ejector Selector that could only be operated when my key and an identical one on the co-pilot's console were turned simultaneously. In an actual attack (assuming that the Russkies had allowed us to fly that far), that would have triggered the NBS to release the Heavystores - two nukes - with the correct Forward Throw, i.e. at the appropriate moment and distance back on the track to ultimately impact where my joystick was centered on the display. Luckily, the only ones I ever flew with were filled with concrete, which we only dropped occasionally on the bombing range at Wainfleet Sands, off the east coast, to test the Forward Throw, or trajectory, of different designs.
All other bombing practice was with a simulated bomb release that two ground stations with computers (more dustbins) would triangulate to indicate where the phantom bomb would have landed. We had annual bombing and navigation competitions with the USAF, which they generally won, having more modern stuff than the NBS.
The only time I even remember the Victors (and Vulcans on the same base) being loaded with real nukes was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the only time I was really scared silly. We slept by the planes in trailers and practiced several times a day jumping in, starting everything up and waiting for stand-down [we hoped!]. The plan was; airborne four minutes after the klaxon went off. Other than that, it was pretty much routine days at the office, except the last 15 months when I was at the OCU (Operational Conversion Unit), RAF Gaydon (where the motor museum now is) doing instruction, which was occasionally hairy with crews converting from the sprightly English Electric Canberra (made under license in the US as the B57) to the 80-ton Victor.
You asked the time and I told you how to build a watch. No, there was a clear distinction between the "Drivers" and the other three crew members, so the idea of any of us getting our hands on the controls (in the air) was never even contemplated. I must confess to occasionally sitting in the left seat of an evening, in a parked Victor, all by myself, holding the control spectacle and dreaming of wearing the full wings of a pilot instead of the half one of a nav. Pilots said that the plane handled very nicely, which had much to do, I imagine, with the crescent-shaped wings unencumbered with engine pods (they were wing-root mounted).
The Victor B1 had four Armstrong-Siddeley Sapphire engines. The government initially ordered 100 or so from Handley-Page, who began work on the B2 version with four R/R Avons with 40% more push. Then a new Labour (socialist) government came in and forced all the famous old aircraft manufacturers into two government-controlled combines, Hawker-Siddeley and BAC. Handley-Page, an old family business, said no dice, and the gov then cancelled further orders and gave the business to Avro and the Vulcan. I saw one B2 version, briefly, during a refuelling stop, and the takeoff and climbout angle was enough to make a B1 pilot weep.
The final irony was that all of us, pilots, navs and aeo's were told on joining that we would be walking into prestigious and high-pay airline jobs on separation. The pilots all did, of course, as did many of the "Electricians" (!!! as flight engineers) but between my joining and separating, airlines eliminated navigators almost totally. To the extent that, today, when an occasional overseas charter flight needs one, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone with a Master Air Navigator's cert. So there I was, fully qualified in buggy-whip manufacture.
And so, back to college and chemistry again.
Hard to think that was all well over 40 years ago. I'm beginning to sound like Father Time.
skywords
Donation Time
That's quite a responsibility as a young lad. I was never intrusted with so much responsibility as that for I never served. The nav station sounds like a hot seat in more ways than one. The heat from the vac tubes must have been ugly. The starships with there 1970's technology Cathod ray tubes generated alot of heat. The air conditioning failed on the test flight of the last one we built. It was once around the patch.
what a great looking airplane
what a great looking airplane
mikephillips
Donation Time
Say Nick, mentioning the Vulcan, you see that the Vulcan Trust hopes to be flying this summer??
Nickodell
Donation Time
Rick; actually, by the time I finished training and was posted to my first operational squadron I was already 24, which was a couple of years older than the average WWII aircrew. The pilots averaged 27, and our "squaddie" (Sqdr. Ldr. - US equiv. Major) was in his late 30s and had WWII ribbons.
All aircrew went through intense psychological screening before being accepted (the wash-out rate was over 40%) and repeat screening for your entire service, for the obvious reason. We were cross-trained on each others' equipment so as to be able to take over if necessary (although nobody understood much of what the Electrician did or how to correct something if it went wrong in his area), and I was told, years later, by a Nav/Radar buddy I kept in touch with, that he was under orders to K.O. the Nav/Bomb with the fire extinguisher and take over in the event that he refused to turn his key on command from the captain.
If you look at the exit door on that stunning picture of the Victor you will see a wind shield (not windshield) that was supposed to facilitate bailing out. Nobody explained how you would avoid being sucked into the engine intake, though, and the ground simulator exercise was always done in a spirit of total disbelief that any of the Three Wise Monkeys in the rear of the cabin would ever survive.
That must be a contemporary picture taken during operational service in the 60s, based on the cars behind it.
All aircrew went through intense psychological screening before being accepted (the wash-out rate was over 40%) and repeat screening for your entire service, for the obvious reason. We were cross-trained on each others' equipment so as to be able to take over if necessary (although nobody understood much of what the Electrician did or how to correct something if it went wrong in his area), and I was told, years later, by a Nav/Radar buddy I kept in touch with, that he was under orders to K.O. the Nav/Bomb with the fire extinguisher and take over in the event that he refused to turn his key on command from the captain.
If you look at the exit door on that stunning picture of the Victor you will see a wind shield (not windshield) that was supposed to facilitate bailing out. Nobody explained how you would avoid being sucked into the engine intake, though, and the ground simulator exercise was always done in a spirit of total disbelief that any of the Three Wise Monkeys in the rear of the cabin would ever survive.
That must be a contemporary picture taken during operational service in the 60s, based on the cars behind it.
Nickodell
Donation Time
Sure do. Here's the Hornet.
Rolls Royce produced the Merlin 130 and 131 - the difference was opposite propeller rotations, a Merlin first, to overcome a severe swing on takeoff - with 2,070hp each (compared to the first Merlin's 950). All-wood construction, like the Mosquito, and similarly armed with 4 x 20mm cannon.
At almost 480mph, this was the ultimate twin-engined fighter before the jets, but by the time it was ready in 1945 the Gloster Meteor was coming off the production lines with another 100mph.
mikephillips
Donation Time
Interesting time period there from the about the end of the war until the 60's. Lots of designs of lots from lots of companies as they tried to determine what the technologies of the future would be.
Nickodell
Donation Time
The pilot, if all goes well, will be Martin Withers, who dropped 10 tons of bombs on the runway at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, on May 1, 1982, which prevented the Argentines, who had invaded the islands, from landing fighter jets. This was a crucial point in the Falklands Battle, as it prevented the Argies from attacking the British Harriers who were supporting the army and Royal Marines landing at San Carlos, on the other side of the island.
Withers's flight of over 4,000 miles, from Ascension Island, was the first British strike in the campaign to restore the sovereignty of the Falklands, and at the time was the longest bombing mission ever flown by any air force. It required the use of 14 Victor tankers (that was what the beautiful Victors were reduced to
) and adapting the Vulcan to air-to-air refuelling in a few days required finding various bits and pieces in ordnance stores around Britain that had not been used for decades. "One part they needed for the bomb-aiming equipment was being used as an ashtray in the officers' mess at [RAF base] Waddington," said Withers, now retired from the RAF and flying econpmy jets to Europe.The Vulcan cabin layout was similar to the Victor's, so I can imagine exactly what it was like during that long flight, although the navigating and bombing systems would have been totally modern, and made the stuff I played with look as if it came out of the Middle Ages.
In answer to the obvious question; no, there was no "head" on board. Each crew member had a "relief pack," which was nothing but a rubber bladder with a metal neck into which one pee'd. A spring-loaded lid snapped down to hermetically seal it after use. If you were clumsy, it could also snap down on tender flesh! It was standard practice to relieve onself into the grass alongside the hardstand immediately before boarding (not a very heroic sight, five suited-up crew members looking like little kids competing to see who could pee farthest - not something you see on the movies), but inevitably, on a long flight, you'd need that bag. Originally there was a "static tube" for the pilots, leading from between their legs out and down into a holding tank under the floor, but as the bottom end often froze up the result was described as "getting your own back," and they were discontinued in favor of bags for the pilots, too.
Nickodell
Donation Time
Rick: Here's the Vulcan landing after the 7,860 mile, 15 1/2 hour flight and a picture of Flt. Lt. (US equiv Capt.) Withers. I saw a picture of him in the RAF Association magazine last week, and 25 years later he only looks a few years older.
Here's a sketch of his incredible flight, showing the six refuelling points by 14 Victors.
A later flight by a different Vulcan almost ended in disaster when the refuelling probe broke during the last refuelling, and, with its tanks almost dry, the captain had no choice but to attempt to reach Rio. They climbed to 40,000 feet, the most economical cruising altitude, and opened the underside door to dump confidential books. Unfortunately, it then would not seal on closing and the cabin could not be repressurized, so they had to put on masks and breathe pure oxygen. At that altitude the effects of the oxygen and low cabin pressure was similar to breathing helium, and with the Donald Duck voices they couldn't make the Brazilian controllers understand their emergency.
Finally, after half an hour, another controller with a better command of English came on and said "Can you see the runway ahead of you? If you're short on fuel [!!!!] you can land on that." At that point they were 6 miles from the runway and the fuel gauges showed 3,000 lbs left, and as a Vulcan needed at least 2,500 for a go-around, if they missed the first approach they were going to crash.
Luckily, the captain, Squadron Leader (US equiv. Major) Neil McDougal, had more Vulcan experience than anyone else, having flown and instructed on the type for 20 years, and from almost 4 miles up he closed the throttles, opened the air brakes and wound the big bomber into an almost vertical bank and steep descending orbit. Brazilians on the ground, watching the impromptu air display, and having never seen such a large aircraft perform in this way, were certain they were going to crash. But at the end of the orbit the Vulcan was exactly where McDougal wanted to be - 1 1/2 miles from the threshhold and 800 feet at 300 mph. He raised the nose to mush off some speed, and crossed the boundary at 150 mph and 75 ft to make a perfect landing. There was some language confusion with the taxying instructions, with the result that the Vulcan's engines quit through fuel starvation while they were on the taxiway. For this display of airmanship, McDougal was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. (I'll bet the "back seat boys" got squat).
Now, being stranded in Rio might be thought of as a desirable thing, but there would be no trips to the beach or the city's nightlife. At least one member of the crew, in rotation, had to stay by their aircraft (impounded by the Brazilians under international law) to guard secret equipment, while the others were not allowed off the base, but were put up at the Brazilian Air Force officer's club. Finally, after a week of negotiations, the plane was allowed to return to Ascension.
Here's a sketch of his incredible flight, showing the six refuelling points by 14 Victors.
A later flight by a different Vulcan almost ended in disaster when the refuelling probe broke during the last refuelling, and, with its tanks almost dry, the captain had no choice but to attempt to reach Rio. They climbed to 40,000 feet, the most economical cruising altitude, and opened the underside door to dump confidential books. Unfortunately, it then would not seal on closing and the cabin could not be repressurized, so they had to put on masks and breathe pure oxygen. At that altitude the effects of the oxygen and low cabin pressure was similar to breathing helium, and with the Donald Duck voices they couldn't make the Brazilian controllers understand their emergency.
Finally, after half an hour, another controller with a better command of English came on and said "Can you see the runway ahead of you? If you're short on fuel [!!!!] you can land on that." At that point they were 6 miles from the runway and the fuel gauges showed 3,000 lbs left, and as a Vulcan needed at least 2,500 for a go-around, if they missed the first approach they were going to crash.
Luckily, the captain, Squadron Leader (US equiv. Major) Neil McDougal, had more Vulcan experience than anyone else, having flown and instructed on the type for 20 years, and from almost 4 miles up he closed the throttles, opened the air brakes and wound the big bomber into an almost vertical bank and steep descending orbit. Brazilians on the ground, watching the impromptu air display, and having never seen such a large aircraft perform in this way, were certain they were going to crash. But at the end of the orbit the Vulcan was exactly where McDougal wanted to be - 1 1/2 miles from the threshhold and 800 feet at 300 mph. He raised the nose to mush off some speed, and crossed the boundary at 150 mph and 75 ft to make a perfect landing. There was some language confusion with the taxying instructions, with the result that the Vulcan's engines quit through fuel starvation while they were on the taxiway. For this display of airmanship, McDougal was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. (I'll bet the "back seat boys" got squat).
Now, being stranded in Rio might be thought of as a desirable thing, but there would be no trips to the beach or the city's nightlife. At least one member of the crew, in rotation, had to stay by their aircraft (impounded by the Brazilians under international law) to guard secret equipment, while the others were not allowed off the base, but were put up at the Brazilian Air Force officer's club. Finally, after a week of negotiations, the plane was allowed to return to Ascension.