…stantly industrially obsolete. In a perfect world, the Spitfire production run would have been run down in favour of new designs. The question is, what exactly? The Whirlwind and Gloster F.9/37 are based on the Peregrine and Taurus respectively, both brand-new moderate displacement engine designs. Looking back on what their respective developers did with older, heavier engines like the Merlin and Hercules, I have to like the long term prospects of…
…t it seems to have been well-placed for interception. JDK: Yes, it’s very true that maps can be political in nature, but I doubt that these ones are meant to be reassuring, because one of the conclusions of the official history was that ‘the only defence in the air likely be effective in the long run is an offensive more powerfully sustained than that conducted by an enemy’ (vol. 5, 149). Jones (and Raleigh, the original official historian) were p…
…re was also a class of naturalised ex-Germans (who N. S., for one, didn’t trust either) but presumably weren’t subject to internment (though I could be wrong — this wasn’t true in Australia in either world war). Gerard De Groot notes that the number of internees fluctuated with the public mood, which doesn’t reflect much credit on either the public or the government of the day, but is a testament to the power of fear.7 Daily Mail, 22 June 1917, p….
…think. It’s not like any of the standard ones (Anderson etc). It has a corrugated steel roof, but also uses big steel beams running across the width of the cellar onto the cellar walls. They look stronger than anything else in the house and could probably support its entire weight in the event of collapse. If I remember correctly (it’s dark down there and there’s a lot of clutter) they are supported by big screw jacks to take some load off the ce…
…dn’t take it any further than a couple of trials, unlike the US Navy which designed, built and operated two flying aircraft carriers, and then finally gave up on the idea. Alan Allport Everyone knows aircraft carriers are rubbish. It said so in that Disney movie (no, not The Little Mermaid; the other one). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cS8GsO-KiuU Brett Holman Yes, but just try getting the navy to admit that! Neil Datson Yes Alan. But surely there…
…rmly on the ground, do I? An English Electric Lightning. A big, and fast, bruiser. This shows how crowded AirSpace is. Apart from the aircraft I’ve already named above, there’s an Avro Lancaster, a Westland Lysander, a Gloster Meteor, a Supermarine Spitfire — and a few others left as an exercise for the reader. The ultimate art deco aeroplane: a de Havilland Dragon Rapide. Based at Duxford but privately-owned. The last time I’d seen a Brisfit, it…
…d edition. A curiosity, this. Dunne was Britain’s first military aeroplane designer, and would have been its first military aeroplane pilot too, if his designs had flown at the first attempt in 1907-8. Ultimately Dunne had little lasting influence on British aviation, and he’s much better known for this book, an attempt to explain dream premonitions scientifically, leading to his theory of ‘serial time’ (as I understand it, the past and future are…
…out it, notably that it is ‘refreshingly short!’ Anyhow, I’m ordering my copy. (I already have a full range of ‘too depressed to remember what I ever was once’ T-shirts.) Brett Holman You may laugh, but we all know that the real money in movies comes from merchandising. Maybe the same can be true of academic publishing? We won’t know until we try. JDK “I used to work with an historian, but all I got was this lousy T-shirt”? Dan ‘My grandad bombed…
…fatigue (known for nearly 100 years) ignoring: de Havilland’s appalling structural record, basically all DH planes had in flight structural failures requiring fixes (the Mosquito started when the prototype was taxiing and the fuselage failed) Glue (Redox?) didn’t work as advertised especially with temperature cycling hence more stress on the rivets in the window frame reinforcements which were only to hold it while the glue set. Note the fake inv…
…second one is much more ambitious: The National Archives catalogue. It’s frustrating that you can’t do keyword search across their digitised collections; all you can do is search the descriptions in the catalogue, and these are by their nature limited. A scraper would help here. But the problem there is that you can’t download documents directly, even when they are free; you have to add to a ‘shopping cart’, pay £0.00 for it and wait for an email…
