Aeroplane Monthly 2017-07

FREE POSTER MERLIN-ENGINED AIRCRAFT July 2017 Issue No 531, Vol 45, No 7

HISTORY IN THE AIR SINCE 1911

MERLIN

DATABASE ON THE LEGENDARY BRITISH ENGINE

MAGIC

END OF AN ERA?

What future for Britain’s vintage jets?

A SPITFIRE REBORN

Aero Legends’ new two-seater

JULY 2017 £4.50

OFFERED FOR SALE

Courtesy: Owner

North American TF-51 full dual-control Mustang S/N: 44-63473 Registration: D-FUNN Price: US$3,200,000 + V.A.T. if applicable

Courtesy: Owner

Messerschmitt Bf-109G-6 S/N: 440738 Registration: D-FMGS Price: €4,950,000 + V.A.T. if applicable

Courtesy: Owner

Courtesy: Owner

Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire FR XVIIIe S/N: TP280 Registration: D-FSPT Price: £1,950,000 + V.A.T. if applicable

Messerschmitt Bf-109G-12 (Dual-Control) S/N: 440738. Registration: D-FMGZ Sold with interchangeable DB605 and RR Merlin Q.E.C.s Price: €6,950,000 + V.A.T. if applicable

+1800.210.1951

Contents July 2017

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See pages 26-27 for a g reat subscription offer

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58 MERLIN POWER HAWKER HURRICANE

First flight: 6 November 1935 white’, Aircraft shown: Hurricane IIb Z5252/‘61 78 IAP, Soviet Air Force

BOULTON PAUL DEFIANT

First flight: 11 August 1937 Aircraft shown: Defiant TTI AA507, Unit, RAF No 26 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation

SUPERMARINE SEAFIRE

First flight: 7 January 1942 894 Squadron, FAA Aircraft shown: Seafire III PR256,

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G

35 Squadron, RAF

No 230 Operational Conversion Unit,

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HONG KONG WESSEX Recalling the last RAF aircraft to leave Hong Kong before the territory was handed back to China, 20 years ago

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AEROPLANE MEETS… PAUL WARREN WILSON Heading up Plane Sailing’s Catalina operation has given this ex-RAF Harrier pilot some tremendous experiences

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DATABASE: ROLLSROYCE MERLIN 17 In a new departure DATABASE for Database, Jakob ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN T Whitfield examines the IN-DEPTH development PAGES and service of the most famous British aero engine of all time

RAF

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by Chris Sandham-Bailey (www.inkworm.com) Artworks by Pete West. Beaufighter by the Merlin. © Key Publishing Ltd, July 2017. the many aircraft types powered this poster depicts only a few of Editor’s note: Due to space restrictions,

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Avro Lancaster I R5689 No 50 Squadron, RAF

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DOUBLE-SIDED POSTER Famous Merlin-engined aircraft from Hurricane to Lincoln — and a superb wartime Lancaster image from the Aeroplane archive

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FEATURES 28

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BRITISH CLASSIC JETS In the wake of many aircraft being grounded and sold, how does the future look for the UK’s ex-military jet scene? DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN The pioneering use of shipborne aircraft during 1915 that revolutionised naval and aerial warfare

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13 MIRA AT WAR Royal Hellenic Air Force Ansons, Blenheims and Baltimores fighting alongside the RAF

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SPITFIRE NH341 The new two-seat Spitfire that’s helping Aero Legends develop its ambitious aviation heritage business

DEVELO PMENT

ROLLS-RO How Ro YCE ME RLIN lls-Roy ce mad e histo ry

engines at Derby, and oversaw the work telegram from afar. Letters, draught s, and nervous drawing smen bearing headed s for inspecti on Royce back and forth, insisted as approva on persona l l Whatev of even minor er the this manner difficult details. of working ies of the First , after expand World War 1921 ed its design Derby Arthur was Napier’s J. Rowledteam. In ge, designe chief engine who up with r and had just come broad-a the Napier joined rrow W12 Lion engine, Rolls-Ro was to yce. engine, redesign the His first job Condor and Condor the resulting features III incorpo rated standar that were to productd for Rolls-Ro become next twoion engines yce and two decades: for the two cylinder outlet valves inlet per connect , fork-and-blade reductio ing rods, and n gear. spur for Rolls-Ro Unfortu nately yce, the became with Lordinvolved in company Trencha a dispute engine rd product production. over event ion capacity To ensure of in the Ministry future conflict, future had decided the Air engines that all should for the RAF manufa be able to be the car ctured under industry licence was adaman . Rolls-Ro by yce had never t and explaine as it could licensed d it its designs not guarant ee the ,

IN-DEPTH PAGES

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ABOVE: awaiting Spitfire Is installati undergo ing on to other final

WORDS: JAKOB WHITFIELD

A Merlin-engined trio from the RAF’s Empire Central Flying School at Hullavington in 1942: Hurricane I Z4791 leads Spitfire IIas P7882 and P7926.

AEROPLANE

● The Merlin’s sometimes

difficult birth

● How Rolls-Royce kept the

● Classic wartime cutaway

assembl

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Merlin relevant

Insights

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shown: Lincoln B2 RF562, First flight: 9 June 1944 Aircraft

In Service

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

AVRO LINCOLN

RCAF

Cutaway

SKYWRITERS Q&A Your questions asked and answered 78 BRIEFING FILE Our new feature looking under the skin of aviation technology and tactics. This time we examine the RAF’s wartime Oboe bombing aid 98 EVENTS Major summer airshows reviewed and previewed 100 REVIEWS 106 NEXT MONTH

DE HAVILLAND HORNET

HANDLEY PAGE HALIFAX

shown: Halifax I L9489, No First flight: 25 October 1939 Aircraft

SPIRIT OF ST LOUIS FILM Insights into making the classic 1957 movie about Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering feat

Production

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First flight with Merlins: June 1940 Aircraft shown: Beaufighter IIF R2270

First flight: 19 April 1944 No 65 Squadron, RAF Aircraft shown: Hornet F1 PX232,

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Development

REGULARS

Squadron, shown: Lancaster X KB762, No 419 First flight: 9 January 1941 Aircraft

N LI S HI

BRISTOL BEAUFIGHTER

DE HAVILLAND MOSQUITO

1942 First flight with Merlin: 13 October Aircraft shown: P-51D Mustang 44-72308, Group, USAAF 335th Fighter Squadron/4th Fighter

shown: Whitley V N1380, First flight: 17 March 1936 Aircraft

AVRO LANCASTER

First flight: 10 March 1936 Aircraft shown: Battle I P5232, No 150 Squadron, RAF

First flight: 25 November 1940 W4050 Aircraft shown: Mosquito prototype

ARMSTRONG WHITWORTH WHITLEY No 102 Squadron, RAF

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FROM THE EDITOR NEWS • Shuttleworth’s Camel flies • Dual power for two-seat Bf 109G • Yorkshire ‘Bucc’ back in FAA marks …and the month’s other top aircraft preservation news HANGAR TALK Steve Slater’s comment on the historic aircraft world FLIGHT LINE Reflections on aviation history with Denis J. Calvert

FAIREY BATTLE

SUPERMARINE SPITFIRE

First flight: 5 March 1936 Aircraft shown: Spitfire Vc BR323, No 249 Squadron, RAF

NORTH AMERICAN MUSTANG

EE FR SIDE IN

NEWS AND COMMENT 4 6

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from The Aeroplane

ent and ental manage later general r.

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103 AEROPLANE ARCHIVE: CRANFIELD COLLEGE OF AERONAUTICS A Fifties visit to Britain’s premier seat of aeronautical learning COVER IMAGE: Jerry Yagen’s Mosquito FB26 KA114 leads Doug Brooker’s Spitfire IXT MH367 and Graham Bethell’s P-51D Mustang 44-74829. GAVIN CONROY

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Editor From the

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he growth in Spitfire Boultbee, of course, already offers experience flights, whether P-51 Mustang passenger flights; it is flying alongside or in now introducing Will Greenwood’s these famous aircraft, has Yak-3 to its rides programme, and marked nothing short of a seauses Hurricane Heritage’s Hurricane change in the UK warbird scene. R4118 for ‘fly alongside’ sorties. Those organisations, aircraft and Who knows what else might be in pilots involved are busier than ever, the pipeline? such has been the level of demand. For some of you reading this, It shows no signs of slowing, there will, I know, be a certain sense either, even several years after the of what one might term ‘Spitfire CAA’s enlightened rule change fatigue’. However, such are the levels that permitted of preservation Demand for Spitfire activity relating to such activity. No wonder two-seat experience flights shows the Supermarine Spitfires are so classic, and the no signs of slowing, even stories about the sought-after, hence projects type’s service several years after the such as NH341 days that still CAA’s enlightened rule for Aero Legends deserve telling, change that permitted that we cover that it can hardly this month. be ignored. But such activity Here we have if the ‘Spit’ isn’t an example of some very cuttingyour bag, we’ve always got plenty edge restoration and rebuilding of other subjects in our pages that techniques on the part of Historic you won’t ordinarily find elsewhere. Flying and its partners in the Our Database feature in this issue effort — witness, for example, is a new departure, in dealing the manufacturing by Maurice not with an aircraft but an aero Hammond’s Eye Tech Engineering engine, the Rolls-Royce Merlin. of new propeller hubs from billet Meanwhile, our look at the last RAF steel, a fascinating subject in itself aircraft permanently stationed in — and a forward-looking operator Hong Kong, the Westland Wessex keen to make a commercial success helicopters of No 28 Squadron, of warbird ownership, while paying is a rather more recent topic than historical tribute and inspiring is perhaps usual for Aeroplane — new generations as it goes about however, the Wessex is such a classic it. No doubt at all, this is a very type, and the withdrawal from Hong commendable endeavour by all Kong a piece of history that deserves concerned. And, looking at the not to be forgotten. Do let us know wider UK warbird experience what you think! Ben Dunnell industry, it’s not just Spitfires that are involved. Goodwood-based

ESTABLISHED 1911

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Aeroplane traces its lineage back to the weekly The Aeroplane, founded by C. G. Grey in 1911 and published until 1968. It was relaunched as a monthly in 1973 by Richard T. Riding, editor for 25 years until 1998.

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CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTH SIMON BECK Simon has had a lifelong interest in aviation, his specialist areas being US military aircraft, civil airliners and aviation film history. He owns two websites: www. uswarplanes.net, cataloguing aircraft designations and serial numbers, and www. c82packet.com, the first and only site dedicated to the history of the Fairchild C-82. He has written several articles on aviation subjects and last year published his first book, The AircraftSpotter’s Film and Television Companion. He is currently completing a large volume on the history of the C-82. Until recently, Simon had worked as a senior editor for a TV broadcaster in New Zealand.

JOHN CARR John, who lives in Greece, recently retired from a career as a foreign correspondent for publications including The Times and the Wall Street Journal Europe, as well as freelance broadcasting. He has always been an aviation enthusiast and is the author of On Spartan Wings: The Royal Hellenic Air Force in World War Two and The Defence and Fall of Greece, 1940-41, published by Pen & Sword in 2012 and 2013. “This is my first contribution to Aeroplane”, he says, “and you might say it realises one of my lifelong ambitions!”

GRANT NEWMAN Employed by Air New Zealand as a line maintenance engineer, Grant services regional airliners at night and is a freelance author by day. His hobbies include photography and flying, of which he does precious little these days. Prior to becoming an aircraft engineer, Grant’s career was in museums, with time spent at the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon and at Scotland’s National Museum of Flight at East Fortune.

RICHARD PAVER “Having flown with many of the UK’s ex-military jets over the last 10 years”, says Richard, “the decline in numbers that we are now seeing is of huge concern. However, the Spitfire magic is clearly very much alive and well, and I do hope that readers will enjoy reading about this country’s very latest Spitfire to fly, Aero Legends’ NH341.”

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News

NEWS EDITOR: TONY HARMSWORTH

E-MAIL TO: [email protected] TELEPHONE: +44 (0)7791 808044 WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK

Shuttleworth Camel flies

ABOVE: Sopwith Camel reproduction ‘D1851’/ G-BZSC airborne for the first time at Old Warden on 18 May, with Shuttleworth Collection chief pilot ‘Dodge’ Bailey at the controls. DARREN HARBAR

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HE Shuttleworth Collection’s Sopwith F1 Camel reproduction flew for the first time on 18 May at Old Warden, in the hands of chief pilot Roger ‘Dodge’ Bailey. This came just a month before the centenary of the type’s introduction to service: the machine has been finished as D1851 Ikanopit of No 70 Squadron, the first front-line RFC unit to receive Camels in June/July 1917. The reproduction is the result of a collaboration between volunteers at the Batley, West Yorkshire-based Northern Aeroplane Workshops (NAW) and Shuttleworth. It was NAW’s third and final aircraft project, following on from Sopwith Triplane ‘N6290’/G-BOCK and Bristol M1C ‘C4918’/G-BWJM, both of which are now based at Old Warden.

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The NAW project leader on the Camel, Bob Richardson, explains: “In the mid-1990s we approached the Shuttleworth Collection, which agreed to finance the Camel. Building commenced in 1995 on the completion of the Bristol monoplane, when our then ‘co-co-ordinator’, Eric Barraclough, announced that he had Sopwith Camel drawings in his loft. These had been gifted to us in the early 1970s, along with the Sopwith Triplane’s, but had been forgotten about in the interim. “We had approximately 350 Sopwith drawings and the collection had a Clerget 140hp rotary, which they were confident could be made airworthy. With drawings and engine we had the two essentials for a viable project. Nearly all materials were

sourced from Old Warden. Such items as wheels, tanks and a very few castings were outsourced. The build was overseen by the Popular Flying Association, now the Light Aircraft Association, our initial inspector being Rob Millinship, a collection pilot. When the Camel was moved from Batley to Old Warden in August 2013, Shuttleworth chief engineer Jean-Michel Munn became the inspector for the Camel’s final phase of building and testing. “The airframe is high-grade spruce and birch ply, the exceptions being the longerons and tailskid, both of which are airworthy-grade ash. After completing many components, both metal and wood, work started on preparing the fuselage jig. Once we had both sides, duly

braced with piano wire, we were able to assemble the basic fuselage that was positioned on trestles for further fitting-out. Following this, a similar process involved the four wings and later the centre section all being assembled in jigs. “After the move south, work continued at Old Warden with the installation of the air, fuel and oil systems, the covering and all sub-assemblies — not forgetting, of course, the very time-consuming job of making the rotary engine airworthy.” NAW was originally formed in 1973, shutting up shop 40 years later following the Camel’s transfer to Old Warden. The Camel is scheduled to make its public display debut at the Shuttleworth Military Pageant at Old Warden on 2 July.

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July 2017 News

Dual power for Bf 109

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T Heringsdorf airfield on the northern German island of Usedom, the Air Fighter Academy has made major engineering changes to increase the capability of Messerschmitt Bf 109G-12 D-FMGZ, following its first test flights during August 2016 (see Aeroplane October 2016). Modifications to this two-seat 109 — based on a donor Spanish-built Hispano HA-1112 Buchón airframe — enable everything in front of the firewall to be changed quickly so that the aircraft can be flown with either an original Daimler-Benz DB605 engine or a Rolls-Royce Merlin 500. Two sets of propellers and two cowling sets are available, and a complete

engine change can now be made in just a few days. The G-12 has also had its fuel capacity significantly increased with the installation of an additional fuselage fuel tank, taking the capacity to 320 litres. This is more than double the original, giving the aircraft far greater endurance and hence ease of operation. The ability to fly this unique Bf 109 with a Merlin engine provides a more practical and sustainable basis for the operation of the aeroplane. The Hangar 10 team is now assessing the possibility of offering passenger flights in the aircraft while fitted with the Merlin in the autumn of 2017 — further details will follow shortly. In the spring of 2018 it plans to offer a very

ABOVE: Bf 109G-12 D-FMGZ fitted with a Rolls-Royce Merlin 500 at Heringsdorf in mid-May. AIR FIGHTER ACADEMY

limited number of flights in it with the DB605 engine, but the flying hours with this powerplant will be restricted due to its rarity. From early 1944, several single-seat Bf 109G variants were converted into two-seat trainers with a full set of dual controls installed in the second instructor’s cockpit, these variants being designated G-12. This aircraft was restored

to airworthy standards between 2013 and 2016 by the MeierMotors team at Bremgarten, south-western Germany. Experienced Bf 109 pilot Charlie Brown made the first flight on 4 August 2016. After completion of the initial part of the flight test programme, D-FMGZ was moved to the Air Fighter Academy at Heringsdorf, where it is currently on display.

Debut for DH Moth Major

ONE of the highlights of the de Havilland Moth Club Charity Flying Weekend at Old Warden on 10-11 June will hopefully be the first public appearance of Nigel Lemon’s DH60G III Moth Major, G-ACGZ. One of just half a dozen airworthy examples of the Moth Major worldwide, The first air-to-air picture of Moth Major G-ACGZ, taken on 14 May. GEOFF COLLINS

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’CGZ was restored over a 15-year period in Nigel’s garden shed at Cookham, Maidenhead, with final assembly taking place at White Waltham. The aircraft received its new permit to fly during February, having made its first flight in 80 years on 28 August last year.

The Moth Major was the final evolution of the wooden DH60G Gipsy Moth, fitted with the inverted and more powerful Gipsy III engine, which gave the pilot a better forward view. The prototype flew in March 1932, and from 1933 onwards the type was fitted with the improved Gipsy Major unit. Nigel’s aircraft was built in 1933 and originally registered to a British Army officer before being shipped the following year to India, where it was operated by the Bombay Flying Club as VT-AFW. Following an accident near Bombay in 1935 the Moth was withdrawn from service and used as a source of spares. The remains ended up in Portugal, where there was a relatively large fleet of Moth Majors. It was from Portugal that the neglected remains were later re-discovered and returned to the UK as a restoration project, which was when Nigel acquired it. Nigel, who has been an active member of the Tiger Nine team since its formation more than 10 years ago, will also be taking ’CGZ to the Gathering of Moths at Old Warden on 30 July.

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News July 2017

Now wearing its original 1964 colours, Buccaneer S2 XN974 at Elvington just after completion in mid-May. YAM

First production ‘Bucc’ S2 back in original scheme

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OLLOWING restoration back into its original Royal Navy colour scheme, the first production Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S2, XN974, was due to be rolled out at the Yorkshire Air Museum (YAM) at Elvington on 31 May. The low-level strike aircraft has been kept in live, ground-running operational condition since it flew in to Elvington on 19 August 1991, the YAM’s location being just 10 miles north-west of the Buccaneer’s spiritual home, the old Blackburn Aircraft airfield at Holme-on-Spalding-Moor. YAM director Ian Reed comments: “XN974 now looks absolutely pristine in the

striking sea grey colours with white undersides and Fleet Air Arm decals, as if it had just come off the production line at Blackburn’s Brough factory. It is a tribute to the skills of aircraft painter Andre Tempest and the other volunteers who have contributed greatly to the project.” XN974 flew for the first time on 6 June 1964 from Holmeon-Spalding-Moor, with chief test pilot Derek Whitehead — who had made the maiden flight of the Buccaneer ‘prototype’, the Blackburn NA39, in July 1958 — at the controls. On 25 September 1964, XN974 began three days of preliminary deck trials

DAUNTLESS ROLLED OUT DOUGLAS SBD-4 Dauntless BuNo 10694/N34N was rolled out for engine runs at Cameron Park, Sacramento, California in early May following restoration to fly by Vultures Row Aviation for its owner James Slattery/Pissed Away. The aircraft was recovered from Lake Michigan in 1994, and arrived at Vultures Row in February 2011. On 12 May, 92-year-old former Dauntless gunner Richard Miralles visited Vultures Row, whose proprietor Chuck Wahl says, “When Richard saw the Dauntless he asked to get in and pretty much ran right up onto the wing and into the gunner’s seat, where he flew more than 500 hours in the Pacific theatre during the summer of 1943. I read the combat report for one of his missions. His aircraft, B-2, took an AA hit in the engine’s number six cylinder, and they flew for more than an hour on only eight cylinders before having to ditch due to running out of oil. They were picked up a couple of days later by a PBY.”

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on HMS Eagle, before spending the next six months on trials work at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down and the Naval Air Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Bedford. Late March 1965 saw XN974 continuing deck landing trials, this time on HMS Ark Royal, and on 23 July it arrived at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida for carrier compatibility trials aboard the USS Lexington. During its time in the USA, ’974 attended air displays at Eglin AFB, Edwards AFB and NAS Patuxent River. On the return flight to the UK on 4 October, it completed

the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic by a Royal Navy aircraft, flying the 1,950 miles from Goose Bay to RNAS Lossiemouth in four hours 16 minutes. A long time was then spent on test work, XN974 becoming a prime avionics and system development testbed between 1967 and 1982. During Operation ‘Desert Storm’ in 1991, on which Buccaneers were deployed, it was used for high-altitude in-flight refuelling testing with RAF Tornados. The Buccaneer Air Crew Association and the Air Crew Association Archive Trust have contributed towards the aircraft’s restoration.

BELOW: The pristine Douglas SBD-4, BuNo 10694, outside the Vultures Row hangar. VULTURES ROW

INSET: Richard Miralles seated in his old ‘office’, with Chuck Wahl, boss of Vultures Row. VULTURES ROW

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July 2017 News

NEWS IN BRIEF BDAM

METEOR MOVES

The ‘casualty’ is helped from Stow Maries’ WW1 electric truck to BE2e reproduction ‘A2767’/G-CJZP during the museum opening event on 11 May. MIKE SHREEVE

New Stow Maries museum opens A

T Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome in Essex, a new museum dedicated to No 37 (Home Defence) Squadron was opened by HRH the Duke of Gloucester on 11 May. The unit was based at the airfield from September 1916 until March 1919 (see Aeroplane July 2015). The occasion was also used to mark the 100th anniversary of the first aeromedical evacuation. In February 1917 Lance Corporal MacGregor of the 2nd Battalion, Imperial Camel Corps Brigade was shot in the foot by a local Bedouin tribesman while advancing on the Turkish force at Bir el Hassana in Egypt. MacGregor was flown in the observer’s

seat of a Royal Aircraft Factory BE2c from No 14 Squadron, RFC to the nearest medical facility at El Arish for treatment. The 45-minute journey would have taken two days by land, which MacGregor would probably not have survived. The incident was re-created for the assembled guests using BE2e reproduction ‘A2767’/G-CJZP operated by the World War One Aviation Heritage Trust (WAHT), the casualty being transported to the aircraft using Stow’s period electric-powered truck. Although the wind conditions on the day were such as to preclude ‘A2767’ from flying, de Havilland Tiger Moth G-AIDS took to the air to

provide a more robust substitute. Members of modern-day aeromedical units were present to demonstrate their skills, and a C-130J Hercules from RAF Brize Norton made a flypast. A number of Stow’s resident Great War replica aircraft were lined up on the airfield, including Sopwith Pup, Camel and Snipe, a French pair comprising Morane-Saulnier N ‘Bullet’ and Nieuport 17/23, and the 7/8-scale SE5a. Stow has a number of public events this year at which it is planned to fly some of the based aircraft, including those operated by WAHT, the primary occasion being Stow Maries at War on 22-23 July. Mike Shreeve

A-20 ARRIVES AT OSHKOSH DOUGLAS A-20 Havoc 43-21709/N747HS of San Antonio-based Lewis Air Legends arrived at Wittman Field, Oshkosh, Wisconsin on 16 May. It will be on display in the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum until becoming one of the stars of the AirVenture show from 24-30 July. During early May, meanwhile, what is thought to be a former Soviet Air Force A-20 was discovered submerged about 330ft in the western part of the Gulf of Finland. The canopies on the almost intact machine were closed, possibly indicating that the crew are still A-20 Havoc 43-21709 on display in the Eagle on board. Hangar at Oshkosh on 16 May. EAA

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The Boscombe Down Aviation Collection at Old Sarum, Wiltshire, took delivery of Meteor NF11 WD686 from the Muckleburgh Collection at Weybourne, Norfolk, at the end of April. The 1952-built machine spent its whole flying life as a test aircraft, and will be restored in the silver and Dayglo scheme it wore with the RAE.

NORTH WEALD C-54 DONATED

The Save the Skymaster campaign, set up to rescue Douglas C-54D BuNo 56498/ N44914 from being scrapped at North Weald (see News, Aeroplane June 2017) received a boost in mid-May when the aircraft was donated to the organisation by the current owner.

MIKE BEACHY HEAD

Mike Beachy Head, the founder of Cape Town-based historic jet operator Thunder City, died of a heart attack on 21 May at the age of 59. The organisation achieved fame as the only civilian operator of the English Electric Lightning.

JUNKERS BACK IN THE AIR

Junkers Ju 52/3m ‘D-AQUI’/D-CDLH of the Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung returned to flight at Hamburg Airport on 13 May, having been grounded at the end of the 2015 season due to cracks in the fuselage centre spar. BEN DUNNELL

DOC MAKES DEBUT

B-29 Superfortress 44-69972 Doc made its display debut at the Defenders of Liberty Air Show at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana on 6 May, flying with a Barksdalebased B-52H, the Lone Star Flight Museum B-17G Thunderbird, and B-25J Special Delivery (below).

USAF

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News July 2017

ABOVE: Vulcan B2 XL426 during one of the Vulcan Restoration Trust’s Visit the Vulcan Days at London Southend Airport. VRT

A hangar for Vulcan XL426 O

N 17 May the Vulcan Restoration Trust (VRT) announced that Avro Vulcan B2 XL426 will be moving to a new home under cover at London Southend Airport. The bomber will relocate to the airport’s Hangar 6 for an initial five-year period, with the first part of the move to a temporary holding location until the hangar is ready already being under way at the time of writing. Since the beginning of May VRT volunteers, assisted by airport staff, have been busy preparing the hangar for XL426’s arrival. Tasks have

included upgrading of the building’s electrical services, replacement of ceiling tiles, bringing the hangar doors back into operation and an extensive amount of cleaning and tidying. The hangar, together with the adjacent Hangar 5, measures some 4,000 square metres and will also provide space for VRT’s ground equipment and spares. VRT and London Southend Airport have been in negotiations since early 2017 over a new site, and agreement to relocate XL426 to Hangar 6 was reached at the end of April. The move is necessary due to extra car

parking space being required for the increasing numbers of passengers using the airport. This takes in the area of XL426’s former parking pan,

The hangar measures some 4,000 square metres and will also provide space for VRT’s equipment and spares meaning a new site had to be found for the Vulcan. London Southend Airport is assisting VRT practically and financially

with XL426’s move so that the costs, and the ongoing cost of running the hangar, remain affordable. VRT has, however, launched a campaign to raise funds for it to improve its engineering facilities in the hangar and to make it a high-quality environment in which the public can visit XL426. Details of how to contribute to the fund can be found on the VRT’s website, www.avrovulcan.com. The public’s first chance to see XL426 in its new home will be on Fathers’ Day, 18 June, when VRT will hold one of its popular Visit the Vulcan Days.

Barracuda to be on view at Yeovilton Air Day

Frame 11 of Barracuda II DP872 in a jig at the Fleet Air Arm Museum workshop. DAVE MORRIS

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IN the Fleet Air Arm Museum workshop at Yeovilton, restoration of Fairey Barracuda II DP872, the only substantially complete example of the 2,607 built, continues apace. Curator of aircraft Dave Morris says, “Even with the daunting task of keeping the remaining 102 aircraft in the FAAM collection in good order, a significant amount of time is being given to the Barracuda project. Work is now progressing forwards from the central frame 11 section, to allow the lower longerons and

tubework to extend forward and meet the firewall. This will allow the pilot’s floor area to be repaired and installed, and in turn allow the cockpit structure to be assessed for reclaim and rebuild.” During the RNAS Yeovilton Air Day on 8 July, the rear doors of the restoration hangar will be open for visitors to inspect the progress on DP872. Dave Morris continues, “A remarkable amount of original material is being re-incorporated into the build. Stripping original crash site

wreckage and painstakingly manipulating it back into workable components is taking the bulk of the time, but is of course what is keeping the percentage of original material in the rebuild very high.” Sourcing vintage aerospecification AGS nuts bolts and rivets is partly governing the speed of the work. Anyone who has old aero nuts and bolts spare or available can contact Dave Morris on 01935 842609 or e-mail dave.morris@ nmrn.org.uk.

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

25/05/2017 22:05

© Paul Heasman

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News July 2017

Restored Bf 108 debuts in Germany

A

T the end of April, newly restored Messerschmitt Bf 108 D-EOIO made its first public appearance during a private meeting of classic aircraft at Ober-Mörlen north of Frankfurt. Built in 1939 for the Swiss Air Force, the rare touring aircraft was discovered

by Dirk Bende in a derelict state in France some years ago, and has been renovated from the ground up by Bende and his team over the past few years at his workshop in Hangelar near Bonn. The elegant machine has an original Argus As 10C engine,

which has also been restored by Bende. Although this Bf 108 was produced for the Swiss Air Force, the new owner chose not to replicate the colours in which it served as serial A-212, but went for the look of a Messerschmitt demonstrator, D-IOIO.

In the coming months, further check flights will be done in Germany before the ‘Taifun’ is handed over to its new owner. It will be based at Wels, northern Austria, where it will be looked after by well-known vintage aircraft collector Josef Ecker.

Wearing the markings of a pre-war Regensburg factory demonstrator Bf 108, the former Swiss Air Force ‘Taifun’ made its first public appearance at Ober-Mörlen at the end of April. STEFAN SCHMOLL

P-40E joins Erickson collection THE latest addition to the Erickson Aircraft Collection, Curtiss P-40E AK940/N940AK, arrived at Madras, Oregon in mid-May from Livermore, California, where the former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter had been operated by Tony Banta. Originally delivered to the Royal Canadian Air Force in November 1941, the P-40 served with No 111 Squadron and latterly with No 133 Squadron at Tofino and Sea Island, both in British Columbia. It was badly damaged in a forced landing at Phelps, New York on 5 November 1995 while being operated by William Anderson/National Warplane Museum at Geneseo. Between June 2000 and March 2002 it was rebuilt by Pioneer Aero/ Avspecs at Auckland and acquired by Banta.

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P-40E N940AK at Livermore, California while owned by Tony Banta. MIKE SHREEVE INSET: The former Soviet Air Force P-40 breaks the surface during its recovery from the Kerch Strait. TASS/PA IMAGES

P-40 RAISED IN RUSSIA

ON 6 May, a Curtiss P-40 was recovered from the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The identity of the former Soviet Air Force Lend-Lease fighter was unknown at the time of going to press.

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

26/05/2017 09:15

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News July 2017

A Focke-Wulf Stieglitz for Yorkshire A five-year project to restore Focke-Wulf Fw 44 Stieglitz D-EMNN to fly in North Yorkshire has recently come to fruition for owner Richard Menage, the operator of de Havilland Tiger Moth T7794/G-ASPV. The aircraft is currently with the Quax-Flieger organisation in Paderborn, central Germany. Richard explains, “Because it is registered in Germany, the final inspection and C of A paperwork is easier if the aircraft is in Paderborn. The work was done under the umbrella of the Quax club’s engineering facility who performed the inspections. The flying to date has been on an LBA (German Federal Aviation Office) test flight permit.  The rare German trainer, Werknummer 1904, was found in Sweden in 2011, having been one of the first batch of 12 Bremen-built examples bought by the Swedish Air Force during 1937. Built in 1936, it flew with that air arm as Fv622, and was subsequently operated as SE-BRZ. Though complete, it was in poor condition when bought by Richard. Some lower

ABOVE: Fw 44 Stieglitz D-EMNN, pictured here at Paderborn, will soon be moving to Yorkshire. RICHARD MENAGE VIA STEFAN SCHMOLL

The Stieglitz is expected to fly from Paderborn this summer and make a UK debut at Old Warden before moving to Yorkshire sections of the steel tube fuselage were corroded and had to be repaired, and the wings also needed to be rebuilt since the original casein glue had perished. Richard placed great value on restoring the Stieglitz to as factory-new and original a

condition as possible, and all the original components have been overhauled. With their experience in 1930s German aircraft, the Paderborn-based Quax-Flieger organisation and its inspectors were a huge help throughout the restoration project. The

aeroplane is registered in Germany as D-EMNN to match the 1930s colour scheme taken from original Focke-Wulf drawings. During the summer the Stieglitz is expected to fly from Paderborn and make a UK debut at Old Warden before moving to Yorkshire later in the year. With the help of his engineer Henry Tuke, Richard is now working on a second Stieglitz, Werknummer 1281, an ex-Luftwaffe machine that he sourced in Finland.

Another Flug Werk FW 190 flies

Flug Werk FW 190A-8/N D-FWSE made its maiden flight at Manching, Bavaria, on 23 May. Test pilot Klaus Plasa took the machine up for a 15-minute sortie, and carried out two more flights the next day. Upon completion of testing, the FW 190 will be delivered to its owner in Sweden. It is the 21st of the Flug Werk aircraft, and has been finished to represent a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 that landed in Sweden at the end of World War Two. DR ANDREAS ZEITLER

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AEROPLANE JULY 2017

26/05/2017 10:48

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PROJECT UPDATES

News July 2017

Approval for MAPS hangar NO objections against Medway Council’s recent granting of planning permission for the Medway Aircraft Preservation Society’s new restoration and display hangar at Rochester Airport had been lodged by the end of the six-week consultation period on 28 April, so construction now looks set to go ahead. The hangar will be located close to main A229 Maidstone Road, offering much-improved access: visitors to the wooden hut currently occupied by the society have to drive across a traffic light-controlled, active apron. Restoration of Short Scion II floatplane G-AEZF is now proceeding apace in the MAPS workshop. Unlike previous MAPS projects — several of which have been completed for the RAF Museum — the completed Scion will go on display at the airport as the society’s ‘flagship’ exhibit. It arrived at Rochester on a low-loader in June 2013 after many years in storage at Redhill Airport. Project leader Robin Heaps says, “The Scion is now beginning to look like a real aeroplane. Progress has recently been made on determining the correct profile for the cockpit frame, and at

the other end a reconstructed fin is now in place. Work is under way on the starboard wing: the rear spar has been completed, with the salvaged bracing tubes at the inboard end and replacement bracing tubes at the outboard end which have now been riveted into place. With certain parts missing or beyond restoration, much has had to be manufactured from new, something that is very time-consuming. We have also been successful in acquiring a Pobjoy engine from an owner in Holland.” Scion G-AEZF was built in 1933, and saw service in Africa and Australia before returning to Rochester for conversion to wheeled configuration. After decommissioning the aircraft ended up at the Historic Aircraft Museum at Southend, eventually falling into disrepair and being moved to Redhill. The restoration has been made possible thanks to a substantial grant from the Rochester Bridge Trust, one of the oldest charities in the UK. Work is expected to last for three or four more years, after which G-AEZF will become a visible reminder of a great aircraft manufacturing company that for many years was the pride of Medway.

ABOVE: The nose section of Short Scion II G-AEZF in the current, cramped MAPS workshop at Rochester Airport. MAPS

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ABOVE: The stripped-down fuselage of Queen Bee V4760 in Seattle. An interesting comparison can be made with the picture of this aeroplane wearing Pathé News colours on page 61. IAN GRACE

Queen Bee under way in Seattle IN Seattle, Washington, former RAF engineering officer Ian Grace is busy helping develop the most advanced fly-by-wire autoflight system in the world for the new Boeing 777X airliner, scheduled to fly next year. But in his spare time Ian is restoring to flight an aircraft that, arguably, has the oldest surviving autoflight system anywhere in the world: a de Havilland DH82B Queen Bee. The machine is a very rare original survivor of some 405 Bees built between 1934 and 1944 as radio-controlled target aircraft for anti-aircraft gunnery training. V4760 (c/n 5447) was built at Hatfield in 1940, sent to Farnborough to have its top-secret autoflight system installed by the RAE boffins, and then flown to the Pilotless Aircraft Unit at RAF St Athan before being allocated to target duties with No 1 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit at Aberporth. Fitted with floats, it flew a few times from Aberporth, catapulted from the cliff-tops and recovered at sea. Then it was damaged by live fire and sent to the DH repair unit at Witney, Oxfordshire in May 1941. Repairs were complete by August, but before it could be returned to target duties V4760 was crated and shipped across the Atlantic to the USA, just a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The convoy managed to avoid the U-boat ‘wolf packs’ and

V4760 was safely delivered to the Army Air Corps’ Technical Data Branch at Wright Field, Ohio for detailed evaluation by the US Army. The United States had ordered a batch of 50 Queen Bees under reverse Lend-Lease. Thus it avoided the ignominious fate of the great majority of DH82Bs at the hands of the gunners or inexperienced radio operators. Having notched up 23 hours of test flying at Wright Field, and with probably less than 100 hours’ total time in the logbook, the Lend-Lease contract was cancelled and V4760 pensioned off to an engineering school in Pennsylvania. At the end of the war, it started a new life in Hollywood when it was involved in the making of the 1957 film The Spirit of St Louis starring James Stewart (see pages 58-63). By the 1960s it was doing the rounds of various museum storage facilities before being acquired by the current owner, who has commenced a painstaking and highly original restoration to flight. Incredibly, an original Queen Bee MkIa autopilot has been found. Crated and in perfect working order, it will be refitted in its rightful place in the rear cockpit. A pair of correct and original Short Brothers floats has been located in Canada so that the restored aircraft will once again be capable of water operation.

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

25/05/2017 22:06

July 2017 News

Civil scheme for Calgary ‘Mossie’ FIVE years after it was moved from storage in a warehouse in Calgary to the Bomber Command Museum at Nanton, Alberta, the restoration of de Havilland Mosquito PR35 RS700/CF-HMS into its Spartan Air Services aerial survey configuration is progressing well with the Calgary Mosquito Society. The 1946-built aircraft is owned by the City of Calgary, and once completed will go on display at the Calgary Air and Space Museum, near the city’s international airport. Richard de Boer, founder and president of the Calgary Mosquito Society, says: “Work continues to focus on structural issues with the fuselage as we deal with delaminating of the layers, water damage from poor storage and very shoddy work from previous attempts at ‘restoration’. The cockpit floor has been fully stripped and restored and is just getting its first coats of new paint prior to re-installation. New Perspex panels are in production for the canopy. A great deal of work continues in the upper mid-fuselage area, above and just behind the wing attach points, where dry rot, water damage, scabby repairs and ‘restoration’ work were undertaken in the mid-1960s. We continue to look for parts such as a set of rudder pedals

ABOVE: Members of the Calgary Mosquito Society working on the fuselage of RS700 at Nanton, Alberta. RICHARD DE BOER

and a throttle quadrant. We are co-operating with the Windsor Mosquito Bomber Group” — who are restoring a Mosquito XX at Windsor, Ontario; see News, Aeroplane December 2016 — “on a variety of parts. We also rely on Glyn Powell, the Auckland, New Zealand-based Mosquito restoration guru, to guide us to vendors for new plywood and fuselage ferrules.”

Built as a Mosquito B35 by Airspeed at Christchurch, Dorset during 1946, RS700 was shuffled around several RAF storage and maintenance units before going to de Havilland at Leavesden during 1951 for conversion into the prototype PR35 high-altitude, pressurised photoreconnaissance aircraft. The following year it went into service with No 58 Squadron

at Benson, and during 1953 moved to RAF Wyton. Upon retirement in 1954, RS700 became one of 10 Mosquitoes acquired by Spartan Air Services of Ottawa, Ontario, and after being registered CF-HMS was the last example to make the ferry flight to Ontario in 1956. Modifications for its new role included the installation of a large additional fuel tank in the bomb bay, a frameless Perspex nose cone, a DF loop and a modified rear hatch for the cameraman. The aircraft flew on aerial survey and mapping operations in Canada, and during 1957-58 RS700 operated in Columbia and the Dominican Republic. Retired during the spring of 1963, RS700 had a chequered career in preservation until stewardship transferred to the Calgary Aerospace Museum in 1988. It was sent to Cold Lake, Alberta for a planned restoration back to military configuration by Canadian Forces personnel from 410 Squadron, but the rebuild soon stalled when the project leader was transferred. In 1990 it returned to Calgary, very little restoration work having been carried out. On 21 December 2011, the City of Calgary awarded the project to the Calgary Mosquito Society.

AT-10 WICHITA FOR REBUILD IN the workshops of Air Corps Aviation in Bemidji, north-west Minnesota, work is under way to restore a very rare Beechcraft AT-10 Wichita trainer, which will eventually become one of just two complete survivors from 2,371 examples of this twinengined type to be built between 1942-44. The machine, 41-27322, is owned by the Cadet Air Corps Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, which has collected the remains of many AT-10s for incorporation into the project. The AT-10 was designed to be built using non-strategic materials, with most of the aircraft — including, amazingly, the fuel tanks — made of plywood. Although it boasted good performance, very few were to make it onto the civil register. Built at Wichita, Kansas, 41-27322 was delivered to Blytheville, Arkansas, on 24 June 1943, and served as a pilot trainer until being declared surplus in April 1945. The other surviving AT-10 is on display in the National Museum of the US Air Force.

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

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ABOVE: The nose of Beechcraft AT-10 41-27322 awaiting attention in the Air Corps Aviation hangar at Bemidji. CHUCK CRAVENS RIGHT: An AT-10 during the war. USAF

www.aeroplanemonthly.com 17

25/05/2017 22:07

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Comment

Hangar Talk STEVE SLATER

Comment on historic aviation by the chief executive of the UK’s Light Aircraft Association

W

e so often bemoan the ageing population of those involved in flying, so in recent weeks I was delighted to note new blood in the community. Some younger faces seem to be appearing among us old and grizzled veterans, which has to be good news for the future of historic aviation. The first of these came to light at the recent Radial, Trainer and Transport fly-in at Wolverhampton’s Halfpenny Green aerodrome. Notwithstanding some issues with the runway surface, which wilted under the efflux of de Havilland Vampire WZ507’s exhaust, it was a superbly organised event bringing together everything from the aforementioned jet trainer to radial-powered rarities such as Stearmans, Stinsons and Wacos, the mighty Antonov An-2, Glenn James’ newly acquired Avro Anson and no less than four North American T-6 Texans/Harvards. At the helm of the event was Andy O’Dell, who came up with the concept, made all the necessary arrangements, recruited a team of likeminded helpers and coordinated invitees from all over the country. The fly-in was held just a week before his 22nd birthday. Here’s to many more such great events, Andy. Those who read last month of the roll-out of the prototype Beagle Pup, G-AVDF, at Turweston in March on the 50th anniversary of its maiden flight may be interested to note that one of the key players in the aircraft’s restoration is considerably less than half its age. Eighteenyear-old Michael Allen has spent the past year working on the Pup, in addition to acting as an apprentice to ATSO Engineering’s owners Alan Turney and Simon Owen.

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

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ABOVE: The intrepid Arthur Williams — now an LAA Ambassador — and his classic yellow Piper J-3 Cub.

Better still, by the time this magazine goes to press Michael will be the proud recipient of the coveted Young Preservationist of the Year award, bestowed by the Transport Trust. It will be the first time that an aircraft restorer has received the accolade. The Light Aircraft Association, meanwhile, has

apprentice. 2017 marks her fifth season as a professional aerobatic display pilot. In addition to the Pitts, Lauren recently made her public display debut at the helm of aviation journalist Bob Grimstead’s Fournier RF4D, an aircraft ideally suited to her smooth, balletic, aerobatic style. A true case of master and apprentice.

Arthur Williams’ love of flying and spirit of adventure have taken him as far afield as the Australian Outback, mountain flying in the Himalayas and the wastes of Arctic Siberia taken on board two of Britain’s most high-profile young light aircraft pilots, creating for them the role of LAA Ambassadors, taking part in outreach programmes and events to engage more young people in sport flying. Lauren Richardson, who displays a Pitts S-1S Special, started to take flying lessons when she was 19, after saving money working as an engineering

The second ambassador is pilot and TV presenter Arthur Williams, who flies a vintage Piper J-3 Cub and is perhaps best known for his role as the host of Channel 4’s Paralympic coverage and the series Flying to the Ends of the Earth. A self-confessed flying addict, Arthur’s boyhood obsession was realised when, despite having been paralysed from the waist down in a car crash

two years earlier, he became a qualified pilot in 2009. Arthur had previously served as a Royal Marine Commando and he combined his love of aviation with his spirit of adventure as Flying to the Ends of the Earth took him as far afield as the Australian Outback, mountain flying in the Himalayas and to the frozen wastes of Arctic Siberia. His equal passion for military history led to his becoming a reporter for the widely acclaimed two-part series D-Day As It Happened and the documentary The Plane That Saved Britain. The latter film centred on Arthur’s love for the de Havilland Mosquito and led to his being nominated for a Grierson award for best documentary presenter. Arthur is now filming a new Channel 4 series on British airfields. With him and Lauren forming a ‘dynamic duo’ promoting flying around the UK, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll see even more new faces in the aviation world very soon. ■

www.aeroplanemonthly.com 19

24/05/2017 13:32

Salute

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03/05/2017 13:55

Comment

DENIS J. CALVERT

Flight Line

Recollections and reflections — a seasoned reporter’s view of aviation history

O

n 27 November 1978, the fourth HMS Ark Royal launched its final fixed-wing aircraft (although this was a Buccaneer, rather than Phantom XT870/012 that features in the publicity photos) in the English Channel before returning to Devonport and the breaker’s yard at Cairnryan. Ark Royal was the last of the Royal Navy’s classic, fixed-wing aircraft carriers, and had protected British interests — and projected British influence — around the globe during eight commissions and for more than 30 years. For its final commission in 1977-78, it had a perfectly balanced Air Group of 38 aircraft: 12 Phantom FG1s, 14 Buccaneer S2s, four Gannet AEW3s, six ASW Sea Kings and two SAR Wessex. Spirits were high when the ship emerged from its last period of refit in spring 1977. Ark Royal would be at the head of the Spithead reviewing lines for the Silver Jubilee Fleet Review in June, and an operational readiness inspection in October demonstrated that everything was ready for deployment. The ship, its company and its Air Group had already become celebrities in their own right, thanks to a ‘fly-onthe-wall’ BBC documentary, Sailor, filmed on board during the 1976 trans-Atlantic cruise. I well remember visiting RAF Leuchars, by then the shore base of the Navy’s Phantomequipped 892 Naval Air Squadron, the day after an episode had been broadcast. Chat in the 892 crewroom was all about it, one Phantom pilot being heard to exclaim, “Did you see my landing on TV last night?” NATO planners petitioned for Ark Royal to be reprieved or, at least, for its service to be extended, but the whole support and training structure

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Fleet Air Arm fast jet air power, 1978-style: Phantom FG1 XV589 gets ready to launch from Ark Royal. DENIS J. CALVERT

for the carrier and its Air Group had been run down to the point of no return. There was a strong public campaign to ‘save the Ark Royal’, egged on by the red-top dailies, but this would ultimately prove no more successful than the ‘save the dodo’ movement started in Mauritius in 1655. I was fortunate in making two visits to Ark Royal in 1978. The first was a PR day trip by

The second was for a week in the Mediterranean right at ‘the end’ in October/November, with the full Air Group embarked. The carrier had already notched up its 2,000th fixed-wing launch of the year and the flying programme continued at full tilt. While there was a certain end-ofterm atmosphere evident, there could not be — and there never was — any

The day after an episode of Sailor had been broadcast, one Phantom pilot exclaimed, “Did you see my landing on TV last night?” Wessex from RAF Turnhouse (Edinburgh Airport) while the carrier was working up in the North Sea, with Phantom Training Flight jets making practice approaches to the flight deck. Ours was a motley party, which included a wonderful Navy ‘minder’, a couple of aviation journos, a reporter from a South Coast radio station who shares my Christian name and the director-general of the BBC.

lowering of standards. Flying from a carrier deck is notably unforgiving of mistakes. This was a professional operation, down to a T. The following Invincible class of carriers, originally promoted as ‘through-deck cruisers’, when paired with the Sea Harrier and ASW helicopters provided the Royal Navy with a winning combination. These, though, were small (20,000tonne) vessels, and the Air

Group they could embark was correspondingly modest. The availability, in 1982, of the ‘Harrier carrier’ HMS Invincible and the converted HMS Hermes made possible the task force despatched to the South Atlantic. Without them, it would never have sailed. More interestingly, had the fourth Ark Royal been extended even for four years beyond 1978, would the Argentineans even have invaded the Falklands? Now, in 2017, HMS Queen Elizabeth, the first of two new carriers being constructed at Rosyth, is nearing its sea trials. Put aside criticisms of cost overruns and concerns about manning, and forget the debacle over the variant of the F-35 to be procured. The Queen Elizabeth carriers displace 70,000 tonnes, have a large acreage of flight deck and will embark up to 40 F-35Bs, helicopters and — who knows — maybe even V-22 Ospreys in the future. Make no mistake: the Royal Navy is back in the carrier strike business. Big time.

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24/05/2017 13:35

Skywriters

In association with… WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK E-MAIL TO: [email protected], putting ‘Skywriters’ in the header

★ LETTER of the MONTH ★ In every issue, the writer of our Letter of the Month wins a £25 book voucher to spend with leading military and transport publisher Crécy. Fifty years have flown

I much appreciated Denis Calvert’s Flight Line column in the May issue because, just two days younger than Denis, I too was at Paris in 1967. His thesis of how difficult it is to forecast outcomes rings especially true in terms of some of the aircraft that appeared that year. The Beagle Pup prototype G-AVDF, still with its raked rudder, was on show just a few weeks after its first flight and seemed to me, as a young pilot, to demonstrate the restart of Britain’s light aircraft industry. In its very first public display, there was an overflight by the Fokker F28 Fellowship. It seemed to have a following wind that would carry forward the great success of the F27, but although 530 units of the F28 and its follow-on Fokker 100 is not a disgrace, the company went bankrupt. The future of manned spaceflight appeared to be heralded by the Martin SV-5B lifting body craft, seen for the first and only time outside the US. But it was, at least for now, a dead end. On the other hand, the only previously unknown Russian aircraft revealed at the show was the rather underwhelming Yak-18T four-to-five-seat tourer. Its agricultural appearance and rough construction marked it down for obscurity, so I would have been astounded to know that, 50 years later, they are still being brought into the West. The (then) extraordinary aerobatics of Lockheed’s 286 experimental rigid-rotor helicopter heralded that particular item of technology and many more aerobatic helicopter shows. The extraordinarily complex LTV XC-142 VTOL transport gave a stunning display of acceleration as it transitioned to

The prototype Beagle Pup in the 1967 Paris Salon static park. DENIS J. CALVERT

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wing-borne flight, but surely it could never become a regular production concept? Well, while it is true that four of the five prototypes crashed, and the tilt-wing concept changed to tilt-engine, the V-22 Osprey has emerged — after some tribulation — as a key piece of US military equipment. The show had the US celebrating the 40th anniversary of Lindbergh’s arrival at Le Bourget, with a replica Ryan NYP flying in, while Russia marked 10 years since Gagarin’s spaceflight and unveiled a Vostok launcher for the first time. Could anyone have been pessimistic enough to guess that, 50 years later, manned spaceflight is still entirely in the hands of derivatives of that launcher? Did Denis perhaps, like me, see the two Chinese Red Guards striding through the static park waving the ‘Little Red Book’ and yelling quotes, before darting towards the Grumman Mohawk and throwing paint over it as a protest against the Vietnam War? And how very sad that the final seconds of the show on the last day claimed the pilot of a Patrouille de France Fouga Magister, who started his downward bomb-burst pull-out fractionally too late and went straight into the ground. The aerobatic shows of those days were dramatic but vastly more dangerous to viewers, particularly the downward bombbursts, pulling out very low over the crowd. Richard Waller

Vampire bites

Although Jakob Whitfield did comment on the involvement of German engineers with Soviet jet engine development in his article in the June issue (‘What fools would sell us their secrets?’), most people seem to underestimate the input they had. Like the West, the Soviets spirited as many of them away as they could, the difference being that they did not hold senior positions in the factories as, say, in America with von Braun. Furthermore, in my experience working on Vampires in the late 1950s this was not a good aircraft, so may even have put the Soviets back in the short term! The Meteor was a far better machine. Vampires were prone to flame-outs; we had one that shut down on take-off at about 60ft up, killing the pilot and totally destroying the aircraft. If you were high enough, it was supposed to be possible to restart a flame-out by switching everything off, then selecting engine start with fuel on. However, you had to be very careful about the angle of descent as the tail booms were fragile — we lost a student pilot like that. Trying to pull out, both tails snapped off and buried the aeroplane 30ft into a hillside. Clive B. Thompson

Journalistic licence

Regarding the piece in your May edition about the air defence of Malta — well, about 30 years ago, I used to work with a man who had spent two years in Malta as a signaller and latterly as a military policeman. I asked him about Faith, Hope and Charity, and he said that those pompous names had been dreamed up by a journalist. The locals really called them ‘Pip’, ‘Squeak’ and ‘Wilfred’, after the newspaper cartoon

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

24/05/2017 13:36

Skywriters

The likes of the Turbulent Team have introduced many new pilots to display flying, but opportunities to induct fresh blood are diminishing. BEN DUNNELL

Display of concern

On behalf of the ‘grass roots’ element of the UK air display industry, I wish to thank you for the incisive editorial in the June issue on the likely future of flying displays in the UK. Without the single-item village fetes and similar local shows, where will the next generation of display authorisation holders refine their skills and gain experience? The increased charges and bureaucracy have combined to cut the number of such displays enormously. The latest debacle is the online application system devised by the general aviation unit of the CAA to apply for those permissions and exemptions needed for display operations. It is not fit for purpose, as I have found, along with many others in the display world. There is a phrase current in regulatory circles which says, ‘Risk must be as low as is reasonably practicable’. Might I suggest the CAA could substitute ‘frustration’ mice of that era. Frankly, that sounded much more likely, as British servicemen in active theatres aren’t much given to pomposity. Douglas Johnston

Messing about with boats

It is funny how some things capture the mind, but the article in the May edition of Aeroplane about Tony Bianchi certainly did so for me. I recalled a story often repeated to me by my mother about my grandfather, a certain William Walter Murray Cowper. He reputedly joined the Royal Flying Corps after school, only to be kicked out for being

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for ‘risk’ in respect of completing the online pro forma? Back in 1958 my first public aerobatic display was in a group-operated Tiger Moth — costing me £2.50 an hour — at a local church fete, when the rector needed to raise money for roof repairs to a lovely Norman church. I, illegally as a PPL, charged him £25 and it cost me £2.50. The profit of £22.50 did not go into my pocket — it went into around nine hours’ more flying that made me a more proficient aerobatic pilot and increased my personal safety. Now, in 2017 and at 79 years of age, I look back on 55 years as a display pilot and some 2,300 public airshow performances with a degree of satisfaction, but I have great sorrow for those who aspire to emulate me and so many others in the future. Barry Tempest

under-age — his father shopped him! Not one to take no for an answer, a trait still in the family, he went straight to the Royal Naval Air Service and was asked, “Do you have any flying experience?” He replied, “I have been aloft”. “Oh, we need chaps like you”, they said. He signed up and was very pleased with himself as the pay was 2p a day more than in the RFC. Grandpa was trained at Redcar and eventually posted to Cranwell. There he befriended a certain W. W. Whitfield who, he claimed, taught him to fly. I suspect he meant ‘fly properly’. We have

a letter he wrote to his father about crossing the Channel to France, along with his Redcar logbook, which lists a whole load of landings due to engine trouble, broken wires, bits falling off and so forth. He made it to Dunkirk and then to St Pol, from where he fought the war, flying DH4s with No 202 Squadron. He repeated the story that he had witnessed losing his best friend in a fiery crash right in front of him. Grandpa never flew again after the war. He did, however, retain a keen interest in aviation. Now the Bianchi story rather fits in. He somehow acquired a Morgan three-

wheeler and took to the track. At the time he was living by the Thames somewhere in the Richmond or Teddington area. He had a houseboat and was keen on all things fast. Luckily for him a family fortune was bequeathed and he started a ‘playboy’ lifestyle of wine, women and song. The family story most often repeated was about his speedboat. We do not know where it came from or who built it. All we know is that it was fitted with an ‘aeroplane engine’ and was very quick. Just maybe it was built by Doug Bianchi’s uncle — the fast boat, Teddington and the aero engine tie in. Grandpa knew a lot of people locally and his favourite game was to go speeding up the Thames as fast as he could, trying to attract the attention of the river police. There was a speed limit on the Thames even then, when very few people could go that fast. Somehow he knew the police launch was no match for his powerboat. He would go upstream, park in a friend’s boathouse and watch the law pass by with moderate haste. Then, with a burst of power, he headed off downstream until reaching Eel Pie Island, went round it a few times and into another friend’s boathouse, got out, went up to the boathouse’s flat roof, poured himself a drink and watched the forlorn chase. As I understand it, Grandpa found himself before the magistrates and was fined three or four times for these misdemeanours. But, as he was by this time a post-World War One alcoholic, he did not seem to care. Eventually he dried out, never to drink another drop, and became a respected dentist in Sunningdale and Virginia Water. Thank you for reopening that chapter of history for me. Chris Murray Bradford

The editor reserves the right to edit all letters. Please include your full name and address in correspondence.

www.aeroplanemonthly.com 23

24/05/2017 13:37

Q&A

COMPILER: BARRY WHEELER

WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK E-MAIL TO: [email protected], putting ‘Q&A’ in the header

Are you seeking the answer to a thorny aviation question, or trying to trace an old aviation friend? Our ‘questions and answers’ page might help

THIS MONTH’S ANSWERS

The RAF-marked Nakajima E8N aboard the German cruiser Orion — an unlikely combination.

The Orion’s ‘Dave’

Q

A request in the June issue asked if anyone had a photograph of the Japanese Nakajima E8N floatplane, codenamed ‘Dave’ by the Allies, operated by the German auxiliary cruiser Orion. This prompted Nick Millman to send the above picture of the aircraft painted in spurious British markings aboard the commerce raider. Maybe it didn’t matter in the Pacific that serial L5196 was actually a Fairey Battle! Could this have been the only Japanese military aircraft operated by the Germans?

A

Indochina transports

Q

David Miller’s search for details on British and French aircraft in Indochina in the March issue elicited more information following the response in the May edition. In 1954, Mr E. Mace from Guernsey was a technical representative of Bristol Aircraft seconded to Indochina to support the Bristol 170 Freighters operated by Aigle Azur. Based in Hanoi, he worked on the engines

A

alongside an airframe engineer. He can’t remember any aircraft being lost, but a night incursion on the airfield by insurgents destroyed a number of aircraft and damaged others, among them an Aigle Azur Freighter. A working party from Hong Kong was flown in and temporarily patched up the machine for return to Bristol for repair. Mace subsequently returned to France following the fall of Dien Bien Phu.

Saved from the dump

Q

French troops unload a dismantled trailer from an impressed commercial Bristol Freighter at Dien Bien Phu in November 1953.

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A pre-World War One floatplane picture discovered in a rubbish tip by Roger Birtles appeared in the May edition, requiring identification and location. John Armitage thought he had seen the photograph before and, sure enough, a copy was published in a 1982 publication, Flying:

A

The Pioneer Years in Kent by David Collyer. The floatplane, possibly an Henri Farman, was part of Claude GrahameWhite’s ‘Wake up England’ tour sponsored by the Daily Mail in 1912 and made flights at Folkestone, Dover, Ramsgate and Sheerness. On 23 August he arrived at Southend and flew pleasure flights from the pier there.

Mosquito exhausts

Q

In the May issue, Peter Broomfield queried why Mosquitos used both five and six exhaust stubs, depending on the mark.

exhaust and says the DH Sea Hornet had a similar arrangement. Basil Nash of Sydney, Australia, remembers with little affection the poor handling qualities of the Mk39 PF576, which wallowed due to the slab-sided forward fuselage and stalled at a speed about 20kt higher than the standard Mosquito. He also flew the Mk33 LR387 (like PF576, pictured in the May issue) and Sea Fury TF956, seen on page 40 of that edition, on test flights at RNAS Stretton.

Rudder numbers

Q

In the May issue, Harold Stillwell queried the use of RAF serial numbers on both the tail and fuselage up to the 1930s. Glen Middleton comments that the use of the manufacturer’s airframe serial number was all-important for repair and assembly and was the only permanent number applied to an airframe throughout its life. The arrival of good RT communications from the mid-1930s onwards meant the pilot could identify himself to ground control much more easily. Before that, identification was made by taking note of the serial number from its positions on the undersides of the wing, the fuselage sides and the tail, which made correct visual identification almost foolproof at all foreseeable flight attitudes.

A

One of the Merlins in Tony Agar’s Mosquito HJ711 showing the saxophone-type exhaust.

A

Ian Statham enlarges on the answer we gave, confirming that early marks required the hot gases from the rearmost cylinder of each Merlin engine’s cylinder bank to be moved forward to protect the wing leading edge. This involved combining the exhausts from the two rear cylinders into a manifold having a single outlet stub aligned with the fifth cylinder in each bank. With the introduction of the later two-stage supercharger in the Merlin 31, the engine was longer with the rear cylinders further forward and away from the wing leading edge, allowing them to have their own exhaust stubs — six of them. John Adams sent a picture of the normally shrouded saxophone-type

Guangdong bombers

Q

Last month, David Newbury was curious about what aircraft were depicted in a picture taken in 1938 over Guangdong, China, and seen in a museum in Dunedin, New Zealand.

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

24/05/2017 13:41

THIS MONTH’S QUESTIONS

Japanese floatplanes over Guangdong — the right way up this time.

A

Many readers were quick to point out that the picture was published upsidedown and did not show some strange asymmetric Japanese bombers, but a more conventional type. If the 1938 date is correct, these would appear to be floatplanes, probably Kawanishi E7Ks. Mostly used for reconnaissance and given the Allied codename ‘Alf’, it is quite possible that the E7K biplane could have dropped light bombs and may have done so over Guangdong. The Aichi E13A ‘Jake’ and Yokosuka E14Y ‘Glen’ would be too early if 1938 is accurate.

Dave Clark Five

Q

Prop for sale

In a Somerset reclamation yard is a single Watts-type wooden propeller planned for sale as originating from a ‘1919 Airship’. The latter is incorrect, writes Graham Skillen, who took the accompanying pictures. He says that details on the single blade, which has been cropped down to about half its original length, state: “DGR No XXX3130 G/

BRISTOL MERCURY VIII & XV/RPM 2400/1138(8?) M”. It has no covering or brass leading edge and doesn’t seem to comply with propellers fitted to the Blenheim V/ Bisley, which had the aforementioned engines, but always with metal props. Even the Gladiator fitted with the Mercury VIIIa or VIIIs versions used a metal three-bladed Fairey Reed unit. What might its origins be?

Oxford cockpit

Spitfire fin tips

Q

Q

A photo of an Airspeed Oxford cockpit published on page 114 of the Database feature about the type in the March issue brought a query from Harry Liddell. He wonders why the variometer/ VSI is missing from the instrument panel, replaced by a blanking plate. Was this possibly a company aircraft before delivery to the A close-up of the Oxford cockpit shown in March. RAF?

In the June issue, Geoffrey Dobson queried the use of an aircraft by the 1960s pop group the Dave Clark Five. Tony Exelby says the aircraft used by the group was a Convair 240, N90861. It was chartered from East Coast Flying Services for a US tour in spring 1964 and carried a large ‘DC5’ logo on the nose and fin. The group never owned its own aircraft. Neil Punnett confirmed the information and Paul Mathias sent a photograph of the aircraft taken during the tour. In music terms, the CV-240 is remembered as the type that ran out of fuel and killed members of the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1977.

Engine rotation

A publicity shot of the Convair 240 used by the Dave Clark Five during their US tour in 1964.

A

A

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Q

Ian Statham asks why some Spitfire IXs have the original rounded-top rudders while others of the same mark have a more pointed shape. Of course, the early MkIXs were converted MkVs, but not all the evidence he has seen supports this explanation. The urgent need for a higher-performing aircraft than the MkV to combat the Fw 190 prompted the RAF to order 100 MkVc airframes with new Merlin 61 engines on 18 April 1942, all to be delivered to Fighter Command by the end of June. With serials in the BR and BS ranges, these early production MkIXs had the original MkV fin and rudder to hasten deliveries, but later aircraft featured the broad-chord, pointed rudder. Can someone offer the reasons for the change?

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS • In the last line of the boxed item on page 83 of the May issue, the reference to the “Super Guppy outside airlifter” should have read “outsize airlifter”. • John Dowson corrects a caption on page 36 of the June issue. “The operator”, he says, “is not operating a radar system but a radio amateur operating station, ZB1AE, as may be seen from

Q

There was a query in the January issue over the different directions of propeller rotation between UK-designed aircraft compared with those originating from the USA. Former Fleet Air Arm pilot Brian Toomey

the ‘QSL’ card in front of the loudspeaker. I cannot identify the equipment in use but the other QSL cards on the wall and the Morse key in front of him are also clues. I suggest it is a typical ‘ham’ shack of the period, particularly one attached to a military operation.” • The captions for pictures 5 and 6 of ‘Hooks’ Tours’ in the June issue were transposed.

responds with memories of his US Navy training in the 1950s. He recalls moving from Harvards to stubby-wing F8F Bearcats and experiencing how unbelievably strong the torque was on take-off. Back in the UK on Sea Furies with 811 Naval Air Squadron at RNAS Arbroath, the reversed torque

effect was less than in the Bearcats, but the problem was managed “with difficulty” until it just became part of flying the type and, overall, was par for the course. In comparison, the Sea Fury’s Sea Hawk successor was, he says, known as the legendary “Ladies’ Shopping Aeroplane”!

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25/05/2017 13:49

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24/05/2017 09:53

BRITISH EX-MILITARY JETS

END of the CLASSIC YEARS?

Jonathon Whaley’s exceptionally colourful Hunter F58A Miss Demeanour, currently grounded along with all other UK civilregistered Hunters, remains up for sale.

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AEROPLANE JULY 2017

25/05/2017 13:46

Collections sold, aircraft grounded, some high-profile tragedies — the UK’s classic jet scene has experienced a difficult few years. How do those on the inside view it? Aeroplane canvassed the views of several British ex-military jet operators to find out WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY: RICHARD PAVER

AEROPLANE JULY 2017

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www.aeroplanemonthly.com 29

24/05/2017 13:44

BRITISH EX-MILITARY JETS

ABOVE: The Venoms previously operated by the Classic Air Force were the last of their type airworthy not just in the UK, but also Europe.

W

hen looking at the historic aircraft that are preserved as airworthy machines in the UK today, it is very clear that a large void has opened up over the last few years with regard to classic jets. Of course, it is quite normal for collections to come and go, but the owners and operators of historic military jets have diminished significantly in number. Very few new owners have entered this arena, and Britain has seen around 25 such aeroplanes either being withdrawn from display flying, sold, grounded or lost since 2010. Except for the Gnat Display Team, the Fly Navy Heritage Trust’s Sea Vixen, North Wales Military Aviation Services’ Strikemasters and the new Jet Provost Display Team, there are now very few jets from the 1950s to the 1990s in British hands for enthusiasts to see fly. It would be easy to draw a broad-brush conclusion, namely that the sharp decline of the sector is largely due to the impact of the Shoreham accident. However, such a conclusion would be wrong. To look into what has happened, I have recently spent time talking to people closely associated with either owning, flying or maintaining classic jets in the UK in recent years. I started with Mike Collett, owner and chairman of what was the Classic Air Force at Coventry, formerly the Air Atlantique Classic Flight. Having owned and operated pairs of airworthy Meteors, Venoms, Vampires

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and Jet Provosts, together with several other vintage jets, his comments are invaluable. Mike told me: “The situation today for operating classic jets in the UK is not healthy. Britain should be leaders in this, but due to a combination of factors the classic jet scene in the UK has basically had its day. There still seems to be plenty of enthusiasm for these types outside the UK, but whether it will come back at some stage over here is very doubtful. It could be that there will be a resurgence of interest at some stage in the future, but who knows when? Personally I believe that it won’t be for quite a long time. “Whilst I fully acknowledge that it isn’t easy being a regulator, the sad fact is that there seems to be little enthusiasm for, or understanding of, vintage jets by the UK CAA [Civil Aviation Authority]. This situation existed before the Shoreham accident, and this has been made worse since that tragedy occurred in 2015. “I had made the decision to close Classic Air Force before the Shoreham accident, so the closure decision was not related to Shoreham. The environment for owning and operating vintage jets in the UK had just become increasingly difficult and expensive. We did have some help with modest fuel price drops as the oil price came down, but the training and flying time

required to get a vintage jet and its pilot ready for a show increased significantly. For example, to secure some pretty modest airshow income an operator of such classic types has a major commitment with respect to maintenance, insurance and fuel, plus some considerable non-incomeearning flying that is required to both train and maintain type continuity for the pilots. “The reason we closed the CAF operation was due to several major issues that all came together around the same time. Firstly, we had been operating CAF for over 20 years and many of our most experienced and senior personnel were either reaching retirement or had moved on to other top jobs outside our organisation. “Secondly, the question of the future of Coventry Airport came up at the same time. In 2014, it looked very likely that Coventry Airport would be closed within a very few years, and as the lease for our hangar expired at the end of 2018 we started to look to move elsewhere as a matter of priority. However, despite assessing many locations and trying out Newquay for a couple of years, it all came to nothing as we felt that we wouldn’t be able to make it work. One consistent factor was that a vintage jet fleet was not what the airport owners were trying to attract. They felt that a modern air transport hub and a vintage military jet operation were not compatible, not desirable, and wouldn’t make them any money.

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“The third factor which influenced our decision to close and sell the fleet was that it seemed to me that everything has its day and sometimes it is simply right to change direction, or do things differently. Maybe it was time to do something new. “The UK airshow scene before Shoreham had gradually changed and so many smaller airshows where we had previously displayed had simply disappeared off the calendar. The bigger military-style events that remained did not have a great interest in vintage military jets, and as such general enthusiasm for these types seemed to be on the wane. This feeling has only increased since the Shoreham tragedy, but this downward trend was very evident well before the Shoreham accident. “With regard to our decision to withdraw from the vintage jet scene, the fourth and final negative factor was that we had traditionally relied upon very experienced exmilitary pilots to fly our jets, and these guys needed little or no conversion training because most of them had many thousands of hours on these classic types. As the years passed, inevitably many of these older pilots retired from flying permanently and we had to gradually replace them with new, younger pilots who had to be trained from scratch to fly and display these classic jets. We have had some really wonderful, very dedicated and skilful younger pilots doing this with us, but with no RAF or other vintage jet background they still needed a full conversion training programme for each of our jets, and this added hugely to the time and cost of running the Classic Air Force operation. “I therefore decided in the face of these issues that, sadly, our time had come and that the best course of action was to close down CAF and dispose of all of the aircraft, hopefully to good homes. In this process, I must emphasise that I have been driven by the desire to keep these jets flying even if this is not in the UK — it would be a disaster of immense proportions if they were scrapped, and I would also be very sad if they ended up as static museum exhibits.

Therefore, I have been trying to sell the former CAF fleet to operators who will keep them flying, and it now seems clear that at least three of our jets will be going to the USA and will be actively flown. “I do believe that many things in life work in cycles. In this case I believe that these classic military jets in the UK have had their day and the younger generations have moved on to other things and interests in their lives. Who knows, interested and enthusiastic people may well come back some time in the future when enough time after Shoreham has passed, and attitudes may change again.” Tim Skeet is the former chairman of the Classic Aircraft Trust, the registered charity created to operate, display and preserve all the jets in the Classic Air Force fleet. A corporate banker with significant experience in finance, working in the City of London, he was appointed in 2012 to help specifically with the financial challenges facing the operation. Tim says, “When we created the Classic Aircraft Trust the intention was to provide a registered charity that could provide a longterm, sustainable means of keeping the Classic Air Force fleet together as a major UK collection with a significant number of the fleet being kept fully operational and publicly

Enthusiasm for these types seemed to be on the wane. This feeling has increased since the Shoreham tragedy, but the trend was very evident well before that

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displayed. There was no way that the fleet could have a long-term future as an airworthy collection without significant injection of either private funds or the injection of some sort of corporate sponsorship. We explored many avenues for sponsorship but the simple fact is that for a potential corporate sponsor a vintage military jet does not fit into the modern brand that big businesses try to build today. Most vintage military jets are simply not of interest to today’s youth in the digital, internet age. “With respect to them being used as an advertising platform they are noisy, they are considered to be old weapons designed to drop bombs that kill people, and they are also seen to be polluting technology that is no longer relevant or desirable today. For example, the kudos and admiration that the UK public have for the Spitfire does not exist for most vintage jets, except for the Gnat, which is forever positively associated with the Red Arrows. The fact that these vintage jets were designed essentially to participate in conflict was also never going to be a good fit within a corporate brand. Therefore, their suitability to be used as a platform to help modern corporate businesses build their brand in a very positive way that would appeal to youth was pretty well nil.” One ongoing consequence of the Shoreham accident is the grounding of all the UK’s civilian-registered Hawker Hunters. However, the most distinctive of them, Jonathon Whaley’s Hunter F58A Miss Demeanour, had ceased flying

BELOW: The Gnat Display Team is presently flying Yellowjacksschemed ‘XR992’ (really XS102) and XR538 in No 4 FTS markings.

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BRITISH EX-MILITARY JETS

TOP: The Royal Navy Historic Flight’s Sea Hawk airborne in 2006. This delightful aeroplane went into storage at Shawbury last year. ABOVE LEFT: Vampire T11 WZ507 is still flying from its North Weald base, but no longer gives displays, and is on the market. ABOVE RIGHT: Chris Heames displaying Hunter T7A WV318 at the 2014 RAF Waddington show, one of its last appearances before moving to Sweden. Hopefully it will return to Britain in the future, once the UK civilianregistered Hunter grounding is rescinded.

DENIS J. CALVERT

before that. “I had 16 years of very enjoyable display flying in Miss Demeanour”, says Jonathon. “For the last eight years the display income fully covered the Hunter’s annual operating costs and in some years produced a modest profit. Having been in a two-seat Hunter syndicate in the late 1990s I saw the potential for a single-seat Hunter as an airshow act and decided that I wanted to buy one. I must make it clear that, right from the start, when I acquired my Hunter in 1997 the aim was to have a specific airshow jet that would appeal to mass airshow audiences. Accuracy in colour schemes was of no interest to me. There were plenty of active military jets displaying and to the general public, mine would be just another military jet — yawn. I therefore designed a unique colour scheme that would be distinctive and complementary to the classic lines of a Hunter; I wanted everyone to remember Miss Demeanour. I recognised this as an untapped opportunity. “A Hunter, especially a singleseat version, is an easy aircraft to fly with simple systems. You can lose all hydraulics and both generators and still fly and land with a degree of normality. What I did do was

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modernise Miss Demeanour’s cockpit and install an electric starting system. She has a glass cockpit with the latest digital navigation and avionics. This allows more time for looking out, enhancing safety when flying in busy airspace. Other changes meant she can be operated by the pilot alone without the need for any groundcrew, thereby simplifying the whole process of managing this aircraft. “In the beginning, I received mixed reactions to the colour scheme based on what could be seen with her sitting on the ground but Jock Maitland at Biggin Hill — a great Hunter enthusiast — booked her for her first major display and as a result she started to receive some very positive exposure. “In the early years flying Miss Demeanour there were, in aviation terms, sustainable losses but fuel was around 20p a litre and insurance charged at £1 per minute. By the time I retired from displaying her, fuel was approaching £1 per litre. Her increasing success as a display item meant that the revenue from displays outpaced the increases in operating costs. Such was her success as an airshow act, after the first few years I didn’t have to market or promote the aircraft — show organisers would

The decision to lift the ban on flying civil Hunters now lies with the board of the CAA. The AAIB reports have not provided any grounds for the Hunter to remain grounded

contact me and ask for a display quote. “I would add that I kept a very close eye on the maintenance costs, bought consumable spares when I could and I was very closely involved in managing the engineering support. I never allowed any slack in the system for what was being spent on the aircraft. In this endeavour I have to thank the maintenance organisations who backed me up. Whilst I did fall out with one organisation in the early years, it had nothing to do with those who got their hands dirty, the engineers and groundcrew. Miss Demeanour and I are privileged to have been supported by engineers as passionate about her as I am. “With the exception of economies of scale, I cannot see any sense in classic jet owners setting up their own dedicated engineering and support organisations. This just adds cost and complexity — all these services should be purchased externally, thereby [stabilising] as much as possible the annual operating costs. “I retired from display-flying Miss Demeanour at the end of 2014. This was not a financial decision. Year-on-year growth in displays meant sustained above-break-even operation, but at a personal cost. My darling wife had put up with my addiction to flying anything anywhere for 44 years. It was also a good time to stop while I still loved every display and would regret stopping. “The display world has changed dramatically in my almost 30 years of displaying. As at today’s date,

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post-Shoreham, has safety really improved? For display pilots, yes it has. For them, rules have made display flying safer — they have not made it safe. The sad truth is that, reading the AAIB [Air Accidents Investigation Branch]’s findings, had all the new rules been in place in August 2015 they would not have prevented the crash, just that the location might have been 220m further away. Western society is increasingly risk-averse, but all that seems to have done is breed risk assessments so that should something tragic happen and, say, the pilot was amongst the fatalities, given a lack of flight recording or obvious aircraft problems, others can be lined up to take the blame. “Is displaying the fun it used to be? No, it isn’t, but I have no doubt that human nature will endure and what today seems unburdenable will become routine. Was I lucky enough to have displayed in the best period? No, the ones I used to watch before I started displaying had the best period, and I’m sure each further iteration of display pilots will say the same about their period, but we’d all be correct. “The environment for classic jets is obviously very difficult postShoreham. The decision to lift the ban on flying civil Hunters now lies with the board of the CAA. The AAIB’s reports have not provided any evidence or grounds for the Hunter to remain grounded. The SRG [Safety Regulation Group] department of the CAA is believed to have put a

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case to the board supporting a lifting of the ban and a member of the AAIB, in a passing comment to me, said that they look forward to seeing Miss Demeanour flying again. If the Hunter remains grounded in the face of lack of rationale differentiating the Hunter from any other aircraft, I can foresee legal action being taken. “The availability of suitably wellqualified and experienced display pilots to take on an aircraft such as Miss Demeanour is, however, a big issue. In my last few years of displaying it I tried to find someone who, for me, was the right pilot to share displaying Miss Demeanour. Four things were required: someone who understood the real purpose of displaying, that being to display the aircraft, not the pilot; someone with the innate ability to display, who would give up their weekends without pay, and finally someone I trusted. The level of difficulty in finding someone with those qualities in that order was exponential.” Another well-known Hunter is the black-painted T7A WV318/ G‑FFOX. Its operator Colin Boyd comments: “I acquired WV318 in 2011 after Delta Jets folded at Kemble and I subsequently converted onto it, taking it to several UK airshows in the period from 2012‑14 when it was displayed by Chris Heames. It went to Sweden in 2014 to be based at Västerås near Stockholm, but as a UK-registered aircraft it was grounded immediately after the Shoreham accident in 2015 due to the CAA restrictions that were imposed on flying Hunters. That

temporary restriction remains in place today, and so WV318 is still over there at Västerås. “We carry out very regular ground runs and taxi the aircraft, which is in superb condition, and as soon as the CAA restrictions are lifted it would be my intention to fly it back to the UK. The climate for operating such a type in the UK in the aftermath of the Shoreham tragedy is obviously a massive challenge now, but I do want to persevere, and I can only hope that we will at some stage be permitted to have UK civil-registered Hunters flown again in UK skies.” WV318 isn’t the only overseasbased Hunter to have been affected by the CAA grounding order. The T8C and F6A operated by the Dutch Hawker Hunter Foundation have remained on the UK register, and as such have not flown since the Shoreham accident. No such restrictions, however, were placed on Hunters operating on the civil registers of other countries.

LEFT: Just once, in the summer of 2015, did the Classic Air Force’s two Meteors fly together. Now, T7 WA591 — the oldest airworthy British jet — is destined for the USA, and NF11 WM167 may follow.

While North Weald-based Vampire T11 WZ507/G-VTII has carried on flying, the twin-boomed de Havilland machine has been absent from air displays. Matt Hampton, its co-owner with Mark Hooton, says: “Mark and I jointly bought the Vampire together in 2002, with the intention to enjoy flying and displaying this wonderful classic jet. We created the Vampire Preservation Group in 2005 to support the aircraft, and then we had over a decade of successfully operating and displaying this lovely little jet. However, in May 2016 we reluctantly took the decision to cease airshow flying and to sell the aircraft as personal circumstances for both of us had changed. Since acquiring the Vampire I have got married and started a family, and also moved to Scotland, so the time required to maintain currency and then go away to airshows simply does not fit in with my other, higher, family priorities. We are joint owners and we both fly for major British airlines. “An added factor in our decision to sell is that with effect from February 2016 the time we both have available to fly and display the Vampire has been significantly cut. This is because the EASA [European Aviation Safety Agency] total flight time regulations for commercial pilots have tightened up compulsory rest periods for commercial pilots on long-haul. During a rest period the pilot is restricted from flying anything

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BRITISH EX-MILITARY JETS

ABOVE: The gorgeous lines of Sea Vixen XP924, now on the strength of the Fly Navy Heritage Trust. RIGHT: Work under way at North Weald to return ex-Indian Air Force Gnat F1 G-SLYR to airworthy condition for the Gnat Display Team.

above 1,600kg in weight — the Vampire is over 4,500kg — so when I am off-duty the window of time availability when I would be free to fly the Vampire has reduced considerably. This impacts all display pilots who fly for airlines as a day job. “Although we believe the CAA are considering the possibility of increasing the current weight limits, when you factor in my time availability, the weather and serviceability issues I concluded that continuing to fly and display the Vampire was simply not going to work for me personally. Mark has recently been flying locally in the Vampire, but the aircraft is still for sale and we are no longer in the airshow business. It’s probably over five years since I last flew a display and two years since my last flight in the Vampire, so the only sensible outcome is for someone else to take it on.” The last historic jet to have been operated on the UK military register as a display and commemorative aircraft was the Royal Navy Historic Flight’s Sea Hawk FGA6 WV908 back in 2010. After the conclusion of that season, the RNHF carried out a full strip-down and inspection of the engine with the intention of having the aircraft airworthy again for the 2012 season. This did not happen, and for a variety of reasons the aircraft has remained grounded since 2010. The RNHF’s limited resources are currently focused on its other aircraft, and it took the decision to place the Sea Hawk into environmentally controlled storage for the immediate future. It was moved by road from Yeovilton to RAF Shawbury in February 2016.

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The plan is to eventually get the Sea Hawk flying again when the resources and funding are available. At the time of writing it is unknown when this will occur, so there is very little prospect of seeing this beautiful aircraft airborne for some years. Another classic naval aircraft has, very pleasingly, bucked the downward trend. Sea Vixen FAW2 XP924/G‑CVIX was donated by Julian Jones to the Fly Navy Heritage Trust in September 2014, specifically to preserve it in airworthy condition. This move has saved the aircraft, as during 2014 it was considered that it was unlikely to keep flying as a private venture. The FNHT, under its Navy Wings ‘brand’, is actively involved in external fundraising to support both the Sea Vixen and other historic naval aircraft including those of the RNHF (see Aeroplane February 2016). Since the end of the Vulcan’s flying career, XP924 has taken on its mantle as the most powerful ex-military jet flying in British civilian hands, and picked up a good deal of display work. It has a busy programme of events lined up for 2017. North Wales Military Aviation Services’ Hawarden-based Strikemaster G-SOAF has been a familiar sight on the UK circuit, and NWMAS is proposing to add a second example, G-RSAF, to its display act for 2017. As solos or a

two-ship, Jet Provost T3 XN637/ G‑BKOU and T5 XW324/G-BWSG have continued to ensure that this classic trainer is represented on the show scene. And, while its aircraft are not British-registered, mention should be made of the Norwegian Air Force Historical Squadron, very regular visitors to UK airshows with two Vampires and now an SB Lim-2 (MiG-15UTI). They have spent a lot of time in Britain and will do so again in 2017, now using Duxford as an operating base. Cause for optimism is seen by the Gnat Display Team, which has been determined to carry on despite suffering a major body-blow with the loss of Gnat G-TIMM and its pilot Kevin Whyman in 2015. In the view of Oliver Wheeldon, one of the team’s pilots as well as the accountable manager of its CAAapproved engineering organisation, “I do believe that the future for the operation of ex-military jets in the UK is a lot more positive than many people are currently conveying. In the Gnat Display Team, we are working very hard to get a new type flying in the UK — the Gnat F1, G-SLYR — and in addition we have sourced another Gnat T1, XP513, from the USA, which we intend to get flying. We are putting a lot of effort into building new, positive relationships with the regulator so that they can work with us in a far more supportive culture. We have

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MIXED FORTUNES long believed in the importance of investing in engineering apprentice programmes to build the skills of the engineers of the future, who we all need to look after these types. The training and mentoring of future jet display pilots is also hugely important, and an increase in the number of CAA DAEs [display authorisation evaluators] who can provide this is fundamental to the future of civil exmilitary jet display teams. “It will come as no surprise that, at the end of the day, the costs of civilian ownership of ex-military jets will be the biggest factor in determining how the population of such types fares in the UK in future years. Therefore, if we can achieve CAA support and approval for SSAC [Safety Standards Acknowledgement and Consent] — paid — flights in turbojets, then this will enormously help the continued ongoing efforts to raise funds to keep these types airworthy.” It is extremely encouraging to note that a new initiative has recently been set up between aircraft owners and the CAA, designed to establish continued airworthiness boards for different types and classes of aircraft to facilitate regular exchange of airworthiness information of type or class-specific best practice. Forum A, chaired by Jonathon Whaley, has already met with the CAA and covers ex-military jet aircraft on the UK register. These forums are now going to take place at regular intervals. In the first instance they have stopped using terms like ‘classic’, ‘vintage’ or ‘historic’ when dealing with ex-military jets. “The CAA are, after many years of paying lip-service, at long last starting to interact with the classic aircraft industry”, says Jonathon. “The first meetings took place this year, starting with the classic jet fraternity but all classic aircraft will have their formal grouping. Small but significant steps, with the CAA having the greatest learning curve and recognising the need for a change in their culture. They seem to have acknowledged that in order to work with our industry at these meetings, they need all sections of the CAA present: management, regulatory, safety, engineering and flight operations, because those are the people from the industry sitting around the table talking to them.” Such regular exchanges of information and best practice can only be welcomed. After all, the future of a major part of British aviation heritage is at stake.

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The Midair Squadron went under in 2015. Since then, both Hunter T7s have been sold abroad, while the Canberra PR9 remains in storage awaiting sale.

Nearly 25 classic military jets registered and flown in the UK have, for various reasons, been grounded, sold or lost since the start of the present decade. Some have flown or will fly again, others not • Canberra PR9 XH134/G-OMHD Ex-Midair Squadron; currently grounded after closure of operator and for sale, stored at Cotswold Airport • F-86A Sabre 48-178/G-SABR Ex-Golden Apple Operations; sold 2014, now flying with Dr John Swartz of Rockford, Illinois • Gnat T1 XR537/G-NATY DS Aviation (UK); currently grounded and stored at Bournemouth • Gnat T1 ‘XS111’/G-TIMM Ex-Gnat Display Team; destroyed at Oulton Park 2015 • Hunter F58A G-PSST Miss Demeanour Heritage Aviation Developments; owner Jonathon Whaley retired from display flying, aircraft for sale, currently grounded and stored at St Athan • Hunter FGA9 XE601/G-ETPS Ex-Team Viper; permanently grounded and sold to Apache Aviation of Dijon, France, in 2012 for spares reclamation • Hunter GA11 XE685/G-GAII Ex-Team Viper; permanently grounded in 2012, then sold for spares to HHA at Scampton • Hunter PR11 WT723/G-PRII Ex-Team Viper; currently grounded at St Athan • Hunter T7 WV372/G-BXFI Ex-Canfield Hunter Ltd; destroyed at Shoreham 2015 • Hunter T7 XL577/G-XMHD Ex-Midair Squadron; airworthy, sold to Royal Jordanian Air Force Historic Flight and exported 2016 • Hunter T7 XL600/G-RAXA Ex-Midair Squadron; sold to Jet Aircraft Museum of London, Ontario, Canada and exported 2016 • Hunter T7A WV318/G-FFOX G-FFOX Group; now at Västerås, Sweden, currently grounded • Jet Provost T3A XM424/G-BWDS Ex-Classic Air Force; currently grounded at Coventry, recently sold and may fly again

• Jet Provost T5A XW289/G-JPVA Ex-G-JPVA Ltd; damaged beyond repair July 2016 in wheels-up landing at North Weald, withdrawn from use • Jet Provost T5A XW433/G-JPRO Ex-Classic Air Force; currently grounded at Coventry, recently sold and may fly again • Meteor T7 WA591/G-BWMF Ex-Classic Air Force; currently grounded at Coventry, but sold to Marty Tibbitts of Detroit, Michigan and shortly to be exported to the USA • Meteor NF11 WM167/G-LOSM Ex-Classic Air Force; currently grounded at Coventry, but sold to Marty Tibbitts of Detroit, Michigan and likely to be exported to the USA • Sea Hawk FGA6 WV908 Royal Navy Historic Flight; last flight late 2010, put into long-term storage at Shawbury February 2016 and currently grounded • Vampire T11 WZ507/G-VTII Vampire Preservation Group; airworthy at North Weald, but for sale, and cessation of airshow appearances announced by owners in 2016 • Vampire T55 ‘XJ771’/G-HELV Ex-Classic Air Force; airworthy, sold to Royal Jordanian Air Force Historic Flight and exported 2016 • Vampire T55 U-1229/G-HATD Ex-Classic Air Force; last flew 2013 on arrival at Coventry, recently sold • Venom FB50 ‘WR470’/G-DHVM Ex-Classic Air Force; currently grounded at Coventry, but sold to Marty Tibbitts of Detroit, Michigan and likely to be exported to the USA • Venom FB50 ‘WK436’/G-VENM Ex-Classic Air Force; currently grounded at Coventry, but sold to Marty Tibbitts of Detroit, Michigan and likely to be exported to the USA • Vulcan B2 XH558/G-VLCN Vulcan to the Sky Trust; permanently grounded end 2015, in storage at Doncaster Sheffield Airport

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DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN

The Dardanelles campaign of 1915 pioneered the use of aircraft at sea. Despite the inevitable teething troubles, the impact on the future of aerial and naval warfare was huge

SHIPBORNE into BATT L I t is a little-known fact that, from the outset, aviation was considered a key element in the execution of the plan to invade Turkey via a seaborne assault through the Dardanelles Straits. Before the outbreak of war in 1914, bombardment of shorebased fortresses by naval guns was considered an inexact science, with little chance of success owing to the precise plotting of the fall of shells being nearly impossible. At sea, range to target and fall of shot were gauged optically by the proximity to the target of the splashes made by the plunging shells as they entered the water. Against land-based targets, this was more difficult to estimate owing to the lack of a visual cue of precisely where the shells fell. As predicted by Maurice Hankey,

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secretary of the War Council, aircraft equipped with wireless were seen as the means by which fall of shot could be determined with greater accuracy than before, against targets on land and at sea. The then First Lord of the Admiralty and keen aviation advocate Winston Churchill concurred with Hankey, and aircraft were promoted as being an important aspect of the effort to knock Turkey out of the war and open a second front to relieve the pressure on the Allies in France. Aside from spotting for naval guns and the vital task of aerial reconnaissance, aeroplanes were to carry out strategic attacks against supply lines to the forts and gun emplacements that lined the banks of the Dardanelles Straits, adding

another dimension to the attackers’ thrust. Prior to the action by British, French and Russian naval units, an abortive attack on the Suez Canal by the Turks on 3 February 1915 was repelled with ease by British and French assets in the area. Airborne surveillance provided by Nieuport VI seaplanes from the French seaplane tender Foudre — constructed as a torpedo boat depot ship in 1912, but converted two years later as the first conventional warship to embark aircraft on a permanent basis — enabled the defenders to determine the precise scale of the attack to follow, proving the operational worth of ship-based aerial reconnaissance. Initially intended as a purely seaborne offensive, in charge of the

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T LE

it was the very first naval vessel completed with the specific function of operating aeroplanes. With its superstructure at its stern and a hangar directly below its bridge, the ship’s forward section was devoted to aircraft handling. Below decks were a hangar and workshops, and either side amidships were two steam cranes for retrieving aircraft from the sea, since floatplanes were de rigeur for ship-based air operations at that time. Ahead of the cranes was a flying-off deck, from which seaplanes mounted on wheeled dollies could get airborne, although this was not used. Under the command of Sqn Cdr Robert Clark-Hall, RNAS, Ark Royal left for the Aegean Sea on 1 February 1915. Aboard were three Sopwith Type 807s, two Wight A.I ‘Navyplanes’, a single Short 135 and four Sopwith Tabloid landplanes. Of these, the Short was felt to be the most useful, the Sopwith 807s and Wights being poor performers unable to reach altitude with a full complement, wireless equipment and a useful fuel load. Military variants of the 1914 Schneider Trophy-winning Tabloid, the Ark’s Tabloids were deemed useless at sea without floats despite their good performance. Inexplicably, there were only two radio sets aboard the carrier, which meant that each had to be moved from aircraft to aircraft. What’s more, the sets could transmit only and were plagued with mechanical defects, which Ark’s engineers struggled to rectify. Arriving in the Aegean on 17 February, its aircraft were put to work that morning. The aeroplanes initially struggled to get airborne owing to persistent engine failures and an inability of particular machines to take off at all in the warm climate — the Wight Navyplanes were a disappointment. Two days later, the machines that could fly were sent aloft in their first attempts at gunnery spotting for the fleet. These early efforts were wholly unsuccessful, marred by ineffective equipment and a refusal of the ships’ gunnery crews to recognise the airmen’s signals. They believed

that the ‘eyes in the sky’ knew less about gunnery than themselves and therefore could not be of any use. Particularly ignorant of the assistance the aircraft were offering were the gunners aboard the Duncan-class battleship HMS Cornwallis, the ship that fired the opening and closing salvoes of the entire campaign and whose firing was wildly inaccurate, which resulted in signals to the ship to cease firing altogether. Carden sent the newly commissioned dreadnought HMS Queen Elizabeth into action on 5 March. Aided by spotter aircraft, it fired its 15in guns at a range of 14,000 yards. At the time the most modern and most powerful warship in the world, Churchill’s decision to dispatch the Queen Elizabeth to the Dardanelles caused consternation within and outwith the Admiralty. Spotting for the battleship, Sopwith 807 serial 922 was fired upon by the Turks, injuring one of its crew — Flt Lt William ‘Sholto’ Douglas (not to be confused with ACM Sir William Sholto Douglas, 1st Baron Douglas of Kirtleside), who received a bullet wound in the leg — and bringing the aircraft down. Further misfortune saw Sopwith serial 808 lose its propeller and crash into the sea. Its crew were rescued. Following tragedy on 18 March, which saw the battleships HMS Irresistible and Ocean and the French battleship Bouvet explode and sink after running into an undetected minefield, the naval assault on the Dardanelles forts came to an end as the flotilla was hastily withdrawn. Further ships were badly damaged by mines and Turkish gunfire on that day. This newly laid minefield remained unseen from aircraft engaged in mine spotting, another duty Ark’s aircrews undertook. Because of the inadequacies of Ark Royal’s flimsy seaplanes, Clark-Hall requested more machines. Although one was another unsuitable Wight Navyplane, he also received two

The Ark Royal’s aeroplanes initially struggled to get airborne owing to persistent engine failures and an inability of particular machines to take off at all in the warm climate

WORDS: GRANT NEWMAN

expedition into the Dardanelles was Vice Admiral Sackville H. Carden, who requested the use of the Foudre in January 1915. Instead, not willing to rely on the French navy for air support, Churchill ordered the first Royal Navy ship since 1588 and the first aircraft-carrying ship to bear the name Ark Royal to Carden. Often claimed to have been converted from a merchant ship hull, HMS Ark Royal was actually built from the keel up as an aircraftcarrying vessel. Her keel and incomplete hull frames did indeed originate from a tramp steamer, but that was all. Her hull and fittings were built for purpose, and upon commission on 10 December 1914

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: A Short 166 suspended from Ark Royal’s crane in an image thought to have been taken in Kephalo Bay, Imbros during the Dardanelles campaign. A stalwart of the spotting operations from the carrier, the Short — coincidentally serialled 166 — was also operated from the monitor HMS Roberts. NATIONAL MUSEUMS OF SCOTLAND

Ark Royal during trials in late 1914. A Sopwith 807 is in its hangar below the bridge. Although seaplane tender operations were a success, the ship was slow and vulnerable to submarine attack, which prompted her placement as a depot ship out of harm’s way during the latter part of the campaign.

GRANT NEWMAN COLLECTION

Armed with a 14in MkX torpedo between its floats, Short number 184 is being swung outboard of the seaplane tender HMS Ben-my-Chree. The exact date of this image is not known by the author, but 184 was Flt Lt George Dacre’s aeroplane, in which he suffered numerous engine failures during his torpedo sorties, but importantly sank a Turkish tug from the surface of the water on 17 August 1915. GRANT NEWMAN COLLECTION

The newly commissioned Ark Royal with a Sopwith Type 807 seaplane, known as a ‘Folder’ on account of its folding wings on the deck, embarked. AEROPLANE

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ABOVE: An aerial view of Seddulbahir Fort, known as Fort No 3 to the British, taken near the beginning of the campaign. Located at Cape Helles on the southern tip of the Gallipoli peninsula at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the fort had a strategic position overlooking the strait and was almost completely destroyed by naval bombardment since it overlooked ‘V’ Beach, where the British divisions landed on 25 April. TREVOR LEE COLLECTION

RIGHT: A Short 166 seaplane moored at the seaplane base adjacent to Kephalo Bay, Imbros. Note the torpedo crutch visible between the two main floats, although the 166 did not have the performance to carry a torpedo aloft in the conditions in the Aegean. This was most likely one of Ark Royal’s aircraft. VIA PHILIP JARRETT/ AVIATION-IMAGES.COM

Sopwith Schneider seaplanes (floatequipped variants of the Tabloids already supplied), two Sopwith 860s and a single Short 166. For five days from 10 April, Ark’s aircraft spotted for battleships firing at targets on the Gallipoli Peninsula from the Gulf of Saros. During this time, the Turkish battleship Turgut Reis, formerly the German Brandenburg-class SMS Weissenburg that was sold to Turkey in 1910, began to harass the Allied fleet. One of Ark’s Sopwiths bombed it, but no damage was done to the ship. On the 27th, it fired on the Ark. Flt Sub-Lt Edwin H. Dunning — who was to make the first take-offs and landings on an aircraft carrier in August 1917 — and observer Flt Sub-Lt W. Park went up in a Short to spot for the battleship HMS Triumph returning fire at the Turkish ship, which left the scene. Unfortunately, the Short was badly damaged on landing, although Dunning and Park were uninjured. On the day of the Allied assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula, 25 April, Ark Royal was anchored with support vessels in Suvla Bay. Its aircraft were in the air over the bay between Gaba Tepe and Ari Burnu, later named Anzac Cove, spotting gunfire. One of these machines overflew the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) lines on 18 May and spotted a large concentration of Ottoman troops in hiding. This was the build-up to the third Turkish offensive to repel

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the invaders from their beach-head. Vastly outnumbering the ANZACs, who were unaware of their presence, the spotting of the awaiting army undoubtedly saved lives. Relying on surprise and their weight of numbers, the Turks launched their attack the next day. Although both sides suffered enormous casualties (around which a formal truce was signed on 24 May to enable the dead to be buried), if the Turks had not been spotted from above the result might well have been disastrous for the ANZACs.

Owing to its lack of speed, which made it vulnerable to submarine attack, following the invasion Ark Royal spent the rest of the campaign as an aircraft depot ship, moored in Kephalo Bay on Imbros, then off Mudros on the Greek island of Lemnos. Despite mishaps and the technical difficulties suffered by her aircraft and equipment, good work was done by her aircrews. Much was learned the hard way in the art of aerial gunnery spotting, since no practice of any sort was carried out between the embarked crews and the fleet before operations began. Sixteen days before the Allied invasion on 25 April, the balloon tender HMS Manica arrived in the Aegean Sea in support. A former manure-carrying merchant vessel converted days before sailing for the Dardanelles, Manica was the navy’s first balloon vessel. Equipped with a French-made spherical balloon and a German Drachen kite balloon received from the Belgians, hydrogen storage tanks and pumps as well as wireless and telephony equipment were carried in support of her peculiar craft. Although ineffective in high winds, which led to breakages of the cable owing to the balloon’s large surface area, the sausage-shaped Drachen was found to be the better of the two; the spherical balloon was less stable in winds above 20mph. Unlike Ark Royal’s seaplanes, Manica’s balloon crews were given the opportunity to carry out practice in fire control techniques with the

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armoured cruiser HMS Bacchante prior to going into battle. Spotters aboard the balloon would telephone the Manica, which then radioed the information to the gunnery ships. The first active operation by Manica’s balloon was a success; it directed fire from the Bacchante against a Turkish position on 19 April, resulting in considerable damage and casualties. The balloon was airborne for seven-and-a-half hours during the ANZAC assault, spotting the gunfire

from Triumph. Early that morning the Turgut Reis began firing from within the Dardanelles Strait over the peninsula, but not before Manica’s balloon had directed fire from Triumph’s guns toward her, which prompted the Turkish ship to pull away. A few hours later it commenced firing on the landing beach, but again — and for a third time that day, later in the afternoon — the balloon and Triumph prevented what could have been a calamitous situation on the invasion beach-head. Manica’s balloon was aloft almost every day over the following weeks, providing guidance to the naval ships’ gunfire. Two days after the invasion, the balloon was spotting fire from Queen Elizabeth against a flotilla of Turkish transport vessels supplying Ottoman troops ashore. The battleship sank one of them. Even bearing in mind its improbability, the use of balloons for gunnery spotting proved a success. This resulted in two further balloon vessels being sent to the region, the tenders HMS Hector and Canning. Although useful, neither ship had as much success as Manica owing to their deployment further out to sea because of accurate Turkish gunfire, which reduced the effectiveness of their balloons’ observers in spotting.

Success came from the fact that the balloons provided a stable platform from which accurate plotting could be made close to shore. The big, dark shapes were visible for miles during their deployment. There is no doubt, however, that the lack of enemy aircraft in the vicinity contributed to their success, as over the Western Front balloon-busting became a favoured, but hazardous, pastime for skilled pilots on both sides. The Dardanelles campaign saw the first use of torpedo-carrying aeroplanes in combat, and although the Short 184 was a cumbersome seaplane of limited flexibility, the type achieved a great deal. Specifically tasked with providing a unique offensive element to the fleet in the Aegean Sea, the seaplane tender HMS Ben-my-Chree arrived on 12 June 1915. A former Isle of Man tramp steamer, Benmy-Chree retained her Manx name, meaning ‘Woman of my heart’, in RN service and was modified by the incorporation of aviation facilities in a large rectangular hangar at her superstructure’s aft end. Commanded by Cdr Cecil J. L’Estrange Malone, RNAS — experienced in aerial warfare as he had commanded the Christmas Day attack against the airship sheds at

ABOVE: One of two Sopwith Type 860s that flew from Ark Royal was number 857, pictured on board in the Aegean. The 225hp Sunbeamengined type was relatively untried upon service entry and suffered many problems. KEASBURY-GORDON PHOTOGRAPH ARCHIVE/ALAMY

Although the Short 184 was a cumbersome seaplane of limited flexibility, the type improbably managed success

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ABOVE: Another view of Short number 166 being hoisted back aboard the deck of Ark Royal.

RAF MUSEUM

Nordholz near Cuxhaven, Germany — Ben-my-Chree carried a handful of Short 184s, 830s and Sopwith Schneiders. Since the 830s proved unsuitable, however, throughout the campaign L’Estrange Malone’s ship primarily operated an air complement of three torpedo-carrying 184s and three Schneiders used mainly for aerial reconnaissance. On arrival in the Aegean, trial torpedo launches with the Shorts were carried out, while the Schneiders were sent on armed reconnaissance patrols. Operating both types was fraught with mishap, as on many occasions floats were holed from taxiing into submerged objects. It was also found that in the warm conditions, the 184s could not take a torpedo and a second crew member aloft. When carrying torpedoes they were flown as single-seaters. The date set for the initial torpedo attack was 12 July, with Flt Lt George B. Dacre in Short number 184 and Flt Cdr Charles H. K. Edmonds, another Cuxhaven raid

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veteran, in number 842 being sent up against ships at anchor in Smyrna Harbour. Unexpectedly, the 14in MkX torpedoes were ripped from their brackets mounted between the seaplanes’ twin floats as they took off. The first attempted torpedo air strike in history came to a premature end as it was about to begin. It wasn’t for another month before another attack was attempted. At dawn on 12 August Edmonds got airborne without losing his torpedo and flew towards the Sea of Marmara, with Flt Sub-Lt John T. Bankes-Price airborne in Schneider number 1560 watching from afar. Edmonds’ report of the attack said: “Approaching Injeh Burnu, I glided down and fired my torpedo at the steamer from a height of 15ft and a range of some

800 yards, with the sun astern of me. I noticed some flashes from [a] tug, so presumed she was firing at me and therefore kept on a westerly course, climbing rapidly. Looking back, I observed the track of the torpedo, which struck the ship abreast of the main mast, the starboard side. The explosion sent a column of water and large fragments of the ship almost as high as her mast head. The ship was about 8,000 tons displacement, painted black, with one funnel and four masts. She was lying close to the land, so cannot sink very far, but the force of the explosion was such that it is impossible for her to be of further use to the enemy.” Unbeknown to Edmonds, the ship had already been abandoned, since it had been previously attacked

The 14in MkX torpedoes were ripped from their brackets mounted between the seaplanes’ twin floats as they took off

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by the submarine HMS E14. After retrieving its seaplanes, Ben-myChree steamed westward for fear of a retaliatory attack. The ship was considered a precious asset and never sailed alone, being accompanied by an escort ship throughout the campaign. A week later, on the 17th, a second torpedo attack opportunity was taken. The location was at Ak Bashi Liman near Chanak, today the city of Çanakkale, where supplies to the Turkish armies were being off-loaded by sea. This time Dacre, whose Short refused to take off after two attempts on 12 August, joined Edmonds in the air, but not before taking 15 minutes to get airborne due to his 225hp Sunbeam engine giving trouble again. Edmonds launched his torpedo from 800 yards and it struck one of three steamers anchored together, which was destroyed by fire. Once airborne, Dacre had an adventurous time of it. His unreliable engine spluttered on his way to the target area and he was forced to alight on the sea. After repairs were made

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while balancing on the aircraft’s floats, which enabled him to start the machine, Dacre spotted a tug moored alongside a jetty and taxied to a firing position. Having launched his torpedo he turned and taxied away. On looking back he saw the tug erupt into flame, but found himself under rifle fire as he attempted to take off. Following a three-mile dash through the strait, bouncing along the water’s surface, he was at last able to get airborne, all the while under fire. His engine promptly died in flight with a bang, however, and he had to glide back toward the awaiting tender, where celebrations had already begun. Dacre’s Boy’s Own episode was the last time Ben-my-Chree’s torpedo bombers went into action. In his report, L’Estrange Malone portentously wrote, “One cannot help looking on this operation as being the forerunner of a line of development, which will tend to revolutionize warfare”. The three successful sinkings earned Dacre the DSO and Edmonds a bar to his DSO earned at Cuxhaven. Aircraft-carrying ships converted for purpose were not the only naval vessels to operate aeroplanes during the campaign. A variety of warships embarked them, which, despite the pioneering nature of the technology, proved satisfactory. It is an overlooked fact that the very first conventional naval vessels with aviation facilities incorporated into their design from the drawing board were a class of big gun monitor — the classification borrowed from the name of the first

American turret-armed vessel built to the design of Swedish-American John Ericsson. With experience gained from bombarding the Belgian coast using warships’ guns in October 1914, the Admiralty requested a class of vessel designed specifically for coastal bombardment. They were to be able to embark aeroplanes for spotting duties as part of their design. These ships became the Abercrombie-class monitors. Fitted with a single turret forward with two US-built 14in guns, the Abercrombies were equipped with a crane and space aft of the funnel for the external stowage of a seaplane. All four Abercrombies — the name ship, Havelock, Raglan and Roberts — were sent to the Dardanelles on completion, with Abercombie herself arriving at Kephalo Bay on 12 July 1915. Eleven days later, HMS Roberts and the monitor M19, armed with a single 9.2in gun, began bombarding Turkish batteries on the Asiatic coast near Kumkale. Fall of shot was plotted by two of Ben-my-Chree’s Short 184s piloted by Dacre and Sub-Lt Maurice E. A. Wright, the seaplane carrier’s crews nicknaming the pair ‘Big Willie’ and ‘Little Willie’. According to reports, Roberts’ guns fired at ranges of up to 10nm, likely at the time to have been the longest range at which guns had been fired in naval warfare. It appears that during their service in the Aegean, none of the monitors were assigned their own aircraft, although Raglan and Roberts received machines from the two seaplane carriers in the region.

ABOVE: The seaplane tender HMS Ben-my-Chree, almost certainly photographed during the Dardanelles campaign. The fastest of the Royal Navy packet steamer conversions to seaplane tenders, Ben-my-Chree spent most of its career in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean Seas until being sunk by Turkish gunfire off the coast of Kastellorizo Island on 11 January 1917. NATIONAL MUSEUMS OF SCOTLAND

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seaplane crews supplied to their respective cruisers had become adept at the task. Throughout December 1915, amid the clouds of defeat, almost all aircraft operations were confined to overflights of the invasion beaches in support of troop withdrawals being conducted across the Gallipoli Peninsula. The amassed naval fleet headed west for less hazardous climes, although Ark Royal and Ben-my-Chree and their war-weary seaplanes and crews remained in the region after the Dardanelles operation came to an end.

ABOVE: At the end of the campaign in December 1915, the Duncanclass battleship HMS Cornwallis bombards Turkish shore positions in support of the Allied withdrawal in Suvla Bay. Her torpedo nets are deployed. The smoke column ashore is from stores left behind in the haste to evacuate and set alight.

Each carried only one aircraft at a time, and on 1 August Dacre, his observer Midshipman Sizemore and three mechanics, along with Short number 184, were transferred to Roberts. Dacre was relieved by Wright and Short number 841 on the 11th. Ben-my-Chree’s personnel and aircraft remained aboard the monitor until 1 September. Two of Ark Royal’s aircraft also served aboard the Roberts, Schneider number 1437 and Short Type 166 number 164 for a week at a time in September. Raglan too was a recipient of the Ark’s aircraft, a Short 184 being on board during October 1915. A series of photographs exists of Benmy-Chree with the submarine E7 moored alongside with at least two of the carrier’s aircraft on it, taken on 3 September. In one particular image, clearly seen on the submarine’s forecastle is the Schneider number 3722, and later Short number 842. The carriage of these aircraft aboard the submarine has raised speculation as to why. It is thought that the intention was for E7 to carry them through the Narrows and deep into the Sea of Marmara for a bombing attack against Constantinople. It had previously snuck into the Sea of Marmara and caused considerable damage by torpedoing Turkish shipping and firing on shore installations, but the exact aim of

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taking the aircraft has been lost. Two days after the photographs were taken, E7 became tangled in anti-submarine nets near the entrance to the Narrows and was deliberately blown up. Its crew were captured. No aeroplane was aboard at the time. With a somewhat less ambitious purpose, Wright and Short number 842, along with mechanics and supplies, were transferred to the Cressy-class armoured cruiser HMS Euryalis between late September and mid-October. Equipped with its gunnery-spotting aircraft, the cruiser operated in the gulf adjacent to the city of Smyrna, shelling shipping and port facilities, while the Short provided direction from above. The Eclipseclass cruiser HMS Doris of the 11th Cruiser Squadron was involved in harassing actions against Ottoman positions along the eastern Mediterranean coast prior to and during the Dardanelles campaign, Marines being sent ashore on sabotage operations. At that time, she carried one of Foudre’s Nieuport VI seaplanes for reconnaissance and light bombing duties, the aircraft stowed on the ship’s transom. Joining the massed Allied fleet in the Aegean later in 1915, the rather active Doris was equipped with Sopwith 807 number 922 and Schneider number 1437 from Ark Royal for gunnery spotting duties, by which time the

The shipborne use of aircraft on such a scale as during the Dardanelles campaign was unprecedented and remarkable, considering that in 1915 military aviation was in its infancy

On 14 May 1916, the former commanding officer of No 3 Wing, RNAS, which had been active in support of the Dardanelles/Gallipoli operation, Sqn Cdr Charles Rumney Samson received command of Ben-my-Chree. In Samson’s hands the ship remained in the Aegean until its untimely end on 11 January 1917, when it was set on fire by Turkish shore batteries off the coast of the island of Kastellorizo in the Dodecanese Group. It was the first seaplane carrier sunk by enemy fire. Widely ignored in histories of air warfare, the shipborne use of aircraft on such a scale as during the Dardanelles campaign was unprecedented and remarkable, considering that in 1915 military aviation was still in its infancy. Despite the varying quality of the equipment, which was hampered by the standards of technology of the time, the intent of the British and French navies to employ their air assets was far-sighted and, as L’Estrange Malone wrote, a portent of a revolutionary change in naval warfare. It took foreign navies time to heed the lessons learned, however, owing to the campaign’s end result and the backlash suffered by the principal combatants. Nevertheless, the actions of the airmen and crews of the aircraft-carrying ships proved a salutary operation, and provided much valuable experience for what lay ahead. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author thanks Trevor Lee for the use of his collection of reconnaissance photographs, Mark Wagner of Aviation Images and Philip Jarrett for aircraft pictures taken at Imbros, plus Ian Philliskirk of the Gallipoli Association, living in Turkey, for location information.

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13 MIRA AT WAR

Lucky

There was a great deal of pride involved in Royal Hellenic Air Force squadron 13 Mira’s fight against the Axis powers. That, for a long time, it went to war with inadequate equipment makes the unit’s achievements all the more heroic WORDS: JOHN CARR

ABOVE: A 13 Mira naval co-operation Anson patrolling the Aegean Sea circa 1940. HELLENIC WAR MUSEUM

R

unning out of fuel at night in a raging sandstorm was not what WO Panayotis Frangoyannis of the Royal Hellenic Air Force had been trained for. Yet, on 8 May 1943, he and the crew of his 13 Mira Bristol Blenheim V found themselves in precisely that predicament. Frangoyannis was coming in from an anti-submarine patrol over the Mediterranean when he found his base at Dekheila near Alexandria hemmed in by a howling wall of Sahara sand. Similarly blocked out was an alternative landing ground at Mersa Matruh, so as the aeroplane’s fuel gauge nudged zero, Frangoyannis told his crew to brace

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for an emergency landing. Bellylanding on sand dunes is a tricky business at the best of times, but the Blenheim somehow made it, sliding and scraping until it jerked to a halt against a barbed wire fence. Frangoyannis and his two crewmen, unhurt but shaken, climbed out and huddled under a wing for warmth in the freezing desert night. It wasn’t only the cold that was a threat. The area was known to be crawling with desert tribesmen who had raised to a high art the capturing of Allied and Axis airmen for ransom. When dawn broke Frangoyannis ordered the destruction of the Blenheim’s IFF (identification friend or foe) transmitter. No hostile

Bedouins appeared, so the three airmen explored their surroundings. With a shock they saw that the barbed wire fence that one of the wings had burst through was the boundary of a minefield. A few feet more and they would have been blown up. That wasn’t all. The skidding aeroplane had just avoided a robust concrete pillbox, and the nose was in fact jutting out over a chasm. “All three of us fell to our knees to give thanks to God”, recalled Capt Andreas Tsimbos, the army observer on board the aircraft, in his diary. For years afterwards, the three men would mark 8 May as their ‘second birthday’.

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At the time 13 Mira (Squadron), technically a part of the Royal Air Force in the Middle East, had just taken delivery of 30 shop-worn Blenheim Vs to replace its trusty but overworked Avro Anson Is. Unlike Nos 335 and 336 (Greek) Squadrons, flying Hawker Hurricanes under RAF command in North Africa, 13 Mira had been allowed to keep its blue and white Greek roundels in recognition of the fact that it was the only pre-war RHAF squadron to survive the fall of Greece to the Axis in April 1941 and escape to carry on the fight in the Middle East. The squadron had been formed in 1931 during a reorganisation of Greece’s air power that had resulted

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in the creation of the independent RHAF, with uniforms, ranks and insignia based on those of the RAF. The fledgling Greek air force consisted of four operational groups: army co-operation, naval cooperation, fighters and bombers. 13 Mira, part of the naval co-operation group, was the first squadron to receive Anson Is, the most modern aircraft the RHAF could boast at the time. When Greece battled the invading Italians in the snows of Albania during the winter of 1940-41, 13 Mira’s patrols kept the Aegean Sea clear for the troopships ferrying conscripts from the Greek islands to the front. It is to the squadron’s credit

that not a single soldier was lost to enemy naval action in that period. Meritorious work it may have been, but it was also boring, and the crews itched for action. They got it on 9 February, when Flt Lts Nikos Toumbakaris and Argyris Kouyoufas were ordered to attack Italian submarines threatening an Allied convoy north of Crete. The weather was filthy, with thick, low cloud. When the two Ansons came within sight of the convoy, the Royal Navy escorts mistook them for Axis aircraft and loosed their guns at them. Both pilots fired their recognition flares, but in the meantime the weather had worsened. For 20 minutes the ‘Annie’ of Kouyoufas was bounced

TOP: An Anson and an unidentified crew, possibly at Hellenikon, Athens, prior to the German invasion in April 1941. HELLENIC WAR MUSEUM

ABOVE LEFT: One of the squadron’s Blenheim IVs on an airfield in Libya. VIA JOHN CARR ABOVE RIGHT: In the cockpit of a 13 Mira Anson. The naval officers’ identities are not known. HELLENIC WAR MUSEUM

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13 MIRA AT WAR

ABOVE: This somewhat worn Anson and personnel were probably photographed in Athens during early 1941. HELLENIC WAR MUSEUM

BELOW: After its undercarriage jammed, Blenheim IV Z7889 crashlanded at Landing Ground 86, not far south-west of Alexandria, Egypt, on 17 January 1942.

VIA ANDREW THOMAS

about so violently he thought it was all over. When the buffeting eased he looked around for Toumbakaris, who in distress had radioed Greek naval headquarters asking to be vectored home. There seems to have been some error in transmission, as Toumbakaris ran out of fuel and prepared for an emergency landing at Messara in Crete. As he approached the coast at near-zero feet his lowered undercarriage caught the top of a wave. The Anson’s bombs had been fused for jettisoning and exploded on impact, killing Toumbakaris and his navigator, Flt Lt Panayotis Linos: 13 Mira’s first losses in the war. The wireless operator, WO Tingas, survived. Six weeks later 13 Mira achieved its first kill when Sgt Christos Spentzos

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The order went out to the RHAF to destroy the few aeroplanes it had left, but the 13 Mira commander had other ideas spotted an Italian submarine stalking a convoy leaving the port of Piraeus. Spentzos lined up on the sub, pushed the Anson’s stick forward, dived and planted his bombs firmly on the target. The whoops of the crew ringing in his ears, Spentzos opened his logbook to record the time of the action, but found he’d forgotten to wear his watch. Therefore, under the heading ‘Time’ he simply wrote “Tora” (“Now”). The word became 13 Mira’s motto. By April 1941 it was apparent that the Greek cause was lost.

On 6 April the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe blasted their way over the Bulgarian frontier and into Greece, sweeping aside the small Allied force sent to stop them. As the Greek forces capitulated and German columns surged towards Athens, the order went out to what remained of the RHAF to destroy the few aeroplanes it had left. But the 13 Mira squadron commander, Sqn Ldr Spyros Dakopoulos, had other ideas. Early in the morning of 23 April he lined up his 10 Ansons, fully fuelled, at Hellenikon air base near Athens for

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a dash to Crete, nearly 250km (155 miles) to the south, when without warning a swarm of Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 109s roared out of the sky. Minutes later, five of the 10 Ansons were flaming pyres. The remaining five managed to take off through the columns of smoke. The flight to Crete was dramatic. Flt Sgt Vasilios Kourdis looked down to see ships full of fleeing Allied troops aflame under the constant attacks of the Luftwaffe. He was acutely aware that the Anson’s single dorsal gun would not be much use if attacked, but somehow the five aeroplanes escaped the enemy’s notice and made it to Heraklion in Crete. Dakopoulos wanted to stay in Crete but the crews, perhaps sensing what would

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happen to that island in the space of a month, insisted on moving on to Egypt. The RAF helped them set a course for Mersa Matruh, where they landed 13 hours after leaving Athens. Kourdis was finally able to relax with what he later described as “the sweetest thing [he] ever tasted” — a steaming cup of RAF tea. After a few days among the luxuries of Alexandria and Cairo, 13 Mira was assigned as a naval co-operation unit to the British Fleet Air Arm’s 201 Group at Dekheila. The Greeks were proud not only of the blue and white roundels that they were allowed to

maintain, but also of their Ansons, which soundly beat the FAA’s stringy Fairey Swordfish and Supermarine Walruses in the appearance stakes. The squadron was given antisubmarine patrols over an area bounded by the Nile Delta, Cyprus, the Dodecanese islands and Crete. For months the crews droned over the Mediterranean waves without sighting a single enemy sub. Sometimes they would catch a nostalgic glimpse of a Cretan peak in the distance. One crew claimed credit for sinking an Italian submarine off Haifa, but 201 Group turned down the request for captured Italian seamen to serve as orderlies in the officers’ mess! The Ansons reached the end of their service lives in February 1942, to be replaced by a handful of Bristol Blenheim IVs and Vs found languishing on a disused airfield. Along with the change came the squadron’s redesignation as 13 Light Bombing Mira. It had to make do with these aircraft for little more than a year. At about the time of Frangoyannis’ fraught desert bellylanding in May 1943, one Blenheim IV stalled and crashed on take-off after being serviced at Tobruk, killing the two crew members and three British servicemen on board — whose extra weight, it was thought, could have contributed to the crash. Shortly after that disaster 13 Mira finally received aircraft its pilots could really get their teeth into: Americanmade twin-engine Martin Baltimore light bombers that could each carry nearly 2,000lb of bombs and bristled with 10 defensive guns. “It wasn’t an easy aeroplane to fly”, wrote one pilot after the war. “It was untameable. Its great engines demanded alertness on take-off. You needed to be a really

LEFT: A Baltimore being serviced in North Africa shortly before 13 Mira moved to Italy. VIA JOHN CARR

BELOW LEFT: Blenheim V BA328 in service with 13 Mira during 1943, operating in Aden. By now the unit’s aircraft had received conventional RAF markings. HELLENIC AIR FORCE

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13 MIRA AT WAR

A C-47D on the strength of 13 Mira at Daegu, South Korea, while engaged in a UN casualty evacuation mission. HELLENIC AIR FORCE

FROM GREECE TO KOREA

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hen the Royal Hellenic Air Force was reconstituted after the war, the powers-that-be decided Greece didn’t need a bomber force, and 13 Mira was disbanded. But the tradition lived on, with the result that upon the outbreak of the Korean War the squadron number was revived and given to a flight of Douglas C-47D Skytrains that carried the blue and white roundel to the Far East. On 11 November 1950, Sqn Ldr Andreas Gorenko led the first detachment of what was now UN Hellenic 13 (Korea) Flight from Eleusis air base on a three-week, 6,500-mile odyssey to Itazuke in Japan, the operational headquarters of the US Air Force’s 21st Troop Carrier Squadron, in which it was to serve. Before dawn on 4 December Fg Off Vlasis Dedes was shaken awake with an order to fly his C-47 across the Sea of Japan to Hagaru-ri, where the Chinese had encircled parts of the US 3rd Marine Division and 7th Infantry Division. Dedes’ job was to evacuate the wounded. “You’ll fly at 6,000ft and drop down as fast as you can, like a helicopter”, the American

briefing officer had told him. He managed a heart-stopping landing at Yong Po, with Chinese artillery thundering in his ears and bullets whistling around the wings, and loaded 35 wounded Americans to safety. The following day Dedes and two other pilots returned to Hagaru-ri to collect more casualties. Among them were 18 dead Americans whose “tragic expressions, as they fell in battle” shook him to the core. Some of the wounded bled to death during the flight out. On 22 December Panayotis Frangoyannis, now a squadron leader, had just touched down at Suwon with six wounded Americans and two nurses on board when his C-47 ran straight into a USAF 36th Fighter Bomber Squadron F-80 Shooting Star taking off. No-one survived. An investigation found that Frangoyannis had probably misheard his landing instructions. Twelve airmen of UN Hellenic 13 (Korea) Flight never came home. The 19 officers and men who took part in the Hagaru-ri evacuation were awarded the US Air Medal. The rest of the flight returned to Greece in May 1955.

The Greek unit’s trusty Skytrains lined up for inspection during their time in Korea. USAF

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good pilot to handle it well”. Another wrote: “I was in love with that aeroplane; it was such a beast.” The Baltimores went into action for the first time against German fuel dumps on the island of Gavdos, south of Crete, on 14 October 1943, surviving unscathed a fearsome volley of flak. German-held Crete was a tough proposition. On 23 October Fg Off Nikos Koskinas had just let his bombs go when a burst of flak sent his Baltimore diving in flames. After ditching just off the coast, he pulled his wounded navigator, Fg Off Panos Tsirikoglou, into the dinghy. He was unable, however, to save his bomb-aimer and New Zealand wireless operator. Eventually the Germans picked them up. Koskinas had lost his flying boots, and remained barefoot for days until he and Tsirikoglou were bundled off to Stalag Luft I in Germany. It was a rare occasion for a 13 Mira Baltimore to return from a Crete mission without some damage. Shockwaves from the flak bursts seriously raised the risk of mid-air collisions. The Baltimore, however, could usually outrun and out-dive any Luftwaffe pursuer. For six months the squadron had to regularly run the gauntlet of Crete, hampered moreover by communist agitation in the ranks, until a transfer raised the unit’s morale. The Allies by now were in control of Italy and 13 Mira’s new task was to bomb Axis positions from a base at Biferno as part of No 3 (South African) Wing. The wing had been trying for weeks to smash the strategic Fano road and rail bridge near Rimini without success. On 24 June Fg Off Byron Frangias reported a near-miss, but on landing back at base was told that he’d destroyed the aircraft in question. He and his British gunner, named Sowden, were cited for valour. Between June and October 1944, when mainland Greece was liberated from the Axis, two 13 Mira pilots were killed in take-off crashes — one of them was believed to be a suicide. Another three-man crew survived being shot down; one man was captured while the other two were sheltered by Yugoslav partisans and returned to their unit. And still the fight was not yet done, the squadron continuing to attack German forces in the Greek islands through to May 1945. Its place in Hellenic military history was assured.

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28/04/2017 15:02

SPITFIRE NH341

A NEW LEGEND is B

Antony Parkinson flying Spitfire IXT NH341 off the South Coast in April.

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s BORN

With the first flight of Spitfire NH341, Aero Legends now has its own two-seat ‘Spit’ for passenger rides. It’s the latest step in the development of this ambitious company WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY: RICHARD PAVER

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SPITFIRE NH341

A

ero Legends’ Spitfire IX Trainer NH341/G‑CICK has become the latest example of the type to fly in the UK. It was rolled out by Historic Flying Ltd at Duxford on 11 March for its first public appearance, having made its maiden post-restoration flight earlier the same day in the form of a short test hop in the hands of John Romain. It was then presented by Aero Legends and HFL to the press and public, and although it didn’t fly again that day due to a carburettor issue a full flight test programme commenced shortly afterwards. Following its completion, a permit to fly was issued by the CAA in early April, and the aircraft immediately joined the Aero Legends fleet at Headcorn in Kent to commence a busy programme of Spitfire customer experience flights. The wreckage of NH341 (along with that of another Spitfire, ML295) had been on display at the Musée Mémorial de la Bataille de Normandie at Bayeux after being recovered from its wartime crash site in 1996. At this time, it was owned by Jean-Pierre Benamou and placed on loan for exhibition in the Bayeux museum. Then in June 2003 it was moved to be displayed at the Juno Beach Museum at Courseulles-surMer. In 2010, this Spitfire wreckage was taken to the owner’s home to be placed into storage. Both ML295 and NH341 had been allocated to the same unit, No 411 ‘Grizzly Bear’ Squadron, in June 1944, based at Advanced Landing Ground B4 at Bény-sur-Mer.

Keith Perkins, the owner of Aero Legends, bought the remains of NH341 in 2011. Three years later he moved the aircraft to Duxford for restoration to airworthy condition as a two-seat IXT. Airframe Assemblies initially completed much of the work on the longerons and fuselage frame. The Spitfire was registered G-CICK on 4 June 2014, and the fuselage arrived at HFL in July 2014 in order for the project to commence. By that September, work was well under way on the fuselage and wing components. Brand-new main spars were delivered during January 2015, having been manufactured by Airframe Assemblies. They were then drilled by the HFL team. HFL rebuilt the whole aircraft, the company having the specialist wing and fuselage jigs to enable all-new fuselages and wings to be made. An

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original engine frame was acquired and completely stripped down. All parts were assessed for re-use and, where required, new T50-spec tubing was manufactured, cadmium-plated and installed along with a new central horseshoe frame. Engine frames can suffer from internal corrosion where moisture collects in the tube interiors, but the example acquired had been well inhibited before going into storage. For the next two-and-a-half years the team at Historic Flying, led by project manager Martin ‘Mo’ Overall, carried out a meticulous restoration of this wreckage to create an all-new two-seat Spitfire IX specifically for use in the Aero Legends customer flights programme. A Packard Merlin 266 was sourced and overhauled to zero time, and a new Dowty Rotol R12 prop was acquired from Skycraft.

ABOVE: The Spitfire crash diorama in the Bayeux museum, which contained parts of both NH341 and ML295. PETER R. ARNOLD BELOW: Fg Off ‘Tommy’ Wheler DFC OBE, one of NH341’s wartime pilots, at Duxford in 2015 to see the project. VIA AERO LEGENDS

This Spitfire is one of the first to be fitted with a new billet propeller hub manufactured by Maurice Hammond’s Eye Tech Engineering. Up until very recently it was increasingly difficult to find fourblade Spitfire prop hubs that were serviceable for flight, but Eye Tech has recently pioneered the making of new hubs, milled from a single solid piece of billet steel. NH341 has wing tanks of 35-gallon capacity, each of which were newly manufactured to fit into the inboard gun and ammunition bays. Original seat pans were acquired, with a 1940 date pencilled on them, and new seat mounting frames and seat raising/lowering mechanisms manufactured for them. The engine frame was completed during January 2015 and trial-fitted to the firewall to check correct alignment. New front and rear instrument panels were made that March and original instruments sourced, which included an original P11 compass for the front cockpit. The same month saw the spars being mounted in the wing jigs. The build-up of the internal wing structure for the ribs and spar web structure of both wings then commenced. Airframe Assemblies made many of the fuselage ‘kit’ parts, plus the complete tail and rudder. By July 2015 the nose ribs for both wings were complete and installation of the leading-edge skins began. The original firewall was one of the parts that confirmed the aircraft’s identity. It was used to create a new lower

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ABOVE: March 2015, and work is under way on the fuselage of NH341 in Historic Flying’s jigs.

Historic Flying rebuilt the whole aircraft, the company having the specialist wing and fuselage jigs to enable all-new fuselages and wings to be made... it took two-and-a-half years, led by project manager Martin ‘Mo’ Overall As of April 2016, the wings were still in their jigs but progressing very well.

ABOVE: Historic Flying engineer Mark Parr at work on the fuselage in April 2016.

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A new feature on NH341 is the billet steel propeller hub made by Eye Tech Engineering. VIA AERO LEGENDS

24/05/2017 13:57

SPITFIRE NH341

REMEMBERING ‘BRUCE’ WHITEFORD

The aircraft has been completed in the markings NH341 wore when it was flown by its first operational pilot, Flt Lt A. B. (Bruce) Whiteford, with No 411 Squadron in June 1944. It thus wears the name Elizabeth on the port side and her nickname Eo to starboard, as depicted in the accompanying photos. Whiteford continued flying with the Royal Canadian Air Force post-war, latterly on Douglas Dakota transports. He retired from the service in 1962. VIA AERO LEGENDS

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firewall, and all the stencilling on the original components was copied exactly onto the new one. Systems installation onto the firewall got under way during mid-2015. Original metal-covered elevators for a IXT version were restored by HFL, while Airframe Assemblies manufactured a new rudder and delivered it that August. Many original parts were found for the tailwheel assembly, which included an original tail leg and newly made tail oleo. This was completed in May 2015. By September systems installation into the fuselage had commenced. An original set of undercarriage legs was acquired, subjected to non-destructive testing and cadmium-plated. Spitfire undercarriage legs are one of the few main components that currently can’t be made new, so serviceable examples are increasingly rare. The engine rebuild was finished in January 2016 and successfully test-run in a mobile jig. A new fuselage fuel tank was completed and trial-fitted into the fuselage in February. By then the fuselage structure and tail were complete, with the fuselage being moved out of the jig in preparation for final assembly and systems installation. March saw the undercarriage hydraulic system being completed, filled and pressuretested. This included connecting the hydraulics to a ground power rig to test-cycle the undercarriage rams, which was carried out many times. The wings were very well advanced as of April 2016, the new wing fuel tanks having been fitted and pressuretested, and work on the radiator bays done. The undercarriage legs, pintles and locks were fitted to the wings in July, after which the detailed process to commission the undercarriage was carried out, which included the fitting of shims and tapers to ensure the correct clearances are achieved in both the up and down positions. By last September, both wings were out of their jigs and the fuselage could be painted. The aircraft rapidly began to take shape during autumn as the tail was fitted along with the rudder, elevators, engine frame and Merlin powerplant. Both wings were painted and fitted to the fuselage. NH341 was on its wheels in December, and on completion of systems checks it was ready for the first ground runs to be carried out just before Christmas. Aside from Martin Overall, the rest of the HFL team included Spike

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Rivers, Terry Hopcraft, Dick Clark and Oliver Emery, who all worked on the wings, while fuselage work was led by Mark Parr, systems installation was carried out by Chris Norfolk along with ‘Mo’, and the paint was done by John Loweth, Kent Bowsher and Col Pope. Canopies were made by Dave Smith, instrumentation completed by Victor Dowsett, and the ailerons and flaps by Matt Jarman. NH341’s avionics were installed by Tony Kay and the cockpit camera system by Colin Swann. Keith Perkins says, “The whole intent of this project is to create the very best Spitfire IXT that is flying today and every [effort] has been put into achieving perfection with huge attention to detail. Martin Overall and his team at HFL have completed an outstanding project and I am delighted with the results. The pilots who have flown NH341 since its restoration tell me that its flying characteristics are delightful and that it is a very fast Spitfire — they are all different, and for this one the aerodynamic efficiency seems to be particularly good. “I have no pretence that this is the original aircraft. It is a new IXT conversion, and at the same time it is a faithful recreation of the original aircraft. In many ways, its specification and build quality are far better than an original aircraft. We have researched in detail the wartime operational history of NH341 when it flew with No 126 Wing, RCAF, and we were very privileged to be able to host a visit from one of NH341’s wartime pilots, Fg Off ‘Tommy’ Wheler DFC OBE, to the project in 2015. At the same time as visiting Duxford to see progress on NH341, Tommy and his family came all the way from Canada to be our guests of honour at our Battle of Britain Airshow at Headcorn in July 2015. During that visit, we had hoped to fly Tommy in the [Aircraft Restoration Company’s] Spitfire IXT G-CCCA — another No 126 Wing survivor. Sadly, Tommy wasn’t well enough, but nevertheless he thoroughly enjoyed the show. “We have finished NH341 in the colours of Flt Lt Bruce Whiteford, who was the first No 411 Squadron pilot to fly [it] on 12 June 1944. He flew NH341 more times than any other No 411 Squadron pilot, hence the [name] Elizabeth on the left-hand side and [her nickname] Eo on the right-hand side represent his wife.

These markings were thoroughly researched and painted onto NH341 by Col Pope from wartime photographs. The size of the lettering, exact position, measurements, colour and font for the nose art Elizabeth all had to be scaled off this single photograph by Col, who then produced a new stencil for the name to be applied to NH341’s engine cowling.” Having its own two-seat Spitfire is an essential element of Aero Legends’ business. In Keith’s words, “I created the idea of Aero Legends after I had flown on an Ultimate High flying experience at Kemble. This, combined with the change in attitudes at the CAA to allow paid passenger flights in permit aeroplanes, opened a whole new range of business possibilities in my mind that could successfully combine the operation of historic aircraft with passenger experiences. “Today we all live in a very open, connected world. I’ve always intended

It is a new Spitfire IXT conversion, and at the same time it is a faithful recreation of the original aircraft. In many ways, its specification and build quality are far better than an original aircraft to be as open as possible with the sharing of these lovely aeroplanes, and at the same time make this a successful business. When I started to create the Aero Legends concept, nine out of 10 people in the established UK warbird business told me that I would never make warbird ownership commercially viable. In addition, 11 out of 10 people told me to avoid jets and so far I have done so, but I will never close off considering any opportunities. “We are now well advanced in the process to achieve our own OCM [organisational control manual] and SSAC [Safety Standards Acknowledgement and Consent] approvals from the CAA which are specific to Aero Legends, with an ever-increasing range of experiences and flights available. Shortly we are commencing paid customer sightseeing flights over London in our de Havilland Devon and coastal tours in our Prentice and Jackaroo. Our current CAA approvals allow for A-to-A passenger flights, and

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SPITFIRE NH341

ABOVE: Members of the Aero Legends team at Headcorn with their new Spitfire. From left to right, Jeremy Britcher, Michael Roberts, Jeremy Wright, Keith Perkins, Ben Perkins, Nick Oram, ‘Parky’ Parkinson (in cockpit), Elliot Styles, Chris Giles, Wayne Marsh, Ady Shaw and Matt Hunt. BELOW: A ‘fly alongside’ experience involving NH341 and Aero Legends’ Devon C2 VP981/G-DHDV passes by the Battle of Britain Memorial at Capel-le-Ferne.

longer-term we will be looking at the steps necessary to achieve approval for A-to-B passenger flights, which would allow us to run European tours on something bigger like a DC-3. “We also have plans to greatly improve our base facilities at Headcorn and are currently at the advanced planning stage for the construction of an all-new customer building, restaurant, hangar and scramble hut. We have acquired the scramble hut from RAF Bridgnorth, which we will move to Headcorn, and discussions are well advanced with various parties to demonstrate the commercial viability of our Headcorn project — we plan to be very well placed with the facilities and engineering. When we first saw photos of the RAF Bridgnorth hut, in the picture taken in the 1960s was their gate guard at the time — none other than Spitfire BM597, which

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of course is now airworthy with [the Historic Aircraft Collection] and a visitor from time to time to Headcorn. There is a longer-term project, which is being worked up with other key stakeholders such as the IWM [and] Maidstone Borough Council, and we have a Lottery funding application under way. “In early 2018 Antony ‘Parky’ Parkinson will join us when he retires from [the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight] in a full-time capacity both as chief pilot and Aero Legends’ brand ambassador. His experience in flying Spitfires, and his uncanny ability to convey to everyone his enormous enthusiasm for flying and for Spitfires, is very infectious. Charlie Brown will be our head of training and our other pilots are Jez Britcher, Gordon Smith, Dave Evans, Sam Whatmough and

Michael Pickin. Both Rob Davies and Cliff Spink have also been of huge [assistance] in providing expert help in setting up this business. “I do hope that the completion of NH341 enables more people to experience first-hand the Spitfire magic. The warbird industry has not generally made aircraft very accessible to the public, and one of the objectives that I have for Aero Legends is to be at the opposite end of that spectrum. As an example, over 1,000 people to date have enjoyed a sit-in experience in our single-seat Spitfire IX TD314. “Thanks to the changes in the CAA regulations with respect to paid passenger flights, we can greatly widen and share the experience of flying in a Spitfire. Why wouldn’t anyone want to do this? What is the point of not sharing, forbidding viewing, and locking an historic aircraft away from public view? These iconic aircraft help to promote more people to learn to fly and to create enthusiasm in the younger generation [for] the preservation and operation of historic aircraft.” ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author would like to thank Keith and Ben Perkins for their help, plus John Romain, Martin Overall, Col Pope and the team at Historic Flying, ‘Parky’ for his impeccable formation work, Rob Davies for flying the cameraship and Spitfire historian Peter Arnold for historical narrative.

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23/05/2017 16:55

SPIRIT OF ST LOUIS FILM

SPIRIT SCREEN ON THE

The film The Spirit of St Louis was intended to celebrate Lindbergh’s pioneering trans-Atlantic flight, but it fell flat with audiences 60 years ago. Today it is remembered as a classic aviation movie, featuring some now very rare ‘golden era’ aircraft types WORDS: SIMON BECK

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here have been many accounts of Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering trans-Atlantic flight from Roosevelt Field, New York to Le Bourget, Paris on 20-21 May 1927, but there is little doubt about the best. In 1953, Lindbergh published his own personal story in a book detailing the efforts to find and build a suitable aeroplane and the gruelling 33 hours taken to fly the Atlantic Ocean, battling weather and chronic fatigue along the way. Simply called The Spirit of St Louis, this fascinating volume won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for biography, and subsequently the attention of Hollywood producers. Film studio giant Warner Brothers, under the leadership of Hollywood mogul Jack Warner, began to get production under way as early as August 1954. The film was a coproduction between producer Leland Hayward and director Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the screenplay with Wendell Mayes. Charles Lederer is credited with adapting Lindbergh’s book. In the leading role was James Stewart, also an accomplished aviator and a World War Two veteran, having flown B-24 Liberators into combat over Europe. After the war, Stewart remained in the US Air Force Reserve as a colonel, with promotion to brigadier general in 1959. Although somewhat older than the lanky 25-year-old Lindbergh was at the time of his flight, Stewart was so keen to obtain the part that he went on a strict diet to lose weight and dyed his hair blonde to appear younger than his actual age of 47 in 1955. He succeeded in mimicking the famous ‘Lindbergh walk’. Lindbergh himself was on hand to act as technical advisor and gave the producers permission to use the registration NX211 on the aircraft that starred as his famous Ryan NYP Spirit of St Louis in the film. One of the greatest tasks for the film-makers was acquiring a selection of aircraft that would truly reflect the look of the NYP, but where? After all, wasn’t it a stand-alone design? Not quite — the NYP was a development of Ryan’s M-1 and M-2, and to a lesser extent its B-1 Brougham. The challenge was really going to be locating examples from the relevant period, some of which were very hard to come by in the mid-1950s, if they were available at all. After all, the preservation, restoration or scratch-

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Paul Mantz searched the continental US and acquired two Ryan B-1 Broughams in various states of decay for restoration. A third was bought by James Stewart building of vintage civil aircraft types was a long way from becoming the finely honed industry it is today. There was, however, one person doing such work, and he was located right on the film-makers’ back doorstep. Paul Mantz had been a stunt pilot, aerial cameraman and aviation businessman in Hollywood since 1932 and had all the expertise required to bring a replica Lindbergh monoplane to life on the big screen. He searched the continental United States and acquired two 1928 Ryan B-1 Broughams, in various states of decay, for restoration. A third was bought by James Stewart, the aircraft also looking the worse for wear at the time of purchase. Lindbergh’s custom-built NYP (New York-Paris) was built by Ryan Airlines of San Diego under the supervision of chief engineer Donald A. Hall. This firm had been founded in 1925 by former US Air Service pilot T. Claude Ryan and his business partner B. F. ‘Frank’ Mahoney. Their first aircraft, the 1926 open-cockpit M-1 monoplane, was powered by a 150hp Hispano engine and designed to run scheduled routes up and down the Californian coast for the company, hence the name Ryan Airlines. By the time Charles Lindbergh began making enquires to Ryan

Airlines in February 1927, T. Claude Ryan had sold his half of the business to Mahoney, who became sole owner in November 1926. Mahoney retained the Ryan name and branding plus the manufacturing rights to the M-1 and M-2 monoplanes. Ryan himself, of course, had no idea his name would soon become world-famous and synonymous with the Lindbergh flight. Worthy of note here is that the feature film doesn’t include Ryan at all, instead only — and correctly — depicting Mahoney (played by Bartlett Robinson) and Don Hall (portrayed by Arthur Space) as Ryan Airlines’ leading figures.

ABOVE: James Stewart (right) as Charles Lindbergh, on set with the film’s producer Leland Hayward. LEFT: Ryan B-1 N7212 in its movie guise as the NYP Spirit of St Louis, with one major exception — here, the aircraft is being flown with cockpit glazing uncovered.

ALL PHOTOS SAN DIEGO AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

Although it’s not clearly conclusive how many M-1s and M-2s were built, it appears there were 28 if one goes by the company construction numbers. When Lindbergh began his enquiries, Ryan was developing the B-1 Brougham with an enclosed cockpit and a 220hp Wright J-5 radial engine. The first B-1 was NC2341 (c/n 29), a converted M-1 airframe that first flew in early 1927. It was purchased by famed American record-breaking aviator Frank Hawks, who named the aircraft The Gold Bug. Later, after Lindbergh’s flight, Hawks would rename it the

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SPIRIT OF ST LOUIS FILM

SPIRIT OF ST LOUIS FILM AIRCRAFT Type

Registration c/n

Curtiss JN-4 N5391 396 Curtiss JN-4C N10389 1898 Curtiss JN-4D N2821D 400 Curtiss JN-4D N6899 47502 de Havilland DH4M-1 N3258

ET-4

Ryan B-1

N7206 153

Ryan B-1

N7209 156

Ryan B-1

N7212 159

Spirit of San Diego with registration NC3009 and used it to promote sales of the B-1 for Mahoney. Technically speaking, Lindbergh’s Ryan NYP was factory build number 30, but there’s no specific evidence for this and no dataplate was apparently ever placed in the aircraft. Following his feat, Ryan’s new B-1 became a very popular choice for budding aviators, for a time outselling all other types then in production in the US. Frank Mahoney discontinued the Ryan name in July 1927 and incorporated the company as the B. F. Mahoney Aircraft Corporation. It went on to build 149 aircraft, although the Ryan name would stick with the design indefinitely, largely due to the Lindbergh flight.

Standard J-1 N2825D 1582 Standard J-1 N2826D 1598 Note: JN-4 identities likely but not confirmed.

RYAN TYPES COMPARED

M-1 B-1 NYP

Year: 1926 1927 1927 Length:

24ft

27.9ft

27.7ft

Wingspan: 36ft

42ft

46ft

Maximum 2,700lb weight:

3,300lb 5,135lb

Engine:

Hispano 8A, 150hp

Wright J-5, 220hp

Wright J-5C, 223hp

Built:

circa 28

149

1

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A few B-1s were worthy of note. NC3007 (c/n 31) was modified as the B-2 with the NYP’s 46ft wingspan instead of the B-1’s 42ft. It was used by Lindbergh on his post-flight promotional tour. Another, c/n 36, was sold to Japan as the ‘NYP-2’, an exact replica of Lindbergh’s NYP. Registered J-BACC, it was destroyed in 1945 during US Army Air Force B-29 Superfortress raids on Tokyo. NC1550 (c/n 42) was modified as the B-1 Special for transporting Leo the MGM lion, the one seen roaring in the film studio logo presentation. New Zealand aviators George Hood and John Moncrieff bought c/n 47 (G-AUNZ) for an attempt on the first non-stop flight across the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. Named Aotearoa, the Brougham departed Sydney on 10 January 1928, but the pair never arrived in New Zealand and were not heard from again.

In 1928, Mahoney presented Lindbergh with Brougham NC4215 (c/n 69), modified to B-1X configuration with a 46ft wingspan and various other goodies that Lindbergh reportedly found to be “just right”. Mahoney had sold his interest in the company earlier that year, and eventually it became the Mahoney-Ryan Aircraft Corporation headquartered in St Louis, Missouri. The factory stayed in San Diego where it would produce an additional 78 Broughams: 10 of them B-3s (c/n 179-186, 210 and 221), 60 B-5s (c/n 187-209, 211-220 and 222-248) and eight B-7s (c/n 249-256), the basic

Since the NYP had no forwardfacing windscreen due to the massive fuel tank, this would be an impractical, not to mention unsafe, aspect to replicate differences being in the powerplant applications. The Detroit Aircraft Corporation acquired Mahoney-Ryan in June 1929, but the Great Depression put an end to further sales and so concluded the production run of a small and faithful monoplane design with the most famous of connections. T. Claude Ryan himself founded another firm, the Ryan Aeronautical Company, in 1934. It built the successful Ryan ST range of aircraft that would be adapted to serve as the PT-22 Recruit primary trainer of

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World War Two. Although carrying the Ryan name, it was a totally separate business entity to the original Ryan Airlines. The three B-1 Broughams located for filming were N7206 (c/n 153), N7209 (c/n 156) and N7212 (c/n 159). The process as far as Paul Mantz was concerned was to restore them to airworthiness and replicate the NYP as far as possible. During the mid-1950s Mantz’s company, Paul Mantz Air Services, was located in Burbank Airport’s Hangar 1 at what was known as the Lockheed Air Terminal. It appears from period FAA records that Mantz shifted the business to Orange County Airport some time during the making of The Spirit of St Louis, but the two Broughams were restored and modified at Burbank before that. Since Lindbergh’s NYP had no forward-facing windscreen due to the massive fuel tank installed where the pilot normally sat, this would be an impractical, not to mention unsafe, aspect to replicate. The solution was to leave the cockpit area unmodified with the pilot flying the aircraft from the usual position. When filming commenced, the windshield would then be covered with a metallic sheet. From a distance this did the trick and made the aircraft look like the NYP. All fabrics were stripped and replaced, the wingspan was widened by 2ft, and the original M-1-style tail sections were retrofitted (later B-1s had a larger tail section). Overseeing the modifications was Mantz employee Otto Timm, a brilliant aviation engineer and designer who coincidentally gave Charles Lindbergh his first

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TOP LEFT: The trio of B-1 Broughams used to make The Spirit of St Louis were all but identical in appearance when altered to replicate the NYP. ABOVE: DH82B Queen Bee N2726A — owned at the time by Leland Hayward and Billy Wilder — in Pathé News colours with a cameraman standing up in the rear cockpit to film one of the ‘replica’ NYPs and a DH60G Moth, probably N1510V. This scene did not end up in the movie. TOP RIGHT: Producer Leland Hayward, director Billy Wilder and pilot Paul Mantz with one of the modified Ryans. RIGHT: The European portion of the filming, which involved the two Mantz aircraft, naturally saw overflights of the Eiffel Tower.

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THE FILM SP

SPIRIT OF ST LOUIS FILM

N7206

The Spirit of St Louis ran to twice its original budget, coming in at US$6 million. The end result was a box-office flop that garnered mixed reviews and failed to recoup its costs ABOVE: Lindbergh’s arrival at Le Bourget, with two MoraneSaulnier MS315s providing ‘set dressing’. This was a spot of artistic licence, as the MS315 didn’t fly until five years after the NYP made its famous flight.

aeroplane ride back in 1921. Mantz acquired six Wright J-5 engines, reconditioning them into four units. Two were fitted to N7206 and N7212, with two held as spares in case of mechanical troubles. Filming required the use of several other vintage aircraft types, also provided by Paul Mantz Air Services. A de Havilland DH4M (N3258) marked with US Air Mail titles is seen in the opening sequence depicting Lindbergh’s early days as a mail pilot. This aircraft survives today with Fortress and Fighters LLC of Stow, Massachusetts. Next are two Standard J-1s (N2825D and N2826D), which were rebuilt especially for the movie and made many subsequent big-screen appearances with the Mantz company. Both were used in flashback sequences such as the priest’s flying lesson and aerial circus stunt scenes. N2825D is now part of Kermit Weeks’ collection in Florida and N2826D is on display at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. Four Curtiss JN-4 ‘Jenny’

biplanes are first spotted in the scene where Lindbergh sells his motorcycle in order to buy an aeroplane, and later as new US Army aircraft in the Brooks Airfield scene. Cameraships were a Stinson L-1 and Beech AT-11 piloted by Paul Franklin. The Spirit of St Louis was a lengthy production that ran to twice its original budget, coming in at US$6 million after a shooting period from August 1955 to March 1956. Given the leading actor’s star status and the historic nature of the subject matter, it would seem the film-makers were on to a sure-fire winner. However, the end result was a box-office flop that garnered only mixed reviews, while the large budget was a major factor in its inability to recoup costs. Today, we may see it rather differently. The Spirit of St Louis is a classic story of human endurance, the like of which we may never see again in the cinema. And, of course, it affords the chance to watch a range of very interesting historic aircraft.

Completed on 17 September 1928, this B-1 was registered to the B. F. Mahoney Aircraft Corporation, San Diego as C-7206 on 19 September. Between 1928 and 1951 it passed through the hands of 16 owners and operators before being purchased by Benjamin J. Carnes of Ceresco, Michigan on 29 January 1952. Carnes was apparently an employee of McDonnell Aircraft at St Louis when Mantz’s chief pilot Stan Reaver bought the Brougham on 18 May 1955. It was ferried back to Burbank in 23 hours 20 minutes for conversion and was known as the ‘second Mantz plane’ as it was acquired after N7212. Both were sent to Europe on board a USAF C-124 Globemaster II, serial 51-5196, for scenes to be shot over Ireland, England and France. Further filming took place in the New York and Boston areas. Mantz retained ownership of the aircraft after filming, selling it on 22 October 1962 to the Missouri Historical Society of St Louis, who flew it as the Spirit for promotional work at the World’s Fair in New York in 1965. The society retains N7206 to this day, and it is currently displayed in the Missouri History Museum in St Louis.

N7209 Having come off the production line at the start of the month, this aircraft was first registered to Capitol Airways of Indiana on 25 September 1928. It had about a dozen owners and operators between then and its purchase by Jim D. Helbig and Opie Dwight Hawley of Denver, Colorado on 29 November 1948. The aircraft appears to

RIGHT: A Standard J-1 making one of the ‘barnstorming’ flashback scenes.

AF ARCHIVE/ALAMY

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M SPIRITS have fallen into disrepair and seems not to have flown for at least three years before 1954. There is some confusion around this period as to who exactly owned the deteriorating machine, which was stored with tie-downs at Adams City Airport, but pilot Paul J. Franklin and W. H. ‘Hank’ Coffin purchased it in mid-1954 and restored the Brougham at great expense to themselves. During the restoration it was found that many parts of the aircraft had been replaced with items from B-1s NC6646 (c/n 131) and NC6649 (c/n 134), which led to some confusion over the true identity. Coffin provided the aircraft to the film-makers as a Ryan NYP replica similar to the Mantz conversions. On 10 December 1955, US CAA bills of sale show a transfer from Franklin and Coffin to actor James Stewart plus Guy Gadbois and Joe De Bona, all of Beverly Hills, California. A certificate of

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registration was issued to the trio on 4 January 1956. Gadbois was Stewart’s business manager in Hollywood, and De Bona a well-known racing pilot and friend of Stewart. N7209 was used in the film for the west coast Lindbergh practice flights, the take-off scene and some aerials over Half Moon Bay near San Francisco. ‘Hank’ Coffin and Paul Mantz were the pilots. As part-owner, James Stewart flew N7209 on several occasions to accustom himself with the role of Lindbergh. The present-day FAA’s records for N7209 cease after 1956, indicating that the aircraft was probably stored and never flown again. According to Gadbois, as recorded by the FAA, it was sold around 1968 by Thunderbird Aviation of Van Nuys, California, but the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan says James Stewart donated it to them in 1959. It remains on display there to this day.

N7212 Registered to the B. F. Mahoney Aircraft Corporation of San Diego as C-7212 on 19 September 1928, from then to 1955 the aircraft passed through the hands of roughly a dozen owners and operators before being purchased by Pete Fountain of Moscow, Idaho on 6 January 1953. He used it to fly hunters to nearby mountains. Stan Reaver bought the machine on behalf of Paul Mantz Air Services on 14 February 1955 and flew it back to Burbank for conversion. It was known as the ‘first Mantz plane’, since it was purchased prior to N7206. Like N7206 it was sent to the eastern US and Europe for filming, again piloted by Reaver. After Paul Mantz’s death in mid-1965, his company went through a major restructuring that included the sale of many of his prized vintage aircraft. Among them was N7212, which was sold to the RosenNovak Auto Company of Omaha, Nebraska on 18 February 1966. It then went to David Jamison of Oshkosh, Wisconsin on 29 May 1968; to Historic Aircraft Inc, also of Oshkosh, on 5 May 1969, and the Friends of the Nassau County Museum in Syosset, New York on 14 April 1977. N7212 was deregistered on 20 October 1981. It is today on loaned display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York, close to Lindbergh’s departure point for his historic flight.

BELOW: Locals look on as a movie NYP flies over Killarney, Ireland in 1955.

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HONG KONG WESSEX

FAREWELL t

As Britain prepared to hand Hong Kong over to China 20 yea aircraft stationed there to leave. The then commanding offi

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L to HONG KONG

20 years ago, the Wessex helicopters of No 28 Squadron were the last RAF ng officer recalls the unit’s role in this chapter of history WORDS: BEN DUNNELL

S

ome cited it as the end of Empire. On 1 July 1997, the sovereignty of Hong Kong was handed over to China, bringing more than 150 years of British rule to a close. The official ceremony held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre also ended a lengthy chapter of the UK’s military history, and in that No 28 (Army Co-operation) Squadron, RAF, had been intimately involved. No other RAF unit had served for so long overseas as 28. It left British shores upon being re-formed in May 1920, following a period of disbandment. Stationed first in India, and then fighting over Burma during the Second World War, the squadron arrived in Hong Kong on 14 May 1949. It had been redeployed from Malaya due to concerns about communist activity threatening the territory. Initially, its Spitfire XVIIIs were stationed at Kai Tak, but they and the jets that supplanted them moved several times between there and Sek Kong. Vampire FB5s and

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FB9s, Venom FB1s and FB4s, and finally Hunter FGA9s equipped 28 for the rest of its time as a fixedwing fighter-bomber unit, before it disbanded in January 1967. The following March, No 28 Squadron was revived. Communistfuelled agitation in Hong Kong had made clear the need for better rotary-wing support, and now it flew Whirlwind HAR10s from Kai Tak. More modern Westland-built equipment followed from January 1972, in the form of Wessex HC2s. They moved back to Sek Kong on 17 May 1978, this airfield being the local RAF headquarters as well as that of the territory’s British land forces and the 48th Gurkha Infantry Brigade. They and Hong Kong’s own civil authorities all worked closely together, but it was obvious that the question of China’s claim to sovereignty would rear its head. In December 1984, the British and Chinese governments signed an agreement under which Hong Kong would revert to the

People’s Republic on 1 July 1997. The clock was ticking. Sqn Ldr — now retired Wg Cdr — Dick Barton arrived at Sek Kong to take command of No 28 Squadron in January 1994. Coincidentally, a Sqn Ldr R. J. F. Barton had been the CO when the unit originally deployed overseas 74 years earlier. Dick was expecting a standard two-and-a-halfyear tour, but, he says, “as the time approached, and the garrison drew down, all the supporting infrastructure started to be dismantled — the schools closed, the hospitals started to close — and the dependents began to move back. They were having problems trying to find someone who was willing to go out and replace me for what was effectively going to be less than 12 months, and also to fold the squadron”. He thus agreed to stay on until the very end. It was to prove a special assignment. On a day-to-day basis, 28’s main roles were supporting the Hong Kong government, the Royal Hong Kong Police and British forces in-theatre. Its Wessex assisted in monitoring

TOP LEFT: The second trio of No 28 Squadron Wessex HC2s in the unit’s final flypast over Hong Kong on 3 June 1997. VIA DICK BARTON

LEFT: Wessex XR522/A was squadron CO Dick Barton’s regular mount. PETER R. MARCH

TOP: Hong Kong-based Royal Marines aboard their Fast Patrol Craft being escorted for the last time by a No 28 Squadron Wessex during exercises on 28 May 1997. The FPCs were used to stop smuggling — of both drugs and goods, including luxury cars — and illegal immigrants. REUTERS/ALAMY

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HONG KONG WESSEX

ABOVE: XR522, with its Nightsun lamp turned on, about to lift a Sims Rainmaker fire bucket from the Sek Kong apron. PETER R. MARCH

TOP RIGHT: The final move, from the dock at Stonecutters Island onto a barge, and thence a ship bound for Uruguay. Suspended here, devoid of RAF roundels, is XT678/H.

VIA DICK BARTON

ABOVE RIGHT: No 28 Squadron’s last Wessex aircrew at Kai Tak, the unit’s final home in Hong Kong. Dick Barton is in the centre of the front row.

VIA DICK BARTON

maritime traffic, in terms of naval vessels and smuggling activities. They worked with the Gurkhas and other members of the Hong Kong garrison in training to provide rapid air mobility should the situation have demanded it, being able to carry a door-mounted machine gun and underslung loads as well as troops and equipment on board. Search and rescue was, for many years, a major task, and the Sims Rainmaker fire bucket afforded a limited firefighting capability. “It was”, says Dick Barton, “a small and fairly contained theatre, but there was a variety of flying. The weather wasn’t always kind — it wasn’t a sunny paradise. You were flying in some fairly atrocious weather in an old aeroplane, but the Wessex was a lovely aircraft. “As the drawdown started to loom, the support for the government dwindled quite a lot, because the Hong Kong Government Flying Service began to take on primacy. For example, the squadron used to do search and rescue — it lost an aircraft [XT667] just before I arrived, in a typhoon — but by the time I got there primacy for search and rescue had transferred to the Government Flying Service. We were just a supporting asset. We would ‘stand to’ for any typhoons, but during my

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time we weren’t called out to do any rescues. Support for the police started to reduce, too. We’d done a lot of work with the police tactical unit, but again the Government Flying Service began doing more of that with its [Sikorsky UH-60] Black Hawks. “We were still heavily involved with the anti-smuggling task force, a combined effort between the British and Hong Kong governments. The Royal Navy’s fast patrol boats would go out and try to stop the smugglers

with dai feis, and their technique was to ram them. But all that petered out towards the end of ’96 — we did very little of it after that. “There was a lot of work supporting the troops, because they were still training out there. We did day and night flying, and quite a bit of NVG [night vision goggles] work. And, of course, towards the end there were visits from both the Chinese and British sides in preparation for the handover. We moved people around

The engineers got all the aircraft serviceable, and we flew a route that took us round all the previous haunts — military bases we’d used over the years, police bases we’d operated from from using what they called dai feis, which were converted speedboat hulls with massive outboard engines. They’d be running televisions, cigarettes and things across the border. Our job was to stand by to go and chase them, putting searchlights down so the Navy could see what was going on and to try and disorientate the guys who were driving the boats. The Navy would cross-board the boats and cut the fuel lines. The Hong Kong police used to chase them

the various sites along the border, showing them the ‘real estate’ of the area and the topography.” One mission Dick flew on No 28 Squadron stands out above all others. “It was the occasion of the first visit to Hong Kong by a nuclear submarine, HMS Trafalgar. We were tasked to take Commander British Forces [Maj Gen Bryan Dutton] out to a lat and long [a latitude and longitude map reference] in the South China Sea, a long way from sight of land.

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We got there a bit beforehand, and at the appointed time up popped the submarine. We winched the commander down onto the sub, they battened down the hatches and then disappeared. It was the spookiest thing I’d ever seen in my life. Very quickly afterwards, there wasn’t a sign on the water that it had ever been there…” The closure of Sek Kong, the last RAF station in Asia, was part of the drawdown process. On 1 November 1996, the Wessex moved to Kai Tak, transporting the squadron standard with them. “We went back to our spiritual home”, Dick recalls, “where we were given a [Boeing] 747 parking bay adjacent to the Government Flying Service, and that’s where we parked our six aircraft.” By now No 28 Squadron was spending most of its time readying for the British withdrawal. There was a degree of ‘showing the flag’, but also a good deal to do in practical terms. Looking at Dick Barton’s logbook, he spent time flying Commander British Forces around, conducting photographic reconnaissances of some ships coming in to Hong Kong, resupplying the remaining ground elements of the British garrison, and much else besides. 28 was due to disband and depart in early June,

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some weeks before the territorial handover, and with other British forces having left the theatre there was a need to bring replacement elements in as temporary ‘cover’. The Wessex flew local-area recces and familiarisations for incoming troops, and on 18 May escorted a detachment of Royal Navy Sea King HC4s that had deployed by ship ready to assume 28’s duties. A final Wessex flypast took place on 3 June. “The engineers did a brilliant job”, notes Dick. “We were running a fairly light ship at the time. They got all the aircraft serviceable, and we flew a route that took us round all the previous haunts. We went over various military bases we’d used over the years, police bases we’d operated from. We went along the border, we overflew Sek Kong for the last time, we came back down through the harbour and Commander British Forces took the salute. We commissioned special flags for it: the lead aircraft flew the Union flag, number two the flag of Hong Kong, number three the RAF ensign, and the lead aircraft of the following three a custom-made squadron banner.” The fate of the six Wessex was already known, as they had been sold to the Uruguayan Air Force. Following overhauls in the mid1990s, they had plenty of life left. Having landed back at Kai Tak, a short ceremony was held to disband No 28 Squadron and hand the helicopters over to Uruguay. It was expected, though not certain, that 28 would re-emerge back in the UK as the first operator of the new Merlin

HC3 medium transport helicopter — that was indeed the case, but a famous era was over. Still, there was one more Wessex flight to make. On 4 June, they were ferried from Kai Tak to the British Army and Royal Navy base at Stonecutters Island in Victoria Harbour. Says Dick, “I did three flights that day, one each in XT605/E, XT673/G and XR522/A, and I was the last to land. The aircraft were dismantled there, transferred to a barge and taken out to ships for the transfer to Uruguay.” Dick Barton later became chief flying instructor for the new triservice Defence Helicopter Flying School at RAF Shawbury, flew No 28 Squadron’s Merlins operationally, and served as squadron training officer on No 60 (Reserve) Squadron flying the Bell Griffin. Now retired, he’s still a civilian qualified helicopter instructor on that unit, and displays the Vietnam veteran Hughes OH-6A ‘Loach’ for MSS Holdings. Unsurprisingly, he looks back on his time in Hong Kong with great fondness. “It was a very small squadron”, he says, “and the task diminished significantly towards the end. There wasn’t anywhere near the degree of tasking there had been in previous years, when it had more aircraft and more crews. But it was a fascinating time, and to be the last squadron commander out there was a great privilege. The saddest thing, I think, was seeing the aircraft dismantled on the quayside ready for transport…”

BELOW: Dick Barton in XR522 leads the formation of Wessex en route from Sek Kong to Kai Tak on 1 November 1996. PETER R. MARCH

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meets

PAUL WARREN WILSON

Paul Warren Wilson in the cockpit of PBY-5A Catalina G-PBYA in a short break between flights to and from the lake at Faxa Sø, Greenland, during Operation ‘World First’. TOBY LEE

Heading up Plane Sailing’s Catalina operation has given this ex-RAF Harrier pilot some tremendous experiences, even before you consider all the other flying he’s done WORDS: BEN DUNNELL

T

he logbooks of very accomplished pilots can sometimes be chock-full of different aircraft. Equally, though, there are plenty who prefer to specialise on just a few. Paul Warren Wilson puts himself in the latter category. “I’ve not flown many aeroplanes in my lifetime”, he says, “but the ones that I have flown I’ve flown quite a lot”. It’s an interesting list, too: Jet Provost and Harrier from his RAF days, Catalina, Tigercat, Fokker 50 and Boeing 747 in civilian life, and the odd unusual diversion along the way. It’s for being one of the cofounders of Plane Sailing Air Displays and the North Weald Fighter Meet airshow that Paul is best-known. As such he was a key figure in the explosion of warbird activity in the UK during the 1980s, a pioneering time for the scene. Times have changed since then; indeed, none of his close colleagues in those endeavours are still with us. But Plane Sailing has been a constant, operating a Consolidated PBY Catalina — albeit now a different one, following

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the loss of the first — and with Paul at the helm. We met at his house not far south of Duxford, where the Plane Sailing team was preparing the Catalina for another busy season of commitments across Europe. Being involved with this aircraft brings unique opportunities, and Paul has enjoyed many of those. “When I was six”, he says, “my family moved out to Australia. That was in 1961. We lived in the outback, in a little town called Deniliquin, and there I remember seeing a DC-3 flying overhead. I trace my interest in aviation to that. Just a few years later, when I was about nine, we moved to Canberra and I had a trip in a Cessna 172 over the city. After that there was no looking back.” The family spent five years in Australia before coming back to the UK, specifically to Sussex. Paul went to school there, joined the Air Cadets aged 16, and took to the air on a gliding course. “I got my solo gliding certificate before I could drive a car”, he recalls. “The next thing was a flying scholarship, which I did at Shoreham on the Cessna 150. That

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Flying the Harrier GR3 with No IV(AC) Squadron at Gütersloh, Germany, was a highly insightful experience. ARTHUR GIBSON

Plane Sailing Air Displays’ first Catalina, G-BLSC, arrives over the coast near RAF Manston at the end of its delivery flight from South Africa on 20 February 1985. ARTHUR GIBSON

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AEROPLANE MEETS… PAUL WARREN WILSON

TOP: Catalina G-BLSC after application of its No 210 Squadron markings. KEY/CLIFF KNOX

ABOVE LEFT: During its first British display at the 1989 North Weald Fighter Meet, Paul flew the Tigercat in the lead of a warbird ‘diamond nine’ formation.

KEY/DUNCAN CUBITT

ABOVE RIGHT: On finals to Duxford in the Tigercat, wearing ‘JW’ tail codes to remember John Watts.

ADRIAN M. BALCH

was very nearly the end of my flying career, because on the first flight, a 30-minute familiarisation, I was sick… Fortunately, I got used to it, and had no problem with airsickness after that.” From 1974-77, Paul was at Oxford University studying physics. As soon as he arrived, he joined the Abingdon-based Oxford University Air Squadron, and “probably did not do quite as well on my degree as I might have done, but I had lots of great flying on the Bulldog”. Even so, “I never really thought about what I was doing until I suddenly found myself unemployed with a physics degree. Then I realised I’d always wanted to fly, so I joined the RAF.” Soon came the first of Paul’s flying adventures. “In a summer holiday at university I went with three friends

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down France through to Algeria and back. That was about a three-week tour. I thought, ‘What next?’ I realised that if you fly to India or somewhere and think, ‘What next?’, the only thing that’s left is to fly round the world. I thought I might as well get on with it.” The trip began after Paul had done his RAF officer training, but before he started flying training. He and Nick Walsh hired a Piper PA-32 Cherokee Six, G-AVBU, and set off from Cranwell in March 1978, their aim to mark the 60th anniversary of the RAF. “We spent four months flying in a totally exhausting fashion”, he says, “because everywhere you arrive people want to entertain you, and they don’t realise that you’ve only

got maybe 10 hours between your arrival and departure and you’ve been doing the same thing for weeks. “I think we made about 40 legs altogether. Of course, there were some long ones across the Pacific. There were some hold-ups there, waiting for the weather to be reasonably favourable. Navigation was with a bubble sextant, which worked incredibly well. We navigated up from Midway Island to Adak, 1,421nm over 12 hours, with a position fix off the sun around midday transferred up twice by one hour 40 minutes each time to make a ‘cocked hat’ that was pretty small.” Not long after arriving back at Cranwell in the Piper on 26 July, Paul began basic flying training on the Jet Provost with the RAF College. The advanced stage, starting about

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a year later, took place at Valley on No 4 Flying Training School’s new Hawk T1s. He was then ‘creamedoff ’ to become an instructor, again on the ‘JP’. On completion of the Central Flying School instructors’ course at Leeming, he was soon back at Cranwell, shortly after he’d been a student there. With that tour over, Paul was off to the front line. He went to No 2 Tactical Weapons Unit at Chivenor for weapons training on the Hawk T1A prior to the posting he’d dreamed of: to the Harrier force. At the time, this meant the T4 and GR3, starting out at Wittering’s No 233 Operational Conversion Unit and joining the operational Harrier world with No IV(AC) Squadron at Gütersloh, extremely active as part of RAF Germany. “The intensity of operations and the very varied demands of the different kinds of flying were a challenge”, he says, “but not something beyond that which is possible.” This included field operations. “Of course, you couldn’t take off vertically if you were carrying a decent fuel and bomb load, but you could take off from a very short strip, say 300 to 500 yards. Now, most airfields could be bombed to smithereens and you could still find plenty of 300 to 500-yard strips, albeit with runway denialtype weapons perhaps it becomes a bit hairy to operate there. You didn’t really need to go and fly off grass. You could find a road to fly off, quite happily. I never flew off a road — I flew off grass, and off metal ‘tin’ strips laid on the grass, where it was perhaps a bit soggy. It was pretty heavy work to get all the intelligence vehicles, the weapons, the fuel and that sort of thing out there, but the capability when first tested in war probably could have been adapted pretty quickly to operate in a way that was as successful as anybody could have hoped it to be.” The RAF was now just one part of Paul’s aviation life. “While I was instructing at Cranwell, my very good friend John Watts and I started flying other people’s aeroplanes to airshows”, he recalls. John had got into it through Mark Hanna, whom he had met during RAF officer training. “He started, I followed. He flew Lindsey Walton’s Bf 108, Stearman and Corsair; I had a go in a couple of those, not the Corsair. We had a lot of fun, and we ended up thinking it’d be quite fun if we had

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our own aeroplane. Eventually that led to the Catalina.” Before that, it led to the inaugural Fighter Meet. Both the Hannas, Mark and father Ray, joined John Watts and photographer Arthur Gibson in devising the concept. Following on from the Great Warbirds Air Display, this was to be the UK’s second event devoted largely to the burgeoning warbird scene, and in North Weald there was the bonus of a very appropriate venue. Says Paul, “I came along and helped — somewhat financially, actually. For the first one I even mortgaged my house to raise enough funds to make sure we were covered”. That was on 30 June-1 July 1984. Right from the start, Fighter Meet established its style. There were assets from most of Britain’s major historic

aircraft operators and spectacular, pyrotechnic-laden set-pieces. With John, Paul and Arthur heading the organising team, that would be its formula for many seasons to come. Insights into the airshow business helped when Plane Sailing, newly established by the same trio, came to acquire its first aircraft. “If we’d have bought a Spitfire”, comments Paul, “they cost a lot of money, they cost a great deal of money to run, and there was a relatively large amount of competition. There were quite a lot of the smaller fighters around, but almost no larger aeroplanes — only [B-17] Sally B. That gave us one significant advantage. The Catalina is a big, impressive aeroplane. It’s not fast, but it looks great on display. It makes a lovely noise, it looks different from every aspect.

TOP: An early promotional task for G-BLSC was a landing on the Thames for the Rawlplug company. Here, the Catalina heads back out towards the Thames Estuary with Tower Bridge and St Paul’s in the background. DAVID LEGG COLLECTION

ABOVE: A low pass for the ‘Cat’ during one of its first displays, the International Air Tattoo 85 at RAF Fairford. KEY/CLIFF KNOX

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“I saw an item in Pilot magazine saying, ‘Psst! Wanna buy a Cat?’ This little editorial piece was about four Catalinas that were up for sale in Brazil. John and I flew down to Rio to have a look, but we didn’t know what we were talking about. We went inside them and looked down at the cockpit floor, and there we saw these great, deep puddles of hydraulic fluid. What I know now is that the Catalina leaks. When it rains water will get in, sit in the bottom bay in the cockpit, and perhaps if there’s a very slight hydraulic leak there might be a millimetre of hydraulic fluid floating on top. It looks terrible but it’s almost nothing. It can be drained out in a couple of minutes. But those aeroplanes hadn’t flown for a while, and the concept of getting one of them checked out and airworthy was a bit too much for us to take on board at that stage.” Another option soon presented itself. “We then saw that Geoterrex, a Canadian survey company, was selling off a ‘Super Cat’ that was down in Johannesburg. That one was in airworthy condition, and we picked it up”. As a ‘Super Cat’, it had Wright Cyclone R-2600 engines and a squared-off fin and rudder. Previously CF-MIR, the PBY was put on the British register as G-BLSC before its ferry flight to Britain from 14-20 February 1985. “John and Keith Sissons flew it from Johannesburg, stopping at Nairobi, Khartoum and Alexandria, flying in hot weather with quite heavy loads. I could only join that flight when the aeroplane reached Cagliari in Sardinia, because I couldn’t have the time off from the Harrier squadron, but I joined it when it got there. We flew back through Marseille to Manston.” Initially the Catalina was based at Barkston Heath, Cranwell’s satellite airfield. It was painted in a hangar there, receiving the wartime No 210 Squadron markings of the aircraft flown by VC winner Fg Off John Cruickshank. G-BLSC became one of the stars of the 1985 airshow scene, but at the season’s end there was bad news. “We had a crack in the wing spar in late 1985, which we discovered on the annual check. The wing spar is a box spar, so the crack was actually in a

fitting and sheet metal, not in a solid spar. It was perfectly repairable, but we had a suspicion they knew about that when they sold it to us in South Africa. That grounded us for a year, but then we were back flying again.” It was possible to pick up work with the Catalina that no other historic aircraft on the UK scene could get. An early waterborne operation saw it on the Thames for a Rawlplug promotion. “We took

was moored there while the Rawlplug guests were having their lunch, with the Catalina in sight.” Then there was a Guinness advert, replicating the famous opening sequence of the film Always in which a Canadian firebomber ‘Cat’ flies low towards two men in a fishing boat, who look round at the last minute and jump into the water. “We had to do this sequence lots and lots of times, which was a great shame because we were paid extra for every one that we did! We flew quite low over this boat, with these two blokes fishing, but because it was a Guinness ad they just looked around and carried on fishing…” In the day job, Paul found himself back at No 233 OCU as an instructor and commanding officer of the unit’s B Squadron, teaching conversion as opposed to the weapons side. The new-generation Harrier GR5 entered service at this stage, in 1988-90. “It had a somewhat better chance of the inertial map telling you where you were, as opposed to where you weren’t. It had a bigger wing, of course; it could develop quite a lot of lift at

As dusk settled I thought the Tigercat’s engines were catching fire. Of course it was just the exhausts, which are always glowing red-hot, but you don’t really see it until night

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it through the Thames Barrier, and through Tower Bridge, for which they raised the bridge although they didn’t actually need to. We moored up next to HMS Belfast. That was pretty tense, because it was a relatively enclosed space to be manoeuvring it in. I’ve done a lot with the ‘Cat’ on water now, and I know exactly how you can and can’t manoeuvre it. What we did there was quite demanding. It

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Plane Sailing had taken up residence at the Cambridgeshire airfield the previous year. US Navy markings were soon applied to the F7F, plus the tail code ‘JW’ in John Watts’ memory. Paul rapidly worked up a spirited routine. “It had a lot of momentum in roll, because of the engines on the wings. You could establish a good roll rate, but there was a bit of a lag. In terms of pitch, you could loop very happily. One of the very nice things you could do with it was an eightpoint roll, putting the nose 20° up to start with and allowing it to drop its way gently down again as you stopped it through the eight points. That was a nice manoeuvre.”

low speed, so taking off from a short strip was a very big capability, even carrying a larger load. The autostabs were better, so it was a little easier to hover and transition.” Plane Sailing, meanwhile, had expanded. First came Pilatus P2 G-BJAX, which John Watts had flown for the OFMC. He and Paul were part of a group that bought the Swiss trainer in 1986. A couple of years later came a much more potent, and unusual, machine. When John saw that an airworthy Grumman F7F-3 Tigercat — a former firebomber for Sis-Q and Macavia, BuNo 80483/N6178C — was for sale, he jumped at the chance. “He thought it would be a great aeroplane to have, and of course it was unbelievable. Kermit Weeks owned it; John was lucky enough to go and meet him, and arrange to buy it. The purchase price wasn’t horrendous at all. Then, unfortunately, John was killed”. On 9 August 1988, in a tragic, random accident over Cumbria, the Tornado GR1 he was flying from Cottesmore collided with one from Marham. All four crew members died. In the face of this loss, Plane Sailing carried on. Paul took on the

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whole of the Tigercat ferry flight from Santa Rosa, California. “It was quite a journey. The engines had not been overhauled, but pretty well checkedout. Despite running-up and doing some local flying, all quite happily, one of the carburettors — which, with the knowledge I have now, should really have been replaced because it had been sitting for a while — packed up while I was transiting across Canada after maybe 10 hours’ flying. Here I was, at night, having to shut one engine down in an aeroplane that had an artificial horizon but that didn’t really work very well, flying limited-panel, with a compass that was only giving good headings when you were on east or west, having to do an ILS into Sudbury, Ontario. That was fairly challenging…” On the trans-Atlantic leg, he continues, “I ended up flying at night some of the time, and as dusk settled I thought the [R-2800] engines were catching fire. Of course it was just the exhausts, which are always glowing red-hot, but you don’t really see it until night, when you see these footlong blue flames coming out, and the bright red exhausts glowing at you.” The sole example of its type then flying in Europe, the Tigercat arrived at Duxford on 13 November 1988.

LEFT: One of the first air-to-airs of F7F-3 Tigercat N6178C after its arrival in the UK and subsequent repaint into US Navy colours. KEY/DUNCAN CUBITT

Alas, all good things must come to an end. In the case of the Tigercat, the reason was another sad passing: that of Arthur Gibson in January 1992. “His estate wanted the aeroplane sold, so we had to say goodbye to it”. Acquired by Richard Bertea in California, N6178C left in the spring of 1993. That year also saw the P2 being sold after engine problems, and Paul’s departure from the RAF following a three-year desk posting at Strike Command. He began operating the Catalina full-time, and a deal with tobacco manufacturer Peter Stuyvesant meant there was plenty to do. As Paul says, “You cannot advertise cigarettes, but you can advertise a brand. Peter Stuyvesant also had a travel brand, so the Peter Stuyvesant Travel Odyssey was advertising the travel element, but there was always an association with the cigarettes as well. The nature of the project was to send some young people on the journey of a lifetime, discovering new places.” The first such tour was scheduled for 1993. Then, says Paul, “we had some problems fitting the seating in the aeroplane and certification of that”. Another Catalina, Z-CAT from Zimbabwe, deputised while G-BLSC was transferred to the Bermudan register. As VR-BPS (later changed to VP-BPS), it was ready for 1994’s Peter Stuyvesant operation. “The trip was broken into four sections”, Paul recalls, “and for each section we had six young people who came along on board, together with the other crew, a film crew and a stills photographer. They wanted plenty of water work, which we did. We positioned the aeroplane down to Brazil, flying out through Portugal,

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AEROPLANE MEETS… PAUL WARREN WILSON

RIGHT: During the second Peter Stuyvesant Travel Odyssey in 1994, VR-BPS visited the volcanic archipelago of Fernando de Noronha. The Catalina wore a special livery for the charter.  HANS WIESMAN

the Canary Islands and the Azores to Natal, and started the tour proper from there. We flew round several South American countries. We had one engine failure in Rio, but within a week we’d had our spare engine shipped in and fitted, and caught up with the planned tour. “It included going through La Paz, up at 13,500ft — that was an amazing experience, because the aeroplane behaves completely differently. Of course, everybody knows that at a high-level airport your true airspeed is higher than your indicated airspeed. That was a moderate factor, and although it’s not a fast aeroplane the Catalina is pretty slippery on final approach anyway; it doesn’t have any flaps. The other thing was that the engine starting and behaviour at these low pressures and high altitudes was completely different. You would hit the starter motor and the engine would turn over at about half the normal speed, but would still catch and start quite happily. The generators which normally, in the ‘Cat’, would come online at about 1,600-1,700rpm would be online at 1,000-1,200rpm, just due to the atmospherics. “We did a touch-and-go on Lake Titicaca, which was more of a ‘smack-and-go’ because we hit quite a downdraft at that point. Again, landing on the water at higher levels is something to be approached with a degree of caution, because your ground speed at touchdown is quite a bit higher, and that makes the hydrodynamic forces much higher — the ‘suck-down’ that you get, the tendency to water-loop are all much stronger and must be dealt with very meticulously and quickly. The weather wasn’t good enough to stay at Lake Titicaca, but we did, however, land and let people on and off at another, smaller lake near Quito [Laguna San Pablo], up at 8,000ft. That worked out just fine.” Two less distant excursions saw the Catalina promoting Peroni’s Nastro Azzurro beer. “A Swiss-Italian guy [Guido Bonfiglio] had got a contract to fly his Catalina [PBY-5A N9521C] round the coast of Italy. He realised he couldn’t do it — it was too difficult — but we had the experience,

the crew and so on to do that, so we picked up the project from him.” There were some 50 landings involved, using VR-BPS to deliver Nastro Azzurro to Italian coastal resorts. “It was so reliable. I don’t think we missed a day’s flying. It was a real hammering that we gave the aeroplane, landing on the sea just off the beaches every day or every other day, in all sorts of weather conditions. Often around the coast of Italy the weather would start fairly calm in the

Gibraltar for an RAF Families’ Day. “That was one of the most remarkable shows we ever went to. Some places you go to, people are keen to buy trinkets — T-shirts, caps, badges, tea-towels, posters — and some they’re not. In Gibraltar, they are. In four hours we took £4,000-worth. We sold everything we had”. Proving the aircraft’s long-distance credentials, Paul transited back from Gibraltar straight into a Duxford display. “Fortunately we managed to adjust our slot by using the HF radio and getting a ’phone patch through to the tower…” With so much else on his plate, Paul stepped back from organising the Fighter Meet. “Some years we made a bit of money”, he says, “but most years we made a loss”. Arthur Gibson’s sonin-law Howard Webby ran it for a few more seasons, the last being 1997. By then, Paul had taken another big decision. “I realised, having operated the Catalina full-time for three-anda-half years, that this was no way for a man to support a wife and four kids in the long term”. He became a direct-entry captain on the Fokker 50 for Air UK at Norwich, a “great intro” to commercial aviation. During 1998 he went to Cathay Pacific as a Boeing 747 freighter first officer, followed by

Engine starting and behaviour at high altitudes was completely different. You hit the starter motor and the engine would turn over at half the normal speed, but still catch and start quite happily

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morning, so we might plan to land at 10am, say, and go and moor up… Then around midday the sun gets up, the heating starts, and the whole place starts to become a bit windy and rough. Quite often, by about one or two o’clock we’d have to just up sticks and go, with the waves getting up.” Around its corporate commitments, the Catalina was kept busy with airshows and commemorations. Paul flew Czech President Václav Havel in the aircraft at the 1993 Roudnice show, and that September took it to

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an upgrade to captain three years later. He’s been there ever since. Thirteen very happy years of Catalina flying, however, came to a sudden and sorrowful end. In the hands of another pilot, VP-BPS sank on Southampton Water in July 1998, due to a fault with the nose undercarriage door operating mechanism. Two of the 14 passengers on board for a press and publicity flight lost their lives. “There was a year or so where I had a think about whether I wanted to carry on or not”, says Paul. “But in the background was the fact that what we were doing was not just having fun, but preserving a piece of aviation history and the memory of the service and sacrifice given in these aircraft by so many people. I decided that we’d try and get going again. “At the point where the first aeroplane sank, I had just established the concept of group ownership. Up until then I’d owned it myself, but this is not a good way to run an aeroplane like that. If a big, unexpected cost comes along you’re going to be bankrupt in no time flat. If you have a group of shareholders — and I went for 20, as was then the maximum number permitted under the Air Navigation Order — they could contribute to the operating cost, and fly on the aeroplane while it

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still remained private-category flying. I said to myself that if I could get 10 of the 20 shares sold in a reasonable time, we’d go ahead. I did, but selling the next 10 was really hard work. It was easier when we didn’t have an aeroplane than once we had one. “With good advice from my longtime colleague and partner David Legg, who’s the world’s authority on Catalinas, we considered all the available machines. We ended up getting one of the two that were at Nanaimo, Vancouver Island — C-FNJF”. A Canadian-built PBV-1A Canso, the former Province of Saskatchewan firebomber had been earmarked for tourist flights in Zimbabwe, but this venture fell through after conversion work had started. The fuselage-side blisters, air stair and passenger seating made it more attractive. “It needed a certain amount of work to be done, because some modifications had been started but not fully certificated. Those generated a lot of paperwork, toil and sweat over a couple of years until everything was properly completed.” When it was ready, Plane Sailing’s new PBY set off from Nanaimo on 1 March 2004. Keith Sissons and Rod Brooking performed the ferry, joined by Paul for part of the route. “They flew down the west coast of North America”, he remembers, “then across a relatively southerly route, and in to Shannon”. C-FNJF arrived at its

Duxford home on 30 March, still in its yellow, red and green firebomber livery. On the 2004 show circuit, it was nicknamed the ‘Rasta Cat’. The aircraft’s transition to the UK register as G-PBYA “was not a particularly quick and easy job. We employed Atlantic Aero Engineering to do a huge and expensive investigation into meeting all the requirements for UK certification. When it was looked at enough, it met the requirements and got its UK C of A. That was the same day as the Airbus A380 had its first flight, and I know which I think was the bigger milestone achieved…” Repainted as a US Army Air Force 5th Emergency Rescue Squadron OA-10A, Plane Sailing’s second Catalina has carried on where the first left off. Few warbirds range as far and wide, and there are few European countries in which G-PBYA hasn’t displayed. Even Russia was on the agenda in 2012, as part of centenary celebrations for the country’s air force. Apart from looking after training and testing, Paul still flies the occasional display, mainly at Biscarrosse in France — the scene of regular water landing practices by Plane Sailing. The shareholders make a major contribution not just financially, but on the operational side too. “We have pilots with a huge variety of experience, everything from close

TOP: In 1993, the Catalina was given a Royal Canadian Air Force scheme with serial 9754, representing the No 162 Squadron mount of VC winner Flt Lt David Hornell. The livery was easier to adapt for corporate work. KEY/DUNCAN CUBITT

ABOVE: Paul being interviewed by the media about Plane Sailing’s second Catalina at the end of C-FNJF’s flight from British Columbia to Duxford. DAVID LEGG

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Having group ownership is great for this aeroplane, because if there is an unexpected cost you have a fall-back ABOVE: In the left-hand seat of G-PBYA during training for water operations.

JOHN DIBBS

BELOW: Biscarrosse, that great centre of what the French call ‘hydraviation’, is a regular port of call for Plane Sailing. Here, Paul touches down on the lake after a PBY display in 2010.

DAVID HALFORD

on 20,000 hours’ airline flying to not much more than 300 or 400 hours. There’s a place for all of them in our group”. Especially welcome is the involvement of younger faces, such as Séb Mazzuchetti and Matt Dearden, both of whom have become Catalina captains and display pilots under Paul’s guidance. Some of the other members are not pilots, but just like being involved with an historic aeroplane. “My plan is to operate the Catalina at least until the year 2050”, Paul continues. “It’s not easy — we’ve just done six months of engineering work with no income… But having group ownership is great for this aeroplane, because if there is an unexpected cost you have a fall-back”. That was the case in 2016, when an engine needed repairing and replacing. “For the first time in eight years, we had to call on our shareholders for a bit of extra funding. But when it’s spread over 20 people — and all our shares are taken now, so all the costs are spread equally — it’s a pretty manageable situation.”

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For some of the group, July 2015’s trip to Greenland was not to be missed. Paul was the chief pilot for Operation ‘World First’, an expedition by students from Worksop College, which chartered the aircraft to deliver the party plus supplies and kit from the remote airport at Constable Point to the lake at Faxa Sø. “The Catalina behaved impeccably”, he says. “We didn’t have a single defect, I think, the whole time, in 40 hours of flying.” One memory from Greenland stands out above all others. “It was the last landing I did on this lake, miles away from anywhere. No people, no housing, no support, nothing. We knew the lake quite well by now; it was the fourth trip in there. It was 5km long. Of course you have to work out which way’s into wind when you come to land on the water, and there are various ways you can do that. For example, smoke — there was no smoke; the way ships are pointing — there were no ships; the way birds are pointing — there were a few birds; or, you’re spoilt nowadays because you have air speed and ground speed from the GPS. “We flew along at 80kt, something like that, and looked at what the ground speed was. I came in over the lake, 80kt air speed, 90kt ground speed. Ah, there’s a tailwind. I wanted to land the other way. I went to the other end of the lake and did the same check again. At 80kt you’d expect 70kt of ground speed, because of the wind, but no: 90kt of ground speed. There was a tailwind from

each end of the lake, meeting in the middle, presumably, and going up. “Now it’s a question of how you land in that. The answer was, go to the far end, land from that end, and touch down a third of the way along where the tailwind turns into a headwind. Of course, you can land in a tailwind in the Catalina, but it’s not a great plan. As I mentioned earlier, the hydrodynamic forces, the risk of water-looping and the suck-down on the nose become much higher. It was probably the first time I’d ever come in to land somewhere, had to assess the wind myself and found that situation. You never assume in aviation, you don’t just think, ‘It’ll be all right’, because it will bite you sooner or later.” Even for a pilot with great experience, there are still new chances to learn, new places to go and new circumstances to face, even if the aircraft are familiar. “What a spread of characteristics I’ve been lucky enough to see”, Paul reflects. “I’ve seen such a breadth of aviation in that small number of types that I feel very privileged. I never forget that.” To join the Catalina Society, visit www.catalina.org.uk. Plane Sailing is planning a special open day for potential future shareholders, so that a small reserve of interested individuals can be ready for when one of the 20 shares in the Catalina becomes available. It will be held at Duxford on 15 October — for information, e-mail [email protected].

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BOOK TICKETS

077_Aero_July17-ad.indd 1

24/05/2017 11:33

Our new bi-monthly series, examining in depth an This time we look at the RAF’s Oboe bombing aid

BRIEFING FILE The components of the Oboe system

The system’s operation

An aircraft: generally a Mosquito, equipped with a transponder and armed with target indicators (TIs)

Two widely-separated transmitters: one codenamed ‘Cat’, one ‘Mouse’

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determines the aircraft’s range and the ‘Cat’ sends signals back to keep its course on an arc intersecting the target

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Two Mosquito squadrons were equipped with Oboe, Nos 105 and 109. MkIV DZ319 belonged to 109, and was used on the first raid to employ the system. VIA ANDREW THOMAS

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W

orld War Two saw the development to maturity of electronic warfare, from cranky prototypes to weapons with continental reach, and the foundation of many of today’s technological tools. One was Oboe, the codename for a bombing aid used by the RAF’s Bomber Command. It was one of the key items developed to improve bombing accuracy. The principle behind Oboe was simple. The aircraft, usually a de Havilland Mosquito, carried a transponder which confirmed its exact distance from the Type 900 transmitter, known as the ‘Cat’. This enabled the aircraft to follow a curved course, a fixed distance from the transmitter. If the pilot flew too far from the transmitter, a series of dashes (‘dahs’) was heard; if too close, a series of dots (‘dits’). When on track — which was only 35 yards wide — they merged into a continuous note, said to be like the sound of an oboe. This course was set to pass over the target. As the Mosquito approached the target, another set of signals

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W NE E UR AT FE

pth an aspect of aviation technology or tactics. ing aid, a vital tool for Bomber Command Why the Mosquito was crucial

de Havilland Mosquito (BIV, BIX, BXVI)

Superior ceiling capability Service enabled reaching altitudes ceilings necessary for line-of-sight contact with Oboe transmitters to bomb the Ruhr effectively 30,000ft In addition the Mosquito’s speed made the hazardous straight, level run to target a little safer

Lancaster Halifax

20,000ft

Wellington

Oboe’s effect on accuracy

Oboe signals Stirling blocked by Earth’s curvature

5

100

This chart shows the marked rise in accuracy following the introduction of Oboe

The Ruhr

Introduction of Oboe on major raids

300miles

80

60

Accuracy of Bomber Command night attacks on German cities* % plotted within three miles of aiming Battle of point (average over previous four months)

40

the Ruhr

‘Cat’ and ‘Mouse’ stations from a second transmitter (codenamed ‘Mouse’) at an angle from the first would trigger a time and distance countdown warning on the transponder. At the last signal, the target markers would be dropped by the bomb aimer. Due to the calculations beforehand, that single intersection of the two signals would be the precise aiming point to place the marker exactly where it was intended. It was accurate to a few hundred yards in ideal conditions. An onboard computer in the Mosquito adjusted the bomb release point calculation to allow for ballistics, wind, altitude and so on. It was known as the ‘Micestro’. A limitation of Oboe was that one pair of transmitters could only direct one aircraft at a time. The run-in to a target normally took a minimum of 10 minutes, more

1942

when including the initial line-up, so this meant that only four to six aircraft could be directed within an hour. Clearly this was not going to work directing individual bombers in their dozens, or later hundreds. A misreading of the continental grid in the trial period caused a puzzling offset in early use, with very accurate bombing a point away from the actual target. Corrected maps solved this. The second issue was that the aircraft had to fly along the curved beam for a period on the run-in to target, making it vulnerable to fighter or antiaircraft fire. Fortuitously, when Mosquito bombers (replacing the Vickers Wellingtons first used on Oboe trials) were introduced, they were fast enough to be able to avoid most attacks — and,

1943

* Excluding Berlin

unlike the Stirling, Wellington, Halifax and Lancaster, they could fly fast at 28,000-30,000ft, which helped. Because of the curvature of the earth, this meant that the effective range at which Oboe could be used was increased. As well as marking for the Main Force, Oboe-equipped ‘Mossies’ were used for individual precision bombing when required and available, usually dropping 4,000lb ‘blockbuster’ bombs. Oboe was a factor enabling the establishment of the Pathfinder Force, and — along with the use of target indicator flares — it was operational by early 1943. Combined, they made up what is today known as a weapons system, working together with one aircraft dropping target indicators for Bomber Command’s Main Force bombers to aim at. Used in conjunction with other aids, by

The aircraft had to fly along the curved beam for a period on the run-in to target, making it vulnerable to fighter or anti-aircraft fire. Fortuitously, when Mosquito bombers were introduced, they were fast enough to avoid most attacks AEROPLANE JULY 2017

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1944

1945

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the end of the Battle of the Ruhr Oboe had doubled the number of bombs on target compared to before its introduction. Initially the ‘boffins’ believed the aircraft could have been flown on autopilot in the run-in, and the bomb release made automatic. But the crews thought they could do a better job. When, in practice, the signal was momentarily interrupted, so it proved. While the Germans attempted to block Oboe, they never did so effectively. Each time countermeasures were developed, the British had moved on to an improved version or signal wavelength. Oboe remained crucial to Bomber Command until the war’s end, reaching further east into Germany with ground transmitting stations being made mobile on trucks and sent to the Continent as the Allies advanced. One of the last wartime uses was to arrange precision food drops to the Dutch in 1945. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to the RAF Museum for their assistance with research for the graphics in this feature.

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DATABASE IN-DEPTH PAGES

Development Production

ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN

WORDS: JAKOB WHITFIELD

Cutaway

A Merlin-engined trio from the RAF’s Empire Central Flying School at Hullavington in 1942: Hurricane I Z4791 leads Spitfire IIas P7882 and P7926. AEROPLANE

In Service

● The Merlin’s sometimes difficult birth

Insights

● How Rolls-Royce kept the Merlin relevant ● Classic wartime cutaway from The Aeroplane

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DEVELOPMENT ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN

How Rolls-Royce made history

ABOVE: Spitfire Is undergoing final assembly at Eastleigh, with a number of Merlin IIs in the foreground awaiting installation to other airframes. AEROPLANE

T

he Rolls-Royce Merlin is, by any reckoning, one of the great aero engines of all time, and is certainly the most famous British aero engine ever. Produced in greater numbers than any other engine of the Second World War, its variants powered front-line aircraft from the first to the last day of the conflict. Yet in many ways the Merlin’s success was as much a testament to Rolls-Royce’s persistence as it was to the engine’s inherent excellence. The great motoring journalist L. J. K. Setright was even more forthright: he called it a “triumph of development over design.” Compared to — for example — Roy Fedden’s sleeve-valve radials, Frank Halford’s

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fearsomely complex Sabre, or even Rolls-Royce’s more exotic designs such as the Vulture and Crecy, the Merlin was perhaps technically conservative. It underwent at least three major mechanical redesigns to counteract what were, at the time, serious flaws. But it was designed and developed in a period when advances in fuels and supercharging meant a basically sound design could see huge increases in power, given suitable development. And Rolls-Royce’s engineers were masters of the kind of development work that would ensure reliability in the face of dramatic power increases. Over its life the Merlin’s power more than doubled; power at altitude nearly tripled, and, as Rolls-Royce’s historian Ian

Lloyd put it, “the skies of Britain and Europe reverberated to the deep throb of more than a million Merlin horsepower.” Sir Henry Royce had favoured liquid-cooled V12 engines since the First World War, but the firm’s post-war designs were mainly used in larger aircraft. In 1912 Royce had suffered a collapse in health, attributed to his workaholic personality and poor diet. He underwent a major operation, his doctors giving him months to live. Advised to avoid Derby’s industrial atmosphere, he split his time between villas in the south of France and West Wittering on the South Coast. Here, with a small design staff, including his assistant A. G. Elliott, he designed his new

engines, and oversaw the work at Derby from afar. Letters, telegrams, and nervous draughtsmen bearing drawings for inspection headed back and forth, as Royce insisted on personal approval of even minor details. Whatever the difficulties of this manner of working, after the First World War Derby expanded its design team. In 1921 Arthur J. Rowledge, who was Napier’s chief engine designer and had just come up with the Napier Lion broad-arrow W12 engine, joined Rolls-Royce. His first job was to redesign the Condor engine, and the resulting Condor III incorporated features that were to become standard for Rolls-Royce production engines for the next two decades: two inlet and two outlet valves per cylinder, fork-and-blade connecting rods, and spur reduction gear. Unfortunately for Rolls-Royce, the company became involved in a dispute with Lord Trenchard over engine production. To ensure production capacity in the event of future conflict, the Air Ministry had decided that all future engines for the RAF should be able to be manufactured under licence by the car industry. Rolls-Royce was adamant and explained it had never licensed its designs, as it could not guarantee the

ABOVE: Ernest Hives, head of Rolls-Royce’s experimental department and later general works manager.

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change to ‘wet’ liners. In these, coolant passed directly along the outside of the cylinder sleeve, giving better cooling, but the liners carried greater stress. As a consequence, the Kestrel was always susceptible to coolant leaks into the cylinders. This issue aside, the Kestrel was enormously successful, with 4,750 being built from 1927 to 1940. Power rose from 450hp in the Kestrel I to 695hp in the Kestrel V, later marks taking advantage of higheroctane fuel ratings to push power to more than 700hp. The engine probably saved Rolls-Royce’s aeronautical business. In the wake of the Condor licensing dispute, its share of the market had fallen from 25 per cent in 1925 to 11 per cent in 1929. The Kestrel was RollsRoyce’s first engine to use sea-level supercharger boost to increase power. In this it was assisted by the fact that the company employed probably the world’s leading supercharger expert, James

Insights

The head of the company’s experimental department, Ernest Hives, was eager to expand the firm’s aeronautical business and accepted the challenge, especially as Rowledge and Royce had already begun the design of the FX, an engine along similar lines. The resulting Kestrel incorporated one-piece castings for the cylinder blocks

In Service

Rolls-Royce were masters of the kind of development work that would ensure reliability in the face of dramatic power increases

ABOVE: Two of the key figures behind what became the Merlin: Sir Henry Royce (right) and Supermarine’s R. J. Mitchell. Of course, neither man would live to witness the full impact of the powerplant in operational use. AEROPLANE

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and heads, and many of the refinements applied to the Condor III. Early Kestrel prototypes used ‘dry’ cylinder liners screwed directly into the castings (aluminium engine blocks needed steel sleeves, or liners, to resist wear from the engine pistons), but cooling problems forced a

Cutaway

Stung by the American engine’s superiority, and unwilling to support another aero engine manufacturer, the Air Ministry looked for an existing engine company willing to build a comparable design. With its experience of liquid-cooled V12s, RollsRoyce was an obvious choice.

Production

The Schneider Trophy-winning ‘R’ engine helped inform future developments, but was not practical for service use. AEROPLANE

Ellor. He had worked in the Royal Aircraft Establishment’s engine department since before the First World War, and was apparently being headhunted by a US engine firm. Civil service pay scales meant that the RAE could not match their salary offers, so, attempting to keep Ellor’s expertise in the UK, the Air Ministry suggested that Rolls-Royce employ him. He joined the company in 1927, and was responsible for the Kestrel, ‘R’ and Merlin superchargers. Rolls-Royce’s second boost came in the form of the Supermarine S6. In 1927, Reginald Mitchell’s S5 monoplane had won the Schneider Trophy, its 890hp Napier Lion powering it to victory. As a result of the growing expense of developing a Schneider competitor, the participating nations agreed to switch to a biennial contest; competitors would have to be ready for September 1929. At the Air Ministry, Maj George Bulman, in charge of aero engine development, considered his options: either continue with the Lion, which would require the introduction of supercharging, or go for an entirely new design. Mitchell had already had discussions with Rolls-Royce to see how his S5 would have to be modified to incorporate a significantly heavier and more powerful engine, and though Bulman was aware going for a new engine was a gamble, he had faith in Rolls-Royce’s design team. Rolls-Royce had recently type-tested its Buzzard or ‘H’ engine, essentially a scaled-up Kestrel with 70 per cent greater displacement. Bulman asked his boss, the Air Member for Supply and Research AVM John Higgins, to hold a meeting with the Rolls-Royce chairman Basil Johnson. When he arrived, Bulman and Higgins were amazed that Johnson wanted to refuse the commission. He was worried that involvement in “sordid competition” would tarnish the firm’s reputation for quality and perfection.

Development

quality of engines it did not manufacture itself. When the report reached Trenchard, he scrawled “no more Condors!” in the margin. What brought Rolls-Royce back into the Air Ministry’s fold was a rival engine — not one from a local competitor, but from overseas. This was the revolutionary Curtiss D-12. In this V12 water-cooled engine, each bank of six cylinders was a single-casting aluminium casting. Previously, individual steel cylinders were screwed into the crankcase, and a separate coolant water jacket fitted around the cylinders. The Curtiss’s ‘monobloc’ construction was both lighter and more rigid, allowing for a more powerful engine. Inspired by its use in the Curtiss CR-3 Schneider Trophy-winning aircraft of 1923, two years later Sir Richard Fairey designed his private-venture Fox bomber around the D-12, allegedly personally importing the prototype’s engine, stowing it in his cabin on board a trans-Atlantic liner. The Fox, a streamlined biplane, was faster than any RAF fighter, and Trenchard immediately ordered a squadron for the RAF. Though Fairey imported the first 50 engines required, he sought a manufacturing licence for the D-12.

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DEVELOPMENT ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN

ABOVE: The first Hurricane prototype, K5083, required three engine changes due to various problems with the Merlin. AEROPLANE TOP RIGHT: Rolls-Royce-operated Hawker Hart K3036, in which the first PV12 test flight was made. ABOVE RIGHT: A long-serving testbed was Rolls-Royce’s Hawker Horsley S1436, here with a Merlin III. AEROPLANE

Knowing that, as he put it, “the firm’s engineers were straining at the leash to go ahead”, Bulman “blurted out in [his] fury a single word, unprintable in polite context”. His boss “turned and looked at me for a long second, and then in a steely voice of real Air Marshal calibre said to our guest, ‘Mr [Johnson], I order your firm to take on this job. We have complete faith in your technical team. The necessary arrangements will be made between our respective staffs. Good afternoon”. Johnson — who was not to remain Rolls-Royce chairman for much longer — left with his tail between his legs, and as Bulman hurried to give the good news to Rowledge, Higgins thanked him “for summing up the discussion so succinctly”! Sir Henry Royce is related as summing up his design philosophy as, “I invent nothing; inventors go broke”. The Rolls-Royce designers decided that the best course of action would be to build on the ‘H’, itself a scaled-up Kestrel, in order to build a ‘racing H’, or ‘R’. The ‘R’ was a supercharged engine of 6in bore by 6.6in stroke, with a compression ratio of 6:1. Starting in October 1928 and

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working day and night, Rolls-Royce had such an engine on test in three months. With the help of the Ethyl Export Corporation’s fuel expert Rod Banks, it raised supercharger boost and engine power without encountering detonation by adding benzole and tetraethyl lead (TEL) to aviation fuel to raise the octane rating. In September 1929, the ‘R’ producing about 1,900hp, with the Supermarine S6 won the Schneider Trophy at a speed of 328.64mph.

uprated ‘R‘ required both a beefier cooling system, and the introduction of new technologies such as sodiumcooled exhaust valves, a first for Rolls-Royce. Having increased power to such a degree, almost every part of the engine required strengthening, and during the spring of 1931 the ‘Derby hum’ of the day-and-night development running was such that the mayor had to appeal to the patriotism of the city’s citizens as they complained of lost sleep.

The Merlin is sometimes called a derivative of the ‘R’, but although it drew on the racing engine it was smaller and used different construction For the 1931 attempt, the Rolls-Royce development engineers sought to increase the ‘R’s’ power. This was achieved by raising the revs and supercharger boost, Rod Banks concocting a new ‘witches’ brew’ by adding 10 per cent methanol to the previous fuel cocktail, allowing the engine to run at 3,200rpm and 2,350hp. If what comes up must go down, however, in engine terms what goes in must come out, and the prodigious heat output of the

As is now well-known, in September 1931 the updated Supermarine S6B won the Schneider Trophy outright for Britain at a speed of 340.08mph. Later that month it attempted the world absolute speed record. For this Banks concocted a brew of 60 per cent methanol, 30 per cent benzole and 10 per cent acetone, with 4.2cc of tetraethyl lead per gallon. Dissolving paint and tank sealing compounds and causing spark plug leading,

this was even less suitable an everyday fuel than that used for the Schneider Trophy, but it was only needed for a short run. Adding some 250hp of extra power, the S6B smashed the 400mph barrier — and the record — at 407.5mph. Though the ‘R’ was phenomenally successful, it was not a practical service engine. By the early 1930s it was clear to Rolls-Royce both that the RAF would be needing an engine more powerful than the Kestrel, and that the technologies used for the ‘R’ were one way of achieving this. The resultant engine was the PV12, soon to be named the Merlin. The Merlin is sometimes described as being a derivative of the ‘R’, but though it drew on much of the development experience from the racing engine, it was much smaller and used different construction. As the name implied, the PV12 was a private venture without an Air Ministry contract, but it was not quite the gamble that is sometimes suggested. The Rolls-Royce company historian called it a “courageous decision”, but if the firm still produced only 315 engines in 1931 and the same again in 1932, this was up from a mere

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DATABASE ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN balance in favour of the inverted design? In any case, for the next PV12 variant, now called the Merlin B, Elliott introduced some changes of his own. The original PV12 prototypes, like the Kestrel, Buzzard and ‘R’ before them, used a plain flat cylinder head, which allowed for easy valve placement. Elliott, however, had become convinced of the advantages of a ‘ramp’ head; this more complex shape supposedly improved combustion by creating turbulence in the cylinder, giving better mixing of the fuel and inlet air. Elliott had long been a proponent of such a head, arguing that single-cylinder tests of the design showed clear benefits. Perhaps, now he was out of Royce’s shadow, he also saw a chance to try out some of his own ideas? However, once Merlin B running started in February 1935 it became clear that the advantages were proving elusive if not

Cutaway

susceptible to cracking, and large components were expensive to repair. The evaporative engine cooling system proved troublesome and prone to leaks. The first engine to carry the Merlin name may in fact have been one of the design concepts discarded for the PV12: an inverted V12. A mock-up was built, but after consideration of the pros and cons it was decided to continue with a conventional V12 layout. The mock-up, however, was on display at the Rolls-Royce factory when a delegation of German engineers visited, and reportedly took a close interest in the design. The big DaimlerBenz and Junkers Jumo V12s developed for the Second World War were all inverted V12s. Though the German engineers could weigh up the configuration’s advantages and disadvantages as well as could Rolls-Royce’s, did the sight of the mock-up maybe tip the

Production

sodium-cooled valves per cylinder, and fork-and-blade connecting rods. To ensure rigidity and strength for an engine whose potential power was in excess of 1,000hp, the cylinder blocks were cast integral with the upper crankcase, with cylinder head castings being screwed down onto the blocks. Six months later Royce was dead, and he was succeeded as chief engineer by A. G. Elliott. The first PV12 prototype ran on the bench in October 1933, passing a type test the following July. The inaugural flight test was made in Hawker Hart K3036 on 21 February 1935. Two prototype engines were built, and during development minor changes were made, such as switching from helical to spur reduction gears. More serious troubles were encountered with the large crankcase and cylinder block castings. Despite Rolls-Royce’s foundry expertise, they were

Development

35 in 1929, and was a measure of the Kestrel’s considerable success. In addition, in the inter-war period the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Technical Development worked closely with engine manufacturers, and it was understood that promising engines would soon gain the support of the Ministry. Bulman was happy to let Rolls-Royce start work on the PV12, knowing that he would be able to put development funds towards it in due course. Indeed, the earliest flight tests of the Merlin were covered by a Ministry contract. Approving the PV12’s development in October 1932 was one of the last decisions Henry Royce made, sketching a preliminary design with a stroke of 6in and a bore of 5.4in. The design followed existing Rolls-Royce practice: a supercharged 60˚ liquidcooled monobloc V12, with wet cylinder liners, four

In Service Insights ABOVE: The first Merlin-powered aircraft to enter RAF service was the Fairey Battle light bomber. Photographed in 1937, these examples are from Nos 105 and 226 Squadrons. AEROPLANE

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DEVELOPMENT ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN

An instrumented external Merlin test rig at Rolls-Royce’s Hucknall, Nottinghamshire-based experimental department. AEROPLANE

imaginary. It produced less power, was more susceptible to detonation, and suffered from problems with burning of the exhaust ports. Continued cracking of the cylinder block led to a redesign for the next model, the Merlin C. This effectively sliced the troublesome large casting into three, with the cylinder blocks separated from the upper crankcase. While this solved the cracking problem, the ramp head continued to give trouble, and, in the words of engine historian Graham White, the Merlin entered “the nadir of its development”. The Merlin C failed its civilian (50-hour) type test, and the decision was made to switch the cooling system from water to ethylene glycol. Though water has a greater specific heat, glycol has a higher boiling point. Developing 890hp, Merlin Cs did power the prototypes of both the Spitfire and the

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Hurricane, though presumably their designers had a certain amount of trepidation in using a non-type-tested engine for their aircraft. Indeed, the Hurricane prototype’s engine had to be changed three times because of cracking and coolant leaks. Rolls-Royce’s development engineers tried their best to

burning. With minor modifications it was developed into the Merlin F, which passed a reduced military type test, allowing for the replacement of valves, in November 1936. By this point the pressures of rearmament had caused the Air Ministry to order the Merlin F into production as the Merlin I.

The Merlin C failed its civilian 50-hour type test, and the decision was made to switch the cooling system from water to ethylene glycol salvage the ramp head, changing the location of the spark plugs and the head’s layout, but were only marginally successful. The Merlin E’s revised heads allowed this engine to pass a civilian type test in December 1935 at 890hp, but in March 1936 it failed the 100-hour military test. It still had problems with exhaust valve

Some 172 engines were built, mainly for Fairey Battles. Though unreliable, at 1,030hp they were the most powerful engines the RAF had available. Elliott had come to the conclusion that the ramp head was not going to be suitable for a production engine, and had tested the Merlin G. This used what was effectively a scaled-up Kestrel block, with a

conventional flat-head combustion chamber and the cylinder heads cast integral to the cylinder blocks. Though it was no more powerful than the Merlin F, it was significantly more reliable, passing a type test in October 1936 and entering production the following year as the Merlin II. More than 1,000 Merlin IIs were built by 1939, and, along with the Merlin III (a model with only minor differences), it was the engine that powered the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain. One major advantage that the RAF had was the introduction of 100-octane fuel. This allowed an increase in maximum supercharger boost from +6.25 to +9, increasing power from 1,030 to 1,160hp. By mid-1940 the Merlin III had been cleared for five-minute emergency power at +12 boost, giving 1,310hp at 3,000rpm.

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PRODUCTION ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN Development

Many factories built the Merlin

B

Work under way at Ford’s Trafford Park shadow factory in Manchester. KEY COLLECTION

By the end of 1937 Rolls-Royce’s production potential was much healthier, especially as the worst of the Merlin’s woes were behind it with the Air Ministry’s planned engine production programmes more room would be required. The company decided to operate its own shadow factories, building one in Crewe and one in Hillington, a suburb of Glasgow. Shadow factories were designed for mass production and a high degree of machine tooling, using a large proportion of unskilled or semi-skilled labour. As a result, their output was fairly inflexible — making design changes required re-tooling and re-jigging. Rolls-Royce operated a three-tier system: Glasgow (and later other licence factories) only manufactured major variants in large numbers; Derby became,

Insights

‘in absentia’ personal oversight of all major projects. With the support of the board, Hives swiftly made wholesale changes to RollsRoyce’s operations and factory layout. Though it was not without the inevitable snags, by the end of 1937 the company’s production potential was looking a great deal healthier, especially as, with the abandonment of the ramp head Merlin, the worst of the engine’s development woes were behind it. As noted previously, Rolls-Royce had expanded its Derby factory to boost production. Between 1935 and 1939 it increased floor space by nearly a third, to more than 1.1 million square feet. However, it became clear that

in Hives’ words, “a huge development factory rather than a manufacturing plant”, and Crewe was somewhere between the two. Derby was where new designs were tested, and the first 200-300 engines of a mark built. Once the snags had been worked out, designs could be passed on to Crewe or Glasgow for mass production, with Crewe being able to change variants more quickly, but at a higher cost per engine. Rolls-Royce’s policy of apprenticeships and highly skilled labour turned out to have the unforeseen advantage that it could promote a nucleus of skilled staff from Derby to act as overseers in both its shadow factories, transferring production knowhow. Rolls-Royce chose Crewe for its first shadow factory because of its good road and rail links to Derby. Construction began in July

In Service

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Cutaway

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Production

y the mid-1930s, it was becoming clear that the growth of airframe and aero engine production required by the RAF’s expansion schemes would far outstrip the capacity of existing manufacturers. The solution was for the government to pay for ‘shadow’ production capacity, mostly in the automotive industry. A 1934 government analysis of Kestrel production capacity concluded that it would be insufficient in wartime. The suggested remedy was an ‘educational’ shadow scheme, with RollsRoyce teaching Humber how to build Kestrels. However, as with Condor production, Rolls-Royce was reluctant to share its secrets. It instead decided to increase the capacity of its Derby factory, as well as sub-contracting more work. Even more change was afoot. The head of the experimental department, Ernest Hives, was appointed general works manager at the end of 1936, and was convinced of the need for Rolls-Royce’s working practices to change. After analysing the company’s operations, he submitted a report to the board in January 1937. It made sobering reading, pointing out that current profits were essentially based entirely on military rearmament contracts, and masked the fact that production costs were disproportionate. Rolls-Royce’s legendarily skilled employees were compensating for the fact that equipment and working practices were outmoded. There were almost as many hand-workers as machinists, whereas modern factory practice was to have between six and eight machine-workers to every hand-worker. Cost control was deemed inadequate, and the design staff organisation was hampered by having been set up to deal with Henry Royce’s

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PRODUCTION ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN

Merlins on the line in Nottingham. Rolls-Royce learned much about modern production techniques during the 1930s. AEROPLANE

1938, and an astonishing five months later the first Merlins were coming off the production line. Glasgow was selected because it was becoming hard to find engineering workers in the Midlands, and providing suitable housing for those who had been employed at Crewe was a problem; while housing was being built, employees had to be billeted with local households. Construction of the Hillington factory began in

June 1939, and was able to draw on the experience gained in setting up Crewe. The first buildings were occupied in October of that year, and engines started coming off the line in November 1940, though the plant had been providing parts for work undertaken at Derby and Crewe before then. However, despite high unemployment in the Glasgow engineering industries during the depression, the demands of rearmament as well as

conscription into the armed forces meant that finding suitably skilled workers was a problem. Hilllington was designed to be mostly self-sufficient, relying far less on sub-contracting than Crewe or Derby, and so needed skilled foundry workers as well as machinists. Shaped by the brutal unemployment of the 1930s, many of the workers who could be found were considered militant by the management, and despite being a factory intended to use large amounts of unskilled labour there were constant disputes about who should be allowed to work on which machines. Nonetheless, by June 1941 Hillington was producing 200 engines a month, and by March 1942 more than 400 a month were rolling off the line. The Air Ministry had decided by November 1939 that the demands of wartime — in particular those of the multi-engined bomber programmes — would require engine production even in excess of what the Crewe and Glasgow factories could provide. Air Marshal Wilfred Freeman, the air member for

FRENCH MERLINS During 1939 the French Air Ministry was seeking to supplement the output of the French aero engine industry, and asked Ford SAF, the French subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company, to negotiate a licence for Merlins with Rolls-Royce. Initial discussions were held in March 1939, when Ford SAF’s managing director confided in the Rolls-Royce executive that his company was not really interested in making complete engines for some time, but that the Air Ministry’s proposal was motivated largely by the need to satisfy political opinion in France. The Ford subsidiary company Fordair was to handle production, with a new factory to be built in Bordeaux. This would not be ready before the spring of 1940, so initially Fordair was to be more of a repair and overhaul centre for Derby-built Merlins. Because of the difficulties Fordair had in finding machine tools and skilled staff, a team of engineers from the US parent company was sent to Derby, who analysed production requirements and ordered tooling in the US for shipment to Bordeaux. Unfortunately, in August 1939 the strongly isolationist Henry

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Ford had decided to stop work on any armament projects, and recalled the Detroit engineers. Without this assistance Fordair was overstretched, so discussions began about the production of engines from parts. By the autumn, it was clear that, although Fordair had made some progress, production was unlikely to start before late 1940, due to a shortage of tooling and staff. Much intrigue seems to have surrounded the project at the French Air Ministry (as indeed was the case for much of France’s nationalised aero industry), and the licence was finally cancelled in December 1939, with Fordair’s Bordeaux factory being switched to the production of the simpler, if significantly less powerful, Hispano-Suiza V12 engine. The Merlin was still, however, intended as the powerplant for a number of advanced French designs, including the Dewoitine D531 fighter and the Amiot 356 bomber, and the French Ministry placed orders for these engines in Derby. Rolls-Royce delivered 143 Merlins before the fall of France, but few — if any — made it into aircraft, and none of them into action.

development and production, enquired of the Ford UK chairman Sir Percival Perry whether he would be willing to produce Merlins. In a followup meeting with Perry and his general manager Rowland Smith, Smith agreed that Ford could, though his estimate of the cost to build and equip a shadow factory for the desired rate of 400 engines a month was £7 million, equivalent to hundreds of millions of pounds today. Remarkably, the actual cost was some £6.6 million. Freeman felt the matter was urgent enough to sidestep the usual procedures and sent George Bulman to the Treasury to get approval, which he received within about five minutes of his arrival! Ford decided its Dagenham factory could not be expanded to manage production on this scale, and chose to build a new facility on the Trafford Park industrial estate in Manchester. Because RollsRoyce had no skilled workers to spare, having sent staff to establish the Crewe and Glasgow plants, Ford decided to send 190 of its workers to Derby to learn the manufacturing processes needed for a Merlin, in order to be able to set up the machine tools for a production line. On arriving there, the Ford engineering team discovered that the Rolls-Royce drawings were unsuitable for the demands of Ford-style manufacturing: the tolerances were too wide to allow for the mass production of interchangeable parts. Having redrawn some 20,000 drawings to Ford’s standards, the Trafford Park factory began construction in the spring of 1940, and the first engines were produced in May-June 1941, though the manufacture of parts for use on Crewe’s production lines was under way by August 1940. By the end of the war, Ford had produced some 30,000 Merlins, all twin-speed single-stage engines (initially Merlin XXs, later 22s and 24s) that were used mostly in bombers.

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UK. Engines for the UK were given a Merlin mark number, and US engines were designated V-1650, with a dash number denoting the mark. Units for the US and UK differed mainly in their propeller splines, with the UK engines using SBAC-standard splines, and the US engines SAE-standard. The Packard Merlins used US carburettors, magnetos and other accessories, and an epicyclic supercharger drive rather than the Farman drive used on Rolls-Royce versions. Contracts were signed in September 1940, and production began roughly a year later. It had been a mammoth undertaking; drawings had to be redrafted to American projection standards and to Packard’s tolerances. Because Packard decided to keep the British threads used on the Merlin, rather than re-engineer the engine with SAE standard threads, it had to

In 1944 the average monthly production of V-1650-1 engines was just shy of a frankly incredible 2,000 units per month

manufacture its own threadcutting and rolling machine tools. The company reengineered the engine to have a two-piece block, where the heads, cylinder skirts and upper crankcase were all separate castings bolted together. Rolls-Royce had plans to do this for its future engines, but under the pressures of war had not yet been able to put a two-piece block into production. The resultant engine was the Merlin 28/V-1650-1, and was based on the Merlin XX. By April 1942 this was coming off Packard’s line at the rate of 510 per month, and in 1944 the average monthly production was just shy of a frankly incredible 2,000 engines per month. Some 897 V-1650 engines, mostly late-mark V-1650-7s, were also built by the Continental Aircraft Engine Company, which used Packard’s sub-contractors. Packard-built engines were highly popular with RAF mechanics, because they were packaged with an extensive toolkit of excellent quality, which tended to be liberated as quickly as possible by groundcrew.

Insights

the Ford Motor Company’s president, and US government officials proved futile, and the deal was cancelled. Rolls-Royce’s American representatives had been in discussion with US companies exploring the possibility of licensed production since 1938, though nothing had come of it. Derby’s management had considered at the time that it would be more cost-effective to sub-contract the manufacture of parts, rather than complete engines. With the failure of the Ford production deal, the British Purchasing Commission turned to the Packard Motor Car Company. Packard was, like Rolls-Royce, a luxury car manufacturer, and was one of the few US companies that Henry Royce had respected. The initial order was for 9,000 engines, of which 3,000 were for the US government, the remainder going to the

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Cutaway

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An early Packard V-1650 application was on the Curtiss P-40F. This is an 18th Fighter Group example named Destitute Prostitute. USAF

Production

When Lord Beaverbrook took over the Ministry of Aircraft Production in May 1940, he ‘raised the voltage’ there, bringing his brand of whirlwind energy to bear. Though his influence was in many ways mixed — he inherited an organisation that was beginning to bear the fruits of the past three or four years’ rearmament planning, and many of his schemes would have damaged long-term planning while bringing only minimal improvements in the short term — he did have a galvanising effect on many schemes. Rolls-Royce was able to gain approval for various repair schemes to keep up with Merlin demand: bullet holes were patched and repaired, cracked crankcases damaged in wheels-up landings had steel braces attached, and major components were salvaged wherever possible from damaged engines and used for new engines. Among his ideas was to send sets of blueprints for British war materiel to the US with a view to securing their overseas production. These included drawings for the Merlin and Griffon engines. The Rolls-Royce management was unhappy about this, worrying, given Beaverbrook’s buccaneering style, that he might trade away manufacturing licences for other concessions without regard to the company’s rights. They were not entirely wrong — in June 1940 it was reported that Ford had been given a contract to manufacture 6,000 Merlins. Given the work already done by the Detroit engineers for the French Ford company, and that under way by Ford UK, this made some sense, but within hours of the announcement Henry Ford had decided that he would not provide war materiel to a belligerent party — only to the US government. The entreaties of his son Edsel,

Development

THE PACKARD MERLIN

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IN SERVICE ROLLS-ROYCE MERLIN The beautiful Speed Spitfire runs up its Merlin II (Special), a variant that illustrated the engine’s development potential. AEROPLANE

Keeping the Merlin in power

I

n the late 1930s, as the ramp head Merlin and its development woes were abandoned, it was clear that the engine had huge potential. In late 1937 Supermarine had begun the modification of a ‘Speed Spitfire’ for an attempt on the world air speed record. As with the ‘R’, Rolls-Royce provided support, testing the engine on another of Rod Banks’ special fuels. By January 1939 this Merlin II (Special) was flying at more than 2,160hp, with +27 boost. Even though, with its special spark plugs and coolant systems, it could only maintain this power for a few minutes at a time, at heart it was still basically a strengthened production Merlin II. As Spitfire test pilot Jeffrey Quill noted, this did more to reassure Supermarine’s chief designer Joe Smith of the power growth that could be expected from the Merlin over the next few years than “any number of Rolls-Royce brochures and technical forecasts.” Hives was worried that Rolls-Royce could be too insular in appreciating expertise from outside the company. Among the changes he made after being appointed general works manager was taking on more technical staff from outside, and one of them was a young

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mathematician and fluid dynamicist called Stanley Hooker. The decision turned out to be incredibly fortuitous. When Hooker arrived in early 1938, he was left to his own devices for a while to settle in. On casting around for something to work on, he came across the supercharger test section, and was shown the experimental plots of supercharger pressure. Feeling that this was a matter of aerodynamics, and therefore familiar ground, Hooker asked to borrow a set of test curves and went off to familiarise himself with supercharger

office holding a copy of his report. “Did you write this?” he demanded. Nervously, Hooker admitted he had, and was told: “Well done, jolly good stuff. From now on you are in charge of supercharger development.” Up until this point the Merlin supercharger had been essentially unchanged from its original 1934 design. Though the Merlin X, introduced in 1938, had a two-speed supercharger, it used the same impeller. The two-speed drive allowed the supercharger to run at the gear best suited to the inlet air pressure:

The Speed Spitfire reassured Supermarine’s chief designer of the power growth that could be expected from the Merlin theory. On examining the Merlin’s design, he came to the conclusion that the rotor and diffuser of the supercharger were mismatched. If this mismatch were corrected, the efficiency of the supercharger could be improved from 65 per cent to 75 per cent or so. Hooker wrote up his deductions in a report and gave a copy to A. G. Elliott. The chief designer’s response was, “This looks very interesting; I must send a copy to Mister Ellor”. A few days later Ellor burst into Hooker’s

‘moderate supercharge’ (‘MS’ or ‘M’ gear) for lower altitudes, and ‘full supercharge’ (‘FS’ or ‘S’ gear) at higher altitudes. After trying and failing to overcome the development problems of its own two-speed drive, Rolls-Royce licensed the French Farman design. The disadvantage was that this was less compact than the Derby version, and so the overall engine length increased. Supercharger drive was mechanically a difficult proposition. The supercharger rotor was geared up to roughly 10 times the crankshaft speed;

not only did this mean the drive had to spin at tens of thousands of rpm, but any accelerations in the engine were multiplied ten-fold. Coupled with the need to tolerate the loads from supercharger gear changes, this meant the drive had to be flexible, as well as durable, compact, and ideally light. The Merlin used a torsionally flexible quill shaft, driven off the crankshaft. Its supercharger gears were of such high quality that when German engineers needed a gear unit to drive test compressors for Daimler-Benz and Junkers engines, they used Merlin supercharger drive assemblies removed from shot-down RAF aircraft. Because of the supercharger’s location at the back of the engine, the intake ducting had a number of bends, and the flow into the supercharger rotor was less than ideal in efficiency terms. After some experiments to quantify the pressure losses, Hooker redesigned the intake and supercharger casing. Together with the redesigned rotor and a new pressurised water/glycol cooling system, this was incorporated into the two-speed Merlin XX. The new supercharger raised the engine’s full-throttle height by 3,000ft. Because of the two-speed supercharger drive the engine

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Cutaway TOP LEFT: Stanley Hooker took on Merlin supercharger development. TOP RIGHT: The first test run-up of a 20mm cannon-equipped Hurricane IIc, straight off the assembly line at Hawker’s Langley factory. AEROPLANE ABOVE LEFT: A Spitfire V from the USAAF’s 4th Fighter Group having its Merlin 45 changed. USAF ABOVE RIGHT: A new Lancaster I in August 1942 shows the Merlin XX ‘power egg’. AEROPLANE

‘power egg’ units, with standard mountings and fuel and other connections to be mounted into different aircraft types. Starting with the Merlin XX, these were fitted to the Bristol Beaufighter and the Avro Lancaster. With the success of the Merlin XX and 45, Hooker and the engineers began to consider how to improve performance further. He calculated that refining the existing supercharger would only give marginal improvements in power, as the maximum efficient compression ratio achievable from a single blower was about 4:1. What was needed was a new approach. By placing two superchargers in series on the same shaft, the Merlin would be able to develop 1,000hp at 30,000ft. Rolls-Royce did consider a turbocharger system, but decided that, especially for fighter applications, the advantages were offset by the

weight and complexity of the ducting. The Merlin’s exhaust energy was not wasted — the engine’s ejector stacks produced a useful measure of thrust, equivalent to an extra 200hp at typical combat speeds and altitudes. At the same time, the Kestrel-type cylinder blocks introduced with the Merlin II were reaching their limits. To develop more power, the engine would have to be redesigned to have separate blocks and heads. The Merlin’s engineers had known this for a while; when Packard Merlin production was being planned, the Rolls-Royce engineers told Packard to develop its own two-piece block (once Rolls-Royce had developed its own two-piece design, Packard switched production over to this), but the immediate demands of production had taken priority. Introduced on Derby-built engines in the two-stage Merlin 61, the two-piece

Insights

Rolls-Royce had considered fuel injection, but chose the carburettor because the fuel vaporising in the inlet system cooled the charge, increasing power. Beatrice Shilling, an engineer working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, worked out a solution: a restrictor ring was fitted to the carburettor, which limited fuel flow to that required at maximum throttle, preventing the flooding of the float chamber and the rich mixture cut-out. Fitted to front-line aircraft from early 1941, this elegantly simple solution was officially called the ‘RAE restrictor’, but with predictable service schoolboy humour became known as ‘Miss Shilling’s Orifice’. It only allowed short periods of negative-g flight, so a longer-term solution was the adoption of the Bendix pressure carburettor, and ultimately fuel injection into the supercharger. Rolls-Royce also did work on packaging the Merlin into

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was longer than the Merlin II/ III, and was initially intended for heavy bombers. It could be fitted into the Hurricane with the addition of a fuselage plug in front of the cockpit, but the Spitfire’s more complex structure would take longer to modify. As the Hurricane I was in greater need of a performance boost than the Spitfire I, the Merlin XX-engined design was put into production as the Hurricane II, entering service in September 1940. The Spitfire would have to soldier on until the planned service entry of the Merlin XXpowered MkII in 1941. In the event, Rolls-Royce realised that by retaining the FS gear of the Merlin XX and moving the carburettor, it could produce the Merlin 45, an engine of the same effective dimensions as the Merlin III, which maintained the Merlin XX’s medium- and high-altitude performance. Fitted to the Spitfire I airframe it created the Spitfire V. This ‘interim’ mark was so successful that more were built than any other variant, and the Spitfire III never entered production. To boost performance at low altitudes the supercharger blades were shortened, creating the Merlin 45M. On MkV airframes with the wingtips removed for increased roll rate, this created the ‘clapped, clipped and cropped’ Spitfire LFV low-level fighters of legend. Another problem tackled was carburettor design. The float carburettors on early Merlins were susceptible to negative g-loads, when fuel would flood the carburettor chamber. Once positive g was re-established the engine suffered loss of power or a rich mixture cut-out. The Luftwaffe’s Daimler-Benz engines used direct fuel injection, which was immune to g-effects, so bunting over into a dive at full throttle could give German fighters a momentary advantage or means of escape. Merlinengined Spitfires and Hurricanes had to half-roll and pull to follow them without risking an engine cut-out.

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TOP LEFT: The Merlin 61 breathed new life into the Spitfire, and the resulting MkIX was an outstanding fighter. Pictured is MH869 of No 302 (Polish) Squadron escorting USAAF bombers. USAF TOP RIGHT: The initial Merlin installation on the P-51, with chin-mounted radiator, is shown by prototype Mustang X AM121. IWM ABOVE RIGHT: P-51B 42-106950 from the 355th Fighter Group’s 354th Fighter Squadron at Boxted. USAF ABOVE LEFT: Sea Hornet F20 TT202 being powered along by its twin Merlin 130s. AEROPLANE

blocks allowed the use of boosts up to +15 on 100-octane fuel. From 1944, 150-grade fuel permitted emergency boosts of +25, giving over 2,000hp. Equally importantly, power was maintained at altitude, giving more than 1,500hp at 15,000ft, and in excess of 1,300hp at 23,000ft. As had happened with the Merlin XX, the engine was designed for bomber applications, but when fitted to the Spitfire it provided a major performance boost, especially at altitude. At 30,000ft the Merlin 61-engined Spitfire IX was 70mph faster than the MkV. Initially the RAF displayed a certain diffidence towards the MkIX, as the MkV was considered adequate, and the Griffon-engined MkIV was under development. The arrival of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 changed this attitude completely, and the RAF wanted all the Spitfire IXs it could get.

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Having transformed the Spitfire’s high-altitude performance, the Merlin was to do the same with the North American Mustang. In late April 1942, the boss of the Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford invited Rolls-Royce chief test pilot Ronnie Harker to flight-test a Mustang. Harker was very impressed by the aircraft’s handling, and especially by its performance even with its Allison V-1710 engine, which was noticeably inferior to the Merlin at height. This suggested that the Mustang was aerodynamically cleaner than the Spitfire. Harker went away and asked Rolls-Royce’s performance experts to estimate what the performance would be like fitted with a two-stage Merlin. Their analysis suggested a Merlin Mustang would gain 40mph at heights above 25,000ft. Harker wrote a memo recommending that RollsRoyce attempt a Merlin Mustang conversion, and

management took up his case with the Air Ministry. Though there was some concern about the prospects — Spitfires were taking all the two-stage Merlins that could be produced — in the medium term the situation looked better, as Packard was starting to make two-stage V-1650-3s. The conversion was approved, and a number of Mustang airframes were sent to Hucknall. First test flights took place in October and November 1942, and even with the provisional RollsRoyce installation — the Merlin’s increased length and cooling requirements meant a slightly ungainly chin radiator — performance was significantly improved, the Merlin Mustang easily breaking the 400mph barrier. North American’s version of the Merlin installation was put into production as the P-51B/C, entering service with the US Army Air Force over the summer of 1943, and with the RAF at the end of the year.

All production Merlin Mustangs were fitted with Packard engines. As the Merlin’s power increased, Rolls-Royce’s army of development testers continued to improve the engine, whether by drawing up field modifications, or incorporating improvements into the next major mark. The main problem was maintaining reliability while power was increased. To this end, most major components of the engine were redesigned and beefed-up, including pistons, crankcases, crankshafts, cylinder blocks, cylinder heads and reduction gears. One quirk of the engine was that both magnetos were powered off the camshaft drive, which ran up the back of the unit from the crankshaft to the top of the cylinder heads. Unfortunately, torsional vibration coming back from the camshaft sometimes caused the skew gearing to fail, which would result in, as the production Spitfire test

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ABOVE: Trans-Canada Air Lines’ second DC-4M2 North Star, CF-TCB Cornwallis. AEROPLANE

THE CIVIL MERLIN

Insights

higher and faster than DC-4s, their time between engine overhauls was around 850 hours, roughly a third of that of commercial US radial engines. The engines also produced a lot of cabin noise, though this was alleviated somewhat by revised ‘cross-over’ exhausts that ducted the cabin-side stacks outboard, developed first by TCA and then by RollsRoyce themselves. The extra running costs were mostly borne by Rolls-Royce. When TCA’s managing director expressed dissatisfaction with the Merlin’s commercial performance, Hives asked what a reasonable level of maintenance cost would be. Being told $4 per engine hour, he agreed to service the fleet’s engines for this amount. This early form of ‘power by the hour’ was initially expensive for Rolls-Royce, but by the end of the Merlin’s life the company had learned enough to supposedly make a small profit at this level. What was undoubtedly true was that Rolls-Royce learned a great deal about the harsh realities of commercial operation in a short time. Hives is supposed to have said to TCA, “We didn’t know the Merlin until you started operating it!” In the longer term, this paid off, TCA — later Air Canada — selecting Rolls-Royce engines for its future fleet: Darts in Viscounts, Tynes in Vanguards, Conways in DC-8s, and RB211s in TriStars.

In Service

The earliest Merlins to operate in a civil mode were the Merlin T24 series, developed in 1944. These were single-stage twin-speed units similar to the Merlin 24s fitted to the RAF’s Lancasters, but were modified to improve service life, and were fitted to Transport Command’s Avro Yorks. Long-range transport operation entailed running at relatively low cruise power for long periods — under these conditions the lower cylinder head temperatures caused deposits of lead oxide from the fuel, resulting in excessive spark plug fouling. To counter this, the Merlin T24/4 incorporated a charge heater to increase the inlet temperature. Post-war, the Merlin 500 series essentially comprised civil and export versions of the T24, incorporating its modifications, though only the Merlin 501 included a charge heater. The 600 and 700-series engines were two-speed two-stage affairs, based on the military 100-series. They were fitted with the so-called ‘transport heads and banks’, strengthened for greater reliability. Most marks had some form of variable intercooling to allow for charge heating to reduce plug fouling under cruise conditions. Initially the system was plagued by coolant leaks, but as experience showed that zero intercooling at cruise allowed enough charge heating to reduce leading, a simple stop valve was fitted to the system. This allowed full intercooling for take-off and climb, which could then be turned off for cruise. Civil Merlins were fitted to Avro Lancastrians, Yorks and Tudors, but their flagship role was on the Canadair DC-4M North Star, a Douglas DC-4-derived design intended for Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA). The North Stars used a modified Universal Power Plant installation, as the DC-4’s nacelle bulkheads were slightly larger than the SBAC standard. In practice it turned out the Merlins were not ideally suited for use in civil operations: though the North Stars flew

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Development

pilot Alex Henshaw put it, “deafening silence” and total engine power loss. The skew gear design was not changed, but careful attention to the backlash adjustment of the drive gearing kept problems under control. The earlier Beaufighter and Lancaster-type ‘power eggs’ were also developed into the Universal Power Plant (UPP), for later-mark Merlins. Fitted with an annular radiator and mounting to the standard SBAC 56in circular bulkhead, the UPP was easier to manufacture; the panels only required simple curvatures rather than the more complex shapes of the earlier versions. Installed on Lancaster VIs, Lincolns and other post-war types, the UPPs were totally interchangeable and could be fitted to any wing position, rather than being locationspecific like the earlier installations. One could mix and match UPPs of different engine marks and even engine types — there was a Griffon UPP, too — though in practice this was only done on testbeds. The ultimate production Merlins were the 100-series. First built in 1944, these incorporated a revised lubrication system for the main engine bearings, larger superchargers, and metered direct fuel injection into the supercharger from an enginedriven pump. They were mostly used on late-mark Mosquitos and on DH Hornets, with the equivalent Packard Merlins employed on late-mark Mustangs. An experimental 100-series engine, the RM17 SM, passed a type test at 2,200hp, was cleared for flight at +30 boost and 2,340hp, and, with water injection, ran on a 15-minute test at +36 boost and an incredible 2,640hp. However, by the time these trials were being performed in late 1944/ early 1945, it was clear that the future for high-powered military engines lay with gas turbines. Instead the Merlin’s development team turned its attention to increasing reliability with an eye on commercial markets.

ABOVE: The Merlin 620, as fitted to the North Star among other types. AEROPLANE

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Operating the Merlin

T

he Merlin was, by wartime standards, a reliable engine. To quote the Spitfire’s chief test pilot Jeffrey Quill, “I learned to be meticulous in the matter of correct engine handling at all times, and although I never hesitated to run a Merlin to the absolute limit of its capabilities, I was careful never to exceed those limits except when unavoidable. In return the engine hardly ever let me down and such total power failures as I experienced — and over the years inevitably there were many — were due as often as not to extraneous causes rather than to anything fundamental to the engine. The Merlin really was the pilot’s friend.” The advantage of liquidcooled engines such as the Merlin over the big radials was that the coolant provided a certain thermal mass to dump heat into. As a result they could maintain emergency boost at higher levels and/or for longer than air-cooled engines. The downside was that leaks in the radiator system, such as through battle damage, would lead to a white stream of coolant evaporating off, a rise in cylinder temperatures, and piston or head failures in short order. Controlling a Merlin required manipulation of three closelylinked engine settings: boost, propeller pitch and RPM. Boost was controlled with the throttle lever — as long as the supercharger could maintain it, automatic boost control kept this at the level selected by the pilot. There was generally a throttle ‘gate’, which the throttle could be pushed through by the pilot to select emergency boost. This was only supposed to be used for five minutes, but in combat, where the extra power might make the difference between shooting the opponent down and being shot down, this restriction was usually ignored. In some aircraft the gates were

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Spitfire prototype K5054 being handled by Jeffrey Quill, who gave the Merlin high praise. AEROPLANE

sealed; if emergency power was selected, the groundcrew could see this from the broken seals and knew to check the engine more closely. Propeller pitch was analogous to the gearing in a car. Fine pitch was equivalent to a low gear, giving high thrust at low speed, and coarse pitch to a high gear, suitable for high speeds. The rpm was determined by the throttle setting and the pitch setting. By 1940 most combat types were fitted with constantspeed propellers, which were usually automatically controlled to govern rpm based on throttle settings. Pitch and boost could be manually controlled for take-off or for efficient cruise — as frictional losses in the engine scaled as the square of rpm, it was most efficient to cruise at a high boost and low rpm. In car terms this is akin to cruising along the motorway in an overdrive gear. As the RAF slogan put it, “Reduce the revs and boost the boost, you’ll have enough petrol to get home to roost.” Because of its relatively high boost, the Merlin was not quite as smooth as the Allison V-1710, which had greater displacement. Even so, it has secured the affection of almost all pilots who have operated it, maintaining Rolls-Royce’s

reputation for excellence. In 1963, the American pilot Bill Lear was living in Switzerland and operating a P-51. Having trouble with the Packard Merlin’s starter clutch, he contacted Rolls-Royce and was told to send it for inspection. On receiving the repaired unit back he rang to ask for an invoice, and was told: “My dear Mr Lear, Rolls-Roycedesigned products do not fail. They may require occasional adjustment, but this is covered by our unlimited warranty. So there is no charge, sir.”

MERLIN VARIANTS Perhaps unsurprisingly for an engine made in greater numbers than any other of the Second World War — more than 112,000 in the UK, and over 168,000 if one includes the American-built Packard Merlins — the engine was produced in a dizzying array of variants. Unfortunately Rolls-Royce’s mark numbers

were assigned more or less in chronological order, and offer little clue to what the characteristics of any particular engine might be. Late-mark Merlin designations are slightly easier to decode, and by 1944 Rolls-Royce had started to assign Merlin marks to a particular series (see table). Apart from the prototypes and the very earliest engines, Merlins either had a Kestrelstyle single-piece block, with the cylinder skirts and heads as a single casting, or a two-piece block, where the heads were separate and bolted down onto the cylinders and upper crankcase. The single-piece was susceptible to coolant leaks at the head of the cylinder liner, especially as the Merlin’s power was increased, but production pressures meant that Rolls-Royce could not introduce it on its engines until late 1942. Packard Merlins had a two-piece block of their own, but reverted to the Rolls-Royce design once it entered production. The Merlin had three basic supercharger designs during its career. Early engines had a single-speed supercharger, while later marks had a twin-speed supercharger drive. Though initially fitted to fighters, the main use for these was in heavy bombers. The ultimate Merlin variants used a twin-speed twin-stage supercharger, with an intercooler and aftercooler, and were for high-altitude bombers and high-performance fighters. Packard V-1650s were all twin-speed twin-stage engines, apart from the V-1650-1, which was a twin-speed single-stage unit.

100

Late-mark two-speed two-stage engines

200

Packard-built Merlins for the RAF

300

Packard-built 100-series

500

Single-stage civil/commercial (for non-RAF customers) engines

600/700

Two-stage civil/commercial engines

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SINGLE-SPEED SUPERCHARGERS PV12

Merlin E Merlin F Merlin G Merlin I Merlin II Merlin III Merlin IV

Merlin XII Merlin 30 Merlin 32 Merlin 45

Merlin 46 Merlin 47 Merlin 50 Merlin 50A Merlin 50M

Merlin 55A Merlin 55M Merlin 55MA Merlin 56

TWIN-SPEED SINGLE-STAGE SUPERCHARGERS

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Merlin X Merlin XX Merlin 21

Merlin 22 Merlin 22A Merlin 23 Merlin 23A

First two-speed variant First variant licence-produced by Ford at Trafford Park Reversed-flow coolant for use with high wing-type (rather than chin-type) radiators, such as on Mosquito Two-piece block as used on Merlin 61; employed on all later engine marks Merlin XX modified with two-piece blocks Similar to Merlin 22, with reverse-flow coolant Merlin 21 modified with two-piece blocks

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Merlin 28 Merlin 29 Merlin 31 Merlin 33 Merlin 38 Merlin 224 Merlin 225 Merlin 228 Merlin 266

Civil/commercial engines Merlin 500 Merlin 500/29 Merlin 500/45 Merlin 501 Merlin 502

Civil version of Merlin T24 Similar to T24; for Spanish CASA 2.111D Similar to Merlin 500/29; for Spanish Hispano HA-1112-M1L Civil engine with afterheater to reduce cruise plug leading; similar to T24/4 Similar to Merlin 500 with increased climb boost

TWIN-SPEED TWIN-STAGE SUPERCHARGERS Merlin 60 Merlin 61

One-piece block First two-stage two-speed engine for fighters; two-piece block Merlin 60 modified with Merlin 62 two-piece block Merlin 63 Similar to Merlin 61, without cabin blower Merlin 63A Used Merlin 64 crankcase but without cabin blower Merlin 64 Similar to Merlin 63 but with cabin blower Merlin 65 Prototype engine for Merlin Mustang Merlin 66 Optimised for low-level power Reverse-flow coolant system Merlin 67 Merlin 68 Packard-built Merlin 85 Merlin 68A Packard-built; as Merlin 68 but with charge-temperature control Merlin 69 Packard-built; similar to Merlin 67 Merlin 70 Similar to Merlin 66, but supercharger optimised for high altitude Merlin 71 Similar to Merlin 70 Merlin 72 Similar to Merlin 70, but with reverse-flow coolant Merlin 73 Similar to Merlin 72 Merlin 76 Similar to Merlin 66, but supercharger optimised for high altitude Merlin 77 Similar to Merlin 66, but supercharger optimised for high altitude Merlin 85 Similar to Merlin 66; Modified intercooler tank and auxiliary gearbox drive Merlin 85B Similar to Merlin 85, with different propeller constantspeed unit Merlin 86 Similar to Merlin 85 Merlin 100,101 Test engines with largerdiameter supercharger Merlin 102 First civil two-stage engine Merlin 102A Experimental Merlin 102 modified with after-heater

Civil/commercial engines Merlin 600 Merlin 600A Merlin 604 Merlin 620 Merlin 621 Merlin 622 Merlin 623 Merlin 624 Merlin 626-1 Merlin 626-12 Merlin 631 Merlin 641 Merlin 724-1 Merlin 724-1C

Civil Merlin 102A Similar to Merlin 600 Military version of Merlin 621, for use in Argentinean Lincolns Civil Merlin 150; used in Canadair DC-4Ms Civil Merlin 151 Civil powerplant with selective intercooling Similar to Merlin 622 but with UK propeller splines Similar to Merlin 622 Variable intercooling Similar to Merlin 626-1 but with selective intercooling (off/full on) Experimental engine with different compression ratio Experimental engine with different compression ratio Similar to Merlin 626 but with selective intercooling As Merlin 724 but with crossover exhaust system to reduce cabin noise

PACKARD V-1650 VARIANTS V-1650-1 V-1650-3 V-1650-5

Twin-speed single-stage engine Packard equivalent of Merlin 63 Experimental engine, used on Bell XP-63

Insights

The Hispano HA-1112-M1L Buchón, as here being used to make The Battle of Britain, received the Merlin 500/45.

Merlin 27

In Service

Merlin 55

Merlin 25

Similar to Merlin 114 with different supercharger gear ratios Merlin 110, 112 Similar to Merlin 100 Merlin 113/113A Reverse-flow coolant system Merlin 114/114A Similar to Merlin 113 Merlin 130 For DH Hornet; down-draught intake and neater profile Merlin 131 As Merlin 130, but with opposite propeller rotation Merlin 132/133 As Merlin 130/131, but with reverse-pitch drive Merlin 134/135 As Merlin 130/131, but with modified throttle Merlin 140 Contra-rotating propeller drive Merlin 150 Commercial engine, later redesignated Merlin 620 Merlin 300 Packard-built Merlin 100 Merlin 301 Packard-built Merlin 101

Cutaway

Merlin 45M

Merlin T24/4

Merlin 104

Production

Merlin V Merlin VIII

Merlin T24

Similar to Merlin 22, with anti-g carburettor Transport variant of Merlin 24, modified for longer service life Merlin T24 fitted with charge heater to reduce plug leading Similar to Merlin 24, with reverse-flow cooling Similar to Merlin 25, with conventional cooling Packard-built, with two-piece block of Packard design. Similar to Merlin 22A Packard-built; similar to Merlin 28 with SAE propeller splines Packard-built; similar to Merlin 21 Packard-built; similar to Merlin 23 Packard-built Merlin 22 Packard-built Merlin 24 Packard-built Merlin 25 Packard-built Merlin 28 Packard-built Merlin 66

Development

Merlin B Merlin C

First prototype; cylinder skirts integral with upper crankcase Ramp heads Ramp heads; cylinder skirts and upper crankcase as separate castings Ramp heads Ramp heads Ramp heads Production model of Merlin G Reverts to flat heads; Kestrel-type block Similar to Merlin II; revised propeller shaft First of the Merlins to use pressurised coolant; 70/30 water/glycol Similar to Merlin III RN engine, similar to Merlin V; Coffman starter fitted Similar to Merlin III, but with pressurised coolant RN engine for low-level use; Coffman starter Similar to Merlin 30 but with two-piece blocks Similar to Merlin XX but without twin-speed drive Similar to Merlin 45 but with cropped supercharger impeller for low-level performance Similar to Merlin 45 but optimised for high-altitude performance Similar to Merlin 46 Modified Merlin 46; service test of anti-g carburettors Similar to Merlin 46 Merlin 50 modified for low-level performance Merlin 50 modified with two-piece blocks Similar to Merlin 45 Similar to Merlin 45M Similar to Merlin 45M, but with two-piece blocks Modified Merlin 55

Merlin 24

XP-82 44-83887 was the second Twin Mustang prototype. Both XP-82s and early production P-82Bs were powered by V-1650s before the Allison V-1710-100 was substituted. USAF V-1650-7 V-1650-9 V-1650-9A V-1650-11 V-1650-21 V-1650-23, -25

Similar to Merlin 66 Similar to Merlin 100 series; fitted with water-methanol injection Similar to -9A, but without water injection Similar to -9, with different fuel system Similar to -11, but with opposite-handed rotation for use in P-82 Twin Mustang Similar to -11 and -21; opposite-handed engines used in XP-82 Twin Mustang prototypes

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Events Shuttleworth Season Premiere

T

en years after his death, the aviation career of Alex Henshaw was celebrated under sunny skies at Shuttleworth’s superb Season Premiere show on 7 May. The increased use of guest aircraft in Old Warden displays saw the two aircraft types most strongly associated with the great record-breaking, air racing and test pilot well represented: Shuttleworth’s own Percival Mew Gull, G-AEXF — in which Alex broke the Cape record in February 1939 — was joined by David Beale’s Mew Gull reproduction G-HEKL, and two Spitfires, the Imperial War Museums-owned MkIa N3200 from Duxford and Battle of Britain Memorial Flight LFXVIe TE311, were flown by John Romain and Flt Lt ‘Parky’ Parkinson respectively. The latter was making a rare appearance in overall black RAF ‘primer’ colours, while the MkI formated to great effect with Old Warden’s then current airworthy WW2 fighter contingent, in the shape of the Shuttleworth Sea Hurricane Z7015 and Hurricane Heritage’s Hurricane I R4118. Making its first post-restoration public display was Peter Vacher’s de Havilland Leopard Moth G-ACMA Mercury II,

O

Martin-Baker’s Meteor WL419 leaves Abingdon in the hands of Andy Gent. BEN DUNNELL

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EVENT PREVIEWS Blackbushe Festival of Flight

Venue: Blackbushe Airport, Hampshire Date: Saturday 1-Sunday 2 July

Peter Vacher’s Leopard Moth, flown by Keith Dennison, accompanied by Shuttleworth’s Hawker Tomtit — another aircraft type with which Alex Henshaw was connected. PETER R. MARCH

wearing its original, 1934 National Benzole company markings, and David Hulme’s Biggin Hill-based Percival Vega Gull G-AEZJ – the sole airworthy survivor of the type used by Henshaw on a recce for the Cape flight — was a welcome sight parked in front of Shuttleworth’s revamped café. Such a wonderful occasion should see many of the near-sell-out crowd returning to the world’s most idyllic historic display venue, during what looks set to be a great 2017 season at Old Warden. Tony Harmsworth

Abingdon Air and Country Show rganiser Neil Porter might have been forgiven for thinking the fates were against him. Having moved the event date back to 14 May so as to allow display acts more time to get ready, his two stars, the Sea Vixen and Boomerang, both cancelled. Then the flying programme was halted after the engine on Twister Aerobatics Team pilot Chris Burkett’s Silence Twister failed and he force-landed heavily alongside

COMPILER: BEN DUNNELL

the runway. Chris sustained a broken sternum and two broken vertebrae, but is expected to make a full recovery. Soon after flying resumed, the Great War Display Team’s new Avro 504K replica suffered an engine problem, Dan Griffith landing on the airfield in some long grass. Neither aircraft nor pilot were damaged. But it would be wrong to remember Abingdon for all of this. In the air were some unusual items, like Rick van der Graaf in his Pratt & Whitney R-1830-powered Yak-3U, and a Northern Ireland ‘role demo’ from the Historic Army Aircraft Flight’s Beaver and Scout. And on static display was Meteor T7 WL419 from Martin-Baker Aircraft, the first time a Meteor had landed at Abingdon since WL419 attended 1990’s last RAF Battle of Britain ‘At Home’ Day at the airfield. Gordon Renchard

An ambitious event to celebrate Blackbushe Airport’s 75th anniversary. Some flying displays will be a little restricted owing to the nature of the site, but a varied programme is being assembled including the likes of the BBMF Lancaster, B-17G Sally B, Plane Sailing’s Catalina, Aces High’s C-47, the Norwegian Spitfire Foundationoperated ‘Shark’ P-51D, Peter Teichman’s Spitfire, the Bronco Demo Team’s OV-10B and the Historic Army Aircraft Flight fleet. Among the rarities expected on static display are DH114 Heron The Duchess of Brittany and a British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter. Admission on the gate: Adults £25, children (2-15) and carers £8, under-2s free Further information: www.blackbushe75.com

Yeovilton Air Day

Venue: RNAS Yeovilton, Somerset Date: Saturday 8 July The sole Royal Navy airshow of 2017, Yeovilton is always an event with its own character. This year boasts exceptional foreign military flying content, courtesy Belgian Air Component F-16, Czech Air Force Gripen and two L-159s, French Navy Atlantique and two Rafales, and the Swiss Air Force Patrouille Suisse team. On the historic front, the Sea Vixen, the Norwegian Air Force Historical Squadron’s MiG-15UTI and Kennet Aviation’s Skyraider will perform, and it is hoped that both the RNHF’s Swordfish W5856 and Naval Aviation Ltd’s Sea Fury T20 will have re-flown in time to do likewise. The static park will see the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Sea Venom FAW21, Wessex HU5 and Sea King HAS5 being brought outside, joining the station’s own Phantom FG1 and two Sea Harrier FA2s. Martin-Baker is sending both its Meteors for the static display, too. Admission on the gate: Adults £28, children (5-15) £10, under-5s free Further information: www.royalnavy.mod.uk/yeovilton-airday

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Events Heveningham Hall Country Fair

Venue: Heveningham Hall, Suffolk Date: Saturday 8-Sunday 9 July This annual summer event at a very fine Suffolk mansion now includes a growing aeronautical element. An invitation-only aviation and motorsport concours d’elegance will see several fine vintage aircraft landing at the site’s specially prepared grass airstrip for the judges’ inspection, among them a Seafire, Peter Vacher’s Leopard Moth G-ACMA, Tipsy Belfair G-APIE and Tiger Moth G-ANEM. The Old Flying Machine Company’s Spitfire MH434 and the Aircraft Restoration Company’s Buchón, together with the Blades team, will provide flying display content; around 100 light aircraft are due to fly in over the weekend. Admission on the gate: Adults £17, over-60s and disabled people £15, children (5-14) £8, under-5s free, family ticket (two adults and three children) £40 Further information: www.countryfair.co.uk

Flying Legends Air Show

Venue: IWM Duxford, Cambridgeshire Date: Saturday 8-Sunday 9 July The Fighter Collection’s annual warbird spectacular this year includes a somewhat different attraction — on Sunday only, before the main flying programme, the Red Arrows will perform. However, the historic line-up is well up to scratch. The Horsemen team of Mustangs will bring Comanche Fighters’ recently restored P-51D Frenesi over to fly alongside the Norwegian Spitfire Foundation’s ‘Shark’ and Frédéric Akary’s Moonbeam McSwine, while Old Warden-based Hurricane I P3717 makes its public display debut alongside fellow Battle of Britain veteran R4118, and the Air Leasing-operated Fury ISS accompanies Christophe Jacquard’s Sea Fury. A fine collection of famous air racers takes in Shuttleworth’s DH88 Comet and Mew Gull, Richard Seeley’s replica Travel Air Type R ‘Mystery Ship’ and Pete Kynsey’s Cosmic Wind Ballerina. Many more aircraft remained to be confirmed after we went to press. Admission (advance ticket only): Adults £35, senior citizens £27.50, children (5-15) and disabled people £19, under-fives and carers free; note that cheaper prices apply until 25 June — see website for details — and weekend tickets are also available Further information: www.flyinglegends.com

Event Planner July 2017 UK

01-02 01-02 01-02 02 08 08-09 08-09 08-09 09 14-16 15 21-23 22 25-29 28-30 29-30 30

Blackbushe, Hants: Blackbushe Festival of Flight — www.blackbushe75.com Cleethorpes seafront, Lincs: Armed Forces Day Event — www.armedforcescleethorpes.co.uk Swansea Bay, Swansea: Wales National Airshow — www.walesnationalairshow.com Old Warden, Beds: Shuttleworth Military Pageant Airshow — www.shuttleworth.org RNAS Yeovilton, Somerset: RNAS Yeovilton Air Day — www.royalnavy.mod.uk/yeovilton-airday Heveningham Hall, Suffolk: Heveningham Hall Country Fair — www.countryfair.co.uk IWM Duxford, Cambs: Flying Legends Air Show — www.flyinglegends.com Headcorn, Kent: Battle of Britain Air Show — www.headcornevents.co.uk/event.php?eventid=16 National Memorial to The Few, Capel-le-Ferne, Kent: Memorial Day — www.battleofbritainmemorial.org/events RAF Fairford, Glos: The Royal International Air Tattoo — www.airtattoo.com Old Warden, Beds: Shuttleworth World War One Evening Airshow — www.shuttleworth.org Sunderland seafront, Tyne & Wear: Sunderland International Airshow — www.sunderland.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=6454 National Museum of Flight, East Fortune, E Lothian: Airshow 2017 — www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-flight/whats-on/airshow Hop Farm Showground, Kent: War and Peace Revival — www.warandpeacerevival.com Silverstone, Northants: Silverstone Classic — www.silverstoneclassic.com Old Buckenham, Norfolk: Old Buckenham Airshow — www.oldbuckenhamairshow.co.uk Old Warden, Bedfordshire: de Havilland Moth Club Gathering of Moths — www.dhmothclub.co.uk

MAINLAND EUROPE

01-02 01-02 01-02 01-02 01-02 02 08 08-09 09 14 14 14-15 18-23 22 22 22-23 22-23 23 23 28-30 28-31 31

BA113 Saint-Dizier, France: Meeting de l’Air — www.meetingdelair.fosa.fr Budapest, Hungary: Red Bull Air Race — www.redbullairrace.com/en_DE/event/budapest Coburg-Brandensteinsebene, Germany: Airshow Coburg — www.aeroclub-coburg.de/airshow Geilenkirchen AB, Germany: Open Days — www.e3a.nato.int Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland: Fly Fest — www.flyfest.pl Cuatro Vientos, Spain: Fundación Infante de Orleans Flight Demonstration Day — fio.es/Exhibiciones.html Katwijk seafront, The Netherlands: SAR Katwijk — www.sarkatwijk.nl Dorsten, Germany: Flugtage Dorsten — www.flugtage-dorsten.de Dijon-Bourgogne Airport, France: Meeting de France — meetingdefrance.fr Paris, France: Bastille Day Flypast Valenciennes-Prouvy, France: Meeting Aérien — meetingaerienprouvy.fr Falkenberg, Sweden: Wheels and Wings — www.wheelsandwings.se Zhukovsky, Moscow, Russia: MAKS 2017 International Aviation and Space Salon — www.aviasalon.com/en Aurel Vlaicu Airport, Bucharest, Romania: Bucharest International Air Show — www.bias.aero Foynes, Republic of Ireland: Foynes Air Show — www.foynesairshow.com Bray seafront, Republic of Ireland: Bray Air Display — www.brayairdisplay.com Kazan, Russia: Red Bull Air Race — www.redbullairrace.com/en_INT/event/kazan Couhé-Verac, France: Meeting Aérien — www.meeting-couhe.com San Lorenzo beach, Gijón, Spain: Festival Aéreo Gijón — festivalaereogijon.com Uetersen-Heist, Germany: Wings and Wheels — www.wingsnwheels.de Härjedalen, Sweden: Classic Aircraft Meeting — www.vemdaleninfo.se/hedlanda Torre del Mar seafront, Spain: Festival Aéreo Internacional Torre del Mar — www.festivalaereotorredelmar.com

NORTH AMERICA

01 01 01-02 03 04 07-09 07-08 08 08 08 08-09 09 14-15 14-16 15-16 15-16 20-23 21-22 22 22 22-23 24-30 22-23 22-23 28-30 29-30 29-30 30

Cleburne Municipal Airport, Texas: Grand Texas Airshow — www.grandtexasairshow.com Cedar Creek Lake, Mabank, Texas: Thunder over Cedar Creek Lake — www.tocclairshow.com West Grand Traverse Bay, Traverse City, Michigan: National Cherry Festival Air Show — www.cherryfestival.org Mississippi River, Dubuque, Iowa: Fireworks and Air Show Spectacular — fireworks.radiodubuque.com/air-show Tacoma, Washington: Tacoma Freedom Fair and Air Show — www.freedomfair.com/airshow Arlington Municipal Airport, Washington: Arlington Fly-in — www.arlingtonflyin.org Pensacola Beach, Florida: Pensacola Beach Air Show — www.visitpensacolabeach.com/events/pensacola-beach-air-show.php Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, Hamilton International Airport, Ontario: Air Force Day — www.warplane.com/events/upcoming-events/event-details.aspx?eventId=96 Gould Peterson Municipal Airport, Tarkio, Missouri: The Greatest Little Airshow — www.wingnutsflyingcircus.com Truckee Tahoe Airport, California: Truckee Tahoe Air Show and Family Festival — www.truckeetahoeairshow.com Golden Age Air Museum, Grimes Airfield, Bethel, Pennsylvania: Wings and Wheels — www.goldenageair.org/events.htm Yellowknife, Northern Territories: Yellowknife International Airshow Lethbridge Airport, Alberta: Lethbridge International Air Show — lethbridgeairshow.ca National Warplane Museum, Geneseo, New York: National Warplane Museum Airshow — nwmairshow.com Flying Cloud Airport, Eden Prairie, Minnesota: AirExpo — wotn.org/airexpo Milwaukee Lakefront, Wisconsin: Milwaukee Air and Water Show — www.milwaukeeairshow.com Kinsman Beach, Red Lake, Ontario: Norseman Festival — www.norsemanfestival.on.ca Sheboygan County Memorial Airport, Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin: Great Air Clinic and Air Show — www.ahcw.org/events.php Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park, Beaufort, South Carolina: Beaufort Water Festival Air Show — www.bftwaterfestival.com Burnett County Airport, Siren, Wisconsin: Gandy Dancer Fly-in/Drive-in — www.gandydancerflyindrivein.com North Peace Regional Airport, Fort St John, British Columbia: Fort St John International Air Show — www.fsjairshow.com Wittman Regional Airport, Oshkosh, Wisconsin: EAA AirVenture Oshkosh — www.eaa.org/en/airventure Great Falls ANGB, Montana: Great Falls Air Show Idaho Falls Regional Airport, Idaho: Idaho Falls Air Show — www.idahofallsairshow.com Columbia Park, Kennewick, Washington: Tri-City Water Follies Over the River Airshow — www.waterfollies.com/water-follies-experience/airshow Fairchild AFB, Washington: Skyfest — www.fairchild.af.mil Springbank Airport, Alberta: Wings over Springbank — wingsoverspringbank.com Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, Hamilton International Airport, Ontario: Vintage Wings and Wheels — www.warplane.com/events/upcoming-events/event-details.aspx?eventId=5

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Reviews

REVIEWS RATING ★★★★★ Outstanding ★★★★★ Excellent ★★★★★ Good

★★★★★ Flawed

★★★★★ Mediocre Enough said

The latest books and products for the discerning aviation enthusiast BOOK of the MONTH The Avro 748

by Richard J. Church published by Air-Britain This latest AirBritain major history covers the Avro/Hawker Siddeley 748, Andover and BAe ATP, and does so in detail. The early pages describe the aircraft’s design, development and production, and how the 748’s two launch customers both ran into difficulties — BKS financial and Aden Airways operational, as Avro was unable to guarantee that the type would be suitable to operate from some ‘hot and high’ airfields and cope with an engine failure on take-off. As outlined by Church, Aerolíneas Argentinas became the first export customer, while

de Havilland Drover

by Geoff Goodall published by Air-Britain This new book on the Drover coincidentally arrived at the same time as Aeroplane’s April issue containing a comprehensive feature on the type, so there is little point in repeating much of this in our review. What can be said is that the volume deals very well with the Drover’s history and has a large number of interesting illustrations, few of which were included in our article. Appendices cover specifications for the various versions, a quick reference guide to registrations, a pilot report from a captain for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and a production list giving a complete history of the 20 aircraft built. Juanita Franzi provides a set of 1/72-scale drawings of the different variants, plus

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Skyways Coach Air was the inaugural UK operator. Full details and production lists are given for all 748s, Andovers and ATPs. Although only 64 of the latter were completed, they saw service with a number of operators. A current status report shows 29 still active and 19 stored, while preserved 748s number 12 and Andovers three. Useful registration and constructor’s number crossreferences enable individual aircraft to be traced, and the mass of illustrations shows many colour schemes. I was slightly amused when I opened the book at page 170 to see an illustration of G-ATMJ being broken up in April 1970, while the text correctly quotes April 2009! However, errors are few. An excellent production history of one of Britain’s last turbine airliners. Mike Hooks ISBN 978-0-85130-492-2; 8.5in x 12in hardback; 304 pages, illustrated £47.50 (£34.95 to Air-Britain members) ★★★★★ some colour profiles. A list of Drover survivors shows that there are 10, two of which are airworthy. Illustrations show some of these, including Mk2 VH-PAB used for seed spraying — an interesting sideline not mentioned elsewhere. If you found the Drover feature interesting you will be keen to buy this book, an interesting and well-produced treatment of an unusual type. MH ISBN 978-0-85130-491-5; 8.5in x 12in softback; 96 pages, illustrated £19.95 (£16.95 to Air-Britain members) ★★★★

Hawker P1127, Kestrel and Harrier by Tony Buttler published by The History Press

Some books are big, glossy and filled with colour photos; others present a wealth of information. Some do both, while a few do neither. This softback volume offers only black-and-white images, save for an

eight-page colour section, but covers comprehensively the story of the P1127, developed through the tripartite Kestrel into the Harrier. By concentrating on the early aircraft — the story as presented virtually stops with formation of the Harrier Conversion Team at Wittering on 1 April 1970 — the author can give full attention to the type’s gestation, its early years and development, without having to devote space to its subsequent (and highly successful) service career. The contributions of the major players behind the P1127 are well covered: Frenchman Michel Wibault, whose swivelling-exhaust ‘Gyroptère’ design of 1956 started it all, Stanley Hooker of Bristol Engines whose team drew up the vectored-thrust BE53 that would become the Pegasus, and Ralph Hooper who, under Sydney Camm, designed a practical ‘four-post jet lift’ aircraft around the engine. John Farley — who more appropriate? — writes the foreword. This is a valuable work and covers much that has not been seen in print before, both text and images. In short, anything this title misses out on in presentation, it makes up for ten-fold in content. Denis J. Calvert ISBN 978-0-7509-6530-9; 8.9 x 9.8in softback; 152 pages, illustrated £20.00 ★★★★

Lindbergh: A Photographic Biography of the Lone Eagle by Bruce McAllister and Stephan Wilkinson published by Roundup Press

Charles Lindbergh was not the first aviator to attempt an aerial crossing of the Atlantic: witness an earlier aviation title, The 91 before Lindbergh (Peter Allen, Airlife, 1984). His, though, was the first successful

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Reviews solo flight and the first non-stop between North America and mainland Europe, and the Spirit of St Louis name has passed into popular culture. While his feat, on 20-21 May 1927, made him an instant all-American hero, his subsequent life was marked by elements of tragedy and controversy. The text covers all these aspects, along with his wartime exploits as a civilian tech rep to the US military in the war in the South Pacific and, allegedly, his equally skilful exploits as a serial womaniser with a string of illegitimate offspring. What impresses most are the photos, which are beautifully presented, often one-to-a-page, and give a depth to Lindbergh’s life story that text alone never could. Some of the shots of his arrival at Le Bourget are well-known, but most of the others are totally unfamiliar. There’s a wonderful photo on page 79 of his aircraft overflying the 100,000 people who had turned out to greet him at Croydon Airport a week later, on 29 May. As an aside (and an answer to a possible Trivial Pursuit question), this crowd is said to have been the largest public gathering at any British airport until the arrival of the Beatles at Heathrow in 1963. DJC ISBN 978-0-692-70524-7; 8.8 x 11.3in softback; 232 pages, illustrated $59.95 ★★★★

Echoes from the Sky

by Richard N. Scarth published by Independent Books A significantly updated version of a title first published in 1999, Echoes from the Sky examines in great depth a subject touched upon in the Malta feature in our June issue: Britain’s use of acoustic

technology for air defence purposes. The author — who died during 2014, having just completed much additional research — lived on the Kent coast, hence his interest. A number of so-called ‘sound mirrors’ were built in that part of the world, and some survive to this day. Scarth describes how the technology was developed and put into practice, both in the UK and Malta. It was, by definition, an imperfect method, but before the widespread advent of radar acoustics were considered the best means available for detecting approaching enemy aircraft. The text reads extremely well, greatly aided by extensive quotes from archive reports, correspondence and other sources. Some of the accounts raise a smile. Scarth describes how, in January 1940, a Lt Col Costelloe of the Air Defence Experimental Establishment wrote to a Maj Phil Lithgow from the School of Anti-Aircraft Defence’s Searchlight Wing in connection with air support for some training involving sound locators. “It really is incredible”, said Costelloe, “that your great School which is, in fact, the keystone of the whole arch of the Empire’s Ground Anti-Aircraft Defence practice should have a call on only one Dragon aeroplane. We deserve to lose the war.” While the design may be rather uninspiring, don’t let this put you off. Echoes from the Sky is surely the definitive word on its subject. Ben Dunnell ISBN 978-1-872836-17-1 9.25 x 6in softback; 448 pages, illustrated £12.95 from www.crecy.co.uk ★★★★

ENGINES R-R Meteors

Dutch firm BAIV, specialists in restoring historic armoured vehicles and tanks, has discovered a pair of very well-preserved Rolls-Royce Meteor engines — a tank powerplant developed on the basis of the Merlin. BAIV says the units it has acquired are “most probably the last fully standard factory-rebuilt engines still in their original transport crates”. They have been stored indoors in dry conditions. Given the similarities with the Merlin, the Meteors may be of great interest to anyone interested in buying an example

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of a powerplant closely related to arguably the most famous aero engine of all time, or for providing a relatively cost-effective basis for a Merlin rebuild. Incidentally, the BAIV team — which also offers several significant items of British armour for sale, including a 1944 Comet tank and a 1943 Centaur bulldozer — will be on hand at a variety of events around Europe this year, including the War and Peace Revival at Hop Farm, Kent, taking place from 25-29 July. £9,855 excluding VAT from www.baiv.nl

DVDs Bristol Scout: Rebuilding History How the Bremner brothers, David and Rick, came to honour their late grandfather ‘Bunnie’ Bremner with a reproduction of the Bristol Scout he flew in the Royal Naval Air Service is a truly great tale. It deserves the documentary treatment, and here it is, narrated by actor Robert Llewellyn. There are fascinating insights to be had from the Bremners, augmented by extracts from IWM recordings of ‘Bunnie’ himself, as well as others who were deeply involved: David and Rick’s partner in the project Theo Willford, Sir George White, The Vintage Aviator Ltd’s Gene DeMarco and more.

ABOVE: David Bremner with the Bristol Scout on the Greek island of Thasos.

The moments of triumph — the aircraft’s first engine run, its 2015 maiden flight, David’s take-off from Thasos in Greece during 2016 to salute his grandfather’s operations there 100 years earlier, and the flights he and Theo made over the Somme — cannot help but raise a smile. All the while, through the highs and the lows, the sheer emotion shines forth. There’s also some excellent, striking aerial footage shot over Bicester. The production isn’t perfect: a caption reading ‘Helleic Airfoce’, a sub-title referring to a ‘Garandmother’ and a credit to ‘The Vitage Aviator’ should maybe have been picked up, and I found the incidental music a trifle incessant. But this is a lovely tribute to perhaps the feel-good aviation heritage story of the last few years. BD Running time 65 minutes £12.50 from www.asa-uk.tv/shop ★★★★

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Archive

Ben Dunnell explores The Aeroplane’s outstanding archives to cast new light on past stories

FLYING CLASSROOMS An early-1950s visit to the Cranfield College of Aeronautics, at a time of crisis for this still young institution

T

oday’s Cranfield University numbers more than 4,500 students, and is justifiably proud of the fact that it produces three quarters of the UK’s postgraduate aerospace engineers. With courses not just on aerospace subjects but also defence and security, energy, the environment, management, manufacturing, transport systems and water, it has gained plaudits for research in many fields as well as making a significant contribution to industry and the economy. More than half of its student body hails from overseas, so the potential effect of a ‘hard Brexit’, in which students may — to the displeasure of many — be included in net migration figures, remains to be seen. But Cranfield has certainly come a long way since its early post-war beginnings. Those were covered extensively in The Aeroplane, for the Cranfield College of Aeronautics was a pioneer. A wartime visit to the US by Bristol aero engine designer Sir Roy Fedden,

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acting as special technical advisor to the Ministry of Aircraft Production, paved the way. He was impressed by the work going on in the aviation field at the California and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology, and recommended the establishment of a British equivalent. UK firms were initially dismissive, but the minister, Sir Stafford Cripps, backed him wholeheartedly. An Aeronautical Research Council report of August 1943 solidified plans. It specified that the postgraduate institution must have its own airfield and aircraft. The climate of postwar austerity made using an existing site the most practical option, and the choice fell on RAF Cranfield in Bedfordshire. Opened 80 years ago this year, the airfield had been a light bomber station and then a night fighter training base. From November 1945 to 1947 it was the temporary home of the Empire Test Pilots’

School. With remarkable speed, aided by Cripps holding office in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government, Cranfield was made ready to house the College of Aeronautics. Its first students arrived in October 1946. By the time The Aeroplane visited for a major feature in November 1952, the college’s teaching and research activities were in full swing. It was divided into aerodynamics, aircraft design, aircraft economics, aircraft propulsion and flight departments. The magazine’s reporter focused on the latter, but noted how, “In the first year students work in each of the five departments with limited specialisation to assure them a broad knowledge of aeronautics. In the second year, they spend most time in one department — chosen according to the subject in which they are specialising — but are encouraged to do as much work in other departments as time permits.” As the piece went on to report, “The Department of Flight plays

ABOVE: The Cranfield College of Aeronautics’ Dove 1B G-ALVF pictured in November 1952. Sold by the college in 1960 to Dan-Air, this aircraft went to Cameroon Air Transport five years later. ALL PHOTOS AEROPLANE

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Archive an important part in the work of the College, being responsible, among other things, for the operation and maintenance of all the College aircraft”. It occupied two of the four hangars, and looked after the airfield itself. Above all, it operated three aircraft as ‘flying classrooms’. The most modern was DH104 Dove 1B G-ALVF, delivered new to Cranfield and registered to the college in September 1949. It had been given a specially adapted interior “to meet the particular requirements”. Then there was Avro XIX Series 2 G-AHIC, transferred to the college during October 1951 after prior operation by Railway Air Services, BEA and the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Its role was as a radio classroom. Anson I G-AIPC was the oldest and longest-serving aircraft in the 1952 fleet, the former RAF machine (serialled MG588) having arrived at Cranfield back in November 1946. It was “used primarily for second-year research projects, but also for certain first-year tests.”

BELOW: Students being briefed by the senior lecturer prior to an afternoon’s flying.

Of course, most of the first-year teaching during the three 10-week terms took place on the ground. However, 21 “flight experiences” were scheduled for the academic year, 15 of them in the Dove, four in the Anson and two in the Avro XIX. “Experiments in the Dove”, The Aeroplane said, “include general handling; measurement of position error by the aneroid method; measurement of take-off and landing distances; calibration of an air thermometer; speed/power relationship; measurement of drag of flaps and undercarriage; partial climbs to determine best climbing speed; continuous climb to measure rate of

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climb at various heights; variation of forward speed with height; specific air range measurements; determination of static longitudinal stability by trim curves, and an oil cooler suitability test”. The Anson I, meanwhile, was employed on stalling investigations “by means of trailing static”, and “the measurement of profile drag by wake traverse”, and the XIX for radio demonstration purposes. “The Dove”, the article went on, “was chosen initially on the basis of availability, initial cost, operating cost and general suitability”. The flight and aircraft design departments collaborated on the interior fit, the end result being able to accommodate six students as well as the pilot and test supervisor. The cabin floor had to be strengthened, not least because the load was biased heavily towards the starboard side where the students sat. For space reasons they worked in pairs, the seats and tables being made by the college’s own workshops. In front of each pair was an instrument panel, largely duplicating the Dove’s cockpit instrumentation. An automatic observer was carried for when “dynamic manoeuvres are undertaken”, and there was room at the back of the cabin for further “special equipment” as required. Despite its age, the Anson I remained a valuable asset. Its “chief remaining virtue”, The Aeroplane wrote, “is that it lends itself readily to research work requiring modifications

to the airframe”. To that end, as of late 1952 it was about to have “a small swept-back wing section”, being constructed by the college, “mounted vertically above [its] fuselage” as part of research into boundarylayer conditions on swept wings. The Anson’s cabin could take four students and an instructor, with just a single test instrument panel for the lot of them. All the Avro XIX’s equipment was intended for its radio demonstration role — Gee or Loran and Rebecca radio navigation systems, the Decca Navigator device, a radio compass and altimeter, an instrument landing system and VHF communications. It too carried four students. Completing the Department of Flight’s fleet were two Tiger Moths and a Chipmunk, these on hand to provide pilot instruction “free of charge for selected students totalling about one-third of the yearly intake”. It was hoped to get them ready to go solo, and some went on to obtain their private pilot’s licence. Existing qualified pilots taking the college’s diploma course could also use these trainers. One of the Tigers was equipped to perform aero-tows for the college gliding club fleet, namely a Slingsby T31, a Slingsby Tutor and a Schneider Grunau. Cranfield at the time was a very busy place, one month notching up

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In response to an independent review of the organisation and work of the college, it set about improving its public profile. There was a visit from the Duke of Edinburgh and articles in the press

more aircraft movements than any other UK airfield except London Airport (Heathrow) and Northolt. The Aeroplane recorded how BEA, and sometimes even Pan American with its DC-6s, used the ILS for training purposes, while an RAF presence remained in the form of a communications flight operating pairs of Ansons and Prentices. These, together with Fairey’s experimental fleet of Meteors and an Avro XIX flown by Sperry as a demonstrator for its flight director equipment, were maintained by the Department of Flight. This helped reduce the college’s costs by what the article rather euphemistically called the “full utilisation of facilities” — in other words, the raising of revenue from outside sources. Indeed, from the outset Cranfield had a close relationship with relevant government departments and the aviation industry. One early example involved work by a second-year student on stall warnings, which so interested the Ministry of Supply that it placed a contract with the college for a formal continuation of its research in this area. What The Aeroplane’s feature didn’t mention were the difficulties being faced by the college at this time. Cranfield University’s own history of the College of Aeronautics goes further: “The pressures, constraints and challenges imposed on the College in the period between

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1951‑55”, it says, “are essentially the same as those facing higher education today: [the] need to seek ways to bring in additional revenue, through the promotion of commercial activities, in order to supplement public money and to demonstrate to the funding authority value for money in terms of the quantity and quality of productivity and output.” That was why Cranfield needed to ensure that “full utilisation of facilities”. It was also the reason behind the college beginning to diversify. Economic difficulties, and then the re-election of a Conservative government under Winston Churchill, made for a difficult public funding environment. Cranfield faced several dilemmas. It needed to retain and attract staff of a high calibre, but civil service pay scales rendered it unable to offer salaries on a par with those they might get at universities, let alone in industry. It had to keep its facilities up to date, but didn’t have the money to do so, while using old RAF buildings spread over a wide area was more burdensome than a purpose-built campus. “The worst part of the crisis”, the university recounts, “was reached in 1952-53 when at a request from the Treasury, the Ministry of Education forced the Governors to accept an independent review of the organisation and work of

the College. This was followed by Cranfield having to go back to the Ministry for a supplement to its Grant-in-Aid before the end of the year”. In response, the college set about improving its public profile. October 1952 saw a much-reported visit from the Duke of Edinburgh, and there were numerous articles in the technical press. This puts The Aeroplane’s piece into proper context. As the college’s remit broadened beyond aviation, so the seeds of future development were sown. In 1969 it was renamed the Cranfield Institute of Technology, and 1993 saw the award of full university status. As the official history points out, some criticised what they saw as an unduly market-driven approach; others argued how successful it was in terms of growth, income and reputation. But the institution never lost sight of its aeronautical roots, and today there is a pleasing bit of historical symmetry. Cranfield University operates a Jetstream 31 as the National Flying Laboratory Centre, flying more than 1,200 students from around 25 universities worldwide every year. It is every inch the present-day successor to the Dove in which The Aeroplane flew 65 years ago, while another one-time Scottish Aviation product, a Bulldog, has recently been kitted out as a flight test facility. Good old British aircraft still have a place at this very modern, and international, place of learning.

ABOVE: The less than salubrious surroundings of the Anson I, with students reading instruments and an inclinometer, watched by their instructor. ABOVE LEFT: The Department of Flight’s aircraft fleet in late 1952, bar the two Tiger Moths which couldn’t venture out of the hangar during The Aeroplane’s visit on a windy November day. In the foreground is Chipmunk Mk21 G-AMLC, on strength from August 1951 to April 1954 when it was sold to a new owner in Australia; as VH-DBS, it remains current and airworthy. Behind it are Dove G-ALVF, Anson I G-AIPC and Avro XIX G-AHIC. The two Avros were respectively withdrawn from use in 1961 and sold in 1965, the XIX ending up being broken for spares by the Strathallan Collection.

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MASEFIELD and his MUSTANG The 1967 King’s Cup Air Race winner looks back, 50 years on

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