JimAttrill

Happy Birthday to meee, happy Birthday to meeee

Now you've got me! I am not a pilot but will read his air tests of the Bf109 and 110 to see if I can figure it out. I reckon if the slats on one wing opened before the other it would have the effect of feedback to the control column as if the ailerons were moving themselves. The book is "Wings of the Luftwaffe" where he tells what just about every Luftwaffe aircraft was like to fly. He liked some things about their aircraft, like the inertia starting systems and the colour-coded controls for engine, fuel etc but was not wild on the greenhouse effect in some bombers like the He111. I think the book is still available online - I got a second-hand copy which had been 'retired' from a library in Oregon of all places.

I can't see that OBD would have an issue about us giving away something that they don't sell anymore.

Eric Brown criticized the Bf109 (and the 110 for that matter) for the 'automatic' leading-edge slats which would come out unevenly in turns causing aileron snatching and making it very hard to aim. So vertical fighting was the best way. As he flew them all I reckon his opinion is worth taking notice of. I also doubt whether that is built into any sim. He found the cockpit of the Bf109 very cramped and he is a rather short person - 5'7"

Here are the dropbox url's one for the HiTR exe and another for the update: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9qxt1jd4fkq9spi/OverFlandersFields_HitR_Update1.46.exe?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/wb38v1ixldtulmp/OverFlandersFields_HitR.exe?dl=0

I have it somewhere, I could put it on Dropbox if it isn't too big

The DVII was the only aircraft specifically mentioned in the Versailles treaty. Apparently Göring had his pilots taxy their aircraft into a hangar wall at Darmstadt rather than hand them over. Can't remember where I read that though. I do remember it was Darmstadt as that is the HQ of Software AG and I was using their database software at the time so it stuck in my memory.

Udet took the then teenager Eric Brown up for a trip in a Bucker Jungmann and he was most impressed and then decided to learn German and to fly himself. Udet was a terrific pilot by all accounts. See "Wings on my sleeve" by Capt. Eric Brown

AFAIK the pilot was Tony Virden and he was doing high-speed dives when the tail fluttered due to the compressibility problems that the aircraft was known to have and the tail fell off. See Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-38_Lightning This was when they were trying to fix the dive problems using servo tabs. Later they added the dive flaps but a bit late - mid 1944. As Eric Brown says of the RAE investigation of critical Mach numbers: "We had found out that the Bf 109 and the Fw 190 could fight up to a Mach of 0.75, three-quarters the speed of sound. We checked the Lightning and it couldn't fly in combat faster than 0.68. So it was useless. We told Doolittle that all it was good for was photo-reconnaissance and had to be withdrawn from escort duties. And the funny thing is that the Americans had great difficulty understanding this because the Lightning had the two top aces in the Far East."

Downloading season 1 now And according to Wiki the show was cancelled after that. So no second season.

I haven't looked at the article yet, but it seems the same mistake was made after the Vietnam war with speed being the essential. And then the Harrier (and the AIM-9L missile) showed that manoeverability was the thing - and sometimes with modern fighters you can have both. Unless it is the F-35 which seems to fail on all counts except profits for the aerospace companies. I was surprised at the coverage given in the videos to the P38 Lightning which was not a successful aircraft at all in Europe. Partly this was due to the unreliability of the Allison engines. Lightnings with two engines that still worked had to break off to escort those with one engine out back to England. The Lightning suffered badly from compressibility effects leading to control reversal in the dive which is mentioned in the video. I read about this in Capt. Eric Brown's book "Wings on my sleeve" where they were asked to investigate the critical Mach numbers of allied fighters (and German ones as well). The Lightning was not known to be good for this - it had killed its test pilot back in 1939. Unfortunately I have lent out the book which has all the figures in it, but Wiki has this to say: "The actual critical Mach number varies from wing to wing. In general a thicker wing will have a lower critical Mach number, because a thicker wing accelerates the airflow to a faster speed than a thinner one. For instance, the fairly thick wing on the P-38 Lightning has a critical Mach number of about .69. The aircraft could occasionally reach this speed in dives, leading to a number of crashes. The much thinner wing on the Supermarine Spitfire resulted in a Critical Mach number of about 0.89 for this aircraft." (A Spitfire was later flown to .98 Mach in a dive by S/Ldr Martindale of RAE upon which the prop and reduction gear flew off. He managed to land it although it was somewhat bent!). The 'dive flaps' on the P38 certainly stopped it becoming uncontrollable but it was not that quick in the dive. After the results of the tests by RAE the American general in charge VIIIth Air Force fighters (Jimmy Doolittle?) told the USAAF that he would only accept P51 Mustangs (which had a high critical Mach number like the Spitfire or even better) and the P38s were sent to the far east and the P47s were mostly used for ground attack. My father worked on the Allison engines in P40 Tomahawks in Egypt. Not his favourite engine at all. It had only one advantage in that it could be assembled to run in either direction. This came in handy on the P82 twin Mustang as well as the P38.

He talks a bit fast but his summation is accurate. I am glad to see that he did mention that some of Bishop's claims were dubious, to say the least. He claimed a few aircraft with no apparent witnesses from either side. The Germans would not have allowed many of his claims at all. But after Ball, McCudden and Mannock were gone the governments on both sides of the Atlantic required heros.

Got the book and I read that in the Royal Welch the sentries at night would stand with their head and shoulders above the parapet. This meant that they could see better and if wounded, it would be mostly a chest wound rather than a head wound which was mostly fatal. And when describing a raid in no-man's land he writes: "We turned to go back; finding it hard not to move too quickly. We had got about half way, when German machine guns opened traversing fire along the top of the trenches. We immediately jumped to our feet; the bullets were brushing the grass, so to stand up was safer." He liked the trench raids as if he were wounded his chances of survival were higher than if there was a full-scale battle going on with the dressing stations overwhelmed. He states this not to justify cowardice but in order to possibly stay alive which seemed unlikely at the time.

Sorry Detlev! I got confused as I have German friends with both names. Yes Hauksbee, standing up would get you killed in daylight but at night in no-man's land standing up was safer according to Graves. I'll try to find the quote for you. Are you thinking of the episode where a soldier is presented with a clock in a glass case? Very funny but also tragic in a way.

Hey Dieter you should get a copy of 'Goodbye to all that' which was written by Robert Graves - a writer and poet in his own right. He served as a lieutenant in the Welch Fusiliers (not to be confused with the Welsh who were a different lot). He was lucky to survive the war being wounded 3 times and even declared dead at one time. He describes trench warfare very well - how they would 'sight' their rifles on sandbags so they could fire without aiming at night. Also how the German machine guns and rifles were aimed just above the ground so if they were discovered when between the lines at night the best thing to do was to stand up and walk back - then the bullets would get you in the legs rather than in the head. What they didn't want when patrolling between the lines was flares to go off, then they would if possible hide below ground in a shell hole until the flare went out and then walk back.

Interesting - I didn't know about the court case that Ford lost which does show that the aircraft were very similar in manufacture. I have flown in a JU52 ZS-AFA which was the registration of a JU52 used by SAA pre-war and reused on the current Spanish CASA 325L version. It used to fly from Joburg and Lanseria airports on alternate Sundays. I took my French father in law up for the trip. He was an ex para and had jumped out of a few AMIOT Toucan's in the early 50s in Senegal. He remembers being trained by British paras who didn't speak a word of French and none of the paras spoke English! Their parachutes were ex-Luftwaffe black and apparently landed much faster than the British chutes causing many broken legs. Anyway he was lucky not to be sent to Indo-China as it was then. I live about 15kms from Lanseria airport and you could hear the Junkers taking off from there! It had been reengined with Harvard motors and propellors and was extremely noisy. I don't think it is in flying condition now as I have not heard or seen it. Here is some info on it, note "The propeller itself is also the Hamilton Standard 12D40 as used on the Harvard, providing the unique sound that ZS-AFA has." This is a bit of an understatement! http://www.saamuseum.co.za/our-aircraft/66-junkers-ju-52-casa-352l.html

Nice picture for the time. I suppose those must be 'Very' flares as carried in aircraft as well. Very was an American naval officer, and Lewis was an American Army officer so they invented a lot of useful stuff for WWI.

I don't think the Junkers was the inspiration for the Ford trimotor. It was the Fokker FVII that got Ford thinking about a trimotor. Unfortunately Fokker already had an American subsidiary, the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation. So he got designer Stout on the job for him instead. Stout did copy the Junkers corrugated metal construction though. The Junkers JU52/1m of the time was single-engined. The prototype JU52/3m first flew in 1932, just before the Ford trimotor ceased production in 1933. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_F.VII

Looking at your posters I notice one for Hugo Heine which uses the word 'propeller' and also 'propellerwerke'. I look it up in my dictionary and the main word seems to be Luftscraube which is more Germanic! And this is the word used in the poster for C. Lorenzen. To confuse the issue 'luftscraube' is feminine and 'propellor' is masculine. Linguists don't like those sexual words and prefer to use 'noun classes'. After all, Zulu has 26 which is a lot of sexes, even more than they have in Australia nowadays! As an aside, my father who was also an RAF engine fitter 1922-1958 always used the word 'airscrew' which he insisted was more correct. He also used the word 'wireless' for a radio - wireless now has a different meaning! He also pronounced 'radar' with the first 'a' short as in cat, considering the 'raydar' to be an American import. Actually its original name was R.D.F for 'radio direction finding' which was used to fool the Germans so I have read. I forgot to mention that 'schraube' in German is a screw so luftscraube=airscrew. My father would be pleased about that.

My Babelfish URL does not seem to have Russian as an option which is strange. But into Italian it is "Lo spirito è pronto ma la carne è debole" and back into English is exactly as the original. When I tried it into Hindi I got आत्मा तो तैयार है लेकिन मांस कमजोर है and when back into English it was as the original except the 'The' was missing. Not bad, really

Hmmm.. as an engine mechanic I have been looking up certain German nouns. It seems that 'welle' is a shaft in English. This gives us 'kurbelwelle' which is a crankshaft. Also 'knockenwelle' which is a camshaft. My dictionary (Wichmanns, RKP) doesn't have an entry for 'knocken'. But I do know that German is a very literal language for technical terms. My dictionary gives 'schwungrad' for fly-wheel which could be correct.

The second RAAF poster is (I think) a Armstrong-Siddley Lynx radial fitted to an Avro 504N of No 1 Flying Training School at Point Cook. The aircraft was WWI vintage but the engine dates from 1922 or so. The Horch/Auto-Union/Audi story is very interesting. Horch has been resurrected lately but it's not the same - like modern 'Bugatti's. I once confused a lot of italian motor enthusiasts on a forum when Babel translated 'roof rack' using their word for a steering rack! It also translated 'wheels' as 'rotelle' which is a castor in English, the things found under office chairs. Much hilarity. Rather like my Italian teacher who got a little job interpreting for a group of Italian engineers investigating 'milling'. She knew all the words for mills used to make flour and such and then found that they were interested in Metal milling machines. Computer translation is not an easy business as each word must not be taken alone but in the context. Maybe they will get there one day with a super computer. I used to have a laugh translating a text from English into Russian and then Italian and back to English to see what happens. Good fun!

I also noticed that one! I knew they made engines in WWI but not aircraft. I can practice my German on the WIKI article (or maybe Babelfish it and see what happens ). I see Horch is there making trucks. Now called Audi of course which is Latin for Horch in German.

I remember being stopped by Saudi cops in 1975 for a 'safety' check. The fact that the car had no wipers and the windscreen and headlamps were sandblasted were not an issue. The lights and indicators were not tested. But the hooter had to work

I suppose that the open cockpit was normal in those days as just about everything was open - bikes, motor bikes, horses, drivers of wagons and even most cars. Even later in the 20s when they brought out passenger aircraft very often the passengers sat inside but the pilot sat out in the rain. I think closed cockpits were for 'wussies' It wasn't until the Gloster Gladiator of the late thirties that the RAF got a fighter with an enclosed cockpit and many pilots didn't like it and flew with the canopy open. You couldn't do that with an Me109 of course as the canopy opened sideways but the RAF always had rearward sliding canopies. (and if you read of the He111 it seems the pilot had to land it with his head poking out of the top - most strange).