For WW2 airplane buffs

[perry owens]

In my garden this morning trying to start the mower when I heard the unmistakable sound of Rolls Royce Merlin engines. Directly overhead were three Spitfires and a Hurricane.
http://vid49.photobucket.com/albums/f29 ... v0ht9c.mp4
Today is the 75th anniversary of "the hardest day" - the day in the Battle of Britain when both sides lost most aircraft. To mark the occasion 18 Hurricanes and 6 Spitfires took off from Biggin Hill airfield, probably the most famous of the fighter bases, and patrolled various bases around southern England. RAF Kenley, another famous base, is just up the road from my house.

[Blaine]

One of your very finest march composers, Kenneth Alford (the pen name for Frederick Joseph Ricketts) commemorated some of that Air War with this march. Alford also wrote Col. Bogey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCyrB-crkSM

[gamekeeper]

A great way to commemorate that important day 75 years ago.
I was looking out for them but they didn't fly over my place...

[Old No7]

Now that's really cool -- I would have looked up too!

Always loved the Spits and Hurricanes...

Spitfire & Hurricane.jpg

My late father briefly served with the RAF at Debden airbase and was a ground pounder for the 121 Eagle Squadron's Spitfires before the Yanks took over operations as the 4th Fighter Group of the 8th Air Force. He always said it was a "Nice little war" with the Brits in charge, with better food and officers. And he loved the Spitfires too. Some of the pilots used to pee on the exposed tail wheels "for good luck"... Not only did it not work, it created some sticky wheels and extra maintenance for the ground crews.

My dad rode out on the horizontal stabilizers several times too (one man on each side), which allowed the pilots to goose the throttle to get the Spitfires lined up FAST on the grass airfields for a quick scramble, without tipping the plane over on its nose... The pilots would wave and the crews would fall off onto the grass allowing the Spits to proceed with a fast takeoff. All that went away when the P47s and P51s came along and hard-surface runways were used. Man, the stories he used to tell us kids. I just wish we'd written more of them down...

Anyway, thanks for sharing. And I am glad we're not talking about that day in German!

Cheers!

Old No7

[66GTO]

In my view those RAF pilots and ground crew stand shoulder to shoulder with the Spartans at Thermopylae in preserving democracy by turning back the invading hordes by the thinnest of margins allowing for eventual victory. Heroes all.

[jeepnik]

One of your very finest march composers, Kenneth Alford (the pen name for Frederick Joseph Ricketts) commemorated some of that Air War with this march. Alford also wrote Col. Bogey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCyrB-crkSM

So that where that came from. Thanks for the information.

[plowboy 45]

That was just to cool perry
Didn't know you could do video on here, but I don't know much anyway


Thanks
PLOWBOY

[2ndovc]

" Never was so much owed by so many to so few".
Sir Winston Churchill


I'm going to go lift a glass to "The Few"!

Jason

[donw]

where I live, we occasionally, get WWII warbirds fly over on their way to major airfields for air shows.

there's nothing to match the sounds of a radial aircraft engines of a B-25 Mitchell or the whine of the turbo charged mustangs.

those who flew those machines in defense of us and our way of life, deserve, at least, a tip of the hat, and a spot of gratitude in our hearts for them and all they did and sacrificed.

if I recall properly, many of the early British aircraft were constructed, partially, of wood and canvas...not much protection from the 8mm and 11mm bullets and cannon used by the Germans.

[yooper2]

There is nothing in the world that sounds as sweet to my ears as Merlins, Allisons, and Griffons running full out. The old Unlimited hydros ran them until the turbines came along so there would be 6-12 boats within spitting distance and the ground would would quake as all of drivers mashed their foot to the floor.

Eric

[M. M. Wright]

Thanks Perry. During WWII I lived under the flight pattern for Tulsa. I had a book of silhouettes of the warbirds of both sides and I learned to identify most of ours. The sounds are etched in my mind still.

Several years ago I was coming in from deer hunting and heard the unmistakable sound of a B-36. When I looked up, there it was being ferried to the Air Force museum in Dayton. I read about it later.

There is a fly-in to a little airport near here every 4th of July which draws many old fighters and a bunch of T-6s. Last year there was a P-47 which landed and taxied right up to where we were standing. Still had the Allison in it. When the pilot got out he was wearing the correct gear down to the leather helmet. Quite a treat.

[Mike Armstrong]

I also remember the B-36. By the time they got from the SAC bases in Central California to our ranch 'way up north, they were so high you could only see the contrail. But you could feel the engines in the fillings of your teeth! I can't imagine the courage needed to be ready 24/7 to fly one of those things to Russia....and maybe back.

[Ben_Rumson]

I too would have liked to have heard/seen that formation of Spits & Hurricane... A symphony of heavy metal
The only P47s I ever heard of had radial engine... The boys that did ground support loved how that big ole radial provided them so much cover from incoming ... Same for the guys that flew the bigger Hellcat out in the Pacific...Yep that's right the Hellcat is bigger than the Thunderbolt

[PriseDeFer]

Good grab Owens. Good sound and just like we were standing there with you.

[Bullard4075]

Sorry I can't resist. " whine of the turbo charged mustangs". The Mustang/Merlin was supercharged not turbocharged. A turbocharger
is run off the exhaust of the engine (P38 Lightning,Corsair,P47) while a supercharger (P51 Mustang,P39) is geared to and run by the engine.
Roughly speaking a turbocharger is free energy (speaking just energy from the engine) while at full power a Merlin engine gives up about
400 horsepower just to run it's supercharger. This why the Mustang was reengined from the Allison to the Merlin NOT because the
Merlin was that better of an engine but that the Merlin had an inbuilt,onboard supercharger. The early Allison Mustangs would run circles around
the early Merlin Mustangs BELOW 15,000 ft. While there were exceptions and combinations and crossovers we are just talking in general.

Some aircraft/engine combinations had both a supercharger and a turbocharger.
The B36 had a kind of reverse turbocharger called a Power Recovery Turbine
(nicknamed the Parts Recovery Turbine) where the exhaust spun a turbine
shafting horsepower back into the engine.

[M. M. Wright]

Sorry Ben_Rumson, I should have said P-40. There was a P-47 there also. "Hellcat" ?

[Ben_Rumson]

Hellcat: Just a little bigger than the Thunderbolt...A longer wing span and heavier empty weight. Enough that when I saw the difference to dispel the Thunderbolt being "The Biggest Fighter Plane"
Now here's one you might win a bar bet with too... Which American plane shot down the most enemy aircraft?... ?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
B-17

[jeepnik]

To take nothing away from B-17 crews, my uncle was a BN in the Eighth. There was some fudging on the numbers of fighters taken down by the B-17. It is certain that more than one bomber crew claimed and aircraft that had been hit by other who also claimed it.

[Ben_Rumson]

True... Maybe the way to have phrased the question would have been to say: What American aircraft was responsible more enemy aircraft being shot down than any other...
BTW My uncle was a B-17 Navigator in the 96th BG 1944... The crew he was in flew their first mission starting during Big Week. They finished all their missions on D Day... He got killed in the first B-52 crash in 1956...

[M. M. Wright]

Lost a good friend last year. He had been a waist gunner on a B-17 and had been shot down to be a prisoner for a year or so. When I asked how many missions he had completed he said "one and a half".

[jeepnik]

Hawker Hunter went down at an airshow celebrating the air battle. Can't be many of those left.

[Booger Bill]

I was a Lockheed AC Company guard 1965 to 2000. We had a Rolls Royce rep from England for the engines on our L 10-11`s that we were making. At the same time I had a English GF who was a war orphan. Both of her parents had been killed and she was sent to boarding schools by the government. She said her father had got killed flying a Spit during the war. Her mother had got killed by a bomb during the battle of Brittan. Her mom lived near the gate of the Victor`s plant in Newcastle and a Bomb fell short and got her. Since my friend the Engineer mentioned he flew Spits I told him the story and details as my GF had told them to me. It shook him up! He told me he was part of that very action and said one German plane got through them and the bomb fell short of the plant and killed some civilians. He was trying to fight crying and that shook me a little too. This was back around the 1980`s. She later got cancer and died in my house. (She had insisted I bring her home from the hospital to die.) Coincidentally, I later had another GF who was born in Berlin and her father was taken prisoner by the Russians. He was among the very last to be released from the Gulag in the 1950`s. Like me, she was also born in 1941. I recall the end of the war, all my uncles coming home, but she claims she don't remember any of the war action. Said the trauma must have wiped out those memory's.

[perry owens]

If you weren't there at the time it's hard to appreciate the scale of the bombing and it's effect on the civilian population, but there is an interactive map here http://bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900 that maps the bombs that fell in the London area in a 9 month period in 1940-41.

Perry Owens

[KiwiKev]

A few years ago there was a documentary about a house in Southhampton that came up for sale. It had been in the same family since WW2. Anyway they difficulty selling it because the west wall was leaning out from the rest of the house. The cause was lots of lead from a German fighter which had shot the house up one night 70 years ago. They did manage to fix it. The owners had not noticed as the west wall was very close to a neighbouring house. ( well that is what they said, or they probably just ignored it.)