I bet you didnt know that

banie01 wrote: »

A quirk of history that I have always found fascinating, is that the Messerschmitt Me109, the most successful fighter ever flown in terms of enemy aircraft shot down and the mount of many of Nazi Germany's top pilots was initially flown in prototype form with a British Rolls Royce engine.
The original flight capable prototypes were designed for the Jumo 210 engine with Daimler as a future option but both were still in early development so Messerschmitt bought 4 Rolls-Royce Kestrel engines to progress testing.

As a further irony, the very last versions of the Me-109 in service.
The Spanish built Hispano Ha112's were equipped with the engine that powered the main UK/US nemesis of the Me-109.
The Rolls-Royce Merlin as flown in the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the Mustang.

So the top German fighter was birthed with, and died with a British engine.

And in the 1960's film Battle Of Britain the Me109's they collected together were the Hispano versions, many of which were on loan from Franco's Spain. The Heinkel bombers were also Spanish and some of the aerial scenes were shot in Spain, which you can sometimes spot as the ground is a decidedly un green fields of England brown. That film also gathered together and saved some of the last Spitfires and Hurricanes of different versions from the scrap heap and got them flying again. One two seater ex Irish Air Corp I believe two seater was used as a camera plane. In the end they got 100 aircraft of various types together. A fair few of those ex film planes are still flying today. By all accounts readying them for flight was a bit haphazard and wouldn't have a hope in hell of passing health and safety today.

They tried to get the British Imperial war museum's JU87 Stuka up and running too and did a few high speed runway test runs but decided against it as it was only one of two of them left in the world and so used mostly models instead. Here it is at the time being tested out in 1968 IIRC.



Probably the last time one was started and taxied. Funny enough that particular example was built towards the end of the war for the ground attack role and had its dive brakes removed, so wasn't a dive bomber anymore.

And to tie with your story above B, the other aircraft the Germans prototyped with the same British Kestrel engines was the above JU87 Stuka.



And like the ME109 it went all the way through the war relatively unchanged and was favoured by many of its pilots over more modern aircraft that had been designed to replace it.

One area of research with the Stuka that was to have wider use after the war were their studies into G forces on the human body. Pulling out of a usually 90 degree dive a Stuka pilot could experience 6 G. They had a few accidents with guys passing out, so they did a lot of research on how to reduce this. They found for example that altitude had a major impact on it and that at higher altitudes with no supplementary oxygen even pulling much more than 2 G could lead to blacking out. Temperature was a factor too. The other thing they did was install an automatic "computer" to pull out of the dive. Pilots almost always ignored it as they didn't trust it. Though spare a thought for the rear gunner in the back, diving backwards... Balls of steel. :eek:

banie01 wrote: »

I can't imagine nosing over face first into a dive and having the wherewithal to aim a bomb and bloody pull up at the end of it!

Just after the war British test pilot Eric "Winkle" Brown was among a couple of guys sent to collect and test as many of the German machines they could get their hands on. He had a major advantage as he could speak German fluently(and had lived there for a time before the war IIRC). So he had a go of pretty much every German aircraft of the war, including the new jets and even gliding flights in the even newer rocket planes. Gliding flights as the fuel was so horrendously dangerous they didn't want to risk it. The stuff was hypergolic , that is it ignited when you mixed two components together, which cut down on complication(and similar was used on the Apollo moon lander engine), but the two liquid components were horrible, melt your skin off horrible.

He also flew a few of their jets, bombers and fighters and was mostly impressed, though engines could go bang with little warning. On one occasion with a jet bomber he was running up the engines in the drivers seat while a German engineer was beside him. Everything looked to be going OK, until he noticed out of the corner of his eye the German lad had got up and was legging it as fast as his legs could carry him away from the aircraft. Then there was a loud bang as one engine ate itself. Words were exchanged after that, in the type of German they don't teach you in language schools.

Annnnyhooo, so our hero Winkle(so named cos he was a little lad. Most of his body mass appears to have been giant balls) came across a Stuka sitting on the tarmac and thought off we go. He had flown all the allied dive bombers and thought them pretty awful, but he said the Stuka though feeling vulnerable because of the high(but great view) cockpit and slow speed, was the best of the type he'd flown by a large margin. He said it in most planes even 45 degrees feels like your tipping over yourself, but at 90 degrees straight down the Stuka was as happy as a pig in poo and very stable and easy to point at a ground target. He reported he spent a few hours thoroughly enjoying just doing mad dives around the countryside. As you do. So I reckon you'd enjoy it B. I can only imagine what the pretty recently bombed civilians on the ground thought, but their screams go unrecorded... He also noted the aircraft had great brakes for landing, something that most German aircraft were very much lacking.

A while later the same Eric was asked to look at a couple of new helicopters that the Americans had given the RAF. So off he goes has a jaunt as a passenger and went back to base. A few days later, him and another lad were tasked with collecting them and flying them to their base. They arrived expecting an instructor to teach them to fly the yokes. Which is a bit mad as anyone who has even a passing interest in flying machines knows helicopters are the devils own work to learn and yet... But nope. They were handed a manual and told, there's your instructor. Earlier I mentioned Eric's large liathroidi, well it seems his pilot mate had the same genetic abnormality and after a couple of whiskeys(yeah. Really) they hopped in and had a go. They got the general gist of it and off they flew, though he noted they were sweating bricks the whole way and flying a few miles apart.

Then there's the German woman test pilot who before the war flew early helicopters indoors, but that's for another day...

I mentioned the Apollo Lunar Lander earlier. Well a few years back at a Grumman dinner for retired lads and lasses who worked on it, Neil Armstrong sent them a letter to thank them for the great job they did. As he noted each flight was a test flight and an operational one and barring a few minor glitches the spacecraft worked and more and surprisingly it was a very nice flying machine on top. Something all the Apollo lads who flew them specifically noted and all said they had a little twinge when they sent it off on it's way afterwards. It also saved the lads of Apollo 13 acting as a "lifeboat", something it was never designed for. Not bad for the only true manned spacecraft humans have ever built and flown.

Many moons ago I met him and got a book signed by him. Really lovely bloke and yep a little fella. Only in feet and inches, in everything else a giant.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Hanna Reitsch. A true believer

Aye but huge ovaries of solid steel. I have her book too, first edition, before they edited out the more "troublesome" parts.

Wibbs wrote: »

You'd wonder how they could legally do that if it was a lifetime unlimited offer. But still, fair play to Steve.

Taken from wiki:

Steve Rothstein, a financier then from Chicago, upgraded to a lifetime AAirpass for $233,509.93 on October 1, 1987 after a discount of $16,490.07 for the value of mileage on a previous AAirpass. He added a $150,000 companion pass 2 years later. Rothstein negotiated additions to the contract, including a provision for his companion to fly on flights immediately before or after his flight. During the more than 10 years Rothstein owned the pass, he traveled more than 10 million miles, accumulated over 40 million frequent flier miles (all of which he gave away), made more than 500 trips to England alone and cost the airline more than $21 million according to them. On December 13, 2008, Rothstein checked in at Chicago O'Hare International Airport with a friend for a flight to Bosnia. A letter from the airline was hand-delivered to him at the airport informing him that the pass had been terminated due to fraudulent behavior, specifically his history of approaching passengers at the gate and offering them travel on his companion seat. Rothstein sued American Airlines in Federal District Court, arguing that "American waived its rights to enforce the contract by not cracking down on Rothstein sooner" according to District Court Judge Virginia Kendall who denied Rothstein's motion in 2011. Litigation was delayed due to the airline's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. By the end of 2012, the two parties appear to have settled their case out of court, with Rothstein's appeal dismissed and the airline's counterclaims dismissed with prejudice.