A couple of aviation stories

Roscobbc

Roscobbc

Moderator
Thought that some of us might be interested in the story of an unintentional take-off in what was (and perhaps still is) the fastest climbing aircraft ever produced - the Lightning
And the Rolls Royce V12 piston engine that could have dwarfed the output of a Merlin or Griffin aero engine
 
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Roscobbc

Roscobbc

Moderator
I recall on family holidays to Mid Wales in the late 50's/early 60's being camped close to a RAF station near Barmouth. My passion was flying model aircraft. Radio control was very much in its infancy then, using valve transmitters and recievers and extremely crude compared with today. Yet on a daily basis we would hear, and occasionally see low flying small (16 foot wingspan?) red coloured radio controlled, jet powered drones. Official line was that they were being used for target practise, although never heard any other aircraft flying in conjunction with them.
 
Baron von Del Boy

Baron von Del Boy

Well-known user
Roscobbc said:
And it is things like this from so many years ago that put all the supposed UFO sightings in to what could well be a more sensible context.
Click to expand...

Ive just watched a video where he found an Intelligence Report from October 1944 in the National Archives which read 'Pterodactyl seen operating at Gottingen, span estimated 80 to 100 feet'. :LOL:
 
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Chevrolet

Chevrolet

CCCUK Member
Roscobbc said:
And it is things like this from so many years ago that put all the supposed UFO sightings in to what could well be a more sensible context.
Click to expand...
Well I did have the reg # C6 UFO on my C6, but told the neighbours not to report it to the authorities as a UFO :cool: See that the Horten had two Junkers engines. As my dear old mum told me, when the Germans were flying to Newcastle to try and bomb the Vickers Armstrong factory on the Tyne during WW2, you could always recognise the droning sound of the Junkers bombers engines. So last time I was in Dusseldorf airport, couldn't resist buying a Junkers watch:
shop.junkers.de

Home

shop.junkers.de shop.junkers.de
 
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Roscobbc

Roscobbc

Moderator
Only applicable in certain limited situations I'd guess. An armed drone/quadcopter would have more applications without the potential loss of specifically skilled service personnel.
 
T

TimP

CCCUK Member
The Lightning is one of my favourite planes of that era. Tremendous performance (50,000ft a min rate of climb) which took a long time for any other manufacturer to beat. Weren't bad at altitude either - a Lightning gave a US pilot a surprise by intercepting his U2 spy place at 88,000ft. The one at RAF Hendon XM135 is the one shown in the video at the top of this thread.
 
Roscobbc

Roscobbc

Moderator
And we all thought the running costs of police and hospital helicopters was expensive.............wonder what kind of training one needs to become a 'pilot' of one of these?
 
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