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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ก.ย. 2024
- We continue with learning about the Spitfire. Let's see how the engineers managed to ramp up production as WWII set in.
Part 1: • The Spitfire (Part 1) ...
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Link to original video: • Spitfire Documentary
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Douglas Barder 7:38 got in the spitfire like that becouse he's got no legs both amputated in a crash in the 1930s solid tin legs were the only ones you could get then. Film about his struggle to return to flying during the war.
Ok, negative gs. g or g-force, is the measurement of forces that cause a perception of weight on a body. Notionally it's the same as the gravitational acceleration of the Earth. Aircraft accelerating and maneuvering usually increase g forces making you body seem heavier. At 5 gs is as if your body was 5 times heavier. Some maneuvers though, like dives do the opposite. Negative 3 gs means that the pilot, or that case the fuel in the carburator is being acted upon by a force opposing gravity with 3 times it's strength, forcing it away from the carburator and choking the engine.
I see others have answered some of your questions regarding negative G and mentioned Sir Douglas Bader (Watch "Reach for the Sky" for his story.) He flew from Duxford airfield which is a museum today and still has airshows.
People have mentioned the P-51 Mustang, the F4U Corsair, P-38 Lightning and the P-47 Thunderbolt as well known American fighters. But I'd like to shoutout the Curtis P-40 Kityhawk\warhawk, a very underrated fighter with a facsinating history (Ask an Austrailian how they feel about them.). The P-51 and F4U have quite a connection with the the Brits when you look into them.
One advantage of using wood in an airframe is that it reduces the radar return of the aircraft, the Mosquito was very hard for the Germans to track because of this and made it (inadvertantly) a "stealth" aircraft. Also the TseTse Mosquito is worth looking at (There is a documentary about it on youtube.
Also check out the Kent Battle of Britain Museum on youtube. It is located on the old Hawkinge airfield, the closest frontline airfield during the war. They deserve some support as very few people know of it.
Unless you're flying a Corsair, Seafire or other carrier based aircraft, "wing folding" during flight is a very bad thing, essentially the wing collapses under extreme + or - G's.
Hope you're keeping well :)
RIP Raymond Baxter, I remember his voice on the PA during Elstree and Leavesden airshows when I was a kid.
Quick follow up to my earlier comment about "What was iconic aircraft for US".
So, I mentioned the P-51 Mustang.
Probably a quick intro clip for it would be this scene in "Empire of Sun" : th-cam.com/video/Ekv_mUb3yuo/w-d-xo.html
(Yes, that's Christian Bale of Batman fame, as a child actor, yes he's British (Wales born, English parents, identifies as English), not American.).
When in silver paint, it's a beautiful aircraft. The Spitfire is small, and pretty wings. The Mustang was a little bigger, that big class canopy looked fantastic, but it lacked the beautiful wings of the Spitfire. Both amazing machines for the job they needed to do (short range interceptor, vs long range fighter).
Tuck and barder shot down about 50 German aircraft between them. Both became great fiends of the great German ace Adolf galland after the war.
The man who looked awkward getting into the cockpit of the Spitfire was Douglas Bader who lost both his legs in a flying accident before the Second World War. He was invalided out of the RAF but was able to return during the war and pilots were in short supply.
Spot on Martin. Note; the biopic movie, Reach for the Skies staring Kenneth Moore tells his story, well worth a watch if you have not seen it.
@@nigelleyland166 Yep, good movie. He was eventually shot down and became a prisoner of war and despite his prosthetic legs still tried escaping - the Germans I believe confiscated his legs.
@@terryloveuk After requesting the British parachute drop a new leg for him as one got jammed in the cockpit when he bailed out. His legs were returned when moved to the infamous castle Stallag after numerous escape attempts. He was held in high regard by the Luftwaffe Command (they were not all Nazis and there was honour amongst the officers on both sides). That prevented his execution for the escape attempts.
I met Douglas Bader in the late 1960s when he gave a talk at a youth club gathering , an inspiring man.
From the area of my home city, Doncaster - we are still angry that the proposal to name our airport after him was rejected.
Wooden planes? Check out "The Wooden Wonder", the Mosquito - a plane that made Herman Goering jealous - fighter, bomber, ground attack, unarmed reconnaissance (relying on it's speed to outrun German fighters).
Terrific aircraft. My dad was an engineer with de Havilland and loved working on Mosquitos. He wanted to join the navy so he could see some action but wasn't allowed - Mosquito production was too important.
Wood is a good material, it's fairly tough and not heavy. But less good in the tropical far East where wood rot was a problem in the jungle, particularly where animal-based glues had been used. Wooden aircraft also allowed loads of joinery companies (e.g. Bolton Paul) used to making wooden window frames for houses to participate in aircraft manufacture.
@@euanthomas3423 - my grandfather was a carpenter by trade; during the war he ended up in the Far East as ground crew for the mosquitoes. His carpentry skills were needed to maintain the mosquitos. Unfortunately he lost his fingers in a bomb loading accident, this cut short his carpentry career. I still have a wooden model of a mosquito he hand craved whilst he was out there; he used the actual camouflage paint on it from the real planes on it :)
Douglas Bader, the pilot with the rather awkward method of entering a Spitfire, actually had no legs, having lost them in a flying accident in 1931. The advantage of not having legs was that he could pull tighter "g" turns than other pilots and not pass out,as with normal pilots the blood would be pulled into the legs and away from the brain. Modern flying suits produce a similar effect by temporary cutting off blood flow to the legs.
. and a feature film was made about him - 'Reach For The Sky'.
The film “Reach for the Sky” is Sir Douglas Barder’s story!
@@malcolmross8427 Bader. It's a good film but inaccurate in some areas.
Also had one leg made shorter to help his golf game
I like the idea of you not being too keen on building wooden aircraft in WW2 - you REALLY must check out the DeHavilland Mosquito Fighter/Bomber. One of the very best aircraft Britain produced - 2 crew, very fast, and could carry the bomb load of a B17. Beautiful aircraft. Building with wood made sense, metal/aluminium was scarce war resource that had to be shipped in through the U-Boats, and DeHavilland found they could use all the unemployed furniture makers as a skilled workforce!
Leigh Mallory was a proponent of the 'Big Wing', which meant getting all his aircraft formed up, all squadrons together, whilst 11 Group would send them by squadron. The Big Wing often ended up arriving late to the battles because it took so long to arrange all the aircraft.
11 Group of the RAF was responsible for London and the south-east whereas Leigh-Malory was commander of 12 Group in the Midlands.
@@markcopsey4729 Sort of. No. 12 Group, particularly out of Duxford, was also detailed to protect 11 Group's airfields such as Biggin Hill while the resident squadrons were tasked with meeting the raids. In this, they sometimes failed for various reasons and considerable rancour developed. There is a part in the Battle of Britain film where Park is laying into Leigh-Mallory in the presence of Dowding on this very subject.
Most people have probably already recommended this, but "The 13 Hours that Saved Britain" is probably the best video for an understanding of the Battle of Britain as it takes you through it in good detail with people who lived through it.
Douglas Bader, seen in the spitfire, was a ww2 flying ace credited with over 20 kills. His is a remarkable story he lost part of both legs in a flying accident in the early 1930s and flew in ww2 with two artificial legs.
Douglas Bader, flew the Spitfire with tin legs. There is a movie about him called "Reach for the Sky". I think you would enjoy it.
Bombers tend to be slower then fighters. What he was talking about with the throttle was that escort fighters had to fly more slowly as not to leave the bombers behind - and going slower uses more fuel since you're in the air for a longer time (and certain types of engines have preferred speeds, with fighters usually being designed to be more fuel efficient at higher speeds).
The spitfire was named after the daughter of the manufacturer's chairman. The Spitfire's name is often assumed to derive from its ferocious firing capabilities. Sir Robert McLean's pet name for his young daughter, Ann, who he called his little spitfire, tomboys were called spitfires in those days
Those “jets” on the engine are the exhaust pipes for the piston engine that spins the propeller! They are using the force of the exhaust as extra thrust by angling the exhaust pipes to the rear! Ingenious!
Wood is an amazing material. I cite the Mosquito as proof.
Cabinet Makers of very high end furniture became reserved occupations.
They did Not let these skilled craftsmen be drafted for the infantry.
I came here to say this, one of the fastest planes of world war two was the Mosquito, known as the wooden wonder. The iconic American plane would have to be the Mustang a long range fighter that could escort the bombers over Berlin.
You should look up World War 2's Wooden Wonder, the de Havilland Mosquito. My favourite aircraft of the period after the Spitfire, a very successful design. Light and fast it was a high speed bomber, radar equipped night fighter, Fighter Bomber, and more.
We've missed you so much SoGal but what a comeback with the Spitfire!
Douglas Bader who you saw climbing into the plane with some difficulty, had lost both legs in 1931 in a plane crash, but still became a famous fighter pilot in the war, during a raid over Germany he had to bail out and was taken prisoner, and sent to a prison camp, He made several escape attempts, and he eventually ended up in Colditz till the war ended in 1945.
The main benefit of radar was to give early warning. It meant that the RAF did not have to waste fuel by being airborne looking for the enemy they could be guided to the enemy from the ground. When you do your battle of Britain videos it will most likely be referenced. What happened was the radar stations would plot the enemy planes and inform fighter command who would then notify the relevant group. The group controllers would then scramble the relevant squadrons to intercept the enemy planes hopefully before they could drop their bombs. One more thing about Douglas Badar not having legs was that when he was eventually shot down his prosthetic leg became jammed under the rudder peddle and he was trapped. He undid his leg and rolled his plane and parachuted to the ground. The germans allowed a spare leg to be flown to the prison camp he was in and he tried escaping and eventually ended up in Colditz until Germany surrendered. Great video and reaction.
As others have suggested, definitely look into the Wooden Wonder - the Mosquito, incredibly modern despite being made of wood, very much a multirole aircraft - it was also essentially stealth. Wood is also easier to repair than steel
At 7:33 that was Douglas Bader getting into the Spitfire. He lost both his legs in a pre-war aircraft accident. He went on to continue flying and winning dogfights during WWII with artificial legs. Hence why he looks like a puppet getting into the Spitfire... he has artificial legs. Check out the 1956 biopic film "Reach For the Sky", starring Kenneth More as Douglas Bader. Good film and gives a good (but probably 'elaborated') biography of Bader.
Negative G-force is what you experience when accelerating downward faster than acceleration due to gravity, like on a roller coaster or when diving steeply in a plane. The net force on your body switches direction and you feel as though you're being pulled upward instead of down.
The problem for the Spitfire was that the Rolls-Royce Merlin used an updraught carburetor that allowed fuel starvation and power loss under negative G-force. Miss Shilling's orifice was a temporary fix until they could re-design it. The Messerschmitt didn't have that problem since its engine was fuel injected.
Pleased to see that you've recovered from your bout of Covid-19. The most memorable American fighter plane that I can think of was the P-51 Mustang - also known as the 'Tankbuster' - a formidable aircraft in its own right. The "Big Wings" that were refered to in this video reference a large collective group of fighters to attack German bomber formations; the brainchild of Trafford Leigh-Mallory - & subsequently, Douglas Bader (the pilot who awkwardly got into that Spitfire cockpit - having no lower limbs, due to a flying accident back in 1931). The 'Big Wing' concept was never really endorsed fully, because it took so long to amass 40-50 aircraft, & by the time the formation was made, the German aircraft were on their way home, with lower losses than anticipated for the Luftwaffe. My Grandfather flew Hurricanes in WWII, & considered Leigh-Mallory as a bit of a prat - arrogant & dismissive of those under his command. The real (commanding) heroes of the Battle of Britain were Air Chief Marshall Dowding, & his Air marshall Keith Park - Leigh Mallory's opposite number - both accountable to Dowding. Park was a New Zealand born pilot, who joined the RAF, & was much admired, along with Dowding - it took over forty five years for Dowding's efforts in the Battle Of Britain to be fully recognised - a statue of him was erected in London in late 1988; long overdue. Looking forward to part III.
@ Andrew T = "Tankbuster" ???? How did you arrive at that conclusion ????
Majority of E.T.O (England) based P.51's flew with the 8th Air Force as Bomber Force protection
Even when finished, "IF" they dove down to the deck, 6 x 0.50cals WILL NOT kill ANY "Tank"
Some 9th DID carry pair/bombs, but 9th converted to P.47 Thunderbolts
The USAAF in general NEVER had a "dedicated tankbuster" so you've been reading childish books.
You're right & correct tho', in assuming it was THE most memorable U.S fighter a/c IN EUROPE
However, out in the Pacific (arguably), that laurel would go to the F.6F Hellcat**
**(over 4,000+ of the 6,000+ Japanese planes shot down in WW.II, were by Grumman Hellcats.
I would second the P-51 as the most iconic US aircraft.
@@BlameThande along with the redoubtable P-47 Thunderbolt 👍
You are thinking of Private Walker, the spiv in Dad's Army.
I so miss the Airshows we used to have at our local airfield. We used to get Spitfires, Hurricanes and Messerschmitts doing mock dogfights. Sadly because of the accident that happened in 2015 when tragically 11 people were killed, there are no more shows.
The Dad’s Army character you were thinking of was the black market spiv Private Walker, played by the late James Beck.
The guy on the right with the model spitfire was Douglas Bader, a famous pilot who had lost his legs in an accident before the war, but who went on to be a leader of spitfire squadrons. He was eventually shot down, leaving one of his tin legs behind in his plane, but a replacement was dropped by parasute. He tried several times to escape from German
prison camps, ending up in Colditz Castle high security , still they had to take his false legs off him to keep him in.
The thing with wooden planes like the Hurricane was that they could take a lot of damage from bullets etc & still fly,
also they could be more easily & quickly repaired. The US iconic plane would be the Mustang, which improved when it was given the same Rolls Royce Merlin engines that the Spitfire had. He says big-wings not big planes. He meant sending a large number of aircraft up together, several squadrons in formation, like a 'big wing'. The battle of Britain when German planes attacked the RAF airfields & factories was through the summer & autumn of 1940. When this did not work they then began the heavy bombing of London & many other cities. This 'Blitz' lasted from September 1940
through to February-March 1941, with bombing raids every night. London was heavily damaged, but so were Hull, Liverpool, Portsmouth & many other places. The centre of Coventry was almost obliterated in one of a series of attacks deliberately aimed at cultural/historic sites, which included York.
Hi Sarah hope you are fully recovered. You mentioned that you thought the battle of Britain was more short term , there is a good documentary called 24 hours to save Britain, already covered by a few of my Second favourite American TH-camrs 😊 it's packed with lots of National treasures of the UK that you wouldn't recognize.
Edit , it's " the thirteen hours that saved Britain" even more short term than I remembered. If you watch it look out for Brian Sewell, possibly the only person in The UK posher than the Queen, god rest her soul.
To help you out -
1) The nozzles are not jets, it is just the exhaust from the engine like a car. But the exhaust gases come out a quite a high speed and so help the propulsion as described.
2) The wings fold up. In the context he meant was failure of a wing causing it to break or fold up. There were some Carrier based planes that had proper folding wings.
3) When he says to keep up with the bombers he meant to lower the speed to match that of the top speed of the bombers.
4) Radar multiplied the advantage because it meant that crews and planes could be rested and repaired as it reduced the need to fly patrols resulting in more planes being available when actually needed. You knew from where and when the enemy were coming.
Hope this helps. :)
The iconic, elite plane of the Army Air Corps in WWII was the P-51 Mustang. An absolutely amazing piece of engineering. Consider that from the moment the first engineer pressed pencil to blueprint (they used both back then), the first prototype flew precisely 6 weeks later. From memory, production of the Mustang was sped up because it used the same Merlin engine of the Spitfire. With a number of different machines that helped to win WWII, the British genius of design got married to the American genius for mass production. The machine that Alan Turing built to break the Enigma code was mass produced for the first time by the Americans. In the conflict in the Pacific America started the war with the heavily armored but underpowered F4 Wildcat. Thankfully for the Americans a Japanese Zero crashed almost intact on one of the Aleutian Islands. The wreck was recovered, repaired and sent to California and flight tested the hell out of it. Using the information gleaned from the Zero, Grumman made improvements to the Wildcat design, including adding a supercharger and rolled out the F-6 Hellcat. It retained the rugged and well armored features but was the first plane that could outfly the Zero.
One of the pilots they interviewed there was Douglas Bader. Bader lost both legs in a flying accident before the war. Because the RAF was so short of pilots at the start of the war he was allowed to fly with "tin" legs. When he was shot down later on the only reason he survived was because after his foot got stuck in his rudder pedals he was able to take off the false lag and bail out. Later when he kept trying to escape the Germans confiscated his legs to stop him from escaping!!
When they were talking about the 'big wings', NB 'wing' also means a group of aircraft larger than a squadron (or several squadrons grouped together), not the actual wings of the aircraft.
Welcome back! My wife and I had Covid 2 weeks ago and we are still feeling exhaustion and have a residual cough. I love your channel. G refers to the force exerted by gravity. Like an ice skater spinning, the force exerted by turning around an arc increases with speed and also increases as the radius of the turn decreases. You can feel this force if you go around a turn very fast in a car. If the force is twice the force of gravity, it is called 2G's of force. As far as radar goes, the ability to detect where the German planes were coming from and the direction they were going, enabled the British to direct their fighter force so that it seemed like they had many more planes defending than were actually there. Thus multiplying the apparent number of planes. Great questions, keep up the good work.
Douglas Bader had no legs after he lost them in a flying accident, that is why he got in to the Spitfire like that.
Look up De Havilland, the Designer of the Wooden Wonder. It contributed such alot ,better known as the Mosquito . One of the best planes of WW2 .
When Bader was shot down over France he was trapped in the plane by his legs he managed to undo the straps and bail out .when the Germans got to him they found a pilot sitting with no legs calmly smoking a cigarette .The Germans sent a message to the R.A.F asking them to send replacement legs the R.A.F dropped the new legs at a pre arranged airfield .weeks later Bader attempted to escape for the first of many times so they took his legs off him again.
theses are the people who were there telling the story in their own words. it is a privilege to hear them.
All three - the interviewer was one of the few as well - Raymond Baxter.
After loosing both legs in an aircraft accident trying to impress his future wife, Bader was a brilliant tactician and he founded the tactic to attack from above with the sun behind you to give his men and aircraft the advantage at the start of combat. An obstinate man, he would argue the point with his superiors for supplies (for the aircraft), uniforms, pilots etc etc.. If he didn't get what he wanted he would (metaphorically) stamp his foot till he got what he wanted. He learnt to play golf to the highest standards whilst recovering from having both legs taken off and escaped from EVERY camp the Germans interred him in except Colditz. The movie Reach For The Sky was made about his life and starred English actor Kenneth More.
What the guy meant by "radar multiplies our squadrons" is that radar is a technology which is known in military circles as a force multiplier. Force multipliers are technologies, weapons, vehicles, intel assets, whatever, that allows your units to fight as effectively as a greater number of units with similar training but without that force multiplier tech.
With radar in particular, at this time in history securing of airspace was primarily done via fighter patrols. Maintaining a constant patrol in the air meant that in the event the enemy showed up, you would already have fighters in the sky that would hopefully run into the enemy and intercept them. Of course, to protect the airspace of an entire country, even one as small as britain, would require an enormous number of planes and pilots. As many as you would think it would take, it would actually take 3x as many as that because planes cant be in the sky 24/7, they need to be refueled and rearmed, have damage repaired, and have maintenance performed. Pilots have to eat, sleep, etc. This means that you can only employ ALL of your strength at once for a very short interval, less than a day, before planes and pilots start wearing out and needing to land, so instead you do like a factory and only employ part of your forces at a time, working a shift, and then they go home to sleep, repair, etc while another squadron takes their place to begin their own shift.
Now, this means that you have choice, you can either invest in a truly enormous number of aircraft and pilots at staggering cost, or you can have major holes in your defense. When radar came in this changed drastically.
Suddenly, you no longer needed to rely on air patrols actually spotting the enemy for defense, or for reports of attacks to filter their way down to the pilots and hope they could catch the enemy as they went home having already hit their target. Now you could see EXACTLY where the enemy was, and in what numbers. And radar didnt need to land to refuel, it didnt need to be taken offline to change the operator, and if you built your radars so they overlapped you could even take one offline for repairs without creating a hole in your defense. Radar operators could see the enemy squadrons gathering over france and get squadrons airborne when they were needed, and then could communicate directly with fighter command about the exact location, heading, speed, and altitude of the enemy, who would then in turn be able to issue orders to their own squadrons to vector them in for intercept. No longer would the enemy show up by surprise, and no longer would the enemy be able to slip past the defending fighters without being seen. As a result, even though the luftwaffe outnumbered the brits many times over, the brits were able to fight them to a standstill and eventually win the battle of britain. Radar allowed the RAF's fighters to fight as effectively as a fighter force several times larger without radar, and thus it's a force multiplier.
The first American WW2 fighter that comes to mind for me is the Lockheed P-51 'Mustang'. The first British jet fighter was the Gloster Meteor. The first German one was the Messerschmitt Me 262. By contrast, the V2 was a ballistic missile. Messerschmitt also made the Me 163 which was basically just a rocket powered plane. I once saw a documentary about a Royal Navy test pilot who flew one after the war. He said that it was the scariest thing he'd ever flown.
North American Aviation Mustang P-51B/C/D. Lockheed P-38F/J/L/M Lightning.
The P51 was built to a British order at the beginning of the war. Aerodynamically it was very advanced but let down by its engine.
After receiving a number of the planes the British decided to remove the Allison engine and replace it with a Rolls Royce Merlin.
The performance was transformed and it was probably the best allied fighter. The name “Mustang” was given by the British. The Americans preferred P51.
@@oldman1734 P-51and P-51A were named Apache.
Its design was a North American counter-proposal for the British request for production of P-40s.
Well he should know, nobody in the world has flown more types of aircraft than him! Also no one has performed more carrier take-offs and landings. Btw, his name was Capt Eric "Winkle" Brown.
@@charlie44266 There was also a ground attack version known as the A-36
"In the office" is slang for being clocked in at work. It was vague due to armaments factory workers having to be quiet about where they worked (due to spies).
I believe in flying terms being "in the office" was slang for having your focus on the instruments inside the plane and not paying attention to the outside environment. A fatal mistake sometimes.
His mention of radar being a multiplier, I think he meant was a 'force muliplier.' Meaning you have a bit of kit that allows your current fighting assets to be far more effective at their job than they could be without it.
12:00 As an engineer myself, I was always taught that above all, engineering is about compromise. To improve one thing, you have to make another thing worse. The key is finding the best middle-ground, where you get as close to your intended goal as possible, without compromising any one thing too much.
When an aircraft is flying, the wing is lifting the weight of the airplane, which causes the wing to bend upward (as seen in the cockpit) at the wingtips. This puts the skin on the bottom of the wing in tension and the top of the wing in compression. If bullet strikes the wing the side in tension is more likely to fail, causing the wing tip to fold over rest of the wing (look at air to air combat movies, when the wing breaks the tip goes up and over) Thats why the pilots say "the wing folds up".
A bullet hitting a Hurricane passes easily through two fabric skins and is unlikely to hit a wooden or aluminum skin support - the plane still flies. If the same type bullet strike an aluminum skin if is more likely to cause a serious failure since metal stressed skin carry more of the load in the skin. The Hurricane depended on wooden structure for strength. The Spitfire depended on its thin aluminum skin for strength. Most airframes today are more like the Spitfire, a type of construction called "monocoque", pioneered in Formula 1 chassis.
As well as getting a small amount of thrust from the exhaust, thrust was also obtained through the radiator box under the wing. This was gained through a phenomenon known as the Meredith Effect. The Mustang also exploited this.
0:30 the "slow" prop is just an artifact of the way cameras work -- strobe effect. It's possible to align the frame rate with the prop and make it look like it's not moving at all. Actual pilot's-eye view is just a blur.
27:40 he's not talking about big planes, he's talking about "big wings" - large formations of fighters.
The Mustang developed out of the Spitfire, American producers radically redesigned the wing to make it easier to produce and gave the wing a flat end, they changed from the Rolls Royce engine to several different American engines.
A 109 crashed on the Island early on, and the Aeronautical recovery team were keen to recover it. The pilot walked into the road, to the bemusement of a passing lorry driver who stopped. Even more amusing was the pilot asked the driver to take him to the Blacksmiths Arms just down the road. Which to the bewilderment of the locals seeing a german pilot at the bar while waiting for the police constable to turn up. He was served a couple of pints in that time. Our treatment of POW's was very different to the German side. When asked how he knew about the pub,mhe said he had been a loner steward and often came to the Island when in Southampton. In the mean time souvenir hunters had turn up and removed most of the cockpit fittings, but to the amazement of the recovery team, the engine had been completely removed and had disappeared, no one to this day knows what happened to it. The threats or arrest did not shade any light.
Fun fact. The Germans made a manned version of the V1 rocket. The pilots were told that they could eject once over the target, but were often welded into the cockpit.
Although women weren't permitted active combat duties, they did deliver finished planes to front line airfields, especially in Kent (southeast England) where the majority of fighting took place being only about 21 miles from france. 🇬🇧🇺🇸💜
Arguably the most iconic American fighter plan of WW2 was the North American P51 Mustang, initially powered by the Rolls Royce Merlin engine as were four of the most iconic British plans of WW2 - Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, Avro Lancaster and the DeHavilan Mosquito.
A huge contribution by Rolls Royce.
19:47 the comment with regards to increasing the British forces by the use of RADAR was saying that because RADAR was monitoring the skies you didn't need to have standing patrols of planes flying about along the coastline looking for incoming enemy planes to shoot down.
This allowed pilots to spend more time on the ground resting, wore out their aircraft more slowly (also reducing the required maintenance on them), and the right number of British planes could be dispatched to deal with each incoming group of bombers rather than patrols having to be sent piecemeal into the fight as they caught up with the bombers.
G is the pull of gravity. 1G is essentially standing still on the ground (though depending on altitude it can vary, but not by much relatively speaking). If you accelerate away from the ground (or more precisely the center of the gravitational pull of the Earth, which is the dominant gravity we experience on Earth) then you feel the effects of gravity more and get pulled backwards. If you accelerate towards the ground then you're going along with gravity (and if you're going fast enough you become effectively weightless as you're falling towards the Earth faster then gravity is pulling you) and this is called Negative G. Negative G can cause fluids to not react in the same way if not pressurised, causing engine cutouts (and doesn't happen to us due to our bodies being pressurised).
Those things you thought were little jets are just the exhaust pipes from the engine. They realised that with the exhaust pipes angled backwards it actuarily made the plane 20 mph faster. The man getting in the plane Douglas Bader looked funny because he had artificial legs. He lost them when he was showing off doing aerobatics for his mates in a biplane and lost control and crashed. Despite loosing his legs when he recovered he proved he could still fly and ended up commanding his own squadron and being quite an ace. During the war he was shot down and taken prisoner of war in Germany. When he bailed out of his plane his artificial legs got caught and he had to undo the straps and bail out without them. The British flew over enemy territory and dropped a spare set of legs with a note saying please deliver these to Douglas Bader's prison of war camp. There is a great movie about him called REACH FOR THE SKY. The V1 was powered by what they call a scram jet a kind of early rocket motor and the V2 was a rocket with a bomb in the nose cone of it. When the Americans captured the technology it allowed them to start there space race to the moon. The Spitfires originally had a carburettor like cars did at that time witch worked fine when the plane flew upright but would start to stall when the plane turned upside down or dove down to steeply. The Messerschmitt had fuel injection and could fly at greater angle or G forces with no problem. The British radar could see where and how many bombers were in what ever area and send the fighters to attack them instead of the spitfires having to patrol around trying to find the bombers.
13:17 If I remember correctly, the Spitfire's exhaust pipes generate roughly 60 lb worth of thrust.
The Mustang fighter and Flying Fortress bomber were probably the most iconic American aircraft of WW2
A very enjoyable reaction to an extremely interesting documentary.
Your ‘big wing’ question relates to a tactic of which Douglas Bader was an exponent, this was where a number of fighter squadrons, probably at least three, formed up to attack a large Luftwaffe formation en masse, the issue with this tactic was the amount of time it took for all these aircraft to form up initially.
Really good analysis of the key performance differences between the Spitfire and Me-109, additionally the Hurricane was easier to patch up and return to battle as its construction was more simple than the Spitfire.
The British air defence system at the time was the best in the world, radar stations (known as Chain Home) mounted at high points on the South Coast looked across the English Channel and identified approaching formations of enemy aircraft, once these aircraft had passed over the radar stations the Royal Observer Corps tracked their progress from the ground, all the time feeding back information to headquarters to allow for timely interceptions.
It’s great to have all these points explained by Bob Stanford-Tuck (29 kills) and Douglas Bader (22 kills). Douglas Bader is undoubtedly the most famous RAF fighter pilot of WW2 and his life is definitely deserving of his very own Sogal reaction!
Talk of wings folding back refers to the pilot pushing the aircraft through such a hard manoeuvre that the wings break off.
Nice to see you well.
Positive G is when your blood rushes from the head to the legs and it may cause the pilot to black out, while negative G is when the blood rushes to ones head and it may cause a pilot to red out.
The G number indicates how many times one's weight is felt due to the centrifugal forces developed when an aircraft makes turns.
Modern day fighters like the F-16 usually go from +9G to -3G, also the pilots wear special anti G suits that get filled with air so that they can put pressure on the lower extremities of the body in order to restrict blood accumulation there and avoid getting a blackout.
Negative G is not a desirable situation, it happens but positive G is the most usual situation the pilots find themselves during a dogfight. A negative G maneuver is a last ditch way to get away from harms way.
This is actual video from Greek F-16s intercepting Turkish F-16s that violated Greek airspace over the Aegean sea and engaging in mock dogfights (there were about 11000 violations of Greek airspace by Turkish aircraft in 2022 alone):
th-cam.com/video/5O8zzkRQ22k/w-d-xo.html
The pilot breathing is indicative of the high G forces during the dogfight.
As far as WW2 jet aircraft the Me 262 was operational with the German air force, although the first prototype jets were the He178 and the first allied WW2 jets were the Gloster Meteor. These are videos of these aircraft:
th-cam.com/video/1wbSAt0FPUs/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/wFJ2HpJ1DTM/w-d-xo.html
And Me262s in action during WW2:
th-cam.com/video/aReAJ4t_ShU/w-d-xo.html
The Schneider Trophy races were run as a timed run against the clock around a circular or triangular course. The Supermarine planes won the annual/biannual race three times in succession thereby winning the trophy outright.
The Hurricane was tough. Cannon fire often passed right through the canvas skin. They were easy to patch and repair.
Nearly forgot, also the birth place and were Mitchell the designer went to school (Hanley High School). Served as apprentice at a railway engine works.
Hi Sarah, very glad to see you back, To learn more about Douglas Bader, see movie "Reach for the Sky", it's his story, also there is an episode of this is your life with Bader as the recipient.
With radar the RAF did not have to have planes in the air all the time, only when a raid was detected did the fighters have to take off therefore they where up and ready with fully armed and fully fueled.
I think you should watch the 1969 movie "Battle of Britain".
It is a dramatisation of events, but I think it will help answer quite a few of your questions.
At one point (about 27 min mark) the person was referring to "Big Wings".
This was an idea of bringing multiple squadrons together and coordinating them as a single huge unit.
Their problem was that for a while, it took so long to coordinate, that when they were ready that German attack was over. But once they ironed out the wrinkles, it became a devastating strategy.
Lastly, in this same segment they mentioned Bader. This was Douglas Bader, one of Britain's most famous fighter ace's. He lost both his legs in an air crash in 1931. He relearned to both walk and fly using prosthetic legs (being an ornery, stubborn git).
There is also a movie about him, called "Reach for the sky".
Hi, Sarah, that was very interesting. The V2 was a rocket. It was one of Hitler"s wonder weapons that was going to change the outcome of the war. Its development and manufacture would make an excellent subject to study more.
You commented about the wooden frame of the Hurricane, but probably the most amazing bomber of WW2 was the Mosquito, which was named “the wooden wonder” as it was made of plywood. It was too fast for the fighters to catch.
The spitfire didn't have jet assist. The engine was a Rolles Royce Merlin gasoline V 12. What you're seeing, 6 exhaust pipes on both sides turned to direct the exhaust rearward thus takiing advantage of the jet like thrust of the exhaust. This done on dragster and funny cars today
""the big ones" was talking about were the Big Wings. 11 Group fighters in the southeast region took off and formed squadrons (12 plane formations) before attacking the German fighters and bombers. Other groups took off and used their time to get into wing formations of 36 or 48 before attacking. Thats what the Big Wing was for to overwhelm the German defense by their numbers.
Today, there are no more Big Wing formations.A typical modern battle formation is four or two aircraft.
As a Brit. I would say you're iconic WWII fighter was The Mustang.
Wood is actually fine for airframes at low tolerance speeds. Its even okay at taking machine gun fire since the wooden beams have gaps in them so many bullets would just pierce the skin of the airframe and pass between the beams (and if any beams are hit its not a huge deal so long as not too many are hit as to lose structural integrity). And like you said - its cheap and light, easy to replace. Better to not be hit at all, and Hurricanes were very agile.
And,in the second World War Hurricanes shot down more enemy planes than the Spitfire
@@davidknowles3459 100%. Hurricanes are historically overlooked, though I think at the time people in the know valued them very highly.
Hey Love 🥰. They actually started cutting down, the iron fencing around peoples homes. You can walk around and see the railings that have been cut down today. ❤❤❤❤❤🤷♀️🙏🇬🇧🇺🇸🇬🇧🇺🇸
If you are wondering about wodden construction planes check out the British Mosquito... otherwise known as the "Whispering Death". Aside from the construction costs a wooden airframe is significantly lighter than a metal one, lighter weight = greater speed and acceleration which is what the twin engined Mosquito was built for.
Small correction, the 'Whispering Death' was the nickname given to the Bristol Beaufighter by the Japanese in Burma. This was due to the Beau's Bristol Hercules sleeve valve radial engines which had a much quieter and different exhaust sound than that from poppet valve engines such as the RR Merlin or P&W R-2800 resulting in them often arriving on target without them being heard approaching. Agree with what you say about the Mossie 😀
Prop planes can be divided into inline and radials. The jets were the ME 262 and Gloster meteor. The US made a conscious decision to build prop planes which we could produce thousands rather than a few hundred jets.
The "Big Wing" was a strategy of putting huge numbers of British planes in the air. Sometimes up to 1000 aircraft.
Bombers were far slower than fighters so the most economic speed for fighters was too high to keep in contact with the bombers that meant they flew slowly and wasted fuel by coasting along with their charges at poor throttle settings. The chap who strangely lifted his leg into the fighter was Douglas Bader. He had lost both legs before the war but still carried on as a fighter pilot with tin legs! Germany never realised British war production went to a 3 shift 24 hour schedule which Germany never did and this was hidden from them, so we were producing many more armaments than they realised. The problem was we had lots more planes than pilots!
Also look up Eric "Winkle" Brown. Pilot and test pilot, flew more, different types, of airplane than anyone else, a record that is highly unlikely to ever be broken.
Radar was a force multiplier because we didn't have to keep constant patrols in case we were attacked
Not sure if someone has mentioned radar to you yet but radar was where we had radar antennas all around the coast. So basically we new the Germans were coming as soon as their planes left the ground in France. It saved a lot of lives because it gave time for people to go underground for safety as well as get our planes up in time.
The guy getting in the Spitfire, with a stiff led. Was Douglas Barder. He has hid leg blown off while flying. You really need to check this Man out. ❤❤❤👍🙏🇬🇧🇺🇸🇬🇧🇺🇸🙏🇺🇸
The tale of Mitchell who designed the plane is a story worth telling.
13:00 I suspect this has more to do with turbulence than with actual thrust. If you shoot the exhaust gasses out sideways, it creates a massive amount of turbulence around the nose of the aircraft, which increases the drag. If you aim the exhaust pipes backwards, the exhaust gasses can merge smoothly with the airflow.
The American equivalent was the Mustang P51. When they came over during WW2 the Americans were in awe at the power of the Rolls Royce Merlin engine and had them fitted in the Mustangs making them a formidable fighter plane.
Radar as force multiplication... radar allowed the British to know exactly where the German planes were, what direction they were headed and their height. So instead of flying around looking for them they knew exactly where to position thier fighters so instead of one squadron luckily spotting the enemy formation all squadrons could converge and coordinate thier attacks thereby multiplying the amount of force they exterted on the enemy. In other areas of war it is similar to adding a mchine gun crew to an infantry squad, the machine gun adds extra firepower and thereby multiplying the possible effectiveness of an infantry squad.
You would be surprised at the stresses you can create on a wing at even relatively low speeds of 200 m/ph. It wasnt unheard of that wings of wooden planes would overload and then "fold" under the load. The spitfire's design didn't really allow that to happen, it was an incredibly robust airframe.
7:34 Someone has already commented about Douglas Bader who, along with John "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham were our boyhood heroes.
In the simplest of terms, negative G's refers to gravity. Gravity places pressure on the body which you don't normally think about (around 50lbs per square inch). However, in an aircrft, you are fighting the forces of gravity, so e.g. when a plane is in a fast climb or turm, you're fighting against the downward pull of gravity, and therefore your body is getting heavier, which is actually draining the blood from your brain, causing blackout at a certain point. On the other hand, if your plane is in a steep dive, you're adding to the downward pull of gravity to the point where it becomes negative - thus the term,, Negative G - which can also cause undesireable effects as it's forcing blood into the head. That's it as simple as I can make it.
The bit where he said radar multiplied the number of aircraft available basically meant that radar showed exactly where the enemy were, how many, speed and direction.
This meant the available aircraft could be used much more efficiently and didn't have to waste time or numbers locating the German aircraft. It was effectively like having more aircraft.
In contrast the Germans were working blind.
That Castle Bromwich factory now produces Jaguar Cars.
I`ve worked there.
Radar was a force multiplier inasmuch as you weren't wasting fuel, pilots and machine flying hours looking for the enemy in a vast sky, but instead you could direct them straight at the incoming raid, thus optimising your forces. In fact, it wasn't radar, it was the Dowding system of taking the raw information from radar, analysing it and then forwarding instructions to the fighter stations and then on to the individual airborne squadrons that made radar useful. The Germans knew about radar but didn't understand the Dowding system. As far as they were concerned there were almost always Spitfires and Hurricanes waiting for them on their raids.
Raymond Baxter is the only man to attempt to shoot down a rocket with a propeller plane. While flying his spitfire over France (I think) he witnessed the launch of a V2 and fired at it as it rose sadly he was unsuccessful.
I think he was quoted to be quite happy he missed; he wasn't confident his plane would have outrun the fireball of an exploding almost fully fueled V2.
The Hurricane, metal frame streamlined with wooden formers and stringers, canvas covered.
I am a generation X kid, and I am thrilled that you’re looking at aviation! It’s fun to watch you learn about something that I’ve been in love with since I was a little boy! Please look up the North American P 51 Mustang.
Sorry I'm so late to the game again. Love your reactions like these. If I had been here sooner I could have been the first to say the iconic American fighter of WW2 was the P-51 Mustang. I had a distant cousin (passed away last year at 90+) who owned a Mustang and flew it up into the early 2000's. Thanks for another excellent video...now to catch up with Part 3. It's always a joy watching you "learn"...and in turn I'm sure so many of us learn things we didn't know either. I'll have to do a Spitfire model soon.
Thanks!
With the Battle of Britain it was the first sustained, long term aerial campaign in world history. Germany’s advantages in that fight was a very experienced Air Force (Luftwaffe) that had seen combat for the better part of a decade. An interesting research tidbit is to look up the top scoring aces of WWII. Their kill totals are orders of magnitude higher than any Allied pilot. America’s top ace was Richard ‘Dick’ Bong with something like 41 or so kills. The Luftwaffe’s top ace was Erich ‘Bubi’ Hartmann with something like 352 kills or so. By looking at the totals you might be tempted to conclude that the Axis won the war. On a deeper dive, though, you learn that Allied top aces were rotated home to become trainers. The Axis top pilots had to go up again and again to stem the onslaught of the Allies. There even existed a Finnish triple ace. He shot down at least 5 planes when Finland was at war with Germany. He shot down another at least 5 when Finland fought with the Germans against Soviet Russia. Finland switched sides again to fight the Germans, he bagged another 5+ German planes. Shooting down 5 planes makes you an ace. Oddly enough you’d think on a theoretical, let’s say, 20 versus 20 aerial fight where, again, let’s just say, 20 planes on one side shot down 10 enemy planes, you might assume that those 10 kills would be evenly distributed amongst the 20 pilots on ‘your’ side….. and you’d be wrong. The vast majority of aerial kills always get notched by a minority of exceptionally gifted pilots while most pilots, regardless of their training, just fly around not contributing anything to actual kill totals. A small minority of your pilots do most of the killing. One of the most famous pioneers of aerial dogfighting tactics, German WWI pilot Oswald Boelke even wrote a book about aerial tactics. He came up with the idea of gathering all of your proven best pilots into a single squadron, allow them the individuality to paint their planes in whatever colors the pilot preferred, treat them like, practically, the rock stars they were and send them to the hottest spots where the action was heaviest. He spotted the talent of a young Manfred von Richthofen and recruited him into his “flying circus.” Richthofen painted his plane a blood red and is better known to History as the ‘Red Baron.’
There's a lot below about Douglas Bader (the legless pilot). If interested, there was a movie made about him called "Reach for the sky"
Reach for the sky. Film about Douglas Bader. You should check it out remarkable, man. After the war, he was tasked with visiting wounded troops to show them that losing a limb didn't mean the end of your life. He toured the UK and USA.
The p51 Mustang was the iconic US fighter of the war, though my favourite was the F6 Hellcat, the Messcherscmit 262 was the first Jet used in combat, the only other Jet in the war was the British Gloster Meteor, the German fighters used more fuel flying slow and staying with the bombers constantly throttling up and down.
Hi - 1, Explaining jet engines - Every gas, eg propane has a molar gas/volume constant of ~ 22 m3 so 1 mole of propane weighing 44g fills 22 meters cubed of space in natural state; so if you burn it you get two products CO2 and H2O(g) both have the same molar gas volume constant of 22 m3 so you get double the volume of gas on combustion. If you take that to Kerosene you get more volume of the same gases produced in a confined space, the produced gas leaves the combustion chamber with a force that is proportional to the amount of Kerosene being combusted in the dimensions of the combustion chamber. The more products produced in the combustion the faster the combustion products leave the chamber - (within reason because of combustion bi products that would cake the engine).
2, Explaining propeller aircraft - An internal combustion engine drives a wedge shaped blade that compresses the air passing over it as it turns and directs it over and under the aircraft, the faster the engine rev's, the faster the blade compresses air - directing more air under and over the aircraft s wings, the greater the thrust produced. 😘
I had no idea about the role Miss Shilling's orifice played in ww2. Fascinating fact.
Beatrice Shilling was a very capable engineer. As well as her role in the Spitfire story before the war she raced motorcycles at the Brooklands race track at Weybridge Surrey. At the end of the war she was part of the team of technical experts that followed the advance into Germany examining examples of captured German equipment. A most formidable lady who deserves to be better known to history.
Wiki: The Brewster F2A Buffalo is an American fighter aircraft which saw service early in World War II. Designed and built by the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation, it was one of the first U.S. monoplanes with an arrestor hook and other modifications for aircraft carriers: "In Defense Of The Worst Plane of WW2 - Brewster Buffalo"
If you want Jet engines, it was developed by Frank Whittle in 1928, he was also in the RAF. The engines in Hurricane and Spitfire was the Rolls Royce Merlin. The "Spirit of Esctasy" is the trophy that sits on the front of Rolls Royce cars, as a reminder of winning it.
And I 'think' the Italians made the first working jet engine, though not the airframe.
I remember seeing a film about Whittle developing the jet engine, can't remember what it was called though. To
Apart from the Hurricane, the Mosquito was also made out of wood. Wood is an ideal material firstly, when you are short of raw materials, secondly it's weight to strength dynamic is better than steel. Plus there is dynamic flexibility.
"Big Wing" - a large number of planes operating as a unit, rather that the hit and run tactics of the elusive squadrons.