Bozon

CHEERS! Kicked my son off of the computer. Damn internet can’t download any slower…

THIS FRIDAY?!

25 rounds is almost 25 seconds of continuous firing - that is a lot. From some accounts of anti-shipping sorties with the Banff strike wing, I don’t recall any that even managed to fire 20. I didn’t do a systematic study, but this seems to suggest that you can only get a few seconds of firing per run, and they were not keen on doing too many strafing runs. RPs proved to be much more efficient in anti-shipping. With rockets you front load all your firepower in a volley of 8 rockets, then get the **** out of the way, so more mosquitoes can salvo their rockets within the shortest possible time span. Not so with the long strafing runs of the BFG, which is why in mixed formations they were always timed to attack after the RP mosquitoes. The main advantage of the BFG was that unlike the RPs that spread, it was possible to accurately target specific locations in the ship. Despite their small numbers, the FB.XVIIIs saw a lot of action and were valued in Coastal Command.

I would love to have some of Marcel Bloch’s creations! I think that Mystere IVA saw action with the Israeli air force during the Suez Crisis “operation Kadesh”, along side the Ouragan. During the “6 days war” Israel had Super Mystere B.2 (aka “Sambad”) - which was an excellent aircraft and a good match to the Mig-19 - I would really like to have SMB2 in DCS. And of course the crown jewel - the Mirage IIIc!

Did the Crusader “the last gun fighter” get any actual gun kills? I know it had lots of issues with its guns jamming when fired under G loads. The irony…

Recent Friday news said this will be in the store, but I can’t see it yet. Is the release of the campaign delayed?

I agree about the “J”, it goes well with the coming F-8 and A-6. However, we must have an “E” - easily the most produced model, served in many air forces and conflicts around the world and had the largest number of aerial victories. I would love to have both, even if that means 2 modules.

Over Northern Europe during June/July it is not entirely dark anyway. I posted the story of a Mosquito pilots that shot down a FW-190A8 and damaged another over Normandy at 23:00 at night, after visually spotting and identifying 5 of them from 1.5 miles against what he described as “bright sunset” (at 23:00…). https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/260567-less-famous-mosquito-stories/?do=findComment&comment=4646069

I taxi the 47 with tail locked most of the time. I unlock it only for tight circles. In DCS of course.

No no no, it needs to be over-the-top, more like this: but with more big gold $ symbols and a giant boom box.

Thanks for the screenshot- I can now read it clearly. What the heck is F5 on the list “Change cabin equipment”? Sounds like redecoration of the cabin - a new floor mattress and a Moose head above the fireplace maybe? Edit: After careful consideration, I kindly ask ED to allow fuzzy dice hanging from the ceiling, leopard skin cover for the seats, and a plastic Jesus on the dashboard next to the gunsight.

Post war mosquitoes carried a torpedo. It was not required during the war. A higher bomb load does not give you much if you get shot down. JU88 night bombing of Britain was almost completely stopped because of Mosquito night fighters. No Ju88 was even close to a late war mosquito night fighter (the most numerous model was NF.30). The biggest problem that late NF mosquitoes faced was that they were too successful - the Luftwaffe could not sustain its bomber losses and stopped raiding Britain at night. For this reason Beaufighters NFs had more kills that Mosquito NFs even though the latter were considered as much better and completely replaced the Beaus in that role. When a plane is good it gets kills, when a plane is superior it gets none because no one will face it.

If by P effect you mean what I think you mean (induced yaw by the “down” moving half of the prop disc producing more pull than the “up” going half) then you are wrong. This has near zero effect when the speed is as slow as taxi speed.

Well, I learned a new word today.

Ohhhhh this looks so good…

In “terror in the starboard seat” RCAF 418 sq. definitely had “personal” planes, but that was not rigid. On one mission MacIntosh mentions specifically that they took a different plane because “their” usual plane was having a major engine overhaul, and also their usual crew chief Hal was not there to great them because he went with the plane. On another occasion he mentions a banter between pilots where one of them bragging that his plane is the fastest in the squadron, which makes little sense unless he had “his” plane. I am sure there are more indications in that books for crews usually flying specific planes.

Too bad, if I could choose between the two, I’d rather have the Typhoon. It was a much more significant aircraft in the war, and was much more successful than the credit it gets.

I thank you for your opinion of my opinion.

Pilots/crews did a lot more significant unofficial modifications to their planes than this. Robert Johnson famously stated that his chief made modifications that allowed Johnson to over boost his P-47 to 70” MAP. Planes back then were hand made and each had its own “character”. I remember a Mirage III pilot that said even these jets were still individuals and he had his preferred tail number, even though this was not “his” plane like in WWII where pilots usually flew the same plane and had the same ground crew (not always, it didn’t work like that in US Navy). The “3G” shouldn’t be taken too literally. The elevator got progressively stiffer but did not peg at 3G. What the ADFU reporter meant was probably that above 3G the stick was uncomfortably stiff and maybe the pilot needed 2 hands to pull harder. Still, if the pilot felt like ADFU that this limits his ability to maneuver in combat I believe (let me stress again, just my opinion since this is may be a too minor a detail to be mentioned in books) he would have adjusted it.

That is just an opinion because it is so easy to adjust, that I cant imagine a pilot not asking his crew chief to do it if he didn’t like it. This is not even a “modification” to the plane - more like one step above adjusting the friction on the throttle.

That inertia weight can be seen in this vid by Kermit Cam. It is a simple mass at the end of a level that is connected to one of the control cables pulleys. When you pull G the weight increases and the lever applies a greater torque on the pulley in a direction that is the same as when the pilot is pushing the control column forwards. I am pretty sure that the size of the mass was customizable and that pilots adjusted it to their liking. Starting at 11:47 : The tour is nice, though Kermit's mosquito looks as if a hobo was living in it... Mosquitoes did have a high rate of structural failures. This was the greatest problem of wood as a construction material - not that it was weak, it was not, on average, but: 1. The variance of structural strength was large. 2. The properties of the wood vary with treatment and environment conditions. The result of #1 is that while the average mosquito was very strong, the wide distribution of strengths meant that some fraction of the population was prone to failure (while some were exceedingly resilient). Metals on the other hand are much more predictable in their properties and much easier to manufacture to a very tight specification. Take the same beam cut and carved from two different trees in different forests and treated by different sawmills, and the difference in their properties (mass density, stiffness, ability to flex without breaking, etc) can be quite different. I think I already mentions in some thread here that the mass density of Balsa may vary by as much as a factor of 6! Such things make it extremely difficult to manufacture planes with the exact same qualities to match a spec. The result of #2 is that the climate and how the aircraft was treated added to the variance of #1 even more, increasing the fraction of the population that is likely to fail. Heck, even the glue will behave differently at different conditions. Again, the average mosquito had no problems, but a tail of the distribution was at a high risk and it was not easy to tell where your plane is on this distribution, and thus how many G's you may pull without snapping. The official limits would tend to include the weakest of the distribution, so most air frames could go well beyond the limit - but it is a gamble. The Israeli mosquitoes had a high rate of structural failures - these were air frames that were already a few years old and arrived from different places over the world, so some had their wood at a different condition than others. Then the Mediterranean sun dried and deformed the wood even more, and one could no longer put a reliable limit on the stresses they could take.

Yes, the props are slightly forwards relative to the fuselage, this is easier to notice when observing directly from above. A two-stage charger is not necessarily better than a single stage, as long as the single stage is able to maintain the required boost. The fighters and fighter bombers did not operate at 30k, so they did not need it - especially the FB.VI that rarely got over 10k. The PR and bombers did fly high. Later NF models like the NF.30 also used 2-stage Merlins.

The two-stage chargers Merlins were installed a little more forward of the wing than the single stage Merlins. As a result, there was room for a 6th exhaust stub. The variants with a single stage Merlin had 5 stubs because the 6th was thought to be too close to the wind leading edge and may damage it. Merlins 21, 23 & 25 used in the FB.VI were single stage, hence 5 stubs.

The casing if the bomb is more than just an envelope to hold the explosives inside. If the bomb has a delayed fuse it must be able to withstand the impact with the ground and not get completely mangled. The weight of the casing also includes the shrapnel that the bomb will produce, so a high capacity bombs produces a bigger bang, a stronger blast wave, but less shrapnel mass than a lower capacity bomb of the same total mass. So, it is a matter of a balance between the damage of blast and shrapnel.

Would you like to see 4000 lbs explode in slo-mo?