Posted on 05/11/2016 3:48:47 AM PDT by Da_Shrimp
I know there are some Spitfire fans here, so I thought you might like this vid. Footage from 'The First of the Few' coupled with music from Public Service Broadcasting, an eccentric English band.
Hope you enjoy. They also did a live session at KEXP:
Ah yes, I was aware of that - and that's one of the sketches the actor playing Mitchell shows in the video.
Hand cranked landing gear indeed. Robert-Stanford Tuck's 'Fly for you Life' mentions that when he was testing Spits back in the 1930s - how difficult it was to maintain a smooth climb while pumping the undercart up.
I thought you were referring to the plane.
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“And here I thought that the post was about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOoiEbtf2w"
Looove that vid. :-)
I was.
Oops!
I read the first sentence and saw something about a band and thought I was wrong.
I was a sickly child and spent most of WWII eating from a tray that had a Spitfire printed on it.(I have no idea where my mother got it). I can still see it in my mind.
The Spitfire brings back lots of memories for me-—some good,some not so good.
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The Spitfire brings back lots of memories for me-some good,some not so good.
Sorry to hear some are not so good.
IIRC other than the P-51 the only other US aircraft to use the Merlin, in a production aircraft, was the P-40 in the F & L variants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_P-40_Warhawk#Variants_and_development_stages
Also recall that the P-51 started out with an Allison engine. The Mustang I or P-51A / A-36 was your basic dog over 15,000ft but excelled at the lower to medium altitudes. Both North American Aviation and the British has started to look at installing a Merlin to see what would happen to the Mustang. And the rest is history, eh?
As a side note what made the Merlin special was that it had a 2 stage mechanical supercharger. The US Allison engine did not. With no supercharger the P-40s and P-39 were dogs above 15,000 ft or so. The P-38 used Allison engines but they had turbo-superchargers. Hence the P-38s stellar performance at altitude.
The US aero engine that would be the equal of the Merlin in importance IMHO would have been the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 engine. Among notable aircraft powered by the R-2800 were the P-47 Thunderbolt,F6F Hellcat, F4U Corsair, A-26 Invader, P-61 Black Widow and C-46 Commando. The Grumman F7F and F8F also used the R-2800 but did not see service in WW-II.
FWIW :-)
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Thanks for the link
Back to work I go:-(
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Back in the late 60’s Triumph had adds in some US magazines featuring a Triumph Spitifre in camo!
A quick Google or Bing search will turn up the add as well as several other variants FWIW
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Back in the late 60’s Triumph had adds in some US magazines featuring a Triumph Spitifre in camo!
A quick Google or Bing search will turn up the add as well as several other variants FWIW
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
If I remember correctly the USAAF used modified Spitfires for long range reconnaissance using drop tanks. In fact they were able to fly over Berlin from the UK.
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