You learn something new every day.

[leccyflyer]

That's been a bit of a slogan for me for decades - I like to learn something new every day, even if it's just a wee snippet picked up from a magazine article or these days the internet, which doesn't actually impact anything but which gives the pleasure of learning something new. One particular example this morning gave me the idea of starting a thread here to share such things with like minded folk. Assuming there are such like minded folk and it's not just me. 🙂

 

As a very important part of my aeromodelling hobby, I've got a long term interest in aviation history, especially military aviation history and especially especially military aviation history in the late 1930s -1940's.  In fact it's a bit of an obsession, fed by a decent library of reference books. It's a running joke with colleagues that my most thumbed book is "Shoelaces of the Luftwaffe, 1939-45, Volume 1".

 

This morning I learned something completely new to me. I'd always thought the the RAF issued Mae West style life jacket was yellow -and assumed that was the case to aid seeing ditched pilots as they floated about in the oggin. I knew that slightly later lifejackets were often orange in colour. What I didn't know was that from the mid 30's until 1941 was that those life jackets were actually khaki in colour. I suspect subliminally I might have been aware of that, since in painting pilot figures I do sometimes opt for a very light buff yellow colour,

 

What I learned today though was that RAF fighter command pilots in the early war years painted their own khaki life jackets with the yellow aircraft dope used for the outer insignia ring on their aircraft. The aim was to improve their visibility in the waters of the English Channel - which were quite similar to that muddy light khaki colour under certain conditions. From 1941 the Mae Wests were supplied in yellow, but prior to that it was a modification made by individual pilots to their own kit. 

 

I also learned, from the same article, that the superior Luftwaffe lifejackets were prized catches and used by some RAF pilots, as these were deemed more effective and inflated by means of an internal gas canister, rather than being inflated via a mouth tube.

 

It would be great if folks would share their own bits of trivia or knowledge new to them, which they also found interesting.

Edited February 3, 2023 by leccyflyer

[kc]

Not a lot of people know that during the Falklands war the Japanese government wouldn't allow even defective RR aero engines parts to be sent back to England - because UK was at war.   Just trivia really but I thought at the time it would eventually be a problem for any country using Jap parts in their vehicle production.  If they took part in a war then maybe parts supply would be cut off - especially electronic.    Now we see certain countries reluctant to send tanks to Ukraine - I wonder if there is a connection here?

 

( by the way - I don't say for one moment that any RR supplied parts were defective  it was the buyer that just THOUGHT they were defective!  )

[Geoff S]

26 minutes ago, kc said:

Not a lot of people know that during the Falklands war the Japanese government wouldn't allow even defective RR aero engines parts to be sent back to England - because UK was at war.   Just trivia really but I thought at the time it would eventually be a problem for any country using Jap parts in their vehicle production.  If they took part in a war then maybe parts supply would be cut off - especially electronic.    Now we see certain countries reluctant to send tanks to Ukraine - I wonder if there is a connection here?

 

( by the way - I don't say for one moment that any RR supplied parts were defective  it was the buyer that just THOUGHT they were defective!  )

 

I don't think RR would ever claim engine parts were everlasting.  Parts have a life and are routinely replaced - it wouldn't be wrong to call the worn components defective. 

 

I speak as a former RR employee, though my field was as an electronics engineer involved in measurement and control for development. I well remember the huge fuss if there were any problems 'in the field'.

 

As regards being dumped in the oggin during WW2, my father bought a huge quantity of kites in the late 40s which I understand were supposed to be flown as aerials by pilots in single person rubber dinghies, presumably to transmit locating signals.  We ended up with a pile of unsold and damaged ones which I enjoyed flying. My cousin and I used to attach several to binder twine (my uncle was a farmer) and got them incredibly high before the weight of the twine overcame the lift.  We also had one of the rubber dinghies which we paddled down the local cut (Cromford canal) and, in 1953, on flooded fields.

 

I've never seen any mention of either the kites or the dinghies in any WW2 literature.  Apparently the kite cum aerial was launched with some sort of gun (compressed air?).  Who carried them?

[Colin Low 2]

Geoff S,

take a look at this.....

RAF / USAAF M-357-A dinghy kite (historicflyingclothing.com)

 

Colin

[leccyflyer]

Colin  and Geoff- I've got one 🙂 - a car boot special. 

 

 

Funnily enough one featured in The Repair Shop last week, but they made no mention of the origin of the kite, it was jusrt a family heirloom, which the father of the family had always flown with his children.  I said then I'd have to try flying it at the club field.

 

 

[Alan Hilton]

A boyhood friend had one we used to fly it on the prom in Blackpool .Great fun

[Geoff S]

I'd forgotten about the box kites. The ones we had were like the standard diamond shape but with a cut-off flat top and bottom with extra cloth extensions to a wooden stick where the string attached.  Like this:

 

 

 

The crossed aluminium tubes had multistrand elastic which was, presumably, to pull them into place after they'd been launched.  They were often perished and we just tied them with string. They were about 4 feet tall.

 

This was the type of dinghy we had.  I think dad bought it when we were at Hunstanton for a rare holiday not in Skegness, where my step-mother's family lived.  We paddled out to sea quite away.  I was about 10 and (foolishly) trusted my dad implicitly because, on reflection it wasn't a wise thing to do.  These are for sale now at £650!  I bet dad paid a lot less.

 

 

 

[kc]

2 hours ago, Geoff S said:

I don't think RR would ever claim engine parts were everlasting.  Parts have a life and are routinely replaced - it wouldn't be wrong to call the worn components defective. 

 

I speak as a former RR employee, though my field was as an electronics engineer involved in measurement and control for development. I well remember the huge fuss if there were any problems 'in the field'.

 

Of course Geoff I was speaking of brand new parts that were unused.   The point was the Japanese would not allow any military aircraft parts, even faulty parts, to be sent back to Britain whilst the Falklands war was on.  When times are difficult one finds who your friends are and who is not!    I wonder if the politicians ever learnt from such events.  Probably not!

[john davidson 1]

1 hour ago, leccyflyer said:

Colin  and Geoff- I've got one 🙂 - a car boot special. 

 

 

Funnily enough one featured in The Repair Shop last week, but they made no mention of the origin of the kite, it was jusrt a family heirloom, which the father of the family had always flown with his children.  I said then I'd have to try flying it at the club field.

 

 

Just the thing  for the next windy day at the strip!

[leccyflyer]

I'll certainly bring it along when conditions permit John - might shoot a bit of video too. 🙂

[john davidson 1]

Too windy today , lost my Corsair downwind, found it in the hedge bordering the main road. Took the hint and had a cup of tea in the shed with the others instead. then went home to watch the last of the rugby

[leccyflyer]

I was hunkered down in the workshop away from the wind and rain John - good that you got the Corsair back and looks like it might be a better day tomorrow. However I don't have a line for the kite - will need to look one out.

 

 

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

On 03/02/2023 at 17:25, leccyflyer said:

Colin  and Geoff- I've got one 🙂 - a car boot special. 

 

 

Funnily enough one featured in The Repair Shop last week, but they made no mention of the origin of the kite, it was jusrt a family heirloom, which the father of the family had always flown with his children.  I said then I'd have to try flying it at the club field.

 

 

Funny I saw a Sky program the other day where they restored all sorts of things and they restored one of those .

[leccyflyer]

That was The Repair Shop. I thought it was a shame that they didn't say a word on the origin of the kite -it was just an old kite.

 

Today's learn something new is from the same source as the Mae West story - a nice little book on the battle in the format of a Haynes Manual. I read over breakfast that the efficiency and accuracy of Fighter Command's air defence system took a nosedive with it's rapid expansion, following the excellent results obtained at it's inception. So much so that in early 1940 a full scientific analysis was undertaken to find the cause. The conclusion was that the rapid expansion had resulted in placement of inexperienced filter room operatives, typically NCOs, in the critical roles as opposed to the small number of experts who had done those jobs in the earlier trials, essentially inventing the job.

 

As a result they revised the budget in order to allow recruitment of officers with a scientific or mathematical background to those critical roles and redeployed the NCOs elsewhere. There was an immediate improvement in the accuracy of the plots and it was demonstrated that a higher degree of understanding of the whole process was necessary to make that first critical analysis. Those roles were often subsequently filled by WAAFs who had previously worked as plotters and gained the necessary experience.

[leccyflyer]

Some of you may well already know this one, but it was news to me when I saw it this morning.

 

Apparently Carry On actor Peter Butterworth spent most of the war in Stalag Luft III, despite being one of the early escapers by tunnelling out, he was soon recaptured and returned to the camp. His stay there was a result of being shot down on a daylight FAA raid on the targets on the Dutch coast in June 1940. Butterworth's Fairey Albacore of 826 Squadron was one of three shot down by Bf109s of JG51.  That's an indication of how mismatched those attacks were at that stage of the war.  So many people had understated and little spoken about war histories.

 

http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=57818