USA Spitfire WWII

[RSKY]

I have just ruined an entire morning, when I should have been doing something else, watching videos of different aircraft engines starting and listening to them run. The P&W radial 'corncob' 28-cyl engine is a fascinating looking monster.

RSKY

 

[dmccarty]

...
There were some pink spitfires, very pretty you say but they were very difficult to see in the air rendering them almost invisible to other fighter aircraft.

Not sure I have read about pink Spitfires but I have read that pink is a very good color to make aircraft hard to see. Of course macho fighter pilots ain't flying no pink plane.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

How about the sound of 8 Merlins in close formation? ...

Bruce

Way back in the 80's, seems like yesterday, a B17 and B24 flew into a local airport in South FLA. I did not have time to visit the planes but I did go and watch them take off. I was able to get pretty close to them in my car at the end of he runway where they were running up the engines prior to take off. The SOUND was AWESOME. :thumbsup: The two planes sat there for quite some time warming up the engines, then they took off, and circled back to "buzz" the air field. Unreal. The sound of just eight P&Ws was unreal. To Germans or Japanese seeing and hearing hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of those planes overhead must have been mortifying.

A B17 flies into our area every few years and one year we went to see it. We climbed aboard and it was immediately obvious that the crew flying in those planes had some b....ls. Not that I did not know that before, but to see that little bit of aluminum skin, that was all but tin foil, and then see the little hatches the crew would have to use to bail out was humbling. Course people were thinner and smaller back then but I could immediately understand why the crew preferred to bail out from the bomb bay. There were people touring the B17 who were too fat to cross the bomb bay "bridge" from the rear of the plane to the front because of the supports in the way. Not sure how the crew moved around with heavy clothes, coats, flak jackets, and parachutes. :confused3:

Later,
Dan

 

[turnkey4099]

But I'm more of an 18 cylinder radial kind of guy...

Radials just have a unique sound and I run outside every time I hear one.

Same here. A crop duster used to fly a radial. He would come past my back lot line at 10ft off the ground lift, do a chandelle and repeat the pass going the opposite direction.

 

[turnkey4099]

One hopes they never used Lucas Electrics.....

Ah, the Prince of Darkeness.

 

[buickanddeere]

How about the sound of 8 Merlins in close formation?

Bruce

On my to do list . The museum is only 2-3 hrs away depending on traffic and I still haven稚 got around to visiting . Last time I seen that Lancaster when it was on a display pedestal at the Goderich Airport .

 

[buickanddeere]

One hopes they never used Lucas Electrics.....

Lucas Electric was the Prince of Darkness .

Darn, beaten to the punchline that time .

 

[bigdeano]

Hydroplane racing used up the supply of Allison engines. When they were gone they went to the Rolls Royce engines and used them up. Now they use helicopter turbines. There were some 24 cylinder Allisons made, don't know how many.

 

[MossRoad]

MOSSROAD I think you like planes more than tractors

It's close! :laughing:

As I mentioned before, I had friends whose fathers were aircraft salesmen, charter pilots, and owned FBO's. Neighbor had a plane. Dad's company had a plane (a v-tail bonanza). And we lived near the final approach path to our local airport. For the past 22 years we've lived very close to the same airport, but on the other side. I see and hear all kinds of cool stuff.

 

[bunyip]

Ah, the Prince of Darkeness.

Although not as bad as the Lada Samara, came with an unregulated generator and if you exceeded around 30mph at night the headlights blew out, someone imported them here and changed them all over to alternators, not a bad looking car but an absolute shocker to drive, they never took off.
And they said the cold war was over....