There was I minding my own business when I was buzzed by a Spitfire !!! Knocking down the shuttering for a concrete slab outside my 'to be' workshop (sorry barn), and there was this Spitfire, having taken off from a grass strip just up the road (Spillstead farm) and I was entertained by a few circuits and fly pasts. Call me soft, but it brought a lump to my throat. Wife chastised me saying I wasn't even born by the end of the war, but there you are I had the lump !!! Can't be that many flying now.
I know what you mean, I used to live up near Scampton, where the RAF Memeorial flight is based. Nothing quite like hearing them coming and seeing them go past is there. War, I wasnt born til after the oil crisis (not the current one!)
Andrew, and I thought it was just me! I too was born after the war ended but was lucky to work with these aircraft during my early career. The most vivid memory I have of a long working life was winning a "prize" as a fourth year apprentice, expecting the usual book token or something I was astounded to be told my prize was to be allowed to ground run a Griffon engined Spitfire. What an adrenalin rush for a 20 year old - never ever forgot it. No I didn't damage it but did miss the dire warning "peacetime limit of 2lbs boost" and took it to "combat boost" of 28lbs. I subsequently ran the real thing (Merlin) and some very powerful engines but nothing compared to that first Spit ground run. I suspect that the modern H&S "wardens" would put a stop to such exciting prizes these days - what a pity.
I was privileged to see quite a few practice displays but the one pilot that stands out in my mind was Ray Hannah (ex Red Arrow leader and noted for flying under the Winston bridge on the River Tees Co Durham /Yorkshire), my jaw dropped open as I watched him bring a Spit round the airfield perry track on its' wing tip which never looked to be more than a couple of feet above the tarmac. I laughed when my then boss dropped to his knees as the aircraft leveled out and came towards us low across the grass but I soon stopped as I joined him a split second later. Now he could fly and it made me think of all those young men who could also fly even when being shot at. The bridge clip is here but turn the sound up really high to watch it,
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There are in fact a fair number of Spits flying at the moment and you can even have a "new one" built if you can afford the time and money it takes. It seems that getting a good Merlin is the most difficult part of the process particularly as our American friends like to "tune them up" and race about with their Mustangs.
Thanks Andrew for inspiring the memory, it made a bad day a lot better.
I believe there are more airworthy ones now than when they made the film 'The Battle of Britain'; you can just about have one made to order if your pockets are deep enough. All big aerial donks make nice noise, but Merlins are special, spit-mounted ones doubly so.
I served my time working on those V12 Roll's Awesome engineering, when they went for testing they had 11 test beds side by side, all open except the last one which was in a separate room. They had to run 5 hours at flat out, no exhausts, just straight port.
Setting the mixture was a bit frightening at first for a young apprentice, you had to lie on top of the running engine, full length, with a 18" long screwdriver and a 3/16" and 1/4" whit ring spanner end welded to another 18" long rod to get at the mixture screws.
As you were doing this your mate took the revs up and the idea was to get 6" of blue flame out the ports at 2,200 rpm. That set the mixture. You then cut a mag off whilst running flat out and it had to drop 200 revs, if it dropped more the running mag was too far retarded and less meant it was too far advanced. So the mag had to be pulled and the vernier coupling moved a couple of holes, then the next mag was done.
There were big thick test books hanging on nails going yellow with age because the guys doing these knew all the wrinkles without referring to the books. When they had finished test and cooled down they were washed in petrol to clean them and the rocker boxes pulled and the tappets set. Sounds a lot of work to set 48 tappets but they used to do a set in about 10 or
15 minutes tops. No feelers, just feel the play and adjust by feel and after a couple of engines you could get to a thou by rocking the follower.
That trick alone won me a few bets when we had the truck garage and were rebuilding engines every week.
IIRC the tappets on a Triumph unit 650 cc engine were set to a gap that you could just feel it tick, on the inlet, and so that you could just hear it tick, on the exhaust.
Always seemed funny to me that the clearances were as close as that, on an engine that had that many gaskets stacked in between the parts of the top end.
I still love to see the Spitfires & Hurricanes flying, I see quite a lot of them when it's airshow time - Basildon must be on some sort of aerial 'motorway' for classic aircraft.
......But, the one sound that really sends the shivers up my spine is the Mossie, on full chat - the Merlin/Griffon engines sound great at any time, but a pair of them, at high rpm & just slightly out of synch has to be one of the most evocative sounds ever. :)
Move over Ferrari, youse aint got nuttin' compared to this...
I'm lucky(?) enough to have been at junior school when Spits & Mossies were still in service & THAT sound takes me straight back 6o years, to my childhood.
John, I'm afraid that you would have been "blacked" in our crew room for giving out that information ("Sounds a lot of work to set 48 tappets but they used to do a set in about 10 or 15 minutes tops"). The production bonus time for setting them in our hangar was 180 minutes - for each bank!! So given our "relaxation" allowance a "good days" work for each engine. The Lanc was popular.
Timing the Mags was one of the first jobs each young "sooty" was given
- those "vernier couplings" confused many. I've known the job go into the second day if a couple of "poor sparks" were involved. Of course I've also caught some of the "brighter" ones messing about after a few minutes having forgotten to tell me they were finished.
As you say, awesome engineering. Shall we start the "which is best - Packard or Rolls" discussion, always good for a few hours "technical passion" when I was younger. If you believe the ex Navy guys I used to work with there must be hundreds of Packard Merlins in deep water as their standard fix for a "bad one" was "lost overboard".
I totally agree with you Barry I also live in darkest Basildon. They occasionally fly overhead on route to some airshow or test run. I always dash out of my workshop just to see and hear them. Can't they be allowed to fly lower like the bloody helicopters do? Regards Alan
I was in at what could be described as the 'Last of the Many' as I served with RAF 31 Squadron at Hendon and we had the 601 and 604 Squadrons( Counties of London and Middlesex) stationed there in 1949. They moved to North Weald to get Vampires which had a habit of melting our Tarmac! John Cunningham came in and was told where he stood! Road Menders??? What next?
We had three Spits on charge as we maintained a taxi service for Air Ministry and these beasties were for the top brass. In addition, we had Devons to replace our aging Ansons but collected a Air Officer Commanding in Chief of Coastal Command's VP-981. It's almost 60 years now but 981 is still flying after a spell as the hack for theBBMF and one of the Spits-JM-R( Jimmy Robbs) is in San Diego and airworthy. Two of the Devons are at RAF Cosford.
31 is still very much active with Tornados at Marham. Our sister Squadron there is 617. Nothing fancy, Dambusters, Pathfinders and Sank the Tirpitz but really not in our class.
Dave, they've been based at Coningsby since 1976 and were based at Biggin Hill, North Weald, Martlesham Heath Horsham St Faith & Coltishall before then.
Oops close tho, I used to live in Navenby (between the 2). Red Arrows at Scampton... Ive been to both, got to sit in a Red Arrow (I was about 8 at the time, imagine the grin :) :) :) ) I also remember the Vulcans, the landing flight path to Waddington was over the house... Planes round here (EMA) dont go fast enough, they look like they should fall out of the sky.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 21:20:22 +0100, "Andrew Mawson" wrote:
Well, this is a temptation that's just too hard to resist. I may get 'drummed out' of UKRME for blatant OT postings..but I'm too old to care any more and I just *know* there's a forgiving spirit out there! Well, it's all engineering, isn't it?
I served in the RAF in Malta some years back when the sub-aqua club let it be known that they had found a Spitfire Mk5b in 30ft of water not far off-shore. I was responsible for the preparations for the base's annual Battle of Britain celebrations at the time so I persuaded the Station Commander that it would be a good idea to recover the Spit and use it as a decorative centre-piece. I was promptly given a couple of weeks off regular duties and, with RN help, organized an expedition to recover the remains.
Although, in spite of extensive and systematic searches, we never found the tail section, and the starboard wing almost came adrift during the final lift aboard ship, this was successfully achieved. A week or so later we displayed our trophy in the centre of our open-air ballroom, attended by senior members of the Maltese Government, with whom, at the time, our relations were somewhat strained. We cleaned the engine externally, from overhead to the underside (12 o'clock to 6 o'clock) on the starboard side only, leaving the port side 'as found'..with sand, shells and marine encrustation. After cleaning it became clear why the aircraft had ditched...there was a neat row of three or four machine-gun bullet holes through the glycol coolant feeds which ran along the top of the engine, which had seized as a result.
We later learned that the pilot, a Canadian, had been chased in a figure of eight around the two small hills on the island of Gozo, just a few miles from Malta, by a pair of ME 109s. This had happened in the early morning and had been witnessed by a fisherman and his son, who had picked up the pilot and brought him safely back to shore. We rapidly set about trying to find both the pilot and the son with the intention of reuniting them as guests at our B of B Ball. Finding the son was no problem on a small island like Malta...the pilot was a different matter. After hurried searches in RAF records in London and various appeals on radio stations and in the Canadian press, we learned that our pilot, having survived his ordeal with the ME 109s, had shortly afterwards returned to the UK and had been posted to a flight testing Spits at Castle Bromwich, a major production facility, and that he had been killed in a flying accident a couple of weeks after getting back. Ironic!
We recovered two 20mm cannons and four wing-mounted machine guns, all fully armed and with live rounds still in their feed panniers and the breeches of the weapons. One of my jobs was to oversee the dumping of any ordnance overboard into deep water during the triumphant journey back to shore, it was the simplest and safest means of disposal. At one stage, with everybody safely else below decks, I did 'enjoy' one distinctly pant-wetting moment when I was actively involved with an armourer in removing a cannon shell from the breech of a weapon still trapped in a drooping wing. There was suddenly a loud 'bang' as the shell exploded a foot from my ear and I unexpectedly found myself, quite instinctively, six foot from where I last remembered, cowering behind a hatch. It wasn't an explosion of the propellant, but exposure to the hot sun which had caused an internal pressure change and the shell case to split, jetting scalding hot 'chocolate sauce' propellant in a stream on to my neck! The weapons themselves were in an astonishing state of preservation. Everything was covered with a thin shell of iron-hard marine growth a couple of millimetres or so thick. However, we soon discovered that if struck carefully this could be removed and after a few days work the weapons were restored to 'as new' condition, as though straight from the armoury shelf, aided by the fact that they were well oiled when originally installed in the aircraft. Although we dumped the ammunition overboard, we saved a number of the metal belt links with an optimistic view that we might even get to fire them again, simply as a demonstration of what was possible. However, although we had cleaned the barrels, the armourers felt that the weapons might be damaged by firing so this plan was, very reluctantly, abandoned. Additionally, one of the conditions of the recovery, which had had to be approved by the Maltese Government in whose territorial waters we were operating, was that everything recovered should be handed over to them after our celebrations were concluded, and there was concern that we might be breeching this agreement if the weapons were damaged. Seven years ago, when I last visited, 'my' Spitfire was in one of the museums at the tip of the Valletta peninsula.
In conclusion, we also found a Junkers 87 (Stuka) dive-bomber with the remains of the pilot still in the cockpit. However, this aircraft was considered a war grave and left completely and respectfully undisturbed. Perhaps most exciting of all, at the time, was the discovery of a superbly preserved Blenheim bomber, in shallow water, and the knowledge that the RAF Museum at Hendon was desperate for an example of this aircraft. Unfortunately, our political relations with the Maltese Government of the day had deteriorated in a short space of time and it seemed very unlikely that we would be given permission to recover this aircraft also, since it too, was just inside Maltese territorial waters. However, ...cough.....if a ship should accidentally catch it with an anchor chain and move it a mile or so into international waters, that would be an entirely different kettle of Turbot..........but I was posted to Washington DC shortly afterwards so I don't know what happened to the map I passed on to others....but I seem to think we now have a Blenheim at Hendon but I think that it was found in Canada...???
As a post-script, at the time I was dating a British schoolteacher in Malta who took her annual holiday from work in order to be the Spitfire expedition cook...she passed all the tests and is now my dear old darling wife.
I'm nowhere near old enough to have seen those prop warbirds in service, but my dad took me along to many an airshow in my youth. I completely agree - even though I've only ever seen and heard it a couple of times - nothing beats the song of the Mosquito....apart from the Lancaster, of course.
For a more up-to-date evocative engine noise I'd go for the English Electric Lightning....level flight halfway up the tarmac at North Weald, then nose up 90 degrees and full throttle. Oh yeah, that's rock 'n roll!!
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