Planes
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@Machpants My old man first flew to NZ on a Solent from Sydney. Swore it was the best flight he ever did in his life. Took 8 hours. Apart from take off and landing he spent the entire time propped up in the lounge bar which he said was a full on cocktail bar.
He was doubly impressed as his only previous flying experience had been in troop transports that took 4 full days to get from Tokyo to Sydney and … didn't have a bar.
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@dogmeat said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:
@Machpants My old man first flew to NZ on a Solent from Sydney. Swore it was the best flight he ever did in his life. Took 8 hours. Apart from take off and landing he spent the entire time propped up in the lounge bar which he said was a full on cocktail bar.
He was doubly impressed as his only previous flying experience had been in troop transports that took 4 full days to get from Tokyo to Sydney and … didn't have a bar.
They were cool looking beasts
Hard to believe the same company produced this ugly pile of shit
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@Machpants said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:
@jegga my granddad did 4 years on Sunderland when based in Fiji, late 50s, according to his logbook
Here's another awesome thing, now on the internet
That is very very cool . What was he flying off the Ark Royal? I’ve tried to find out if corsairs and hellcats ever engaged 190s or 109s . Best I could come up with was maybe over Norway .
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Haha nothing so cool as a Corsair. He was a TAG (Telegraphist Air Gunner) in a a Fairey Fulmar. Probably lucky he only sighted ME109s! The 3 plans shot down were all transports, Italian, in the med.
Still as shit as the Fulmar was, his log book entries are much cooler than mine which have shot at by, rather than shot down
Location of original logbook 😜
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/HMS_Ark_Royal_sinking_2.jpg
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@Snowy Can you do me a price for the following? I have an irritating fluffybunny who references his granddad in the 1950's making him younger than my own pater. I'm sure you would find that he would make an attractive pair of racing shorts given his nom de guerre. Maybe enough left for some driving gloves for the Audi?
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@Machpants said in Planes:
Haha nothing so cool as a Corsair. He was a TAG (Telegraphist Air Gunner) in a a Fairey Fulmar. Probably lucky he only sighted ME109s! The 3 plans shot down were all transports, Italian, in the med.
Still as shit as the Fulmar was, his log book entries are much cooler than mine which have shot at by, rather than shot down
Location of original logbook 😜
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/HMS_Ark_Royal_sinking_2.jpg
At least it wasn’t a Blackburn roc , they were dogshit.
I never understood the British theory that a carrier fighter needed a navigator . The yanks and Japanese never did and when they did try to marinise the spitfire it didn’t have the range and it’s landing gear was borderline on their steel aircraft carrier decks .
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@Machpants said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:
Probably lucky he only sighted ME109s
Yep, even luckier they didn't sight him.
190 hours doesn't even get you a commercial licence these days. Amazing what they did with so little experience. I've done around 20,000 and still know fck all. I too am only "shot at " rather than "shot down" someone else.
@jegga Swordfish were on the Ark Royal but I don't know what else.
Also, was there a second Ark Royal? The guy who surveyed my boat was an engineer on it but he couldn't have been that old...
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@Machpants said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:
Probably lucky he only sighted ME109s
Yep, even luckier they didn't sight him.
190 hours doesn't even get you a commercial licence these days. Amazing what they did with so little experience. I've done around 20,000 and still know fck all. I too am only "shot at " rather than "shot down" someone else.
@jegga Swordfish were on the Ark Royal but I don't know what else.
Also, was there a second Ark Royal? The guy who surveyed my boat was an engineer on it but he couldn't have been that old...
According to Wikipedia they had fulmars , rocs and the swordfish successor the albacore as well as the string bag .
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As @Duluth has kindly given us a separate thread and people seem interested in Planes:
Then there is this:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12277937
There have been some serious failings at Boeing over the MCAS system and it seems that transparency was another one.
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These ugly things were useless in the pacific, NZ air ace Geoff Fisken said when he was trying to defend Hong Kong from bombers the bomber would simply fly a few thousand feet higher than the buffalos service ceiling and get away without being damaged.
They gave them to the Finns to use against the russians and they did really well. To be fair the Finns were desperate for any aircraft they could get their hands on but they stripped out some armour to make them lighter and the majority of their scraps were at low altitude too.
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@jegga Other than weight - temperature and humidity. Way less dense air in the tropics and look at the wings on the bloody thing. A bomber would generally have much better altitude performance due to aspect ratio compared to a Buffalo esp in low density air.
These guys put up some good clips every now and again that you might like:
This is pretty cool for a balsa wood aeroplane:
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@Snowy buffaloes overheated too, not such an issue in Finland I guess.
This guy has a decent channel, unfortunately youtube purged a bunch of his videos because they featured swastikas on the planes. Still he knows his shit and doesn't take himself too seriously.
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@jegga He's German? Weird watching him go on about a Halifax.
youtube purged a bunch of his videos because they featured swastikas on the planes.
FFS. It's a part of history he isn't promoting it. That is how they were painted.
Yeah they did it to a lot of history channels in the last purge . I think he’s German and already seemed a bit sensitive about it .
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a bit sensitive about it .
Understandable.
"Speedbird" are British Airways (wank, I know).
Reminds me of this:
Ground controller: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, -- And I didn't land." -
a bit sensitive about it .
Understandable.
"Speedbird" are British Airways (wank, I know).
Reminds me of this:
Ground controller: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, -- And I didn't land."Nice , reminds me of this
“When Motorhead toured the Bomber album the stage set featured a Lancaster bomber, which hung over the stage.
When they played Dresden in Germany, Lemmy strides out onto the stage, points to the Lancaster and says :
"Good evening Dresden. I bet you haven't seen one of these for a while."