Inside The Cockpit - Short Sunderland

today's episode is sponsored by the free-to-play game War Thunder if aircraft hold a special place in your heart or perhaps you are a fan of those targets that some people call tanks or ships War Thunder has everything you need more info on wall funnel later on in the video so welcome everybody to military aviation history I'm Chris of course and we are at the Royal Air Force Museum taking a look at this bad boy this is of course the short Sunderland uh probably one of the most famous aircraft out there it's a flying boat of course and this one that we have in the museum as always on inside the cockpit what we're going to do when I have that walk around on the outside I'm going to explain all the details here then we'll go on the lower deck because yes this aircraft has two decks on a lower deck first I want to explain the ins and out of that and then exclusively the Royal Air Force Museum has also opened up the upper deck which is usually closed off and we're going to discover that together I haven't been up there just yet I don't know exactly what to expect well you know I've gone through the manual but we'll see what is actually left over there because the history of this aircraft is quite interesting build 1944 this specific one as a Mark V and then it flew of course those anti-submarine missions that you would expect from the Sunderland to fly over the Atlantic and even into the North Sea and then in 1951 it was given to the French flew of the air Naval for about 10 years mainly from sort of the the that linkage points from Buress over to the North African colonies back then and then it was given back to the British in 1961 and ended up here at the Museum so let's have a walk around of the Sunderland then shall we we're of course going to start up at the nose why wouldn't we do it over there uh we have of course upfront a twin turret three or three machine guns right there and what's cool with this turret is you can sort of see how it's mounted inside that nose section there all right well it can be retracted almost entirely inside making some space there for somebody to pop out and help with the Mooring of the aircraft that's where it would be done if it would be going into a harbor or a seaplane station that's where you would do it and if you go just a slightly more up front you'll see this cut out window here right and that can be popped open just slightly it pops out sort of like this at an angle right and that would be the bomb aimer station and at the same time we also have the stairs here imagine the Sunderland being in the water you could use these stairs from a boat to then jump inside that opened up turret section of the aircraft as we then move towards the side we already see the fixed machine guns two three or three brownings on either side and then taking a step back here let's have a look up there at the cockpit of course we're going to jump in into the pilot seat very soon but that cockpit is there and the tear-shaped tear-shaped device behind it that would be the direction of finding antenna right now this is going to be a bit of a challenge to film because of course as you've already seen I am being absolutely dwarfed by this aircraft and filming especially the wing is going to be a bit of a challenge but I'm sure Josh the cameraman is up to the task so let's talk a little bit about what we find in the wing and on the wing first off you see those hatches there on the Leading Edge right the one that almost touches the wing at the fuselage at the wing route that's where your auxiliary power unit would be housed and then they hatch next to that on either side in fact of the the engines uh both the inner engine and the outer engines you'll find a platform that can be folded out just like so creating this well this platform for you to immediately access the engines for to do some maintenance because obviously you can imagine if this aircraft sits on on the open surface of the sea and you want to work on those engines you can't really demount them so you uh you open up those hatches and you have a nice little platform to work from the engines themselves then these are Pratt and Whitney are one eight thirties Dash 90bs now this plane originally when it came out came out with Dash 65s they were re-engine them to the dash 90ds and those produce around about 1 200 horsepower at the highest setting Max setting would be running sort of at 2700 RPMs and with a boost of plus 9 on your pounds per square inch what is interesting with these engines as you see them now in their current configuration right let's maybe have a look at the outer engine here as well they are being driven well not the engine is being driven by the propellers that you have there are free blade and constant speeds Hamilton hydromatic propeller so these are fully favorable which is a big step up from the initial engines that the Sunderland used the initial engines were the Bristol Pegasus and I believe the propellers back then were at the Haviland propellers and those couldn't be fully favorite now imagine you're out on the over the ocean you're over the Atlantic and you're shutting one of these engines down to save on fuel and also on the on the engine hours and you cannot cover the prop not really an ideal thing because what it essentially happens if you don't favor the prop it doesn't have its sleekest profile towards the wind and you have in essence free air brakes just sitting there uh causing all sorts of Mayhem to the pilot to the controls and of course also to the aerodynamics now between the engines then you see those two air intakes those are for the oil coolers each engine in the nacelle behind the engine has an oil reservoir of 140 liters those all reservoirs usually in the early sunderlands to be self-sealing in the later sunderlands they were no longer self-sealing I'm not quite sure why that change came about I assume maybe it has to do something with the capacity of the tank usually when you make a tank self-sealing the capacity of the tank goes down or perhaps it was just realized that it wasn't really needed to have those as self-sealing the aircraft themselves in the wing has five fuel tanks and they're set up in a free uh forward and two rear tanks so you have the forward inner tank which is the biggest one and they get progressively smaller as you go towards the outer tank and then the two rear tanks in the back together a 1 300 gallons yes 1 300 gallons per Wing double that of course it's mirrored on the other side you get 2 600 gallons of fuel which is pretty good of course sunderlands would be flying missions over the open ocean that would take anywhere about well upwards of 10 hours 12 hours so you do need that range and that fuel and that's essentially endurance long-range endurance okay having done sort of this inner portion of the wing now with the engines let us move over to the wing tip there's a couple of cool features there as well with the Sunderland so if you would just follow me what we see here of course is the float that is of course required because if the Sunderland sets down in the open ocean or in the water or in a lake what you don't want is it to tip over to one side right so these floats nicely balance it out on the uh on the water surface then on the Leading Edge if you look at the outer wing all the way to the wingtip the Leading Edge is heated and that prevents uh I think to accumulate on the wing again imagine you're on over the Atlantic it's not really the best of times well there's a war going on of course but the weather is not very good it's cold it's maybe some of the winter months you can very quickly have an accumulation of ice especially if you're flying at higher altitudes as well so that prevents that and and it's a nice little feature in the Sunland I would say this bulge that you see there is of a more modern anti-surface vessel detection radar in during World War II what you would generally expect to find there are sort of these these antenna that look almost like deer antlers right coming out just around the wing tab in fact I might be mistaken here but you sort of see that hatch on the Leading Edge there there's a small small hatch there I believe that's where it was typically mounted of course you have also the navigational light to the on the wingtip and then if we swing it over let's have a look at that massive aileron now that is one big inner run extends all the way from the wingtip over to the midsection of the wing where it meets the flaps it's a one piece aileron with no variable trim setting the pilot cannot trim out this aircraft in the roll axis however you do see those two fixed aileron tabs there those could be used to already have a fixed trim setting before you actually take off and then we look at the flaps the flaps are special in the Sunderland because these are gouge type flaps now what are gouge type flaps basically uh you know foul of flaps right they they sort of extend on Rails going outwards increasing that when um the wing area and then they droop down and that increases the curvature of the wing well gouge type flaps what we have here they immediately sort of curve down as they're being extended on Rails right which increases the wing surface area and immediately also the curvature now as far as I know with these flaps right here they were only used by the short company because they were invented by somebody who worked for the short company and of course with the amount of aircraft that were produced throughout time and space it is possible that there is an exception to this but as far as I know the Sunderland is essentially one of the only aircraft that has these types of flaps I believe the short Sterling has them as well and maybe one or two other aircraft from the short company if you know of an aircraft that has exactly these type of couch garage flaps that and I haven't named it just now then please let me know and because that would actually be interesting because you never know there's so many aircraft that were produced and sometimes you find these weird uh weird coincidences in in the designs right moving a little bit further towards the fuselage now next to the depth charges that you see right there we're going to talk about sort of the Bombay once we're inside so I'm not gonna be uh talking about them just yet but you see those three lights there that face downwards those are the downwards identification lights where you could get into contact with sort of uh surface objects like ships or in fact land-based objects as well and identify yourself or send coded signals and so forth right let's step back again because now we have to take a look at the fuselage and yes it is going to be a little bit of a challenge to film this but maybe at this angle here we can first of all see the inopportune placement of our camera bags but if you look sort of at the top half of the aircraft you see a little bulge here and that's where the mid upper turret was originally housed I was taken off I'm not quite sure if it was taken off by the British or by the French or maybe later on when it was returned to the British but that turret would generally be housing two or three or three machine guns again again three or three machine guns for those people that prefer metric system that's essentially 7.7 millimeters yeah it's a rifle caliber machine gun all turrets by the way are hydraulically operated and now I just realized that I forgot to talk about something namely the placement of the generators and the hydraulic pumping system all right so in the outer engine of the Sunderland that's where the pumps would be for the hydraulical system and they would power for example turrets but also the flaps whereas the electrical generators would always be on the inner engine so you have that nice little uh nice little division of labor there between the engine but there is of course as there always is an exception to this because the starboard inner engine also houses an additional pump for the hydraulical system as well so what you have in the Sunderland to sum it up you have two electrical generators in the inner inner engines and you are free hydraulic pumps two in the outer engine and one in the starboard inner one all right so with having done my homework on that thing let's go further towards the rear of the fuselage where you see the antenna sticking out of the rear just in front of the vertical stabilizer and some of the older pictures especially from World War II you see again sort of spikes coming out there antenna coming out not like these more more uh more vertically aligned and a couple of them in a row and that would be where the main uh main antenna would be for the anti-surface vessel radar set right so I believe the sunderlands went from The Mark II set all the way to the mark IV Mark 5 Set uh with with those antennae right towards the rear then again this is going to be a bit of a challenge to film here I believe but the leading edges of both the horizontal and the vertical stabilizer are also heated to once again prevent that accumulation of ice we have the elevator and the water of course these are variable trim DSR variable trim tabs both of them in fact the rudder has two of them one a higher one and one lower one you see there is a little hatch next to the turrets that's the escape hatch for the rear Gunner which is nice because along a lot of British bombers for example let's assume that let's take the Halifax as an example because I have a video about that one as well the rear Gunner had a hard time getting out of out of the uh the aircraft sometimes so theoretically you could rotate the turret to 90 degrees and then open the hatch behind you and jump out or you had to get out of the out of the turret and then run all the way to the mix section of the Halal effects and bail out there but here on the Sunderland the chap can get out immediately of course that turret as well that's where the main defensive Firepower of the Sunderland would be located four three or three machine guns giving some Hefty defensive fire power there if it's dueling out against for example German heavy Fighters or bombers made into sort of heavy Fighters over the Atlantic especially linking it out of course with kg-40 there being located in the north of France right let's loop around then as you can see the way this is underline the sort of position right now it's being put on these stilts but you can also see where some of the rear uh the real uh on the rear position there where you could position those Wheels in order to then Ferry it out onto a land and outwards and you also have uh fairings to actually attach wheels on either side I will get to that in just a second but as we then loop around completely by the way I should mention as well the Royal Air Force Museum if you come visit London do check out this is an absolutely prime location to see aircraft just like the Sunderland and its free entry mind you it is free entry but of course if you're coming here why not you know go to the restoration area or go and pass by at a gift shop as well museums do Reserve our support I do believe now I'm not going to talk too much about the port side Wing simply because it's essentially mirroring what is available on the starboard side but there is a little bit of an exception namely that these two what looks like hatches now they have been painted over those would be the position of the landing lights to big massive Landing lights there and if we swing it all the way to the uh Leading Edge Wing route here that's where usually it's been closed off now I don't know who did that maybe the French maybe the British afterwards that's where the air intake would be for the air conditioning unit of the Sunderland right so that rounds up us up on the outside we are going to jump inside now discovering first the lower deck now you typically when you come to the Royal Air Force Museum you have to get into the uh aircraft from the starboard side right because that's where the entrance is and the exit is here on the port side front port side hatch but because I'm a little bit of a well anti-ofherian Rascal we are going in via the exit so as we go up watch your step Jaws we will find the entrance hatch and we will take some lights with us as well because it is quite dark in there now as we jump inside of the Sunderland quick reminder that of course if you visit the museum you also get full access to the lower deck but like I said the cockpit and the Opera deck is an exclusive here however I do have news for you you too can sit in and fly a short Sunderland virtually of course in War Thunder and it is not just the Sunderland but thousands of other aircraft as always with sponsorships they send you a list of talking points which I don't care about so I would say go because I want to tell you what I think about War Thunder not what every other sponsorship tells you look there is no other game out there that has the variety of flyable aircraft spanning from interwar all the way to the World War II period with the bf-109 the short Sunderland and the B-17 over them to of course the cold war planes like the F-14 Tomcat the mig-21 or the Mirage free and they even have Voodoo machines and then if you are so inclined you can also Drive targets you know those things that other people call tanks or ships more Thunder is fantastic fun if you just want to sit back and teach others not to get in your way I especially enjoy their mixed battle experience where I drive around in targets and then I upgrade my life experience by taking control of an aircraft to provide some good old close air support War Thunder constantly adds new planes Voodoo machines and targets like well tanks apcs and ships and then of course you can play on PC like a true connoisseur or if you want to join the fun via Playstation or Xbox you can do that as well it features cross-platform integration signing up is completely free and if you use my exclusive sign up bonus in the description and actually I just noticed that makes this video a double exclusive a Sunderland cockpit and a special reward for all of you but yes if you use my exclusive sign up bonus in the description you get a free premium vehicle three days booster and an exclusive Channel logo so welcome to the inside of the Sunderland it does get just slightly cramped first off what we have in front of me here is the bomb aimer section of course but you can also see the uh the placement for the three or three machine guns as well as that their storage area here for the anchor a dinghy and a drogue and everything like that now it's important to of course have those jokes by the way what is a drug first of all a drug is essentially an underwater parachute and you throw it off overboard and it will because of the current blow up and always be in line with the current which then as you're throwing it over will also keep the aircraft in line with the current which is of course important because you don't want it to be sideways on now there is also a prospect hatch over here that has been put in uh in the upper deck we will have a look at that later on and just to my left here there are also stairs going up to the upper deck next to sort of the area that I've already talked about in the nose you also have spare shoot placements here you have fire extinguishers these brass fire extinguishers you will find them all over the aircraft that won't Point them out all the time because they are quite a few because you're flying missions that go once again upwards of 10 to 12 hours you're also going to be well you know you have a call of nature sometimes so the gens finds itself right over there or as as I like to call it the second bomb aimer position and then as we walk through sort of this walkway we find the first storage area this is where typically you would find the personal effects of the crew and as you can see also there's a rifle rack here with four uh four rifles that can be stored uh portholes can also be opened and closed by as per convenience you have coves hanging seals as well yeah just a typical sort of storage fence you would expect to find now coming through here we then enter the war room now the boardroom as you can see there's enough space for potentially eight people to sit next to each other and have lunch dinner tea biscuits uh you name it it can be done there's an ashtray just over there to the side as well and this table can be folded out and retracted again to make a way up up here you can see there's a little bit of storage space again for the crew to uh to store their personal effects as well and you also have once again those hatches on either side now those portholes not hatches portals now we enter the galley and I'm just going to put down one of my lights here because they are getting in the way the galley first of all there is a ladder here the ladder helps the crew immediately transition up to the upper deck or a lower deck depending on where you want to be going and then let's have a look at the port side here first first of all there is a watertight aerial fairing um aerial access point all the way on the bottom this container here houses another drug you will find it on the port side at starboard side as well more parachutes over here for the crew of course an emergency exit hatch over here on some of the sunderlands you could also find these hatches on the side for an additional 7.7 or 303 Liquors gun as well and then here on the right hand side this is where the crew Woods will be preparing their sustenance right so we have an oven oven here and a sort of a hob as well for for some light cooking you have some storage space for example the Sunderland also came with two five gallons containers of fuel five gallons that is 11 liters so double that 22 liters of water fresh water supply for the crew um 22 liters that makes roughly well that makes roughly 40 pints of water you weren't thinking of be aware you um so yeah that's that's the galley that uh that is where the food would be prepared and then we come of course to the area that everybody likes to talk about and that is the bomb storage Bay what you have in the Sunderland is of course if we perhaps have a look at the left hand side here with the uh the depth charges that are already mounted you can see that they're being mounted on Rails first of all these are these rail mountings there's four on either side and the maximum weights that could be put on those is one thousand pounds collectively so four bombs should not go above one thousand pounds one thousand pounds roughly 450 to 500 Kilograms right these rails as you can see could also be moved inside of the aircraft and they sort of meet here the port and the starboard ones meet right here and then you would take these hatches that you see on either side and you would move them up the rail and close off this section here and the reason why you do this is well first of all you don't always need to have these bombs and the mechanisms that the bombs are attached to exposed to the elements but also it provides some advantages by being able to store the bombs or the depth charges inside of the aircraft what you're essentially doing is reducing the effect of drag on the aircraft and that makes it better for takeoff or for top speed even that you're flying at or even in terms of range that has its advantages and as soon as you spot a German submarine well out they go and away they go and if you score a hit the submarine goes down if not well you can have a second try because what the Sunderland also has is next to these eight depth charges that could already be mounted in their mounting points you could have additional depth charges for on either side so one cycle of real large stored right here and those being put back up now that's not something that was done on every machine because you got to remember that a thousand pounds over there roughly a thousand pounds plus here and then another uh two thousand pounds being sold that is four thousand pounds of weight which is quite a bit and that is also also going to reduce the range of the aircraft but if you wanted to if you're flying with additional with additional um bomb loads then you could do that to give you a visual representation of how the ordinance was deployed here is a scene from wolfener that shows it this is greatly sped up more of an approximation of what I would assume the real live speed would be so yeah it's just for visual representation but it's really neat that said I did try to find some information on how quickly these depth charges could be deployed first of all loaded and then deployed but I did not find any if you have some information on that I would be very happy to take a look first of all what we are seeing here is another bunk another ashtray and another Bond here for people to rest and recuperate and then as we move up here towards the tail section we enter what is affectionately known as the workshop so on the one hand side we you would have tools here and ability to fabricate some you know lighter lighter parts that might be required for example if you took some battle damage the crew was generally equipped with uh with some sort of sheets metals or some sort of adhesives as well in order to plug as many holes as possible because of course you don't necessarily want to land in a Sunderland with holes in the bottom part of the aircraft but that could be done by the crew in flights and if the damage was that as more extensive than that they could also land and generally already send out signals before that they would have to be pulled on to land as quick as possible the Sunderland will stay above the water until essentially two rooms in these rooms by the way have watertight doors between them um or not really water type doors but they have to use sort of squash doors which prevent a certain accumulation of water or swapping over to the next room um if two rooms are fully submerged at that point the Sunderland is actually going to go down so she can't take a lot of water because before before she sings what you can also see in the back here is some storage area for for example parachute flares uh you would store dinghies here not drugs this time just the thing is sometimes propellers as well you see paddles there that have been placed by the museum to show some of the storage that would be happening uh you have the repeater Compass as well and then of course you can see the walkway all the way to the back of the aircraft with the turret and sometimes this section would also be separated from that rear section with a sort of cloth sheet with a cut out door as well right on the top we see some some lighting and some light holes in order to bring some natural light and and then these beam positions these beam positions would generally what's your stamped these beam positions would generally be used to mount 50 cal machine guns so you could Mount one on either side right in here for some additional defense and of course here on the port side we have the exact same business additional parachutes here and so forth and that really rounds off up here on the lower deck now let's go up now we have to do a little bit of a Switcheroo here because Josh has to come forward I have to go to where you are standing just in a second ago and then we are going up that way this is going to involve some aerobatics so here we go once again big thank you also to the Royal Air Force Museum for actually opening up this section this is not accessible to the public if you come to the museum please do not go up there and uh you will Discover it together with me now as I'm climbing through this compartment now I want to mention two important things first of all a big big thank you here to the RAF museum for giving me access to this part of the aircraft this is not your typical inside the cockpit episode I've been working with them for a long time to make this specific aircraft possible it's a very special exception and does also an exclusive I am informed that no one filmed this part of the plane for a long long time due to conservation and health and safety precautions so I really appreciate that the RAF museum has made this possible and that brings me to the second point I was restricted to 30 minutes up there to film for health and safety purposes which is why I will first give you a quick tour for some orientation and then we will jump into a detailed explanation of the different crew positions so what we have here is the amplifying unit okay so that must be attached to the radio set control unit have a look closer look at that later on storage Maps bags for bomb Carriage traversing handle flat motor turning handle and then we have another tank here some hydraulical equipment this must be linked to that it's actually quite fun discovering a plane together with the audience rather than already knowing what to expect we have the radio transmitter unit all right okay now I'm gonna have to switch around and move this way this really is tight and confined towards the cockpit right then arriving in the mid section of the aircraft of the upper deck I will just hasten a quick reminder here this perspex window would of course not exist there would be an empty space for this hatch and it's for you to go up and down this of course could be closed uh in terms of the galley being used uh I'm just going to remind Josh as well not to step on it because otherwise the video is going to take a very sudden and violent end now what we have here there's more radio equipment but on the right hand side here as I navigate around this window we have the flight engineer station which of course includes sort of the uh the information on the engines in terms also of the the oil and the fuel temperature at the engine temperatures as well of course also of the fuel content so you can see the fuel tanks here per side we have the starboard rear end rear tanks we have the starboard front tanks and the same thing here for the port side as well the oil temperatures or the engine temperatures here first outer inner in our outer and the same for the oil of course you can see right here and then we see coolers air shutters of course you have oil Cooling and just the outlets for the engine usually the rich would be for the oil whereas the green should most likely be I'm not quite sure why that is here I'm gonna put that into a bin Main feed overload might those be actually the fuel cogs no the are over here okay those are the cogs also no it's color coded by engine ah this is clever okay so the green ones must be the starboard engines and the red one must be the um Port engines okay interesting yeah outer inner inner outer trailing Edge tank Outlets okay interesting no another short moment of acrobatic coming in right radio operator position right here with one of the main transceiver transmitter and receiver units Morse code you also see a lots of luggage standing up here and then we what we have over here is the radar operator station and this station over here I believe was mainly for the Navigator who would then you know you could see already see some to Compass the video Compass there you have the altitude you have the speed as well and then you have this table here to do any sort of calculation and tracking on a map and then we are in the cockpit area there we go there's another perspective window over here we have to be a little bit careful about that so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to jump inside of the pilot seat I'm allowed to do that thankfully thank you very much RAF Museum this is an absolute dream come true although I don't have a parachute so this is a little bit uncomfortable and I'm slightly too large aircraft as well there we go I'm in a Sunderland with you awesome now let's go through the main crew positions in some detail I will take you through the flight engineer radar and wireless operator positions and then we will go through the main cockpit let's first start with the flight engineer's position all the way on the top you will find the oil dilution selector and push buttons arranged in such a fashion that the rear fuel tank indicators are set above the frontal ones the five fuel tank indicators in either Wing have their old gauges fuel pressure warning lights and the cylinder head temperatures and oil temperatures are found in the central position of this flight Engineers panel and the oil pressure gauges are prone to either side set above the propeller the iso controls and the vacuum pump selectors and then the fuel cogs are operated by five levels to either side with the sixth one and the sixth most inner levels operating the carburetor air intake control carburetor the iso selection cogs and hand pumps are set to the left of the main gauges and then an APU refueling pump so the auxiliary power units for fueling pump is set all the way to the starboard side of the aircraft or rather of course the left side of the flight Engineers sitting position then let's move on to the radar operator the Sunderland had a variety of air-to-surface vessel radar sets installed over their service I don't know when the one that we see here was installed perhaps during a service or after to complete the Museum's exhibit so let's take it as a representation of the real thing as far as I can tell we what we have here is an ASV Mark III which is essentially identical to the H2S Mark II with the main big difference being to the antenna system and its coverage angles mind you these radar sets have quite a story for themselves so if you have any additional detailed information about what you see here send it my way or post a comment below I know radar sets have quite an enthusiastic fan base so it would be great to hear from you to extend my own understanding of them also YouTube members and patreons as a thank you to all of you I'll link to a few manuals for the radar sets so be sure to check out the community Tab and the patreon feed to get those starting on the top we have a sideways mounted switch unit the three push buttons on top are the power buttons to turn the set on this is done in stages with the middle button LT on first pressed you wait 30 seconds for the circuits to meet the required temperature and then you press HT on the visual indicator light show the set is ready then with a red light Illuminating after about 60 seconds after the L the HD on is pressed to turn the set off press LT off to the left below the lights you have your gain and 10 Mile zero control the latter basically allows you to translate slant ranges to ground ranges thus accounting for distance measuring errors and distortions at ranges of less than 10 miles below these the Lucero and range switch Lucero enables you to use ground beacons on other frequencies than the native set for distance bearing and height measurements a scanner and heading switch are to the bottom with a dimmer switch to the left all the way to the right we have the range drum with a movable pointer and the range and height control are offset to the right out of view these also operate the height drum to the left the left side of the drum is in a 30 mile scale the right hand side in a 100 mile scale the main drum for accuracy purposes is at 10 miles any other screw controls you see here or on other sets in the future are for the mechanics and maintenance screws only moving on to the PPI or indicator set the main feature here of course is the PPI itself so that's the plan position indicator here you can see a representation of the return although this does come from an h2os manual for Overland operations as you can see but it still gives you a general idea of what it might look like although it doesn't show c-clutter distortions in this in this picture that's a whole other story the PPI is where the radar operator would scan the ocean surface to engage in that cat and mouse game with access shipping and especially German U-boats that depending on the year equipment and frequency would also be carrying equipment to warn them of radar transmissions and thus they might in fact have early warning from approaching sunderlands to the immediate left you find the mixer control indicator and its control as well as the brightness control of the PPI and the row of controls to the bottom of the PPI are from the left here the contrast the shift and the tuning switches and the slightly offset switch is as far as I understand for the lamp of the PPI lowest indicator is the high tube with a brightness control to its right A visual representation of the return display is shown here in the picture moving on then to the wireless operator who operates well the wireless or radio as we would say nowadays for this he has a t1154 transmitter and r1155 receiver set the wireless set is connected to the directional finding antenna as well you'll remember that one from earlier and the directional finding visual indicator is also found to the right of the co-pilot the wireless operator also controls the aerial switch and the control winch for the antennas now let's go through the receiver and transmitter first the r1155 receiver is set to the left on it you will find the master switch set to the right to switch between all or select frequencies then we have the frequency range switch allowing you to select between HF and MF frequencies so that's high frequency and medium frequency and the latter is used for directional finding you will find of course the switch to the left the tuning indicator allowing you tends to strop through the frequency range as found in the middle the volume control is set to the left with switches for the balance low frequency filter and the amplitude set above it finally top right the sensitivity switch for low sensitivity when homing in on a beacon as well as the high sensitivity when taking a bearing off a beacon as well as the overall switch for the oral directional finding then we have the t1154 transmitter with a lot of colorful tuning wheels and this is of course set to the right of the receiver on the bottom you will find the master switch and frequency range selector there are three ranges in the set known as well range one two and three one and two are high frequency HF and 3s medium frequency MF the color code is of course intended as it links the master tuners on the left with the tab switches and output tuners on the right blue and red are range one and two yellow is range 3 for that directional finding each Master tuner has eight preset frequencies corresponding to the letters on the tuner and oscillation dial in case of Blue we have here 8 through G or rather H which is indicated as three the same can be set on the output tuner the tabs will just connect the area to the set range as you can see yellow has an additional one for 34 positions in total the two dials on the top are the milliampeter indicating 0 to 300 milliamps for high frequency and the ammeter indicating 0 to 3.5 arms for medium frequency then finally we move over to the Navigator position he has a chart table no of course there's more the table helps with tracking maps and so on but it can also be stored it used to be on the starboard side of the cabin but was moved here with the installation of the radar set a bearing Compass is provided and then we have a ground position indicator mounted above the chart table this is a projector with a compass Arrow being projected onto the map you can see how a specific map scale is required for this it helps also to account for the influence of the Wind the two larger controls on the left are wind scales and above this the master switch and then we have the wind speed and direction indicator that can be adjusted via the wheels to the right and the course indicator is adjusted similarly as far as I know now this engine starting control panel is mounted to the starboard side or the right hand side of the wireless operator and it sits above the doorway that separates the flight Engineers position from the frontal cabin and it is found just below the Astrodome the Astrodome itself no longer features on this aircraft I don't know exactly when it was demounted but as you can see it's all position is still here just above that entry hatch to the cockpit to the top of this control panel then you have the booster core switches the fuel booster pump and the pump master switches you can also find the fuel pressure warning lights here the priming pumps and the selector for the individual engines on each wing while Port wing and starboard wing of each port and starboard a wing are set just below this as always I will move on over from the port side over to the central instrument board and then I go on to finish it off on the starboard side on the port side so the left of the pilot we find the following switches we have the radio demolition switch to the right the autopilot control levers and control switches together with the pitot tube heaters and below this from the left you have the bomb fusing switches the bomb Carriage indicator lights as well as the bomb selector panel two jettison buttons for the bombs and bomb containers round off the weapons controls in front of the pilot you'll find your basic six you have the airspeed indicator the attitude indicator the vertical speed indicator the altimeter the directional gyro and to turn and slip indicator below this you'll find the downward identification light switch and the navigational and recognition light switches your main Compass is in front of the control yoke towards the top of the instrument board the flap indicator lights the flap control selector and that is accompanied by a flap position indicator and below this you will find the radio alternator as well as the distance reading Compass repeater the signaling and Landing light switches are found just to the left of the throttles moving over to the central instruments on the top the engine ignition switches for either side with the mixture indicator lights set in the middle and Below these you will find your four RPM gauges for the engines arranged in the appropriate sequence from the left to the right or port to starboard the same applies to the engine boost gauges fire warning lights and the CO2 fire extinguisher push buttons are found just below this in earlier variants these would typically be found to the left and above the pilot the propeller feather push buttons are set in a row just above the starter buttons the throttles are arranged with four levers each corresponding to the respective engine make sure levers are below these just above the propeller speed control levers moving to the co-pilot station we will find a much more simplified setup a radio altimeter limiter an airspeed indicator an altimeter as well as a turn and slip indicator round off the basic instruments then a vertical balance indicator for the aircraft is found below these all the way on the starboard side you will find out the directional finding indicator that I mentioned earlier now this appears of course quite simple but we are not just done yet above the two stations you will find additional indicators and controls first the master fuel clocks for the engines are found up front here as well the elevator trim wheels are next to those with a separate handle for either pilot a rotted trim control is found in the central position as you can see these are set in such a fashion that either pilot can operate them fuel jettison controls are also found all the way in front and then we have a long horizontal Rudder trim indicator in the central position while an elevator trim indicator is set to either side of it allowing both the pilot and the co-pilot to read the indication that is set there and that brings us to a close on the sunderland's interior for a massive plane of this size the relative Simplicity of the cockpit itself might be surprising however as we saw there's more to it than that because we also have that separate flight engineer Navigator radar operator and wireless operator position inside the ear cabin as well all right so I hope that you enjoyed that tour of the short Sunderland I certainly did especially discovering this upper part with all of you so as always um also if you like this sort of content do consider checking out paper on the channel memberships I know that everybody always keeps on going on about these things but that is in fact a support that sustains and supports the series so if you enjoy these sort of videos do consider supporting via those two platforms and to the ones that of course do affect your very much you are keeping this series alive and as always I wish all of you a great day and spend some time with your friends and family go out there discover the world and of course come to the RAF Museum as well because it's a place that deserves to be visited as always have a good one and see you in the sky

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 234,937

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Id: vmNm7AzsTuI

Length: 48min 50sec (2930 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022