hello and welcome to season 3 of Rex's hanger unfortunately I am still recovering from the horrors of influenza which has delayed the release of videos for the past month as as you can see I still have a really nasty lingering cough and it makes recording anything more than a passing paragraph very difficult by way of compensation I'm releasing this video today when in reality I was hoping to upload season 3 in mid to late July season 3 covers all the videos are released through early to mid spring of 20122 including any special videos as many of you requested that for them to be added into each season so hopefully you will enjoy this and hopefully by the end of this month I'll be less broken and regular videos will resume once again anyway enjoy episode 1 the Avro Aven the afro Aven was a light aircraft developed during the 1920s and despite only achieving moderate Commercial Success it still left its mark on the fields of competitive flying and Aviation record setting following the first world war the market for civil aircraft began to grow at a rapid Pace in Britain this was SP thir on by the shrinking of the class Gap and the general consensus that enjoying aircraft shouldn't be restricted to people with wealth or mechanical obsessions as a result of this the limb light aircraft trials were held to encourage the development of light aircraft for private ownership this event was held three times in 1923 1924 and in 1926 and it was in this final event that the Aven would make its appearance the first prototype Ty Aven was developed from a modified Auto gyro fuselage in 1926 the air Ministry had placed a new contract for auto Gyros with Avo which were to be designated as the AO 576 not long after construction began one of these new aircraft were set aside to be modified for the two- seat light airplane trials at Limb and it was redesigned as the Avo 581 Aven the Prototype was completed and given the registration GB oov it had a remarkably low structural weight which gave a tear weight to all up weight ratio of less than 0.5 the aircraft trials had strict weight allowances with a maximum engine weight of only 170 lb and as a result of this the 70 horsepower Jer engine from the Avo 576 was retained as it was the most powerful engine in this weight class for competitive purposes the Aven had a large wing area for its size and the wing structure itself was built as simple as possible in order to save weight the outer sections were mounted on two pairs of wing struts and the center section was mounted on four smaller struts attached to the fuselage aerons were only fitted to the lower wing and fuel was stored in the front of the fuselage to leave the upper main plane clear to comply with the rules of the lights aircraft competition the wings folded around the rear Spar and this was accomplished with quick release bolts the Aven was flown in the limb trials by Australian Herbert J hinkler and overall it did pretty well hler flew 1,074 Mi over 3 days and despite a leaking fuel tank he gained second place in three of the six tests he averaged just under 69 mph for the 312 m 3 laap cross country to shorum on September the 12th on the 14th he averaged 69 mph for three laps of the 366 M Hastings circuit and on the 14th he had average 78 mph over a 396 M 6 laap race the Aven was proving to have excellent endurance for such a light airframe however its luck ran out when the drive of its Magneto sheared and the aircraft was eliminated from the remainder of the competition this blow was somewhat lessened when hinkler won a separate race later on on the 18th of September which covered six laps of the limb course and he averaged 90 mph after this the Avan was taken back to AO Works in hble for modifications the wingspan was reduced to 28 ft and the nose was lengthened to accommodate an 85 horsepower ADC serus 2 inline engine this engine was gravity fed from a large Center section tank whose weight necessitated the addition of two more sloping struts between the upper wing and the fuselage a new triangle of Finn and an enlarged Rudder were fitted to compensate The increased side area of the lengthened nose and it was in disguise that the Aven was redesignated as the Avo 581a after these modifications were complete hler who liked the Aven bought the Prototype and competed in several races over the course of 1927 at the same time as this Avro began work on the production version of the Aven but hinkler continued to to score impressive achievements with their first prototype he had his sights set on long-distance flights and over the summer of 1927 hler made various modifications to the aircraft these included a new undercarriage of his own design lowering the engine to make it more accessible for maintenance and adding a longrange fuel tank as long-distance flights carried to the risk of possible emergency Landings in fields bogs and other places not well suited to aircraft hinkler widened the undercarriage when he redesigned it he also designed it to be able to be moved further back which allowed the tail to be lifted more easily when the wings were folded Ed for transport hinkler made his first record setting flight on the 27th of August 1927 flying 1200 M from England to lva in approximately 10 hours and 45 minutes this was the longest non-stop flight by aite aircraft at the time and when it was inspected the Aven impressed the lvan Air Force who then placed orders for the Aven as a training aircraft after this flight hinkler embarked on a far more ambitious Endeavor the avia's fuel consult during the England lava flight convinced him that it was capable of flying him all the way from England to his homeland of Australia as this was a considerably longer distance than anything so far attempted with the Aven he decided to further modify it a more rugged non-folding divided undercarriage was added the wings from another Aven one that had set altitude records were fitted to the aircraft and the wooden propeller was replaced by a metal one built by fairy in this new configuration hler Aven was redesignated again to the AO 581e he took off from cuden on the 7th of February 1928 with Darwin as his intended destination at the beginning of his flight there was little media retention perhaps because many thought that such a light aircraft lacked the endurance for such an attempt but by the time he was halfway to his destination his attempt had caught the attention of the aviation World on the 22nd of February he safely arrived at Darwin completing the first solo flight from England to Australia and for his exploits he would eventually be made an honorary rwf Squadron leader the production models of the Aven were known as the Avo 594 they had limited success in competitive events and only moderate Commercial Success when compared to the davand moth however like the Prototype some of these avens would go on to set some records an Aven Mark 2 flown by Dudley watt won an Al ude race in 1927 reaching 12,750 ft in 90 minutes the Prototype model of the Avan Mark I nicknamed The Red Rose was flown by Captain Bill Lancaster from England to Australia he actually began his flight before hinkler taking off on the 14th of October 1927 however he was plagued by various mechanical problems and did not arrive in Darwin until March the following year his Aven performed better after this and set a new record for crossing the bass straight from Melbourne in just 6 and 1/2 hours a production Aven Mark III was purchased by Lady Heath who flew solo from the South African Cape to England between March and may of 1928 she then later sold her aircraft to another female pilot who was beginning to make a name for herself Amelia aart she would fly the Aven on her first long-distance solo flight becoming the first woman to fly across the North American continent and back back in August of 1928 another Aven a 616 sports model dubbed the Southern Cross junr was flown by guy menes on the first solo flight from Australia to New Zealand in 1931 this same aircraft would later be used by Bill Lancaster on his ill-fated attempt to beat the English to South Africa speed record its wreckage was eventually discovered in 1962 and is now on display at the Queensland Museum along with with being a record Setter the Aven also had a moment of heroism on the 1st of January 1929 Canadians Wilfred May and Vic Horner flew an Aven from Edmonton to Fort Vermillion to deliver much-needed deia medicine including the return Journey the total distance covered was over 700 mil which was a truly impressive feat considering the appalling temperature and flying conditions at the time the flight became known as the against death a title shared by the exploits of a dog sled team who in 1925 also had to deliver deia medication to a remote region in appalling conditions during the middle of the Canadian winter there was a bit of a theme in the 1920s there only two pre-production models dubbed the Aven Mark 1 were built they closely resembled the original prototype with the exception of having slightly rounded wing tips and a triangular rudder things quickly moved on to the Aven Mark I which had a 85 horsepower Cirrus engine and subsequent models after that would eventually move on to the 95 horsepower serus 3 the production run of the Aven was somewhat chaotic as internal arguments that would put Parliament to shame resulted in multiple design changes some Mark 2s were fitted with the Armstrong Sidle Genet radial engine as was a single Aven Mark III and these would be known as the Avro 594 B two Aven Mark 3s were also converted to float planes and these would be known as the Avo 605 the Aven markv came in a variety of shapes sizes and flavors for Aviation enthusiasts to choose from along with several improvements these included a more robust undercarriage support structure and new horn balanced ailerons this aircraft was also powered by the Cirrus 3 engine and it had a production run of 90 units of these only a handful were sold in the British market with the bulk being sold overseas to Argentina Australia Brazil Mexico Norway South Africa and Spain the Aven Mark 4M known as the AO 616 could really be considered its own aircraft its fuselage had welded steel tube framing in place of wood and the Cirrus engine was replaced with either Hermes or Genet major engines depending on the specific airframe a large quantity of these were exported to Canada who also built 18 specifically for the Royal Canadian Air Force as training aircraft and an equally large amount of the heres models were also sold to China many were used in flying schools but some were also used as light mail carriers in the early 1930s however by this point the Aven age was starting to show and it became apparent that it was nearing the end of its development life an attempt was made to improve its chances on the competitive scene by building two Aven Mark 4S as low Wing monoplanes these were known as the AO 625 neither of these saw much success in races and the first model was eventually rebuilt as a standard B plane the last avens were built in 1933 and only a handful saw military service in World War II 10 wooden and four metal frame avens were impressed by the RAF at the start of the war and they were used solely as training aircraft several surviving avens can be found today despite having logged over 35,000 flying miles the first prototype Aven flown by hinkler was in remarkably good condition however it was never registered in Australia instead it was placed in the brisban museum which then became the Queensland museum with its original markings and it's still there today and I snapped this photo during a recent visit two airworthy avens can also be found in Australia and several other models are on display in the US Canada Britain and Sweden though it was only a moderately successful I aircraft the Aven certainly had an interesting life and one that is often overshadowed by the more popular deavalon moth so I hoped you enjoyed today's video on this little plane and I'll catch you all next time episode 2 the hle h59 in 1930 hio began development work on a new twin engine biplane to the watching world it was being designed as a civil transport but in reality it was being developed for the reiches Marine they were looking for a new Maritime Patrol aircraft and at the time hle was the most established name in the clandestine business of building military planes for Germany Hinkle's new aircraft was designed as a large twin engine attack and reconnaissance plane which could be operated as either a land plane or a float plane as such two prototypes were ordered to test out both versions of this design the float plane was designated to the H 59a and the L plane was the H 59b though the actual design of the aircraft was not cutting edge it was appealing due to its sturdiness and relatively cheap cost an important factor to consider when Germany and indeed a lot of the world was somewhat broke in 1931 like many aircraft of this size particularly the German ones it had a tubular fuselage with slab sides the twin engines were housed in a pair of Nels outboard from the fuselage and between the wings these were supported by struts that connected to the upper and lower Wings spars the engines themselves were 660 horsepower 46 L BMW v12s the lower struts also connected to the framework that connected the twin Floats or the undercarriage to the airframe this was done to distribute the impact of Landing more evenly and in general provide a more sturdy platform compared to other float planes at the time the h59 was rather large with a wingspan of just under 24 M and enough room in the fuselage to facilitate an internal Bombay this would allow it to carry a mixed payload of bombs or a single heavy torpedo aside from Landing mechanism the only difference between the two prototypes was the location of the fuel tanks the float plane had two additional fuel tanks in the Keels of the floats whereas the land plane had rely on just the internal tanks though it could sacrifice space in the Bombay for extra fuel if needed in total the float plane version had a standard fuel capacity of 2700 L and this could be brought up to 3200 L with the addition of internal tanks despite being the second design the land plane was completed first fitted with wheels and large streamlined fairings for the undercarriage it made its Maiden flight in September of 1931 a few months later the float plane prototype equipped with a pair of long singl step floats took off in January of 1932 from the outset the H 59a was preferred being more suited for maritime duties with its floats and a small batch of additional prototypes were ordered for further evaluation despite the engines being considered slightly underpowered and the aircraft's modest top speed still being a bit uncomfortable with an open cockpit the h59 was deemed successful in all of its evaluation TR Tri s and this resulted in the order of a pre-production batch of 16 h59 b1s which would later be redesignated as the b0 this should not be confused with the Prototype H 59b which was a land plane as this design was then abandoned at this point though it is a little confusing when aircraft manufacturers decide to make their designations case sensitive rather than assigning a fresh letter to them compared to the Prototype there were some minor equipment changes and the addition of a .9 mm mg machine gun in the nose however these pre-production models were quickly superseded by the HG 59 B2 which was produced by both HL and aado like its predecessors this version was powered by two 660 horsepower BMW engines and was of a mixed construction however it now had a new all metal nose with bomb aiming panels while glazed panels were also fitted for a vental gunner position and a similar setup in in the dorsal position in this configuration the aircraft now had three defensive guns and a total crew of four with the nose Gunner also acting as bomb aimer the h59 entered LT waffer service as a torpedo bomber and Maritime Patrol aircraft in 1935 photos suggest that at least some of the pre-production models were brought up to the standard of the h59 B2 however records and photographic evidence is pretty sparse on this so it's very difficult to tell how many of these were actually upgraded it soon earned a good reputation for its flight handling being very easy to take off fly and land however it was still considered underpowered and its range was somewhat Limited at just 942 km this aircraft would see action relatively early in its career with several units being deployed as part of Germany's Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War they were used for a mixture of night bombing and anti-shipping patrols the latter having them equipped with a 20 mm cannon in the nose in place of the machine gun with production of the h59 B2 established hle began work on more specialized versions the first was the h59 B3 which was a reconnaissance version that sacrificed a gun position for camera equipment the HG 59 C2 was also without Armament but it was designed to accommodate sixes and the required equipment for airc Rescue by the outbreak of of the second world war they had been used successfully in multiple rescue operations another reconnaissance version was later developed designated the E2 six were built for longrange Missions and had three Advanced cameras installed various models of the h59 were also introduced for training purposes the 59 C1 was originally designed for reconnaissance but was further lightened by stripping it of all weaponry and converted to a training platform the 59 D1 was similar to the C2 model used for C rescue but it was used for training Pilots radio operators and Navigators more advanced training was given with the h59 N which had specialist radio equipment and torpedo dropping was taught with the h59 E1 by the outbreak of war in 1939 the bomber version had been withdrawn from service being deemed too obsolete for any direct offensive roles due to this the h59 was largely used for maritime Recon and airc rescue equipping squadrons on the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea during the early stages of the war approximately 80 H 59s were employed by the LT waffer and whilst most were either in reconnaissance or airc rescue roles there were also some specialized units early on the lift waffer had foreseen the need to set aside a number of sea planes for special duties and a squadron had been formed in 1939 for the purpose of transporting small groups of soldiers to carry out amphibious attacks against hostile Shores two such minor operations were carried out during the invasion of Poland but it was during the invasion of Norway that this unit proved its value in the last 3 weeks of April 1940 the sea planes were flown into numerous FS to deliver parties of up to 50 soldiers who then paddled ashore in dingies to secure key objectives later as the German Army fought its way northwards the H 59s were used to deliver stores mail and medical supplies as well as to evacuate critically wounded soldiers though successful in Norway their most spectacular use was to be carried out on the first day of Germany's invasion of the Netherlands a key objective on May the 10th was the capture of the Twin Bridges over the ma at Rotterdam at 7:00 a.m. that morning six H 59s flew into to deliver 120 assault troops and their dingies though heavy fire brought down four of the planes the troops were successfully disembarked and they captured their objective with the aid of paratroopers later that year the h59 would become one of the Lesser known participants in the Battle of Britain scores of them flew rescue missions in the English Channel picking up to down LT waffer Pilots a task that increased in frequency as the air War escalated for these missions the aircraft were painted white with red crosses which would normally protect them from enemy engagement however it became known that some of these rescue planes were also radioing the location of British fighter patrols to German bomber formations and their protection was subsequently revoked moreover at least two of these planes were also shot down whilst laying mines in the temps estery and it was noted that of the score of hle shot down there was scarcely a crew member who was actually qualified to render basic first aid let alone deal with serious wounds after the Battle of Britain peted out the HG 59 continued to see operational duty until mid 1942 when it was finally retired from active service training models continued to be used for another 2 years but most were either destroyed or too worn out to be of any use by the time of the Normandy Landings four aircraft were leased to The Finnish Air Force in 1943 but this was only a short-term Affair and they were returned to Germany after 4 months none of these aircraft survived the war and Frank there isn't a huge photographic record of them either but their use as a somewhat aggressive ambulance and transport service gives an interesting history to what was otherwise a very uninteresting plane and I hope you found it interesting as well as always thank you all very much for watching and I'll catch you all next time episode 3 The Curtis P36 in 1935 Curtis Wright built one of the first of a new breed of sleek all metal American fighter aircraft though it had a pretty disastrous beginning and an uneventful service life with us Pilots it would go on to serve extensively overseas with a variety of countries in the leadup to and during the second world war we are of course talking about the Curtis P36 hawk in the early 1930s the Army Air cor had been forced to accept that the era of the bip plane was drawing to a close despite being hobbled by the financial effects of the Great Depression development had progressed on a new generation of bomber aircraft the best examples being the Boeing B9 and the Martin B10 this put the Army in the rather embarrassing position of having bombers that were faster than their best Pursuit aircraft and while the Boeing p26 sort of corrected this its design was already considered outdated after only a couple of years of service and so in the spring of 1935 the Army opened a competition for the development of a modern Pursuit Fighter the aircraft submitted by Curtis was the model 75 this was a departure from previous models as the principal designer was Donovan Berlin who had previously worked for Northrup the model 75 was a loow monoplane of all metal construction with the exception of the control surfaces which were still fabric clad it was to have a fully enclosed cockpit with a sliding canopy a fully retractable under Carriage with the main Wheels slotting into the wings and construction of the Prototype began in 1934 at this time it was a completely private Venture by Curtis though they were expecting the Army aircore to announce a design competition at some point in the near future as it turned out their metaphorical crystal ball was almost accurate to the day and the Prototype took off in May 1935 the same month as the announcement of the competition the Prototype performed well during the initial tests with the sole exception that its maximum speed was slower than expected its engine was an experimental two row 14 cylinder version of the right Whirlwind dubbed the XR 16706 and it would become a source of frequent mechanical headaches nevertheless Curtis were generally satisfied with their prototype as was the Army and it was sent to right field to take part in the competitive trials these trials took some time to get underway owing to the lack of competing aircraft and it turned out that the Prototype submitted by Curtis was the only one to actually arrive on time the Prototype developed by cerski considered the main rival for Curtis had been heavily damaged during a delivery incident and had to be returned for repairs during which it was changed from a two-seater fixed landing gear fighter into a more competitive single seat model with a retractable undercarriage this this would become the basis of the cerski P35 the only other major competitor was the almost completely unknown Northrup 2A which remained unknown as during its Maiden flight on July 30th it took off headed out over the Pacific Ocean and promptly disappeared the pursuit fighter competition was delayed to allow cerski to rebuild their prototype this prompted Curtis to protest claiming that seki were now being given an un Fair Advantage as they were now actively modifying their prototype rather than just repairing it as a result the competition was then further delayed until 1936 so that Curtis could then make their own modifications the experimental right engine was replaced with a 700 horsepower pratton Whitney r535 however concerns were soon raised about a potential lack of power and the engine was changed again to a 950 horsepower 9 cylinder right cycle clone during this delay the opportunity was also taken to strengthen the canopy and adjust the fuselage behind the cockpit to improve rear visibility unfortunately the new engine proved to be as contener as the old one no less than four engine changes were made during the trials at rightfield and the aircraft top speed was still slower than expected as a result of this the cerski Prototype would win the competition earning a contract ordering 77 models under the new designation of P3 5 for Curtis the disappointment was actually shortlived the Army Air Corp had reservations about cersi's capacity to meet delivery requirements and combined with the growing saber rattling in Europe they decided a backup aircraft was needed and so on the 16th of June 1936 Curtis received an order for three Service Test models of the 75b that were redesignated as the y1 P36 the first of these was delivered to the Army in March of 1937 the main difference between the Prototype and the test model were the change to the 900 horsepower pratton Whitney twin wasp engine and further modifications through the rear cockpit to again further improve rear visibility the y1 P36 was a significant improvement over the original prototype and it so thoroughly impressed the army that it won a new Pursuit fighter competition in 1937 and orders were placed for 210 production aircraft as the p 36a this was the largest single order for military aircraft in the US since the first world war but it would not be the only order Curtis would receive indeed most of the P36 Fighters produced would be the various export models however I'll cover the domestic versions first to keep things simple the first production model the p36a arrived at rightfield in April of 1938 the 20th Pursuit group based at Barksdale field in Louisiana had been the intended first recipient of the new fighter and expecting this they had chosen to relinquish their old P 26s ahead of time unfortunately upon arriving the p-36s almost immediately encountered an extensive array of teething problems severe buckling of the metal skin was observed near the landing gear Wells which required adding reinforcements and thickening the skin engine exhaust difficulties threatened to either a Rob the aircraft of power or B threaten self- emulation and despite fixes on the production line and in the field numerous p-36s were repeatedly grounded this was the cause for some embarrassment for both Curtis and the 20th Pursuit group as at one point they were left with just six operational Fighters between three squadrons with many Pilots lamenting the loss of their old peashooters some of these problems took a considerable amount of time to fix and by that time the p36a was was being relegated to the training role in the US development was considerably underway on the newer more powerful P40 which had taken the painful lessons of the P36 to heart and the only combat experienced by us p-36s was during the attack on Pearl haror during which five were able to get into the air and shoot down a pair of Japanese zeros attempts had been made to improve the P36 in the US but they didn't have much of an impact overall a single P36 B was produced in 1938 it was fitted with a 1,100 horsepower supercharg twin wasp to evaluate the engine's supercharged gearing but it was eventually converted back to a p36a at the conclusion of the tests the last 30 models of the original order for 210 aircraft were converted to the P36 C these had a 1200 horsepower twin wasp engine and an additional pair of 30 caliber machine guns mounted in the wings experiments were also made with a complete change of power plant the XP 37 and the 13 subsequent test models were powered by the Allison v710 liquid cooled engine the experimental prototype first flew in June of 1937 and the Army was very impressed by its performance unfortunately it was a short-lived project problems around the supercharger led to multiple delays and the high cost of each completed aircraft sealed its fate so yes overall the P36 didn't have a very exciting life with the US Armed Forces but it did significantly better overseas a large number were exported to various countries around the world and during World War II many captured aircraft were brought into service with other powers this led to one of the few occasions during the conflict in which American built planes fought against other American built planes early in 1937 Curtis began develop and work on a simplified version of the y1 P36 to be sold for export not all overseas customers enjoyed climates or budgets that were kind towards complicated aircraft and sophisticated features like a retractable landing gear threatened all kinds of maintenance problems and so the model 75h was developed in general its construction was similar to that of the y1 P36 but it had a fixed landing gear and a lower powerered engine of 875 horsepower emphasis was placed on ease of Maintenance rough field performance and the aircraft's capacity to accommodate different types of engines and Armament the first overseas customer for this aircraft was China who placed an initial order for 112 units at the end of 1937 these aircraft were retroactively designated as the hawk 7 5 m by Curtis it is unclear how many of these actually ended up in Chinese Service as only 30 Hawk 75m are accounted for in Curtis records with deliveries beginning in May of 1938 tooling equipment and kits for an unspecified number of additional aircraft were also delivered but there seems to be no record of any more aircraft actually being assembled in total three full squadrons of hawks are known to have been operated but they achieved little success against the Japanese forces largely due to poor serviceability and the inadequate training of pilots and ground Crews the simplified version of the hawk was also exported to a few other countries under different designations Thailand operated the hawk 75n and Argentina operated the hawk 75 Argentina also required a license to manufacture the 750 domestically with 20 units being built at a supposedly better standard than the export models that were delivered to them along with the simplified Hawk Curtis also exported production versions of the p36a with most of them going to European nations the French Air Force would be the largest foreign operator of the P36 and it was one of their most fielded aircraft at the time of the German invasion in 1940 French interest in the P36 dated back to 1938 when the government entered into negotiations with Curtis to supply them with 300 export models the hawk 75a was an export model of the p36a and could be sold with either the pratton Whitney twin wasp or the right Cyclone engine unfortunately these negotiations were fraught with difficulty the unit price asked by Curtis was high enough to be considered insulting and the Army aircore opposed the deal as they doubted Curtis could meet both their own delivery requirements and those of the French however with Hitler eyeing off bits of Europe with the hunger of a bear in Spring the French need for military equipment was growing by the day this was further compounded by development issues encountered in France with their own aircraft and so in mid 1938 an initial contract was signed for 100 units of the hawk 75 A1 this was partly made possible due to the personal intervention of President Roosevelt who allowed the French test pilot a chance to fly the y1 P36 and report his findings back to to the French government between 1938 and the Armistice between France and Germany multiple orders were placed for the hawk and the design of the export model would be changed several times in France the name of Hawk was never used and the aircraft were known simply as the h75 not counting for units lost in delivery and those never assembled for combat the strength of the French Hawks totaled 291 aircraft they saw action within the first month of the war in Europe with units from the group dasas 24 shooting down a pair of BF 109 e in September of 1939 claiming the first Allied aerial victories of the conflict generally they were outclassed by the BF 109 being neither as fast or as well-armed but their Superior maneuverability and ability to take more punishment helped to even things out during the fighting through 1939 and 1940 French Pilots claimed 230 air-to-air kills and 81 probable against a loss of just 29 h75 though potentially optimistic it would mean that just over onethird of all French kills during the Battle of France were made by an aircraft that made up less than one sixth of its single seat fighter Force after the collapse of French Resistance the aircraft that had not escaped across the channel were captured by the lift waffer in fact some of them had not even been assembled and were still in their delivery crates these aircraft were taken back to Germany where they were overhauled and refitted with German instrumentation before being sent to Finland in total The Finnish Air Force would receive 44 captured aircraft between 1941 and 1944 most were French models but 13 also came from Norway after the German invasion the aircraft were well liked by Finnish pilots who nicknamed it Susu or sweetheart and they scored a truly remarkable ratio of 190 kills for the loss of just 15 some of the Hawks would remain in France to be operated by the vishy Air Force in 1942 during The Landings of Operation Torch elements of these units would engage carrier launched Grumman F4F Wildcats it was one of the few occasions of the war where American built aircraft would engage other American built aircraft the battle was rather one-sided though with the Hawks being cons considerably outclassed by their carrier-based opponents and the battle ended with the loss of 15 planes against seven after France England would become the second biggest operator of the Hawks but only as a result of the additional influx of French models in 1940 based on several favorable trials the British government briefly entertained the idea of ordering the hawk for RAF service but the order for units was never placed in some respects the hawk turned out to be superior to the Mark 1 version of the Spitfire a statement that is no doubt heresy in some Aviation circles I know but it's true the Rae observed that in a diving attack at 400 mph the hawk was superior to the Spitfire thanks to its lighter and well harmonized controls in dogf fight conditions at 250 mph again the hawk wiped the spitfire's eye by being more maneuverable and easier to control mostly because its elevators unlike the Spitfires weren't overly sensitive to the point of being a threat to the Pilot's safety however the Spitfire won out thanks to its raw power and acceleration which allowed its Pilots to engage and break from combat at will something the hawk could not achieve in RF service the impressed Hawk 75s from France would be renamed the Mohawk in total the RAF would find itself in possession of 229 planes mostly French but some also came from the Middle East and India they were redesignated into four subvariants as the Mohawk marks one through to four early on it was decided that they were not suitable for the European theater though a bit of wounded Pride from the AFF forementioned tests may have influenced this decision and the Mohawks were sent to South Africa and India five squadrons of mohawks were operated by South Africa and two were operated by India at one point just eight Mohawks provided the only fighter defense for all of Northeast India being kept mechanically operational by sheer willpower and the fighter remained operational on the Burma front until finally being replaced by more modern Fighters including its successor the P40 in December of 1943 in total the P36 would be operated by no less than 14 different countries mostly as an export but sometimes as captured equipment records have them being operated by Argentina Brazil Britain China Finland France India Iran the Dutch East Indies Norway Peru Portugal South Africa and Thailand for an aircraft that started off with an appalling history of mechanical problems the P36 well and truly redeemed itself overseas and a few models even managed to survive the war several surviving examples can be found around the world including two airworthy models that are part of the fighter collection in duckford for Curtis the P36 was a commercial success with over 1100 domestic and Export models being built but more importantly its development and the hard lessons learned from it set a foundation for Curtis to develop one of the most important fighter aircraft of World War II the P40 Warhawk but that's a video for another day as always thank you all very much for watching and I'll catch you all next time goodbye episode 4 the hle h11 zilling Germany produced some spectacularly unique aircraft during World War II one of these creations was a giant transport glider called the mesmi 321 gigant but that isn't the start of today's video no today we're going to be looking at the aircraft that was built to tow it the equally strange hle hg11 zelling during the early stages of the gigant development the LT waffer found itself in a bit of an embarrassing position the yuna's j90 the intended Towing aircraft was not powerful enough to safely tow the giant glider into the air a solution was found in the terrifying form of having the gigant towed by three bf-110 and assisted by rockets for takeoff an Endeavor that was so complicated and dangerous that only the most experienced Pilots were allowed to take part unsurprisingly the aerial equivalent of an overweight sleigh being towed by a trio of explosive reindeer didn't sit too well with the Sena members of the relevant authorities one of whom was Ernst udet who is now the lift waffer chief of procurement and Supply Keen to not lose precious men and materials in numerous midair explosions he approached hle in the hopes of finding a different solution that could be implemented quickly and without great expense this would bear fruit in 1941 when udet paid a visit to H's Factory and together they stared longingly at a collection of H1s that were under construction and thought what if we stuck two of them together when put in such simple terms the idea sounds almost comical but there were several strong Arguments for such a design H's initial calculation showed that the project could be realized in a relatively short time frame as most of the design work was already done and the only area that required major redesign would be the central Wing section that connected the two fuselages it would also be considerably cheaper to ruce than a complete original design as the required materials and Equipment already had established production lines the cost-saving advantage men that the project received almost Universal approval and the design work was complete by August of 1941 construction then immediately began on the Prototype which was built from a pair of existing H6 bombers this was all completed by Hol within 2 months and it performed its made and flight in Autumn despite looking highly unorthodox the Prototype was praised by T Pilots for its surprisingly good performance and handling and it was ordered to wrenchin for official trials during this time a second air frame was also built for the trials again from an existing pair of H6 bombers both of them performed as expected completing multiple tests as well as performing a successful takeoff Towing an me 321 with a simulated payload even a forc landing incident when the first prototype was ditched on the Rin Lake due to Mechanical failure did not do much to dampen spirits the Prototype was quickly repaired and a production order for 40 h111 Z1S was placed with deliveries expected to be completed by early 1943 compared with the Prototype there seemed to be little changes made to the design of the production model most of the units were built from H6 airframes that were diverted from existing production lines however some were also built from Thea h16 model as its production began to get underway in 1942 as mentioned earlier the only completely new part of the assembly was the construction of the central Wing section that was used to connect the two h11 airf frames together seeing as this was the only thing holding the two airframes together a lot of attention was paid to its structural integrity and for this reason its construction was kept as simple as possible it maintained a constant section thickness and depth and it was connected at the points that would otherwise have connected a traditional Wing to the h11 fuselage when assembled the two fuselages were spaced 12.8 M apart and the new Total wingspan reached an impressive 35.2 m in addition to providing the Dual functions of added lift and necessary connectivity the redesigned Center section also served to accommodate a fifth engine like many production H1s the Willing would use 5 F2 versions of the jumo 211 which provided a total power output of 6,700 horsepower power there was also talk of using the 41.8 L BMW 801 as the fifth engine however sources indicate that this was only done as an experimental project and it was never fitted to an operational airframe as a result of the added engine and the requirement for all engines to be running on higher power to tow the heavy glider the overall fuel capacity was increased two fuel tanks were installed in the central Wing each with a capacity for 1,2 25 L and this brought the total internal fuel capacity up to 8,570 L The Zing was also designed to carry 4 600 L drop tanks to further improve its range the landing gear component of the aircraft was incredibly simple as it was just twice that of a normal ag11 it consisted of four main landing gear legs combined with two tail Wheels which meant that you now had a Sixpoint Landing configuration and that was it though there was now essentially double the plane it would not require double the crew the primary cockpit navigation station and most major instruments were concentrated in the Portside fuselage only an additional set of flight controls and the most important instruments remained in the starboard side and The Zing was designed to operate with a crew of seven four were in the port fuselage a pilot the first engineer a radio operator and a gunner three were in the starboard fuselage a secondary pilot who was mostly an observer a second engineer and another Gunner due to the precarious Personnel situation brought on by the surprise or well rather the shock of operation Barbarosa hle did not manage to complete the first two production aircraft until October 1942 but they eventually lumbered into service not long after this it was found that the power of the five jumo engines was only partially sufficient to get a fully loaded me3 tube1 into the air owing to the odd decision of only testing the Prototype with a partly loaded glider due to safety concerns for lighter missions it was perfectly capable but for heavy lifting it was once again decided to fall back onto rocket assisted takeoff six of these would be used in total two under each fuselage and one under each outer Wing these would each add an extra 500 kg of thrust during takeoff and once expended they were jettisoned with parachutes for easy recovery the huge m321 was suspended from a 150 M long 16 mm thick steel cable this branched out to connect to two couplings that connected it to the central Wing section of the Z willing this was done to both reduce the total load stress and also reduce the risk to these willings control surfaces in the event of a cable failure if there weren't any gigants to tow the Z willing was also used to tow the smaller but still relatively chunky Goa 242 transport glider it would often tow two and even on some occasions three at once and it could do so for up to 10 hours at cruising speeds thanks to the additional fuel tanks though it was a singularly unique and impressive aircraft the 111's Willing would not have a particularly long service life and this was for a couple of reasons the first was the cancellation of production orders tests had been conducted on refitting the me 321 glider with six powerful ran engines the subsequent testing phase of the newly redesignated me 323 was so successful that only 10 production models of The Zing were built before the order was cancelled the other reason was these willings Main theater of operation most of them were concentrated on the Russian front from January of 1943 and due to a lack of suitable Landing sites thanks to a combination of ice mud and hostile Bears they only saw limited use some of this did involve running resupply missions to the kaban bridge head which it did pretty well and sometimes to resupply Stalingrad which it did less well but these were few and far between the zelling also saw some use over the Skies of France and Italy but with Allied air superiority growing by the day the towing and resupply missions went from dangerous to downright suicidal one aircraft was shot down over France three over Italy and the remaining eight were all damaged on the ground at one point or another by September 1944 with only four aircraft remaining the decision was made to pull them from active service and during the chaos of the final 18 months of the war they were either cannibalized for parts or destroyed by Allied bombing raids though they were never built there were also plans for two other versions of the 111 willing the zed2 version was to be a bomber capable of carrying a moderately heavy payload this would come in the form of either 4 18800 kilo or 6 1,000 kilo bombs or alternatively it would carry four of the henchel 293 anti-shipping missiles there was also talk of it carrying two large seam mines but it doesn't seem like this was seriously considered to cope with the added loads the jumo engines would be supercharged however initial calculations would soon come out with an estimated range of just 1,094 km and and the project was ultimately dropped the zed3 would share the same fate but its cancellation was mostly As a result of the stoppage of construction on the zed1 which thus rubbed the project of a potential test bed it was designed as a long-range reconnaissance aircraft and was meant to have a range of at least 5,000 km thanks to a combination of internal and external fuel tanks further information on performance and Armament however seems to be non-existent as the project was canceled very early on in the design phase in total only 12 of hino's weird 111s would be built and none of them would survive the war the aircraft they had been built to tow the me 321 would go on to be built in greater numbers as the me 323 though deeply impressive in size it would also have an equally painful service life mostly thanks to the Swarms of Allied Fighters but that's a story for Another Day episode five the farman heavy bombers in the 1930s a series of heavy bombers were built by French manufacturer farman though often forgotten they were able to carry a remarkably heavy payload for the time and were amongst the heaviest bombers in service at the start of World War II today we're going to take a look at the series as a whole as it can be considered one long continuation of a single design and also because the recordkeeping for this aircraft in the 1930s was about as chaotic as the French government in 1929 at the request of the air staff a program was drawn up for a 4 engine night bomber the intention being to replace the leor and Oliver Leo 20 which had only entered service the previous year this was done in response to a gradual increase in Franco Italian tension and although there was talk of a potential League of Nations memorandum that would prohibit large-scale bombing an idea that remained in the realm of phant the French weren't going to take any chances the new bomber program called for an aircraft capable of carrying two tons of Bombs over a range of 2,000 km in typical French fashion for the time this program would change its requirements almost as much as the French government changed office but through the administrative chaos farm and Aviation Works managed to submit a proposal dubbed the f211 it was a high-wing monoplane of mixed construction it was powered by 4 300 horsep power gnome rone radial engines that were suspended beneath the wing in tandem pairs struts connected them to the wing and a curious pair of wing-like extensions connected them with the fuselage designed for a crew of four it would normally have a pilot co-pilot a nose Gunner who also acted as bomb aimer and a rear Gunner the aircraft made its Maiden flight on October the 19th 1931 and in December it was presented to the eligibility committee for testing during these tests several problems were noted that made the 211 a poor choice as a heavy bomber the controls particularly the elevator were very heavy the center of gravity was too far AF which made Landing a somewhat terrifying experience the wings had insufficient strength to prevent warping of the material its range was considerably shorter than predicted a mere 900 km and the aircraft top speed of 195 km an hour meant that even with a Tailwind it was woefully slow as a result of this the aircraft was extensively modified in 1932 the front fuselage was lengthened to bring the center of gravity forward the wingspan was increased from 23 M to 25 M the wing itself was strengthened and the engines were replaced by supercharged variants that gave 350 horsepower the aircraft was then redesignated as the f212 and presented for testing in February of 1933 during these tests it reached a top speed of 250 km an hour and was able to reach an altitude of 3,500 m in just 18 minutes though a significant Improvement farman had realized that their aircraft was too small and they abandoned development of the f212 and began work on the f220 unlike the previous model the f220 was of an all metal construction with the exception of the control surfaces the fuselage and wings were constructed of a mix of Steel tubular frames and girders all of which was covered by a stressed metal skin it was powered by four Hispano szer engines that put out 600 horsepower again arranged in tandem Pairs and these drove four blade fixed pitch propellers in terms of size it was considerably larger than the 212 having a wingspan of 36 M and a maximum loaded weight of 16 tons with its nose vaguely resembling that of a greenhouse the f220 took off for the first time on the 26th of May 1932 and following some modifications to its internal structure the details of which are completely unknown but it was probably to add some sort of wine rack it was admitted for testing the following year one of these tests involved the unapologetically French requirement of Landing 200 times on the Cobalt strip at the town of East all joking aside the aircraft was actually lucky to even get there on route flying through the Ron Valley the aircraft began to experience Wing flutter and if anyone out there has experienced this firsthand they know how terrifying it is this particular incident became so severe that the pilots were forced to watch on in horror as the wing rivets started breaking free and scattering the French Countryside with the throttle excessively reduced they were able to just make it to the landing strip before the airframe disintegrated around them following the incident the f220 had all of its missing rivets put back in the correct place along with a set of balances for the aerons this seemed to mostly fix the fluttering issue but the aircraft's image had soured in the minds of officials and at the conclusion of the endurance tests it was rejected as a bomber without a definitive use in November 1934 it was converted into a long-distance maale carrier at the request of Air France with farman redesignating it as the f220b it was equipped with additional fuel tanks in the place of bombs though it kept the balcony style nose and it was fitted with new Hispano radiators to improve its long distance endurance in hotter climates after 333 hours of flight testing it received its official certificate of airworthiness and was renamed lent on the 3rd of June 1935 on loan to Air France from the French government it made its first Atlantic Crossing from takar to Nal in 14 hours and 52 minutes during its commercial career the Centaur made 24 South Atlantic Crossings the last one occurring on the 29th of June 1936 as no more models of the 220 were produced and thus no source of spare materials its life was doomed to be short and after failing its inspection in August it was retired though shortlived the centur left its Mark and as a result of its performance Air France ordered a more advanced version of the f220b to argument its slow Fleet of male carriers back on the bomber front things had moved on to the f221 this was essentially an improved version of the 220 rather than a completely new design it now had a traed Zoid or tail and the Gunner positions were enclosed under glass domes the engines were swapped out for the more powerful Gomer 14 kbrs which put out 730 horsepower these engines also had reduction gears and were supercharged though more advanced than the previous design farman had made the odd decision of retaining the fixed undercarriage from the earlier models the f221 made its maen flight at the end of 1933 unlike the previous iteration it didn't try to shake itself apart on route to the testing grounds and during the flight trials it impressed Pilots by being able to land without flaps at less than 80 km an hour the 221 so impressed members of the French air Ministry that in order for 10 production aircraft was placed before the tests had even concluded the production model of the f221 differed little from the Prototype the main exception being that they now came within improved versions of the engines that produced 800 horsepower each this allowed them to carry a slightly heavier bomb load than originally designed and depending on the mission they could carry between 1.2 and 2.2 tons of bombs at an average speed of 290 km an hour ever in the pursuit of improvement farman quickly moved on to the next iteration they built an improved version of the 221 which amongst small airframe changes featured more powerful engines again of 870 horsepower and finally a retractable landing gear this was presented as the f222 D1 and was immediately approved for another production order of 10 aircraft as a result of the improvements farman's bombers can now boast an operational load carrying top speed of 325 km an hour and a range of 18800 km they were delivered to 815 bombardment group in April of 1937 and were generally well liked by their Crews however before these units had even arrived the French government had already signed another two contracts for an order of 24 more bombers and once again these would come in the form of a new variant this one being dubbed the f222 D2 these new models received a marked dihedral on the outer wing sections to correct some lateral instability and the front fuselage was lengthened by 88 cm and sloped to provide better visibility for the pilot while the first eight of these had the same engines as their predecessors the other 16 were equipped with a more advanced version that featured improved cooling though there was no change in power output it did mean that they could fly under higher power for longer they also carried a heavier bomb load again being able to carry 100 to 500 kg bombs for a total load of just under 4.5 tons that's nothing to sniff at by 1930s standards and depending on what is classed as a heavy bummer by various sources France could be said to be the only European nation to have operational squadrons of heavy bombers at the outbreak of World War II though they would only drop leaflets during the phony War the f222 would be amongst the first to drop actual bombs on German territory with over 133 tons being dropped in May 1940 not long after this in an interesting turn of events one of those bombers would end up on British soil after being Borrowed by French pilot James Dene who wanted to evacuate himself and 20 of his comrades after landing safely he would go on to serve in the free French Air Force becoming an Ace and shooting down nine German planes the last of farman's big bombers to enter service was the f223 which was later renamed to the NC 223 when the company was nationalized unlike the previous models this one featured more radical design changes the fuselage was significantly redesigned to both improve strength and reduce weight and it now had a twin tail arrangement to improve its lateral stability the Prototype model had been built as a male carrier back in 1937 as part of the request by Air France for a modern version of the old f221 but with Europe's stability teetering towards War it was also evaluated for military use this new aircraft marked a return to the Hispano szer engine and with a 6,000 L fuel tank it was hoped to further improve upon the f222 as a potential heavy bomber these hopes are soon realized during an endurance trial when it set a new record for carrying a 10 ton payload over a distance of 1,000 km as a result of this all orders were quickly placed for the NC 2233 along with being a highly evolved airframe compared to its predecessor the 223 also had modernized equipment the Hispano szer engines were further upgraded to provide 1,100 horsepower each it had a brand new pneumatic flap system and it featured A Smith autopilot system its defenses were also improved with the two rear-facing machine guns being replaced by 20 mm hispar cannons the first production model flew at the end of 1939 and the last of a 15 unit order was ready for Flight by March of 1940 though they weren't ready for service that wouldn't happen until May the reason for this delay was the defensive Armament at that time of the war the Hispano cannons were classified as secret materials and no relevant Authority had been able to entrust any examples of the weapon for testing as a result of this the test tests for the aircraft's defensive gun mounts had to be done with wooden mock-ups which of course didn't account for the gun's weight this meant that when the actual guns arrived their mounts weren't suitable for them and had to be hastily redesigned as a result of this the 223 saw little action against Germany in the last weeks of the battle of France but it is notable for one particular Mission at midnight on June the 7th 1940 an impressed Male carrier variant of the 223 named Jules Vern flew deep into Germany to drop the first bombs on Berlin at this time the 223 was the only aircraft in the Allied air forces that had the range for such an attempt in charge of the mission was Captain Henry delier in Berlin there was no blackout so confident was high command that the city wouldn't be bombed so it was not difficult for his crew to spot their target when they got close he instructed the pilot to fly low as if they were making to land at templehof airport they flew over it without incident and headed for teagle their payload was 8 250 conventional bombs and a case of 10 kilo incendiaries the heavy bombs were dropped from their bomb racks but there was no such provision for the small bombs and so the flight mechanic and bombarder tossed them out of the passenger Doors by hand after returning safely and to much congratulation their mission was repeated several days later when Henry and his crew bombed the H Factory at rosock though it created a lot of noise the raids did little in the way of physical damage but the real intention had been the psychological effects though the effect was somewhat lessened as the German propaganda machine quickly moved into action and spun it as some sort of practice air raid aside from this the French heavy bombers saw almost no service over Europe on June the 16th seven were flown to North Africa for use against the Italians however 6 days later the Armistice between France Germany and Italy brought their combat duties to a halt the LT waffer took the Prototype 223 for research purposes and the other planes were put in service with the new vishy Air Force this lasted until the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942 when Germany moved to occupy the rest of France the Jules Vern met its end on November the 8th when the French Resistance burnt it to prevent it falling into German hands and the remaining aircraft under vishy control in Algeria were destroyed during The anglo-american Invasion and so that brings to a close the somewhat brief somewhat weird history of farman's often forgotten heavy bomber episode 6 the Blackburn TB during World War I the aviation world was still in its infancy designers were still figuring out what did or didn't work and this produced some interesting results one of these was the twin Blackburn in 1915 the British admiralty was looking for a solution to the so-called Zeppelin Menace at the time the airships of the German Army and Navy were casually floating through the British skies in relative safety the power climb rate and range of British Fighters not being quite enough to get at them yet as a result of this the admiralty issued a requirement for a two- seat plane capable of long endurance and an ability to reach an altitude of at least 12,000 ft in terms of armament this new aircraft was not intended to use guns to shoot down the Zeppelin it would instead fly up and over the Airship and bomb it this would be achieved with the use of the ranking incendiary Dart which when dropped would pierce the airships outer envelope and ignite the explosive gas bags within at this time the Blackburn company was very new to the aviation field their main experience thus far had been building Farber designed b2s and S with cus but they had rapidly developed a good workking relationship with the admiralty and felt confident enough to submit their first true military design known as the TB or twin Blackburn it was a curious design being a biplane that had not one but two fuselages these were joined at the front by a 10t center section and at the rear by a single large tail plane from the outset it was designed as a sea plane and the fuselages were supported on the Water by two pairs of floats on Bungie sprung mounts these floats were set forward of the center of gravity and so a pair of small floats were also attached to the bottom of the tail to keep it out of the water the two wings were arranged without stagger constructed of spruce spars and ribs and the ailerons were placed on the upper Wing only the upper wing also had a considerably greater span and because of this it had to be braced using wired King posts to make design and construction of the aircraft easier and because they had the parts the twin fins and Rudders were taken from the be2 which was already being produced by Blackburn the choice of a twin fuselage design had been made on account of the requirement for long range as having two fuselages meant you had double the fuel capacity and providing your engines were efficient enough you would therefore have better range this need for efficiency meant that Blackburn were very interested by the arrival of the American John W Smith who brought with him the design for a 10 cylinder radial engine an engine he claimed that would only weigh £380 and produce 150 horsepower whilst maintaining a very low fuel consumption apparently the admiralty was in a generous or desperate mood in 1915 for not only did they accept an unorthodox design from a company with almost zero military experience but they accepted it to be powered by an engine that had never been used or let alone tested on British soil all in all nine of the TB B planes were ordered whilst Smith's new engine went through a rapid series of bench tests unsurprisingly this new engine with fabled performance figures turned out to be pretty rubbish when tested with an experimental ad Navy plane and a Vicor fb5 the Smith engine not only proved to be underpowered but also pretty inefficient and so eight of the N9 TBC planes were completed with known mono saap rotary engines and the ninth was fitted with 110 horsepower clerget the first and last models of the production batch of nine were sent to undergo trials at rnas Isle of grain in 1916 this proved to be a somewhat terrifying experience for test pilot JW sedan and his Observer ew Stedman the latter of which recorded the experience in his Memoirs the pilot sat in one fuselage with all the flying and engine controls while the Observer sat several feet away in the other with no controls except the starting handle for the engine on his side starting on the water needed discipline courage and Agility for a pool of excess petrol which formed on the float when the engine was primed promptly ignited when said engine fired the observer's job during takeoff in a scene that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Dad's Army was to lie on the lower Center section and put out the fire on the Pilot's side with an extinguisher scramble into his own cockpit to start the second engine and then leap out again to extinguish the second fire on his side before finally getting in again for takeoff once in the air and hopefully not on fire the aircraft proved difficult to handle as the flexing of the wing caused the aileron cables to slacken which resulted in an almost total loss of lateral control this design flooor though alarming was soon fixed however there was still a disconcerting amount of relative movement between the fuselages caused by the flexing of the wire braced Center section along with being uncomfortably wobbly the TB was still underpowered even with the new engines only being able to achieve 2/3 of the desired power output as a result of this the military load had to be reduced to just 70 lb of rank and DTS not that it ever got a chance to actually use its weapons against the zeppelins the first major problem was that the crew of the TB were limited to hand signaling for communication not an ideal Arrangement when in action against enemy airships that you know sometimes had guns on them and the second problem was that of altitude by the time the TB was complete it was clear that the whole idea of attempting to attack approaching airships with bomber type planes which had little margin in the way of speed or maneuverability was badly flawed especially when it was then discovered that the airships could simply out climb the planes by jettisoning ballast and going to an altitude above the plane's ceiling and So within a not too short time frame the Emeral T realized that there was little use for the Blackburn TB four were briefly used at rnas killing home where they terrified everyone but by the end of 1916 they were all put in storage and eventually broken up as scrap in August 1917 I'd like to say that Blackburn's next attempt at a military aircraft was more sensible but the ad Sparrow was anything but that however that's a story for Another Day episode 7 the McDonald xf85 in the summer of 1948 a very unique aircraft took to the sky or rather was dropped into the sky this was the McDonald xf85 Goblin it was one of America's attempts at creat a so-called parasite fighter and as far as designs go it's one of the weirdest planes to be flown by any us pilot during World War II the huge formations of American bombers were protected by longrange escort Fighters as bomber technology developed and their effective range increased the fighters could roughly keep up thanks to the addition of drop tanks however with the emergence of the first generation of jet fighters there came a problem they lacked the range to keep up with any of the heavy bombers for reasons that usually involved explosions aerial refueling wasn't quite far enough along in its development to facilitate that line of thinking and so the US Army Air Force considered Reviving The idea of the parasite fighter these aircraft had seen some use in the 1930s and during the earlier parts of the second World War mostly by the Soviet Union the United States had also dabbled with the idea of parasite Fighters but development work had been discontinued before their entry into the war owing to the improved range of conventional planes but as the aformentioned new generation of jet fighters now had considerably shorter range the concept was once again appealing enough to consider and so in early 1944 the Army Air Force directed the air technical service command to undertake studies on the idea and invited industry manufacturers to submit concept proposals Unfortunately they didn't get many responses most manufacturers were busy producing conventional aircraft or working on what they considered more promising projects and many believed that the parasite fighter was a deadend road in terms of development this proved to be fortuitous for the relatively young McDonald aircraft Corporation who were Keen to expand their portfolio as they were the only aircraft manufacturer to respond with enthusiasm that being said their initial proposal the model 27 was not well received unfortunately no drawings of this aircraft seem to exist so here's a pretty photo of a b29 for the time being designed by a team led by Herman D Barkley the model 27 was a small but rather conventional fighter that was meant to be carried partially within the belly of said b29 or the newer and upcoming b35 or b36 however the model 27 was rejected in 1945 as the Army Air Force concluded that such a design would cause too much drag and it was decided that any parasite fighter must be contained completely within the b35 or the b36 the b29 this point was removed from consideration as it was deemed hilariously too small undaunted McDonald completely revised its parasite fighter design and on the 19th of March 1945 submitted a proposal for the model 27d it was a diminutive aircraft with an egg-shaped fuselage triple vertical tail surfaces a tail plane with a pronounced anhedral and vertically folding wings with 37° of Leading Edge sweep it was to be powered by a Westinghouse j34 Turbo Jet and it was to be armed with four 50 caliber machine guns mounted in the fuselage also as a quick side note here the wing sweep of this design was pretty adventur interest for the time as it both predated the acquisition of German engineering data post-war and North Americans recommendation for redesigning the original straight-wing XP 86 the only other major developer of sweat wi aircraft at the time had been Northrup with their XP 56 and the XP 59 McDonald's proposal for their new parasite fighter was received favorably and in spite of the post-war gutting of military aircraft orders they received order for a static test model and two prototypes tailored for use with the b36 on the 9th of October 1945 a wooden mockup of the Prototype was built in 1946 this included both a mockup of the model 27 and a modified version of The b36 Bombay that would house it the Army Air Force conducted an inspection in June after which the mockup was accepted with only minor modifications recommended to the oxygen stations in the Bombay and McDonald began construction on the two prototypes in the latter half of 1947 initially the model 27d was redesignated as the xp85 but in 1948 this was changed to xf85 and the aircraft was given the name Goblin by the Air Force though some McDonald Personnel gave it the more affectionate nickname of Bumblebee in parallel with the development of the xf85 the Army Air Force which in September 1947 became the US Air Force planned that the 24th and subsequent b36 would be capable of carrying one f85 plus a bomb load while some of the bombers would be modified to carry three Fighters with no bomb load at all as a sort of floating aircraft carrier providing the test results of the two prototypes proved favorable the US Air Force were prepared to place an initial order for 30 of the f85 parasite Fighters as far as designs go and as a direct result of its unusual requirements the xf85 was almost as far away from a traditional fighter design as it was possible to be in the late 1940s indeed almost everything about this plane could be considered weird in one form or another in terms of operation the xf85 was designed to be launched and recovered from a retractable trapeze that would extend beneath the parent bomber as a result the xf85 was not fitted with an undercarriage but had a retractable hook in the fuselage set forward of the cockpit and for emergency Landings it had a retractable steel skid beneath the fuselage and its wing tips were protected by small steel Runners for moving the Goblin on the ground a special four-wheel transport dolly was built that allowed it to be transported from The Hanger to the Mother Ship or other testing facilities as it would spend most of its time nestled in the steel bosom of a strategic bomber the xf85 only needed a combat endurance of 30 to 40 minutes this meant that only a small 420 L fuel tank was required though compared to the total size of the airframe this would still take up a considerable amount of space in fact the arrangement was so compact that the center of gravity would move several inches during the course of a flight as the fuel tank was drained there are also some sources that give the fuel capacity as 720 L but for the moment I'm more inclined to go with the lower figure as that seems to be the more dominant amongst various Source materials that I could find in terms of aerodynamics the short length of the xf85 fuselage reduced the effectiveness of the tail surfaces and so McDonald grew inventive with the flight control layout to keep the xf85 stable more tail surface was needed but having one or two very large tail sections would a present all kinds of terrifying drag problems and B prevent the aircraft from fitting in the Bombay of a b36 in the end five stabilizing surfaces were mounted around the rear of the plane four were arranged in an x pattern with the fifth as a vertical stabilizer continuing with the trend of weirdness there was no traditional Rudder on said vertical tail section instead four so-called rators were mounted on the other four stabilizers which combined the functions of conventional Rudders and elevators these operated in pairs with the upper right and the lower left working together and vice versa though in an unusual departure to normality there was nothing special about the control surfaces of the main Wings which had conventional ailerons for roll control the trapeze system was equally unique as the fighter it was designed to carry it had three sections the upper two section were hinged to hold the xf85 level as the mechanism was extended and a pincer likee stabilizing arm was mounted at the forward end of the lower portion to restrain the movements of the fighter whilst it was still attached the trapeze mechanism was removable and mcdonal was directed to ensure that it would take no more than 12 hours to remove the system and allow normal use of the b36 is Bombay the whole system was designed to launch the xf85 from the parent bomber in less than 2 minutes once the Bombay doors were open to launch the fighter the trapeze would fully extend the pilot of the xf85 would lower the wings and lock them in position and start his engine the trapeze operator aboard the bomber would then release the pins arms that kept the fighter in place and finally the pilot of the xf85 would flick a switch that unlocked the head of the Skyhook and the fighter would drop free by the summer of 1948 the first prototype was almost ready for flight trials unfortunately some Butterfingers resulted in it being dropped in one of naca's wind tunnels damaging the nose intake and lower fuselage and after a relatively short delay the second prototype was hastily readied for use instead initial flight trials began on the 23rd of August however as no b36 could yet be spared for testing the xf85 would be carried a loft by a specially modified b29 super Fortress this had a cutaway Bombay complete with the trapes installation that was intended for the larger b36 the first three test flights were simply captive flights with the xf85 Performing the parasite part of its role to admiration and clinging onto the drapes of the b29 without incident it was also lowered down into the Airstream with its engine turned off to give the test pilot a feel for how it handled in the air piloting the goblin was McDonald test pilot Edwin shock he would be the only person to fly the xf85 partly because he was one of McDonald's best and most prolific test pilots and partly because the aircraft size meant that it couldn't be flown by anyone over 5'8 after the first three captive flights were completed without incident shock was ready for the first Free Flight of the goblin this was was made on the 28th of August when at an altitude of 20,000 ft and flying above the Muro dry lake the modified b29 evicted its parasite and shock took the xf85 for a 15-minute flight to evaluate its handling characteristics despite looking like a squashed melon with fins stuck on the side the xf85 was reported to be surprisingly stable and it responded quickly but not dangerously to the controls indeed it handled so well that it could almost come as a surprise that the project was cancelled but then came the moment of reattachment hooking onto the mother ship was perhaps one of the most terrifying things that any pilot could experience in 1948 on its own lining up the Skyhook with the drapes was difficult enough as mentioned before the controls were somewhat sensitive but then there was the added problem of the incredibly turbulent air beneath the parent b29 in the process of reattaching the xf85 was caught in this violent turbulence and struck the trapeze with such force that it shattered the canopy and ripped off shock's helmet and breathing mask thankfully he managed to regain control of the aircraft and safely performed an emergency landing on the dry lake bed below but it was a worrying start following its repairs the Prototype made three more flights on the 14th and 15th of October 1948 with successful recoveries using the hook and trapes however each of these attempts required the full concentration and effort of an experienced test pilot to avoid disaster and on the fourth flight Shar had to again make another emergency landing courtesy of the severe turbulence not withstanding the addition of auxiliary vertical surfaces at the wing tips to improve directional stability whilst flying through the turbulent air the sixth flight also ended with the landing on a dry Lake after another heavy impact with the trapes the same fate also awaited the first prototype when on its first and only flight it also headbutted the mother ship and had to commence an emergency landing in spite of this the favorable comments regarding its stability control and spin recovery prompted McDonald to remain confident about the xf85 and it was hoped that a redesigned trape system might make the docking process easier to Air Force personnel however it was obvious that even with major improvements the goblin was still going to be quite the handful for the average pilot as even the best will in the world couldn't magically make the prop wash of a b29 let alone a b36 simply disappear this combined with the waves of funding reductions that began in the Autumn of 1949 made it increasingly difficult to justify further development work on the xf85 the final nail in the coffin was the realization that foreign interception Fighters were now in development with performance figures that far outclassed the xf85 and so after occurring just 2 hours and 19 minutes of flight time McDonald received a termination notice for the xf85 program thankfully for Aviation enthusiasts everywhere these aircraft did not go to the scrap peap the first prototype is on display at the national museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio and the second is on display at the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Nebraska their survival can partially be owed to their extreme uniqueness but also to the fact that lessons learned from their development were applied to the development of the Republic RF 84k Thunder flash which itself saw limited use as a parasite reconnaissance aircraft as part of the ficon program but that is a story for Another Day episode 8 the Vic 161 in the inter War period and indeed during World War II itself numerous attempts were made at designing an aircraft that could attack a formation of bombers From Below of these attempts the Vicor type 161 also known as the cow gunfighter was perhaps one of the weirdest in the late 1920s members of the British Air Ministry were divided on the topic of bomber formations speciic specifically how to attack them one group was of the firm belief that large formations of bombers would always need escort Fighters the other believed that bomber defenses were becoming sufficient enough that large organized formations could provide enough defensive fire between them understandably the air Ministry assumed that the same kinds of arguments were likely happening across the channel in France and Germany this in turn meant that they had to plan for the possibility of engaging large unescorted formations of bombers in a hypothetical war in the future as these hypothetical bomber formations would be unescorted they could afford to develop an Interceptor with a focus on outright Firepower rather than maneuverability this resulted in the issuing of specification f29 sl27 which called for an Interceptor capable of carrying the 37 mm Coventry Ordinance Works Cannon often known simp as the cow gun along with being able to carry set gun the aircraft also needed to be able to rapidly overtake an enemy aircraft flying at 150 mph at 20,000 ft in the shortest possible time and maintain enough stability to serve as a stable gun platform this stability was especially important as the gun would be in a fixed firing position firing up at an elevation of at least 45° to reduce complexity reloading would not be necessary as the gun would be fed by a loading system that held 50 shells tenders for this specification were issued to several aircraft manufacturers one of them being Vicor their design dubbed to the type 161 was one of the most unorthodox and was a call back to the early single seat Pusher fighters of the first world war though that might make their design sound archaic it was in many ways ahead of its time broadly speaking this sort of design would feel a lot more at home during the jet era disc scouting the fact that it was a bip plane what vickas had designed was a plane that had a nose mounted Cannon a pilot positioned far forward a central engine within the confines of the fuselage more or less and one that provided its thrust in a pusher configuration its uniqueness certainly caught the attention of the air Ministry who eventually rejected four of the seven proposals they received they took great interest in these structural design of vica's new plane which amongst other Innovations included concealed control wires that were carried inside the tubula tail Booms for added protection as a result a contract for the production of a prototype model was granted and it was completed at the end of 1930 it was built as an unequal span B plane the wings were arranged with a heavy stagger had a tubular support structure and were clad in duraluminium support with the fuselage was provided by single tube K struts in in a 2bay Arrangement and the wings themselves were connected by two pairs of I struts to produce the high amount of climb required they were built with a high aspect ratio and to prevent this causing interference between the upper and the lower Wings the gap between them was kept as wide as possible as the upper wing also had to be kept relatively low on account of the cannon the type 1 61's Wing configuration looked especially weird upon its completion the central fuselage behind the engine was not really a fuselage it was in fact a large fuselage like fairing with the actual tail support being provided by the twin tail Booms to improve aerodynamics and streamlining the propellers were mounted in a spinner fairing that match the slope of the profile of the fairing that connected to the tail this would prove to be a good move as eventual tests with the national physical laboratory showed that it added a few extra miles an hour to the plane's top speed the pilot and cow gun were housed in a metal monoco Nell this had a smooth outer skin with a corrugated inner skin riveted directly to it this was done to withstand the severe shocks expected from the big gun which for the time was certainly on the larger side of things in terms of armament for this sort of aircraft the combat strategy for using said gun was to fly up and under a formation of bombers hope that they don't notice the Interceptor in scatter and then unload high explosive shells into their weak undersides an optimistic strategy perhaps but one that was being pursued nonetheless in January 1931 the aircraft flew for the first time on the whole it went well but some modifications were made to improve its elevator and your stability around this time it was fitted also with elevator trim tabs that could be adjusted in Flight which would mark one of the first appearances of such a device further flight trials resulted in other modifications which included a broader cord Rudder A New Tail skid shoe alterations to the geometry and gearing of the trim tabs and the addition of small fins near the extremities of the tail plane eventually the aircraft was sent to maral Sham Heath for evaluation trials in September apart from a couple of incidents such as a loose propeller Fairing and broken wires in the tail boom caused by loose Stones thrown up by the propeller the trial were without incident and vica's aircraft was reviewed favorably by its Pilots the gun was fired in Armament trials without much noticeable effect on the airframe and flying performance however the Gunnery trials did reveal that the overall workload on the single crew member was a bit well it was a bit much the gun plane combination was cited to its Target using a periscope site this site was mounted on the left side of the control panel the gun itself kept the pilot company on the starboard side of the cockpit complete with its huge automatically fed ammunition Clips which were stored in racks this meant that not only did the pilots have to navigate the plane underneath a formation of bombers all the while hoping that they don't take notice but he would then have to keep it steady whilst simultaneously having his right eardrum blown out by a Bine themed Cannon attempting the aerial equivalence of a raking fire this migraine inducing complexity was probably the main reason why further development of the type 161 was stopped however the concept of an Interceptor mounting upward firing guns would live on though the cow gun would never be implemented in such a configuration with hindsight and considering the later development of proximity fuses it can be argued that KN Fighters with that sort of armament could have delivered some heavy blows during the Battle of Britain but that will always remain a speculative what if despite its failure the shortlived development of the type 161 would set the air Ministry down the path towards another weird but more iconic Interceptor the Bolton pool defiant episode 9 the seoa maretti s55 the seoa maretti s55 was one of the weirder flying boats to enter service during the inter War period but despite its strange looks it was actually very successful and it enjoyed a large production uction run especially when compared to other flying boats at the time and frankly it looked really cool it was first conceived in 1923 when the regier Marina and the newly formed regier aeronautica were looking to expand their capabilities part of this included the ability to project Italian air power over the Mediterranean Italy's main rival in this Naval theater Britain and France both had sizable fleets and so the need arose for an amphibious aircraft capable of torpedo bombing conventional bombing and mine laying in response to this need seoa maretti submitted the highly original design that would become the s55 the design featured twin holes that were separated almost 15 ft apart a thick 3section Cal wing with the cockpit located in the central Leading Edge it would be powered by two engines arranged in a tandem configuration above the wing and the tail was supported by twin Booms that connected to both the wing and the twin holes for added support the twin holes were made from wood with the frames in a mix of popler Walnut and Ash while the double planking was predominantly made from Cedar and plywood between these two layers of planks was a layer of cloth that was covered in a special waterproof putty and all of this combined to make an extremely seaworthy structure both waterproof and stable the twin Arrangement also removed the need for balancing floats to be attached further out on the wings which would help with streamlining the central section of the wing was by far the most important part of the airframe not only because it connected the twin holes but it also housed the Pilot's cockpit supported the huge struts that held the twin engines in place and it also carried the aircraft's payload underneath as a result of this it was heavily reinforced with several spars being made integral to the upper structure of the holes and extending throughout the entire span of the wing itself designed to operate with a crew of five or more probably six the s55 normally had two pilots in the central cockpit a rear gunner in each of the twin holes and a bomb aimer in the port side hole the hypothetical sixth crew member was an engineer who would maintain the engines during flight this is not mentioned in any of the sources I have found except one which happens to be the official aircraft manual that was issued by the ministry of Aeronautics however the entire book is in Italian and while it does not specify a total number of crew members as this was an operating and maintenance manual it does allude to a so-called engine driver station this combined with the location of the engines themselves would make sense as the engines were mounted above the wing access to them was granted by a watertight hatch that was located behind the cockpit and so it would make sense that a engineer of sorts should be able to service the engines during flight initially the s55 was designed to be powered by a pair of Lorraine Dietrich engines that produced 400 horsepower each the raised arrangement of these engines was popular amongst designers of flying boats at the time as it a kept the equipment as far away from seawater as possible and B completely reduce the risk of the propeller kicking up or getting caught in said seawater it did however mean that the two pilots now had a spinning propeller above their heads at a proximity that would make modern health and safety officials apply for emotional counseling but as there are no records of decapitated Pilots we can assume the system was safe enough in terms of ordinance the s55 was designed to carry all of its offensive payload under the central Wing section as mentioned earlier according to the official manual it could carry the following a single 800 kg Naval torpedo or a single 800 kg high explosive bomb it could also carry a pair of 500 kilo bombs or 4 250 kilo bombs or8 104 kilo bombs the release of the payload was done electronically or mechanically by a control panel operated in the port side hle this also featured a modern self-contained aiming system that could be operated by day or night against moving or stationary targets the Prototype model of the s55 was completed at some point in early 1925 and after initial test flights it was sent for evaluation trials these trials included testing the aircraft at its empty and its maximum loaded weights with a top speed recorded of 131 mph in the air and a landing speed on water of 56 mph its water handling characteristics received universally High Praise and its ruggedness and stability in Heavy Seas Vindicated the decision to go with the twin hole design as opposed to a single hole the only area in which the s55 struggled was climbing it wasn't atrocious but it wasn't exceptional either taking 16 minutes to reach an altitude of 10,000 ft and a full hour to reach its surface ceiling of 16,400 Ft in the following 12 months this problem was somewhat rectified with the installation of two 500 horsepower isota fraschini v12s the fuel load was also increased which slightly reduced the top speed for the benefit of a significantly greater range and with these new performance figures the regia aeronautica was ready to place the first of its production orders in 1925 however the s55 fame would not come from its military career commercial variants of the s55 known as the 55c or 55p were already being built and were operating on two different commercial routes across the med Mediterranean however in 1925 the original prototype set 14 World Records for Speed altitude payload and most importantly distance this convinced seoa maretti that their aircraft could be well suited for transatlantic flights and this would lead to the record setting Journeys that the s55 is best known for in 1927 Franchesco depano an Air Force officer and a vocal advocate for the C would Embark as part of a three-man crew on what would be known as the four continents flight starting on February the 13th his s55 which had been dubbed the Santa Maria took off for the first leg of a journey that would eventually cover four continents and 29,000 mil most of the journey was completed without incident although unhappily the Santa Maria was burnt to a crisp on an artificial Lake in Arizona courtesy of a carelessly discarded cigarette however a replacement was sent by ship from Italy and the Santa Maria 2 flew across the Eastern United States and Canada before returning to Italy despite being an unarmed version of the military variant and not a dedicated commercial model the Santa Maria's success was a great boost for the possibilities of a transatlantic commercial service something that was of Great Value from both an economic and propaganda perspective to the Italian government and as a result of this further ambitious flights were attempted the improved s55a would be the next to make headlines this model featured 800 horsepower isota frini w18 engines a new top speed of 147 mph and an improved range of 1 1200 to 2100 M depending on its configuration 12 of these new aircraft made a 6500 M Mass flight from Rome to Rio De Janeiro in 1930 with the flight being led by air marshal Italo Balbo this flight would be overshadowed 3 years later by the North Atlantic Crossing of 24 planes for the occasion of the Chicago World's Fair for this an aerodynamically refined model the s55 X was used changes included much smoother holes and engine cowlings fairings at the joining of all major components and new three blade or metal propellers although identic in weight to the s55a the new model can now reach a top speed of 174 mph with a range of 2,794 Mi One s55 X crashed at Amsterdam on the outward journey and another at the aor on the return flight but thanks to the provision of a backup 24 s55 XS still made triumphant arrivals Chicago and New York this flight more than any other single accomplishment up to this point propelled Italy to a new level of prestige in the field of Aviation during the 1930s besides the more spectacular long distance flights the s55 had a long career with the regia Marina serving for more than 10 years although 13 aircraft were listed as available in 1939 the s55 had by that time reached the end of its service life and was withdrawn from service before the hostilities began as a result none of them would ever see any wartime service however this isn't quite the end of this aircraft story as a result of the s55 early long-distance triumphs development work began on a larger model that was aimed directly at commercial travel rather than being a converted military plane this resulted in the s66 the s66 was generally similar to the s55 although it was considerably larger and was powered by three engines rather than two much to the relief of the pilots these were arranged in The Pusher configuration which kept the spinning propeller blades well clear of the still open cockpit buil as a 14 passenger commercial flying boat the s66 went into service in 1932 on the Rome caliari tripol route as well as one running from Rome to Alexandria later on thanks to the addition of more powerful 700 horsepower engines the passenger capacity was increased to 18 and it had a top speed of 164 4 mph not a great deal as known about the s66 however 24 are known to have been built and they were operated as civil transports from 1932 to 1939 after this at least one was impressed by the Air Force for ascu search and rescue operations but not much is known apart from that finding Source material on these planes has been especially difficult and it looks like there just isn't much left on them in terms of Records however one example of the s55 still exists today which is nice as I think it's a rather goodlooking plane despite its weirdness it is located in Brazil indeed it was used for the first crossing of the South Atlantic by Brazilian Pilots but its Fate has been shrouded in doubt as the Tam Museum faced financial problems in 2016 however it now looks like after a stint in temporary storage it will be going into a brand new hanger in the near future for the public to be able SE again seoa maretti weren't the only ones making weird and wonderful flying boats in the inter War period in fact there are some truly adventurous examples out there that I plan to cover but those of course are videos for Another Day episode 10 The grumm Duck in 1929 the loaning aeronautical company was taken over by Curtis right the new owners wanted to move the company and its production facilities to Pennsylvania however a small group of loaning employees didn't feel like uprooting their lives and moving across the country five individuals Leroy Grumman Julius hpit Albert loaning William schwendler and Jake sble chose to remain and formed the Grumman aircraft Engineering Corporation unlike some manufacturers who started on unsteady Financial ground Grumman would have an easier beginning it was completely and privately financed by Grover loaning who also provided the manufacturing rights to the loaning retractable landing gear Hull and the float designs this secured an early line of cash flow along with their first Navy contracts and this allowed Grumman to develop and produce the model A and model B floats which equipped The Vault o2u and 03u observation planes these early production runs allowed the company to develop its facilities which led to the development of their first Fighter the FF and they were soon approached about the development of an amphibious aircraft as well in 1931 the US Navy reassigned the letter J as the designator for a new type of General utility aircraft previously J had been used solely for transports these new utility aircraft would be purpose built for deployment with utility flights aboard carriers at Shore bases and attached to special utility vessels the first design received by the Navy would not not come from Grumman however the newly relocated Grover loaning Aircraft Company submitted a privately developed design called the x02 L1 this shared many of the design features of loaning earlier models but in general it was more streamlined and modernized the US Navy tested loaning prototype in 1932 and it received High Praise but Grover loaning had no production facilities to meet the Navy's requirements it was then that the approached Grumman who had now already established production of their FF fighter to redesign the Prototype and submit their own proposal gramman quickly completed preliminary design work and a prototype was ordered under the designation xjf 1 it was designed as a compact single Bay B plane which had a crew of two seated in tandem it featured a fully enclosed canopy something that was finally becoming more commonplace in aircraft design and it could also accommodate two passengers seated side by side in the rear of the float access to this compartment was through a set of folding doors in the floor of the rear of the cockpit as the float was fared into the fuselage in a style typical of loaning designs being an amphibian it also featured a traditional landing gear the main landing gear retracted into the float and the tail wheel along with its housing doubled as a water Rudder meanwhile for carry operations it had an arrester hook that extended down from the rearmost section of the the fuselage power would be provided by a pratt and Whitney twin wasp which was a 14 cylinder radial engine that was rated at 700 horsepower though later models would be unarmed the Prototype was designed to carry a 30 caliber machine gun which was operated from the rear cockpit and a single 100lb bomb could be carried under each of the lower Wings the XJ F1 was completed by April of 1933 and flew for the first time on the 24th taking off from a grass field in front of grumman's Long Island Factory it was then delivered to the Naval Air Station in Washington DC for flight evaluations on the 4th of May 1933 these evaluations passed without any major problems and the only minor redesign work that resulted from them was to the vertical tail surfaces evaluation flights had revealed some longitudinal instability and while it wasn't horrific its effects would be exasperated in poor weather conditions especially when it came to carrier operations the tail Services were thus redesigned into a broader squarer shape and Upon returning for follow-up examinations the Prototype was accepted and what would became known as the grumm and duck was ordered into production full production began at the start of 1934 and the first jf1 entered service at the Naval Air Station in Norfolk Virginia during May of 1934 several iterations of the duck would be developed over a short period of time and as a result of this only 27 of the original JF 1s would be produced many of these would serve with the Marine Corp starting from February 1935 in total JF 1's serving with vj1 utility Squadron would be attached to USS Wright USS Saratoga USS Lexington USS Ranger and USS Heron jf1 were also present at Fleet air bases in the Canal Zone pal Harbor and the Philippines while the provision for offensive and defensive Armament was retained with the jf1 most operating aircraft had this removed so that an additional crew position for a radio operator could be added instead along with the jf1 production had also begun on the jf2 which had been specifically ordered for use by the US Coast Guard these were built from the outset as unarmed aircraft and could be easily identified by the loop antenna of their radio direction finder the only other major differences between the jf2 and the jf1 Was the removal of the arrester hook and a change in engine with the newer model powered by a 9 cylinder right Cyclone this engine was smaller than the twin wasp but produced the same amount of power in total 15 of the JF 2s would be built over the course of 1935 and they would be operated across various Coastal states on the US Mainland as well as Hawaii and Alaska as production on the initial model of the duck was winding up a final variant was also built a batch of 5 JF 3s were built for Navy and Marine Core Reserve units in 1935 again these were now powered by a 9-cylinder right Cyclone though it now produced 750 horsepower instead of 700 and they were delivered without a resta hooks as well when the last of these were delivered by Grumman production was halted so that modifications could be made to the aircraft overall design not long after the first jf1 had been delivered for the Navy it was realized that with some design changes though none of them were considered major the duck could be used for Target Towing smoke laying Medical Transport or reconnaissance duties though it wasn't a complete redesign enough changes had been made that the new design differed from the JF series enough to receive the new designation of j2f the j2f series of duck carried additional equipment in light of its new multiroll design but with the exception of having the float extended by an additional foot and the change of power plant the airframe itself remained largely unchanged the first J2 F1 flew on the third of April 1936 and was delivered for full evaluation the same day during that year a production run of 21 units was ordered and like the original jf1 these were equipped with a 30 caliber machine gun and Provisions for Wing mounted bombs this order was complete in 1927 but like its predecessor the j2f would be delivered in a number of variants and this first production order was not only one of the smallest but just one of many 1938 saw the arrival of the J2 F2 of which Grumman received an order for 30 planes these were built mostly for the Marine Corps and were powered by a 790 horsepower version of the right cyclone and instead of a three blade they drove a two-blade propeller the J2 F3 was another unarmed version of the duck this model was built for US Navy attaches and the commandant of the US Naval Academy outfitted for VIP use as so-called Admirals barges these were recognizable for their dark blue and silver paint Scheme 20 of these were built but aside from that not much is known about them production numbers grew rap ly in 1939 and 1940 with the threat of War looming closer America established new military outposts along its Maritime borders the duck was well suited to operate from these improvised bases which were usually shallow Inlet facilities that sometimes had nothing more than a simple docking ramp in September 1939 production of 32 J2 f4s began this variant was almost identical as the previous models with the except of some slightly modernized equipment in the cockpit the final model of the grum and built Ducks was the J2 F5 and the first of a 144 unit production order arrived in July 1941 these now had a more powerful 950 horsepower version of the right cyclone and the engine cowling was broadened to cover the oil cooler for added protection it was also designed to carry a greater payload being able to carry 325b death charges for maritime Patrol duties as the war escalated the US Navy needed Grumman to Aid in the production of torpedo bombers and Fighters as a result of this production of the j2f was transferred to the Colombia aircraft corporation based in Long Island the Columbia built variant was known as the J2 F6 and they built 330 units over the course of the second world war in total 584 models of the j2f would be built with the majority being the J2 F5 and the J2 F6 though many were retained at bases in the United States or away from the front during the war some ducks operated by the Marines and the Navy distinguished themselves in the Pacific and in one notable event a j2f 5 evacuated several VIPs from the Philippines one of whom was Carlos romolo who would later become the president of the Republic of the Philippines after the war some ducks were taken from Surplus and overhauled for Arctic operations as the oa2 a name taken from a single duck that was used by the Army Air Force during the war these ducks were assigned to the 10th air rescue Squadron as part of the Alaskan Air Command and they were operated well into the 1950s though often forgotten or simply not mentioned the duck also saw some service overseas as grumman's first export aircraft between 1937 and 1959 Argentina would operate 44 aircraft of various models some were xus Navy models but some were also purpose-built for export and designated as the g15 and the G20 the acquisition of the Ducks had facilitated the creation of the first true Naval observation squadrons for the Argentine Navy they formed the eyes of the fleet during a time when radar equipped ships did not exist and then later on when they were absent Ducks were also acquired by Colombia and Mexico the former acquiring three and the latter two no records exist for the Colombian models but it is recorded that the Mexican Ducks served in the verac Cruz region from 1947 until 1951 a number of ducks went into civil use after the war in the US some appeared in films and TV shows some were used to Ferry businessmen from Long Island to Wall Street and some were even used as firefighting aircraft for this reason a number of various Ducks survived today all of them being found in the United States as far as early design goes the duck was a huge success for Grumman and it helped them establish a relationship with the US Navy that led to the development of several iconic aircraft some of these would become the backbone for Naval airow during the Pacific War and some would become cold war Legends but those are all stories for Another Day episode 11 the mitubishi a5m the Navy type 96 also known as the Mitsubushi k14 and known more commonly in the west as the a5m Claude was a Japanese carrier fighter built in the mid 1930s it was the product of a modernization program to reduce Japan's dependence on foreign equipment and it would become the world's first monoplane carrier fighter to end a service in February 1934 the aviation headquarters for the Imperial Japanese Navy issued a new specification for a single seat Fighter the document known as specification 9 she did not specify that it should be a carrier born fighter just that it should be a fighter several influential officers of whom leftenant Commander Hado saai was the most vocal believed that aircraft designed from the outset to operate from carriers had performance defects and that any fighter must be developed to be the most effective combat aircraft it can be first and only then would it be modified for Carrier operations because of this the 9 she specification only quoted the performance requirements the new fighter must one have a maximum speed of 350 km an hour at 3,000 M two climb to 5,000 m in 6 and 1/2 minutes three have a wingspan and length not exceeding 11 M and 8 m respectively and for it must have an Armament of 2 7.7 mm machine guns under the direction of Jiro horikoshi Mitsubishi's team began work on a new prototype to meet these requirements the Prototype soon to be designated the ka14 was built around a light alloy monoco with a flush riveted aluminium stressed skin special attention was paid to aerodynamics and Streamlight a thin wing profile was selected the fuselage was given as smaller cross-section as possible and although a fixed undercarriage was used to save weight it was covered by streamlined fairings the ka14 was powered by a Nakajima Kabuki 9 cylinder radial engine it featured a reduction gear and was rated at 550 horsepower for takeoff and 600 horsepower at cruising altitude it was selected over Mitsubishi's own engine the A4 as it was lighter without suffering any loss to Performance or endurance the most recognizable feature of the ka14 was of course the elliptical inverted G Wing which when viewed from headon can be compared to a w in shape in the case of the ka14 this Wing shape was chosen as it was used in a previous specification to improve cockpit visibility during Landing however early in the prototype's development there were already concerns about its Effectiveness there were reasons to believe that turbulent air flow would be generated by the anhedral dihedral transition which would then affect the overall flight characteristics of the plane deciding to air on the side of caution a second prototype upon which construction had already begun was modified to be completed with a standard Wing so that the two models could be compared in the trials 11 months after the N9 she specification was issued the first ka14 prototype was completed in January of 1935 it flew for the first time on February the 14th flown by Mitsubishi test pilot kajima the takeoff weight of the ka14 was 1,373 kg resulting in a wing loading of 77.2 kg per square meter this was considered rather High by Japanese standards who valued lightness and maneuverability however that being said it was still significantly better than some other aircraft that were making their first appearance for example the first prototype BF 109 that took off 4 months after the ka14 had a much higher Wing loading of 117 kilos per square meter the flight Trials of the first prototype not only exceeded the expectations of the design team but they exceeded those of the N9 she specification itself during further trials a maximum speed of 444 km an hour was achieved at an altitude of 3,200 m a eclipsing the performance of any other aircraft currently in the Japanese Naval inventory despite the success there was still a couple of concerns raised by the test pilot the ka14 suffered longitudinal oscillations at high angles of attack and the plane had a nasty tendency of trying to drop a wing during Landing Wing dropping on an Airfield could be inconvenient and sometimes dangerous depending on the speeds involved but Wing dropping on approach for a carrier land was a different level of risk altogether and for this reason it was hoped that the second ka14 the one with the straight Wings would perform even better at a late stage of construction it was decided to add flaps to the center section of this prototype as a result of the aforementioned Landing issues the wing design also Incorporated a change that expanded lamina flow over the wing tip which was hoped to improve stability at high angles of attack problems with the reduction gear on the Kabuki 5 engine was solved by replacing it with the direct drive Kabuki 3 and the plane was readed for testing much to the relief of all these modifications proved to be a Sound Investment despite weighing 100 kilos more than the first prototype the second ka14 had virtually the same performance without any of the dangerous drawbacks because of this the Army Air Force also expressed interest in Mitsubishi's aircraft and a single example was ordered under the designation ke18 though ultimately it did not impress the Army enough for purchase as even it did not meet their borderline obsessive requirements for agility it did spur them on to draw up a new specification for an advanced fighter they expected Mitsubishi would offer an extensively modified version of their own fighter but as Mitsubishi were busy with preparing the ka14 for full production only a small team could be spared for modifying the ke18 into the key 33 as a result of this Nakajima would win the Army competition with the ky27 this was no great loss for Mitsubishi whose Factory was filling up with Fighters they were merrily building for the Navy and considering the borderline hostile nature between Army and Navy staff it was probably a blessing in disguise not to deal with demands from both camps by late Autumn of 1936 the ka14 had been approved for series production as the type 96 carrier born fighter also known as the A5 M1 1 it was relatively similar to the second ka14 prototype however it featured a new engine cowling the internal fuel tank capacity had been increased and the rear fuselage had been slightly redesigned to further improve stability it was also now powered by the Kotobuki 2 Kai a which was rated at 580 horsepower for takeoff because of these airframe changes overall weight increased to 1500 kg which had a KnockOn effect on performance and reduced the top speed and climb rate as a result of this things quickly moved on to the A5 M2 which featured the improved Kabuki 2 Kai 3A their designations are getting rather complex now and this gave 610 horsepower at takeoff and now drove a three blade propeller other changes included the shortening of the exhaust pipes the splitting of the carburetor air intakes in two and the shortening of the engine mounts to maintain M the center of gravity the maximum speed Rose back up to 426 km an hour and the climb rate to 5,000 m was just under 8 minutes though the weight had increased again which slightly affected overall maneuverability the increase in other performance metrics outweighed this drawback and the A5 M2 entered production at the end of spring 1937 the outbreak of the second Ceno Japanese war accelerated the delivery of a5m operational units with the first arriving Just 4 days after the start of hostilities they first saw combat with the 13th koku Thai the Imperial Japanese equivalent of an Air Group above the Skies of Nang King despite only being available in small numbers the a5m enjoyed a large deal of superiority in the opening months of the conflict as the opposing Chinese forces were mostly Fielding outdated planes however there were still some losses though some of these were attributed to the Chinese Fielding of Brea 27s though in many ways it was the Italian lovech child of the p26 P shooter its General profile was still similar enough to the a5m to confuse Japan's more inexperienced Pilots which led to some unfortunate incidents following the capture of Shanghai and as the Japanese Army moved on Nang King the Chinese air resistance grew much fiercer this was in part thanks to the influx of Soviet equipment such as the poly carpov I 1552 and i16 during the offensive which continued until the fall of nank King the a5m clashed with these fighters on numerous occasions initially the Soviet Fighters proved to be a tough nuts to crack as the a5m only had two rifle caliber machine guns however after a month or two of relatively disappointing combat the Japanese Pilots began to take the measure of these new opponents and their luck improved though less powerful the a5m proved to be more maneuverable overall and the strength of its airframe proved to be more robust than expected in one particular demonstration of this petty officer kashimura was able to bring his plane back to base after losing a third of his Port Wing from an enemy ramming attack while the combat continued over the Skies of China work had begun on the A5 m2b this new version reverted to the Kotobuki 3 engine which was now behaving itself and a number of minor changes resulting from combat experiences in China were also introduced these included the provision for the fighter to carry two 30 kg bombs a larger windscreen tail fin and more importantly came the addition of a fully enclosed canopy unfortunately all of this added more weight which led to Pilot complaints about reduced performance that being said they were far more vocal about the canopy itself which they claimed seriously limited visibility it was so disliked that many operational Fighters would have these canopies removed by the ground crews in the field this eventually led to the A5 m2b having its production changed back to an open cockpit configuration after this the A5 M3 was not a production model but an experiment to test the fitting of a Hispano szer liquid cold engine as well as a 20 mm Hispano Cannon though these trials produced some very promising performance figures the design was not adopted as the Imperial Japanese Navy wanted no Rel Reliance on foreign built equipment and so we arrive at the A5 M4 which is usually the model that this aircraft is most remembered for this model was specifically developed to tackle Chinese aircraft that were out of the range of the A5 M2 their bases having been moved further in land externally this new version was almost identical to the last production A5 M2 BS upon which changes had been made to the landing gear wind screen and rear fusal large but there were some other changes apart from the new engine it also featured attachments for a 160 L drop tank which gave it a extended range of 648 km This was later further improved with the addition of an even larger 210 L drop tank built in the largest numbers and eventually redesignated as the A5 m4 model 24 it was powered by the Kotobuki 41 engine which gave 710 horsepower takeoff even later the Kotobuki 41 Kai engine was introduced and the new variant received the designation of A5 m4 model 34 both production variants were delivered to Frontline units from 1938 up until 1941 during 1939 the a5m had very few combat opportunities owing to the shrinking number of Chinese combat planes most of the activity was focused around assault missions and general Patrol duties around Japanese BAS bases there was a brief Resurgence of activity in December when a sudden onset of Chinese bomber attacks struck the main forward the Japanese Airfield the last major air battles took place at the end of the year and the start of 1940 the first of them involved 13 a5m against 20 i6s and i12s of which 14 were shot down for the loss of a single a5m during the second engagement 26 a5m fought a similar Force shooting down 13 enemy planes for the loss of just two combat over China produced several Aces flying the a5m and many of these would prove invaluable for training Japanese Naval Air crews in the leadup to the conflict against the United States when the Pacific War eventually began the United States and Great Britain still thought the a5m formed the bulk of the Japanese Naval fighter units and as such assigned it the code name Claud in fact the only unit still Fielding the a5m in a non-reserve capacity were the carriers ryuo zho and hosho this resulted in many eggs on many faces when the a6m2 the dreaded zero started appearing in large numbers and running circles around the older American fighters with the exception of the attack against D Val no A5 m4s participated in offensive action against the Allies though some would see action in a defensive manner over the Marshal Islands the last combat saly for the a5m took place on the 7th of May 1942 when the aircraft carrier Sho was attacked by us torpedo bombers two a5m and 4 a6m managed to get airborne before several Torpedoes and 13 bombs sent the Sho on a one-way trip to the seabed though they destroyed three us planes for no losses all but one had to ditch in the sea due to the loss of the carrier with the other managing to land at a nearby Island after this this the bulk of the remaining a5m were kept in Japan for use by reserve and training units this also led to the A5 m4k which was a two- seat training model that was introduced in 1942 in total 103 of these planes were built and they remained in service until the end of the war also like many older defunct or otherwise obsolete aircraft these would be used alongside the remaining a5m for kamakazi attacks as the US Navy sailed ever closer to the home islands and so ended the career of the a5m the fighter that propelled Mitsubishi into the good graes of the Imperial Japanese Navy and one whose combat experience led to the development of the A6 M20 it also provided the Air Force with a large supply of experienced pilots and instructors for the upcoming conflicts with the US and along with the ky27 it led to some key changes in Japanese aerial Doctrine all of this will be better explained in another video that I have planned one that will take a much closer look at the air war between China and Japan but that is a topic for Another Day episode 12 The Bristol bagshot and Westland Westbury last time we looked at the Vicor type 161 and today in a slight departure we will be looking at two aircraft the Bristol backshot and the Westland Westbury the reason for this is that one of the planes covered today has a very brief history and when making a separate video for it the time barely made it past 4 minutes and so I decided to combine them both of these aircraft were born out of air Ministry specification 424 which called for a multi-seat twin engine fighter capable of carrying two automatic shellf firing guns the potential of heavy guns had been recognized in the first world war and attempts had been made to adapt several types including the 37 mm centry ordinance Works gun also known more easily as the cow for use on various aircraft it was a pair of these guns which were ultimately required to be used in Fighters designed to this specification although this was not initially disclosed in the specification details aside from familiarity this choice of armament was made for a variety of other reasons as well Chief among them being the trends of French bomber designed by companies such as farman Amo and poz which included Research into using mm cannons both Bristol and Westland submitted designs to meet this specification by the end of 1924 however both designs were fundamentally different in concept Bristol's design team led by Frank Barnwell favored a monoplane configuration with an all metal wing and fusel AR whereas wand's team led by Arthur Davenport went with a far more conservative Arrangement as it was the first one to fly let's start by covering the Westbury originally the design featured a 2bay bip plane configuration but after wind tunnel testing this was revised to a 3-bay design with high aspect ratio in June 1925 wesam received an order for two prototypes the first would be built in the more traditional style of having an all-wooden Wing structure and the second would have wings built from a mix of duraluminium spars and wooden ribs the fuselage was built in three separate sections that were bolted together at the Lance the for unit which was all wood and covered in ply contained the front gun turret which held the first of the two Cow Guns this was installed on a special mounting that allowed the weapon to be trained through 360° in azoth the movement of the gun was controlled by a brake pad that allowed a spring mechanism to engage or disengage the weapon from its current position training the gun itself was done by a hand cranked pinion gear that was engaged to a base ring the whole mounting was provid provided with a rotary platform for the Gunner and a fixed cylindrical Shield was carried by the ring eventually the mounting would prove to be useful and Innovative enough for Vicor to actually purchase its production rights for later use the second unit formed the central portion of the fusal arch this started just in front of the Pilot's cockpit and extended back to the rear Gunner's position unlike the forward section this Central piece was built from steel tubing and covered in ply this section housed the station for the other cow G but unlike the one on the nose this one was on a simple Tran mounting it was designed to be fired in a fixed position aiming upwards into a formation of aircraft normally though it did also have a limited Arc of Fire the third fuselage unit comprised the rear section of the plane and was of mixed construction with steel tube lons and Spruce gerter frames this section could be easily removed as the fairings were attached to the lons by a series of Clips which made made transportation and maintenance easier as the tail section could simply come away as the Westbury had a deep fuselage the three crew positions were connected by an access passageway which when needed could allow just one Gunner to operate both cow guns if required the pilots could enter his cockpit either by climbing up the fuselage after of the wing or they could enter via the rear Gunner position and climb through the internal passage the first prototype was powered by a pair of 450 horsepower Bristol Jupiter sixes each driving a wooden two blade propeller these were housed in Nels on the inboard section of the lower Wings the fuel and oil tanks starting magnetos and priming pumps were all contained in these Nels and the whole Arrangement could fit into a standard Railway truck for Easy Transport this first prototype flew for the first time in September 1926 and immediately went into initial flight trials and wind tunnel evaluations as a result of this modifications were made to the second prototype which was still under construction these included a more rounded nose the addition of a small ventral fin between the V struts of the tail plane and the lengthening of the engineer cells to allow the installation of Jupiter 8 engines the First Flight of the second prototype took place at YoVille in 1927 after which it went to martal shim Heath during the trials at melim both cow guns were tested and upon the firing of the rear gun the fabric and ribs of the uper Wing were damaged by the concussive blast thankfully the plane landed without incident and some further modifications were made so that it wouldn't shoot itself to pieces in the future chiefly this involved the fitting of a rubber sprung protective shield over the upper Wing to deflect the offending muzzle Blast away the nose gun was also testified in a number of positions including directly into the line of flight despite it providing over 2,000 lb of recoil force with each discharge despite attempts at rapid disassembly and the possibility of stalling out due to gun recoil both westrey prototypes performed well they even handled easily with one engine stopped or even turning against the running engine but by this time the air Ministry interest in such heavy aircraft was waning and not long after this the specification for the aircraft was abandoned despite this Westland gained valuable experience with installing and operating the cow gun something that would serve them later in the specification that would lead to the Vicor 161 and the Westland cow gun Fighters the Bristol back shot was less fortunate than the westbr as mentioned earlier it was a more modern design being built in a monoplane configuration having an all metal shoulder mounted canalle wing and a steel tube fuselage the wing was built from two main steel spars and had ger aluminium ribs with the whole Arrangement like the fuselage being clad in Fab brick initially like the Westbury the bag shot had not been designed specifically with the 37 mm C gun in mind this change came after work on the Prototype had begun on receiving the updated specification and confirming the required equipment changes it was realized that the bagshot would be overweight and unable to land at a speed slower than 57 mph with the specification itself calling for a landing speed of just 50 m hour Frank Barnwell who was leading the design team suggested making an experimental rolled strip fuselage which would be interchangeable with the existing one and that would hopefully save weight providing the tests were successful the alternative was to abandon the project altogether as he believed it would be a waste of time and resources to pursue other options unfortunately for Barnwell the air Ministry declined to cancel the contract and he was ordered to complete the back shot anyway if only to compare it with the competing Westland in a biplane versus monoplane style evaluation powered by a pair of Bristol Jupiter sixes the backshot was flown for the first time on the 15th of July 1927 the first flights on that day went without incident but subsequent flights were almost disastrous this was because at higher speeds the lateral control was ineffective due to Wing torsional flexibility which caused Aeron reversal something that was of course only discovered when the aircraft was in the air luckily sirel yuin the test pilot managed to land the bag shot safely and the aircraft was brought back into the factory for an exhaustive structural testing program at the conclusion of said tests barwell realized that the only hope was to redesign the back shot as a bip plane which virtually meant starting again from scratch no further attempts were made to fly the bag shot until the full test results had been examined by the air Ministry who eventually retained the aircraft to conduct more research on the torsional stiffness of ceral wings the back shot was scrapped by late 1931 and the Westland West Breeze didn't last much longer though the latter did prove useful as a test bed for various automatic cannons the most important takeaway from these designs was the need for structural reinforcement for even with the muzzle deflecting Shields installed the Westland planes continued to suffer from The Recoil forces of firing such heavy guns fixing large guns onto relatively fragile airf frames would continue to prove a challenge over the coming years but it would certainly lead to some interesting and even successful designs but that is of course a story for Another Day episode 13 The Martin B10 every now and then an aircraft comes along that redefines the standards from which all future types would be built in the case of American bomber design in the 193 30 s this would come in the form of the Martin B10 by the end of the previous decade America's bomber force was starting to not only look outdated but unable to fulfill the requirements of a rapidly evolving Air Force all operational bombers were the tried and tested but slow biplane designs most of which were members of the Keystone series and these were quickly showing their obsolescence Sleek monoplane designs were already starting to appear in the commercial Aviation sector particularly in Europe but these had thus far struggled to gain favor in many military circles though the benefits of the monoplane had been demonstrated the US Army and Navy still required all military planes to be built as bip planes this was partly due to old school conservatism and partly because it was thought that their reliability made them cheaper in actuality the monoplane had become cheaper to both fly and maintain by 1929 but senior officers at the time didn't like being told that they were wrong eventually and sometimes with great reluctance it was accepted that the monoplane was the future and the Army aircore began seeking designs for a new monoplane bomber this quickly resulted in the development of several experimental aircraft Douglas came up with the Goldwing xp7 developed the shortlived xb8 and Boeing seemed to be the strongest Contender when they produced the YB 9 all of these were an improvement on previous biplane models but each design was a compromise of old thinking with new technology watching this from afar Martin began work on a private Venture of their own they had previously built bombers for the Army aircore notably the successful mb2 of the mid 1920s and they now worked on a design not only to beat the competition but render them totally obsolete the Prototype designated as the model 123 was a rapid departure from anything Martin had developed before it was a Sleek all metal can to leave a midwing monoplane of Advanced Construction the wing was built in three sections a center section built into the fuselage which carried the two engine NE cells in the Leading Edge and two detachable outer sections all of these had a structure of riveted aluminium with stress steel fittings and the whole lot was covered in a Sleek stressed aluminium skin like the wing the all metal fuselage was also built in three sections however its metal skin had a different Arrangement the sides of the fuselage were covered in a smooth skin of stressed aluminium to deal with the sheer loads during flight whereas the top and bottom of the fuselage was clad in corrugated skin that could better handle compression loads unlike previous bomber designs which usually carried their dragon deucing bombs under the wing or the fuselage the model 123 was the first to contain the entirety of its bomb load in an internal Bombay this was not only a practical Innovation but one for safety as well as carrying fused bombs within the plane usually had better safety margins than those stored externally it also allowed the bombarder control of when the bombs would be armed depending on the bomb type and fuse another featured Innovation was the provision for a mechanically retractable landing gear which again was done for the sake of streamlining however like the internal Bombay this would come at the cost of added weight and as such the bomber would be equipped with a pair of 600 horsepower right sr1 1820 Cyclone engines keeping up with the trend this too was an innovation as the Cyclone was still in its earliest stages of development and its successful use in the Martin prototype was a contributing factor in it being used for many other aircraft of Fame later on in its life the Prototype was completed and delivered to the Army on March the 20th 1932 who upon receiving it sent the plane to rightfield for evaluation at this point the aircraft was given the new designation of XB 907 in its completed form it had a wingspan of just over 62 ft and with a new pair of streamlined engine cowlings it was expected to achieve a top speed of at least 190 mph depending on what sources cited it either had a crew of three or four the point of debate is whether the Prototype initially had provision for a co-pilot or not as it was later removed for the production model regardless of number all of the crew positions were open to the elements in this first design which considering the hoped for top speeds would have made for a frigid experience on that crisp March morning in central Ohio Frozen Pilots aside the Prototype performed better than expected during its first flights not only did it take off and land in a shorter distance than expected courtesy of modern split flaps but but it also reached a top speed of 197 mph at 6,000 ft in light of these promising figures the Prototype was sent back for modifications in the Autumn to further improve its capabilities the nose went through an extensive redesign which included the fitting of the first enclosed gun turret to ever be found on a US military aircraft this turret was manually rotated by the Gunner and featured a single 30 caliber Browning machine gun though it did somewhat reduce pilot to visibility for takeoff and Landing it was believed that this was offset by the nose Gunner thems who in a pinch could provide visual guidance though I can't imagine that would have been a particularly fun Affair for anyone involved especially in poor weather other modifications included the change from the shorter townend ring cowlings to the more encompassing kna units an upgraded engine to the newer 675 horsepower version of the cyclone and the widening of the wingspan by a further 8 ft though all of this added another 2,000 to the total weight of the aircraft it performed even better when it returned to right field in October 1932 reaching a new top speed of 207 mph as a result of its outstanding performance the Army aircore placed a production order for 48 bombers and purchased the original prototype redesignating it as the xb10 between that moment and the first deliveries of the production b10s some additional changes were made to the overall design it was accepted and in no small part thanks to some very vocal complaints that a plane flying over 200 mph should not have open Cruise stations and so the Pilot's cockpit and rear Gunner station were finally enclosed the number of crew was also reduced to three at this point and the weight saved by ditching the co-pilot was used to allow the installation of radio equipment that would be used by the rear Gunner various engine installations were made to the 48 units delivered for the initial production order the first 14 aircraft designated as the yb10 had a similar version of the Cyclone engine that powered the first prototype and thus their overall performance was very similar most of the production order would be powered by a more powerful version giving out 775 horsepower and these units would be delivered as the b10b there was also an experimental model the YB 10A this featured Turbo superchar LED versions of the engine that gave it an impressive top speed of 236 mph at 25,000 ft however for various reasons mostly due to cost only one of these were to be built when it finally entered service the B10 was faster than any fighter currently operated by the US Military and its Advanced performance rendered all other bomber designs obsolete overnight domestically they would serve with numerous air groups both as a conventional bomber but also in some auxiliary roles in January of 1931 the Army aircore assumed responsibility for coastal defense around the US Mainland this was the source of considerable grumbling as this task had been the cherished prerogative of the US Navy and the decision was made to adapt several models of the YB and B10 into the yb12 these aquatic conversions usually entailed the fitting of large floats for water use but for the northern regions there was also the use of a ski and wheel landing gear Arrangement aside from this particular task the B10 sometimes found itself involved in events that caught the general eye of the public as well a notable example of this occurred in 1936 when a group of b10s were used to drop much needed supplies to Island communities in the Chesapeake Bay these islands had been cut off after a particularly nasty winter storm which had iced up the bay to such a degree that sending in supplies by ship was impossible in response to a request by the Red Cross the 49th Bomb Group sent in several B6 and B10 bombers for a resupply mission Landing directly on the islands was deemed too dangerous and so the planes conducted the supply equivalent of a bombing run sometimes dropping their supplies from a height of just 15 ft above the ground the b10s made headlines again later that spring when a flight of nine aircraft made several long-distance flights from Virginia to the Panama Canal though this was not done in one single leg with stops in Miami and Costa Rica it did much to display the projection of US Air power as a result of its success the B10 was approved to be sold for export once Martin's delivery contracts for the Army had been completed and in August of 1936 an example of the B10 was demonstrated to foreign buyers as the model 139w unsurprisingly Martin found several customers who were very keen to purchase eventually models would be sold to Argentina China the Netherlands the Soviet Union Thailand and turkey most of these units were exported as various versions of the model 139 in general they were very similar with the main difference usually being a change in power plant the two biggest export customers for the B10 were Argentina and the Netherlands Argentina would eventually operate 39 aircraft across its Army and Navy and the Netherlands would oper rate 121 they would also be the only customer for the updated version of the xort model dubbed the 166 this model was of the same basic design as the 139 but it featured a notable change to the cockpit layout instead of a separate Pilot's cockpit and rear Gunner station it now featured a long glass house style canopy along with this the nose and front turret fairing were modified to improve streamlining and the provision was made for additional bombs to be carried under the wing between the engines and the fuselage by the time the b10s actually saw combat they were already aircraft in production that surpassed them however because the B10 was so much of a Leap Forward compared to previous bomber designs the export models saw extensive use as they often steal outclass to the aircraft operated against them they got their trial by fire in 1937 when five Chinese operated b10s were flown on bombing raids against Japanese Ground Forces around Shanghai and King though their speed made them effective they were fielded in too few numbers to make a large impact and by the end of 1938 all of them had either been destroyed or damaged Beyond repair the remaining combat experience of the B10 was mostly found in the service of Thailand and the Dutch East Indies the latter forces seeing extensive operations against the invading forces of Imperial Japan operations varied between Coastal Patrol anti-submarine efforts and altitude bombing Dutch operated b10s were sometimes used for low altitude missions as well but a mix of strong Japanese anti-aircraft fire and some unfortunate Friendly Fire incidents soon put an end to that particular tactic though it was a losing battle the b10s played their part in holding up the Japanese invasion as best they could especially when it came to the defense of simantra as the end Drew near many of them would be used for reconnaissance duties to spot incoming Japanese attacks thanks than to their high speed but by the end of 1942 Java was almost completely surrounded several b10s were shot down by Japanese Fighters many more were destroyed on the ground and the few remaining models were either captured or scrapped after the Allied Forces had surrendered back home the B10 would remain in service with army bombardment squadrons until the arrival of the B17 and B18 in the late 1930s during this time an attempt was made to build on the success of the B10 and design a competitor against the new bombers the model 146 could easily be considered a fatter albeit more powerful version of the B10 but in reality it also featured a lot of brand new components besides being designed with a much longer range than the B10 it also featured improved engines Fowler flaps and a new cockpit that once again allowed for a co-pilot though it was ultimately a failure the model 146 along with its successful forbear taught the designers at Martin many valuable lessons but surprisingly despite over 340 being built only a single example of the B10 survives today it's an export model originally operated by Argentina and it can now be found at the national museum of the US Air Force in Ohio by the time the last b10s were retired having served the Royal Thai Air Force until 1949 they had left a lasting Legacy of the plane that re invented American bomber design traces of the b10s design can be seen in many famous US aircraft that were operated during the second world war and it directly influenced the design of Martin's next and perhaps most famous fast bomber The b26 Marauder but that's a story for Another Day episode 14 the Douglas B18 today we're looking at the Douglas B18 a product of poor timing poor politics and a poor budget in the early 1930s the effects of the Great Depression were being keenly felt military spending was being reduced across the board and an increasingly isolationist public opinion made it very hard to justify the development of any sort of heavy bomber this was further compounded when in 1934 a board was set up to evaluate the role of military Aviation and their unanimous statement can be quoted as saying independent air missions have effect upon the issue of battle and none at all upon the outcome of the war unfortunately the officers of the Army Air cor did not possess the gifts of foresight to show said board that Yes actually military Aviation would have significant impacts on future Wars and so when the development success of the Martin B10 revolutionized American bomber design overnight the Army aircore found itself in the position of possessing technical innovation without the the means to properly make use of it and so in 1934 it was in the midst of this money conscious non-air power minded and strategically inept atmosphere that the airt announced a new competition for the development of a multi-engine bomber their specification required a bomber capable of carrying 2,000 lb of Bombs over a range of no less than 1,020 Mi and upped to a hoped for maximum range of 2,200 Mi the top speed was to be at least 200 mph though ideally they were looking for something that could achieve speeds more along the lines of 250 mph the specification did not set out an exact requirement for engine number and as a result of this submissions would include both two engine and four engine designs instead of starting out with a completely new design Douglas based their twin engine bomber on the existing and successful airframe that was the dc2 transport designated as the DB1 or Douglas bomber one this aircraft was basically designed around the wings of the dc2 and was fitted with a deeper and wider fuselage to accommodate an internal Bombay the design also featured in large tail surfaces and the span and area of its wings were increased by adding rounded tips to manage the task of carrying 2,000 lb of bombs and all the other relevant military equipment an upgrading power plant was also required the DB1 was powered by a pair pair of R r820 G5 Cyclone engines these each had a power output of 850 horsepower and to make the aircraft less visible at night they both had single collector exhausts that went over the wing rather than under it the aircraft was planned for operation by a six-man crew including two pilots a navigator and bomb aimer and three Gunners in terms of defensive Armament the DB1 was to be armed with three 30 caliber machine guns one in the nose one in a dorsal turret and one in a ventral hatch aside from the physical changes such as the Bombay and the enlargement of the Flight Services the general construction of the aircraft was essentially the same with the same aluminium alloy used for the structure of the Wings and the fuselage and the fuselage itself had the same semi monoco structure found on the dc2 and so when the DB1 was completed in April of 1935 it resembled a slightly shorter slightly wider and slightly more aggressive version of the dc2 after completing manufacturer trials the DB1 was sent to right field for official evaluation against the competing aircraft these consisted of the Martin 146 an enlarged and more streamlined development of their successful B10 and the Boeing model 299 which was the prototype for the B17 Flying Fortress it is here that the money conscious attitude and thinly veiled political r rivalries within the war department come into play on paper and in terms of performance figures the Boeing prototype should have been the clear winner it had a longer range had a better defensive Armament could carry more bombs and it was substantially faster however the DB1 based on an already existing design under mass production was priced to the Army aircore at a cost that was 40% cheaper than the Boeing and so the competition quickly boiled down to a choice between quality and quantity the technical staff recommended the acquisition of a smaller number of boeings while the general staff pointing out that the DB1 performance though worse than the Boeing still fully met the aircore specification wanted to purchase a larger number of the Douglas bombers this debate went on for some time until the crash of the Boeing Prototype at right field the result of an unhappy moment when it took off with the controls still locked the general staff used this incident as further justification for a more conservative and budget friendly approach to procurement and an order was placed for 133 Douglas B1 18s while a smaller order was placed for just 13 of the Boeing yb7 following the completion of evaluations at right field the original prototype was returned to Douglas and brought up to production standard 2 years later it was modified to test the feasibility and effects of firing a heavy Cannon for this purpose it was equipped with a 75 mm field gun that was mounted in a fixed position in the Bombay following initial tests on the ground where it didn't immediately explode it was then assigned for inflight firing tests during which it was quickly realized that the vibration and force of the cannon being fired was not going to be handled well by the airframe and these tests were quickly halted nonetheless the results of these tests would prove valuable and indeed they Direct aided in the development of the Canon armed b-25s that would be used during the second world war the production B18 differed from the DB1 prototype in a number of ways though none of these changes could be considered major they were now powered by a pair of more powerful right Cyclones producing 930 horsepower and these were housed in improved cowlings and drove a newer wider bladed pair of three blade propellers all but two of the first production badge also had a redesigned nose cone this was reduced in length by 7 in and now featured both side windows and a bomb aiming window in the lower front section deliveries of the B18 began in early 1937 with the first arriving on February the 23 the first four of these aircraft would be assigned for testing at various sites across the United States the fifth sixth and seventh aircraft to be built were the first b8s to be delivered to an operational unit this being the the seventh bombardment group at Hamilton field and they would later be joined by 30 additional aircraft the remaining 94 b8s were assigned across various bombardment groups as well as a pair of reconnaissance squadrons later on most of these units either had their B18 supplemented or replaced by the updated b18a while some groups continue to operate a mix of the two and by 1940 most bomber squadrons were equipped with b8s the b18a was the most produced model by a considerable margin with a final production run of 217 units that were ordered over three batches the most notable change was yet another modification to the nose with the bomb station being moved upward under an extended glazed housing and the forward gun was now mounted in a bull-shaped turret that was set further back and Below than on the previous model other modifications on the 18a included the installation of two 1,000 horsepower right Cyclones and some general upgrades in equipment and instrumentation ironically for an aircraft being marketed as budget friendly the B18 failed to secure much in the way of export orders during 1938 the British Air Ministry expressed interest in purchasing the B18 for use as a maritime reconnaissance and bombing aircraft however upon further inspection the aircraft was found to be underpowered and undergunned compared to other emerging designs and the asking price of $109,000 per unit was received poorly after insulting the British Douglas found itself surprised when it received more favorable attention from the Canadians 20 aircraft were ordered for the rcaf and they were designated as the Digby Mark 1 these were ordered as reconnaissance bombers and were externally similar to the b18a however they would feature 303 caliber machine guns instead of the 30 caliber ones and other British and Canadian equipment would be fitted no doubt including some sort of kettle despite being reliable and generally well-liked by their Crews the Digby and b18a were not long off the production line before their days were numbered as the 1930s came to an end the general staff of the aircore finally recognized that larger for engine bombers would be the future of Frontline units and it also realized that the rapid advancement in fighter technology overseas meant that the idea of even using the b8s for Frontline bombing missions was nothing short of suicidal as a result no further production orders for the B18 were placed leaving the final production total at 350 planes that being said the b8s though obsolete were still the most numerous bombers fielded outside the continental United States by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor Unfortunately they would not see a lot of use in the Pacific as well most of them happened to be at Pearl Harbor on the day of said attack with most of them being destroyed on the ground round courtesy of strafing dive bombers and zeros the operational use of the B18 in general did not last long during the war however 122 aircraft were modified for anti-submarine operations as the b18b the bombarder station was replaced with a search radar and magnetic detection equipment was installed in a stinger likee protrusion at the end of the tail the offensive load normally included depth charges carried in the Bombay but tests and limited use was also made with retro bomb racks beneath the wings which fire the bombs backward in a spread pattern in this new role the B18 was not unsuccessful and it was one of the first American planes to sink a German uboat taking out U 654 in August of 1942 along with Canadian operated dig bees the B18 would spend most of 1942 harassing enemy submarines usually in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic coast after being replaced by b-24s in 1943 some B18 BS were used to develop radar bombing techniques but most were relegated to the roles of training or Transport Aircraft three b8s were also transferred to Brazil and used with a training unit as part of the Len lease provision like many other b8s these were also eventually converted for anti-submarine use and in May of 1943 one of these Brazilian b8s engaged a German newat using depth charges and bombs and although there was a sizable oil patch left on the Sea The ubot Kill was strangely never confirmed after the war the surviving b8s that were still airworthy were often sold off as Surplus with some operated as commercial transports in various countries including Australia and Canada some of these aircraft were still operated in military units as well but this did not last long and the last units operated in Canada and Brazil were both retired from service by the end of 1946 today five examp survive in good condition with the potential recovery of a SI airframe still on the table it's being a wreck on private land in Hawaii ultimately the B18 was not a particularly bad aircraft but it was the product of poor foresight and once again it showed that converting a civilian aircraft for military use as a bomber rarely produced great success it also showed Douglas that if they wanted to develop successful Frontline bombers they needed to have the size and the range for such a task this consideration would soon lead to the development of the huge and experimental xp19 but that's a story for Another Day episode 15 early Hawker aircraft and their development today we're going to be looking at the early aircraft of the Hawker Aircraft company this is the first of a new series which will look at the pioneering designs of most major aircraft manufacturers seeing as some of these earlier examples often have very brief or vague histories I thought it best to cover groups of aircraft in a single longer video rather than doing five or six very short ones so Hawker the company was born in the uncertain and auster times that immediately followed to the end of the first world war during this period government policy towards aviation in general and Military aviation in particular was almost non-existent stop with one of the biggest names in the industry had tried to diversify and produce planes for both commercial and civilian use however there Endeavors in this new field ultimately failed and they had to fall back to the production of car bodies and motorbikes the company struggled on in this way for a short time until in 1920 the treasury for excess War profits Duty lodged a claim against sowith for an amount they could never hope to pay the company was put into receivership and eventually liquidated but From the Ashes of the swi aviation company arose a new firm called HG Hawker engineering this new company was formed by pioneering Australian Aviator Harry Hawker who was also soth's Chief test pilot and Thomas Sopwith himself Hawker engineering advertised itself as a company that manufactured bicycles internal combustion engines cars motorbikes and aircraft but considering the names of its founding directors it took little imagination for anyone to guess where their Ambitions lay it therefore came as no surprise when contracts were immediately accepted by Hawker to recondition large numbers of War Surplus aircraft this was a valuable source of early Financial stability but swith and Hawker were Keen to design and build their own aircraft as well unfortunately Hawker would never live to see this happen on the 12th of July 1921 while piloting a Newport Goss Hawk he suff Ed a fatal Hemorrhage as a result of spinal tuberculosis Hawker was dead before his plane hit the ground but his name would be immortalized by the fledgling business he'd helped start and Hawker engineering's first aircraft was just around the corner by the time of hawker's death the design office was already filling with draftsmen and while the government continued with its shortsighted policy of making doe with Surplus planes the faint rustlings of specification papers could be heard in whiteall as the true inadequacies of the raf's equipment became apparent to those who were farsighted this soon resulted in the specification that led to the Hawker dker though not the first plane designed at the new company it was the first to be built but unfortunately it was not a success specification 7/22 outlined the general requirements for an aircraft that could provide Gunnery spotting reconnaissance and unit liaison duties this specification was a modified version of one that had already been issued but it had received Universal complaints from manufacturers for having contradictory requirements and this may have contributed to all of the aircraft designs being submitted being well rubbish the design tended by Hawker design staff under newly appointed chief designer Captain B Thompson was accepted and construction began on a number of prototypes the dier was of Allwood construction though it was unusual for the time in being a monoplane as the British bias towards biplane designs was still considered substantial the parasol monoplane Wing was swept back and braced by a pair of struts on each side that connected to the fuselage the wing itself was relatively thin and the trailing Edge above the cockpit was cut away to provide the pilot and observer with a good view in all directions the undercarriage was another unusual feature it had a very wide track there was no axle connect in the wheels and the wheels themselves were of a small diameter only one dier was completed and that was only after numerous alterations had been made to the basic configuration of the aircraft and it was flown a number of times at Brooklyn's during the summer of 1923 initially it was fitted with an Armstrong Sidle Jaguar engine but this was swapped out for a 430 horsepower Bristol Jupiter 4 before its first flight in terms of armament it was to have one vica's gun on the nose cowling and provision was made for a rear-facing Lewis gun however both of these were removed owing to weight restrictions apart from the gun fitted on the nose vickas also produced a large number of the equipment in parts that were used on the dyer the wind driven generator was Vicor as was the undercarriage flight stick Rudder controls rear gun mount and tail skid had they been even more involved it may have been cheaper for Hawker to Simply hand the airframe over to Vicor after its initial flights the plane went to maral shm Heath for official evaluations in late 1923 but after just 18 hours of flight time it was clear that the dker was not suitable as a military aircraft apart from displaying severe aileron flutter which resulted in the frightful tendency for the wing to part company with the rear cabain struts the aircraft was directionally unstable throughout its entire speed range and it was subsequently rejected the dier was then delivered to the Royal aircraft establishment at farra for further evaluation but no record seems to exist of these results and the aircraft was lightly scrapped at the end of 1924 as a result of its poor performance the other prototypes were not completed and the only other model that had begun construction was reportedly taken out of the shed and bury in a corner at Brooklyn's next up is the Hawker Woodcock this was designed to meet specification 25/22 which called for a single seat Knight fighter initially the work of a team once led by Captain Thompson the first prototype Woodcock bore many signs of its swi Heritage featuring Tu bay wings and being powered by an Armstrong Sly jaguar in March 1923 it made its Maiden flight in the hands of test pilot FP Ram but it proved to not only be disappointing but dangerous to fly aside from display playing an alarming amount of wing flutter even for those days its Rudder proved to be almost entirely ineffective and for this reason spin recovery tests were never permitted with the first model when it arrived at maral sham Heath for service evaluation it was rejected on account of its poor maneuverability however it did receive praise for its reasonable field of view and being simple to maintain at this point Captain Thompson was replaced as chief designer by WG Carter who would go on to be the Le designer of the gluster meteor and he immediately began to redesign the Woodcock replacing the Jaguar engine with a Bristol tuiter 4 and incorporating single bay wings this new prototype dubbed the Woodcock Mark I was built with these new features and flown for the first time in August of 1923 it immediately showed itself to be an improvement on the first model the wing flutter though still present on some occasion was considerably reduced and positive directional controls now achievable throughout most of the speed range unfortunately the Jupiter 4 engine presented an issue with the exposed valve gear being particularly vulnerable to icing up it was also a problem that was experienced to some extent by some other uncal radial engines as a result of this the Prototype appeared at the 1924 henden display with a series of individual cylinder covers each equipped with manually operated shutters to regulate the air flow soon after this however minor modific ations were made to the valve gear and the fitting of an exhaust collecting shroud in front of the cylinders reduced the risk of icing And the cylinder covers were removed following this a further assessment of the Woodcock was conducted towards the end of 1924 and after the tail surfaces had yet again been improved the RAF deemed it acceptable for service and placed a contract for the production of 10 aircraft the first six of these not fitted initially with night flying equipment were issued to m Heath for further tests and some then served with number 17 Fighter Squadron after this however it was number three squadron at up aen that received the first of the production Woodcock Mark 2s eight were delivered in May of 1925 and these replaced their aging collection of Sopwith Snipes in total 61 production models of the mark 2 would be built most of which went on to serve as night Fighters with number three and number 17 Squadron one of the aircraft schedule for delivery to the RAF was purchased by Hawker engineering as a demonstration aircraft and entered by Tom sowith in the King's Cup race of July 1925 flown by another Hawker test pilot George bolman it was unfortunately forced down at luten by bad weather in the opening stages of the race and it was badly damaged nevertheless its demonstration prior to the race gave Hawker some much needed public exposure in service the aircraft was armed with two 303 caliber Vicor machine guns these were mounted on each side of the fuselage and were synchronized with the two blade propeller in the early days of their service the woodcocks suffered a number of incidents that did little to endear them to their pilots the most serious of these issues resulted from failures of the main Wings spars and there were several cases of the undercarriage struts collapsing though this was mostly attributed to the poor surface of the Airfield they were landing at WG Carter quickly put the Woodcock through a modification program and by the end of 1925 the structural weaknesses of the aircraft had been cured and the Woodcock became well-liked as a KN fighter only two squadrons would operate the Woodcock flying Knight patrols over the Midlands throughout the mid to late 1920s however with a maximum speed of 143 mph and a simple twin gun Arrangement it presented no significant advancement over the swi Snipes it replaced on the the other hand its acceptance by the RAF enabled the small Hawker company to survive in a time of much reduced manufacturing contracts after the Hawker Woodcock came the Hawker signets which is unique for being the only light aircraft developed by Hawker the significance of this aircraft lay in two things its remarkable design characteristics and its designer in 1923 Haw engineering employed the services of a young draftsman who had considerable experience in the design and construction of wooden aircraft his name was Sydney Cam and he would go on to become one of the most famous and influential designers in British aviation in early 1924 those years were still ahead of him and his first job was to take over the design of a light aircraft one that was to compete in the light airplane competition held by the Royal AO Club this event was backed by the air Ministry Who provided funding for £3,000 in prizes during such times of austerity when every Shilling counted the competition would receive submissions from companies Great and Small including Hawker initially it was Wilfred G Carter who was in charge of the design work for the Signet but he handed the project over to Sydney cam reportedly saying that he simply couldn't get used to thinking in terms of ounces instead of pounds cam however could think in terms of ounces instead of pounds and when it was entered the signate was the light aircraft in the contest coming in at a featherweight 373 lb the airframe weighing no more than 270 was of Allwood construction and fabric covered the fuselage consisted of four Spruce lingons and braced in the form of a Warren truss by diagonal cross-sections the wings were built upon fabric wrapped box bars with Warren truss Spruce ribs and though the top Center Wing section was attached to the fuselage by four Spruce fed steel struts metal fittings were kept to the absolute minimum to save weight two signets were entered into the competition registered as gbmb and GB JH the former was powered by a 34 horsepower 2cylinder anzani engine and the latter by a 34 horsepower 2cylinder ABC scorpion both survived the elimination Heats and gained fourth and third places respectively in the final the signant Reg said bmbb won first place in the trials for best takeoff and pull-up it also won the short Landing competition and had some poorly timed valve trouble not got in the way on the final day would have certainly taken home the air Ministries grand prize the next year both signets attended the 1926 limb competition these were now fitted with the 34 horsepower Bristol cherub engine Bullman once again flew the Signet BMG and bjh was flown by one flying officer rag rag won the limb open handicap race with Bowman coming sixth but it was Bowman who finally won the principal competition on the 26th of September taking home the daily male prize of £3,000 with rag coming second for a onew finish for the Hawker signets at the end of the 1920s Bowman's signant was put into storage and mostly forgotten however after the second world war it was painstakingly rebuilt by Hawker over the years it attended numerous meetings sometimes even appearing at Garden parties and since the 1970s it has been on almost permanent display with its current home being the RAF museum at cosford before the signant had competed in its first race development work had begun on the Hawker Hedgehog this was designed to air Ministry specification 3722 which called for a new carrier-based reconnaissance aircraft to replace the Arro bison and the imaginatively named Blackburn Blackburn first appearing on the drawing board is the Haw T2 the Hedgehog was designed as a three- seat single Bay unstaggered bip plane it was of conventional fabric covered wooden construction and designed to operate the pilot Observer and Gunner in separate tandem cockpits the pilot sat well forward under the top Wing Center section but the Gunner at the rear was just clear of the wing trailing Edge of which a section was cut away to improve their field of view powered by a 398 horsepower Bristol Jupiter 4 the Hedgehog employed some novel features for its day these included the use of Landing flaps on both the upper and lower Wings both Wings also featured so-called drooping aerons and the wings could be folded for easier storage and for Carrier operations the Hedgehog made its first flight at Brooklyn's in February 192 4 with FP ROM at the controls upon completing its initial test flights it was then sent to maram Heath for the customary service evaluation here several officers flew the aircraft extensively and the Hedgehog's handling characteristics were met with universal approval its stalling characteristics were especially praised as was its ability to recover from said stalls however by the time the Hedgehog had completed these trials the air Ministry canel the requirement for it in their eyes the Hedgehog's performance though good did not present sufficient advancement over the existing Avo and Blackburn models neither of which had yet to complete their first year of service nevertheless the M Ministry purchased the sole example of the Hedgehog and it was returned to MIM as an experimental aircraft there further tests were conducted on the unusual drooping aerons during the first half of 1925 after this it attended the RAF display at henden before being converted to a float plane and tested by the Marine aircraft experimental establishment who tested it over the summer once converted back to a land plane it saw some use in deck handling trials aboard HMS Argus in September of 1925 the following year it was fitted with a new 450 horsepower Jupiter 6 engine and despite being the only model it was redesignated as the Hedgehog Mark I after this it fade comes obscure but it appears that the aircraft was written off sometime during or just after 1927 when it nosed over in a landing incident the Hawker Horn Bill in a return to Aven nomenclature was WG Carter's answer to air Ministry specification 7/24 this called for a high power single seat fighter it was to be powered by the new boosted ungeared Rolls-Royce condor fre engine it was to have a top speed of no less than 208 mph and it was to have a service ceiling of 29,000 ft this specification was an attempt by the air Ministry to break away from traditional radial engines a heretical concept to some of the old guard and explore the possibility of acquiring a fighter aircraft with significantly Advanced performance recognizing this Carter paid particular attention to the design of the closed cowling of the engine the result was a small and exceptionally Sleek biplane for its time the Horn Bill was built as a single Bay biplane of mixed wood and metal construction the engine supports being made of steel tubes with the whole Arrangement snugly clad in ger aluminium paneling for cooling the aircraft had two radiators mounted under the lower wing and although it was meant to have a spinner over the propeller this was not initially fitted so that a hux starter could be used for the engine the horn build took off for the first time in July of 1925 it was flown by ROM on its first flights however George Bulman would soon join as the chief test pilot after the initial flights which resulted in the fitting of a metal propeller to try and improve performance the aircraft was taken to Mar chm Heath for assessment in December during the course of the evaluations it was found that despite having a very snug cowling the hornbill was no match for the depressing climate of a British wind win and its engine suffered repeatedly from the problem of overcooling attempts were made to combat this mostly by covering up most of the outer segments of the radiators but eventually the decision was made to take the horn Mill back to the workshop for extensive modifications all of the modification work was done under the supervision of Sydney cam who by now had taken over from Carter the engine was replaced with the new Condor 4 which produced 698 horsepower and its longer crank case required new covering panels which were R back and fled flat across the top of the engine the two radiators were sensibly replaced by a single Circ radiator that was mounted between the landing gear struts and the tail finin and Rudder were both slightly altered to increase their area after these modifications were complete the Horn Bill returned to Brooklyn's field and Bowman completed a series of performance and handling flights though the Horn Bill was designed to carry a vica's gun it was not fitted because the Condor engine had not been installed with a synchronization gear and for these flights ballast was used to simulate the weight of the missing gun its low speed handling surprised Balman who found the aircraft easy to control at speeds that would induce a stall for most others but overall he was unimpressed it had numerous faults one of the biggest being a dramatic loss of engine power above 16,000 ft after a appearance at the RAF display at henden the Horn Bill returned to maram Heath for its full service evaluation as well as a comparative evaluation against the Armstrong witor cisin 3 though the hornbill was considerably faster than the cisin and altitudes below 20,000 ft its low ceiling killed any hopes for it to be considered as a service aircraft on top of this was the Litany of complaints that came from Bowman after his test flights the engine was now overheating a result of normal service fuel being unsuitable for the Condor when flown at four power despite strengthening the aircraft tended to break its Stern post upon Landing directional stability and control were lacking at higher speeds to such an extent that even full Rudder was barely enough to maintain height in steep turns at speeds above 150 mph but worst of all Balman said that the cockpit was so cramped that it was impossible to reach the cocking handle of the vica's machine gun and that a larger than average pilot would find it impossible to safely bail out in an emergency to quote Bowman himself he said the Horn Bill was too clever by half and the designer almost forgot that the pilot is an important part of the design despite its shortcomings the air Ministry suggested that the Horn Bill be transferred to the Royal aircraft establishment for testing as even though it was unsuitable as a service plane it displayed outstanding handling characteristics at low speeds and was still considered an advanced fighter design next up is the Hawker Heron this was a relatively short-lived but important project that evolved from the development of the Woodcock the Heron started life as the third Woodcock that was to be built but sowith had obtained the air ministry's permission to complete it as a so-called metal Woodcock in early 1924 the redesign work was given to Sydney cam who quickly realized that a completely different aircraft would result from this work and so it was given the new name of Heron the structure was built using steel and aluminium tubes these were attached to form a rectangular section That Was Then used with others to form a simple box that was cross braced with tension wires the parallel cord Wing had twin spars that were built from light steel tubing and the nose of the fuselage behind the engine was covered with duraluminium sheet unlike the Woodcock 2 the Heron had straight wings of unequal span and increased stagger a smooth contoured Fin and Horn balanced Rudder replaced the woodcock's original tail surfaces and completed the transformation of the Woodcock into the Heron it first flew in mid 1925 powered by a Jupiter 6 engine that drove a two-blade wood propeller although the Heron's weight was a little more than the Woodcock 2 it managed to achieve a top speed over 15 mph faster than its predecessor achieving 156 mph at 9,800 FT after this it went to marim Heath in December for its evaluation trials however for these its wood propeller was replaced by a fairy Reed all metal propeller though in the end this made little or no impact on its overall performance the Heron remained at marim for most of 1927 being transferred to number 22 Squadron for handling and performance reports during this time it earned a good reputation amongst Pilots with considerable praise given to its handling characteristics and ease of servicing courtesy of the metal airframe after its time at maram was done the Heron was struck off air Ministry charge in May of 1928 it then returned to Brooklyn's where with its Armament removed it was reregistered and entered into the King's Cup Race at henden unhappily while being taxied to the start line it struck a parked car and was badly damaged by the time it was repaired the certificate of air worthiness had expired and the plane was finally struck off the register for good Sydney cam would later refer to the Heron with considerable affection suggesting that for him at least it marked the transition from the outdated fighter formula of the snipe Woodcock and GRE and the wing and tail layout of the Heron can easily be recognized in the later haa Fury when it made its debut the next aircraft is the Haw of horley this has the distinction of being the last Allwood design drawn up by the company though many models would eventually be completed with either a mixed or all metal structure it was also the first haer aircraft to reach a production run that exceeded 100 units with 124 horley being built in total the horley was designed as a two- seat single engine medium bomber in response to specification 2623 construction of the first prototype began in 192 24 however its first flight was delayed until the following spring after a construction accident caused significant damage at this stage it was powered by a Rolls-Royce Condor 3 and featured two radiators on the sides of the fuselage set back behind the engine like originally found on the Hawker Horn Bill in May 1925 the horley Prototype was taken to marim for assessment against the competing aircraft by Bristol Hanley page and wesland initial favor leaned towards the horley especially as it was the only plane capable of meeting the initial load requirements a point of some embarrassment for the other competitors but the final judgment was withheld as there were numerous complaints about the air Ministry specification specifications 23/25 and 24/25 rectified this issue with the latter also setting out load requirements for both conventional and torpedo bombing following complaints about engine accessibility and ground handling the Prototype horley had gone back for modifications and during this time work had also begun on a second prototype the second prototype Incorporated metal in parts of the wing INF fuselage structure and this aircraft was flown for the first time on the 6th of December 1925 when they returned to martal shim for evaluation both horley were praised for the ease in which they could be adapted to carry various loads and this prompted the air Ministry to place a production order for for 30 horley in March of 1926 the first 10 of these would be completed as the Mark 1 which was predominantly of wood construction with the remaining being completed as the horley mark 2 number 11 bomber Squadron was the first to receive the mark 2 in January of 1927 which they used to replace their aging stock of fairy THS shortly after this number 100 Squadron also replaced its fors with a new set of horley and by 1928 they also equipped number 15 and 33 Squadron as well as the anti-aircraft Corporation flight at bigan Hill the horley were a considerable Advance over the previous aircraft capable of carrying three times the bomb load over greater distances the mark 2 also featured the improved Rolls-Royce Condor 3A as well as the new Mark 2B bomb site though in some photos usually without people as a reference the horley may look small it was actually quite a large aircraft the Mark I had a wingspan just over 56 ft and it had a loaded weight of 9,200 lb its powerful engine allowed it to carry some impressive payloads for its day one being A500 lb bomb though none had been produced since 1918 and the other being an 18-in torpedo speaking of torpedoes the Prototype horley torpedo bomber was built from the 10th production unit of the initial Mark 2 delivery order this aircraft was transferred to the torpedo development flight at gosport in early 1927 where it remained for several months before being shown to the public at the henden air display in July at the end of that year an initial production order for 12 torpedo bombers was placed with the first being delivered in August of 1928 these units went to the coast defense torpedo flight in Scotland which was shortly renamed to number 36 torpedo bomber Squadron subsequent orders were placed for more torpedo bombers and these would be completed with all metal construction and were unofficially referred to as the horley Mark III many of these served with number 36 Squadron when it was redeployed to Singapore in 1930 and they remained in service until as late as 1935 horley continued to serve homebased bomber squadrons for several years participating in the yearly exercises and also appearing at the henden air place from 1928 to 1931 the arrival of the Vicor vilder beast in 1932 put an end to the horley's days as a Frontline unit however they would continue to see extensive use for Target Training as well as some units being used for all manners of experimental testing from 1926 onwards various horley would be used as engine test beds the original prototype was used to test a Rolls-Royce Eagle a Rolls-Royce h10 as well as the emerging napia Lions another was converted to mount a Rolls-Royce Condor which was then featured at henden and other horley were also used to test the Armstrong sidley leopard the Rolls-Royce buzzard and even a yuna's jumo was installed on one particular model perhaps the most significant of all engines tested on the horley was the rollsroyce pv12 two aircraft would be used to test this engine between 1934 in 1937 gaining certifications for various models of what would become the Rolls-Royce Merlin the success of the experimental horley prompted overseas interest in 1929 Hawker built six horley for the helenic Naval Air Service with five being delivered as military aircraft and the sixth to be used as a VIP transport in 1930 the Danish government placed an order for two aircraft to be powered by the leopard engine this also included a request to produce the aircraft under license should it prove satisfactory these two aircraft were completed as the so-called D torp the design featured a mixed construction of wood and metal the undercarriage could easily be swapped out between Landing wheels and a pair of floats and the cockpit layout was changed to facilitate a third crew member between the pilot and the Observer the first D torp was delivered as a land plane making its first flight in September 1932 2 and shortly after it was followed by the second the latter also underwent trials with floats at Felix Stow in November that year where despite its largest size it performed well on the water both D torps were flown extensively between 1932 and 1933 but despite performing well budget constraints prevented the Danes from putting the aircraft into production by this time the horley was already being phased out of service at home and it would have probably been updated in its use within a few years anyway after the horley we have the Hawker hinch though ultimately unsuccessful it was the first all metal design built by Hawker and it was influential in the designs of later Fighters by both Hawker and other manufacturers as well the hinch was built to specification F9 sl26 which set out to find a replacement for the Armstrong witor siskin and the Glazer Gamecock this require requirement was somewhat urgent as the fairy Fox a light bomber was about to enter service and rather embarrassingly it posted performance figures that either matched or exceeded those of the raf's current inventory of Frontline Fighters the a Ministry was so eager to avoid this scenario that they accepted no less than nine different prototype proposals from various manufacturers over the course of 1926 these included the Bolton pole Partridge the the Gloucester ss19 the Bristol Bulldog the Armstrong witor 16 and of course the hawk of hinch Hawker was quick Off the Mark with this one being the first to submit their design for consideration the hinch Prototype was built as a metal structure to Bay biplane with the wings arranged with a considerable amount of stagger and it was to be equipped with a pair of synchronized Vigor machine guns per the specification it was powered by a radial engine this one being the Bristol Jupiter 6 and it was expected to have a top speed in excess of 160 mph Hawker was in fact so quick in designing and building the hinch it being flown for the first time in March 1927 that they were able to spare the time to submit the aircraft for deck handling trials aboard an aircraft carrier this it did aboard HMS Furious in July these trials went surprisingly well for an aircraft that had not been designed with carriers in mind and the experience gained from the allowed Sydney cam to take an interest in the new Fleet fighter specification something that would eventually culminate in the development of the hawen Nimrod after the deck handling tests were complete the hinch was prepared for its evaluation trials and went to martal Sham Heath in August of 1927 extensive Trials of all the attending prototypes were carried on until the early months of the following year by which point the bulldog and hinch were looking like the clear favorites ultimately it could not be decided which of the two should be considered for full scale production as their performance figures were exceptionally similar and so the decision was made to deliver both aircraft for squadron trials these took place at Kenley horn Church North H Hal bigan Hill and uph Haven both of the aircraft were well liked by their pilots but in the end the Bulldog was judged the winner owing to its top speed of 174 mph versus 171 for the the hinch the hinch Prototype was then returned to the factory where single bay wings were temporarily introduced for testing and shortly afterwards the aircraft made a brief appearance at Felix Stow to test the use of a twin float undercarriage from July 1929 onwards the hfin was used by Hawker and the Rae for trials with heavily cambered air foil sections it carried on in this manner being used for various experiments for a number of years until some point in 1933 when it was finally scrapped the last aircraft we're looking at today is the hawah Harrier and no not the V told Jet Plane of Fame but rather the first aircraft to bear this name the Harrier was hawker's response to specification 23/25 which called for a two- seat plane capable of Performing day bombing and Coastal reconnaissance duties this was based on the failure of an earlier specification which had led to the Haw of horley as mentioned mentioned earlier on with the main failure being the lightness of the required bomb load and so before the horley had completed its final evaluations design work on the hawah Harrier had begun it was designed with an all metal structure and cam made Provisions for the possibility of it having to carry a torpedo as it looked like the air Ministry were about to modify their specification to include set requirement the engine chosen was the reduction geared Bristol Jupiter 8 but because of the gears relatively high power absorption the aircraft was somewhat underpowered when it was completed the Harrier was flown for the first time in early 1927 it then performed its initial flight trials at Brooklyn's from March to November thereafter it was evaluated at maram Heath during the winter of 1927 1928 and again in the summer these initial trials were carried out with a variety of bomb loads mostly the 112 and 250 variants as predicted the air Ministry then modified the specification to include the requirements of carrying the admiralty type 8 torpedo and the Harrier went back for its already planned modifications during this time the reduction gear of the engine was removed as during all flight trials a lack of power on takeoff had been the main complaint and the last thing a pilot wanted when taking off from a carrier over the North Sea carrying a heavy torpedo was a lack of power unfortunately even with the new engine now giving 583 horsepower the Harrier now carrying 3,000 lb of torpedo and Associated equipment was still underpowered as a result of this its trials were conducted with the rear gun mountings removed and the fuel tanks half filled for the safety of the test pilot in one of the reports received by Sydney cam was a rare case of sarcasm in the usually stomach dictum of the mar shim assessors in response to the required weight shedding for testing it's is saying it's a Pity that it has been found necessary to leave The Observer bomb aimer on the ground when bombs are being carried unsurprisingly the Harrier failed to impress and it was not selected for service in November 1929 it was handed over to the Bristol engine company for use as a test bed it was first equipped with a 495 Bristol Orion radial engine and then the 870 horsepower Bristol Hydra double octagon here it lived out the rest of it days before being struck off the register and eventually scrapped in 1933 though it was a failure the Harrier served Hawker well by aiding in the development of bombing equipment that would later be used in the Hawker heart and other smaller lessons were learned that cumulatively aided the company in future developments and so that concludes our look at the early aircraft designed at Hawker engineering as mentioned earlier I plan to do a few more of these for some of the other manufacturers not all manufacturers require this sort of video but a lot of the ones that operated in the 1910s and 1920s had a lot of short-lived obscure designs that are often better covered on mass episode 16 the Douglas xb7 today we're taking a look at the Douglas xb7 a curious looking gold- winged bomber that was developed at the very beginning of the 1930s though originally it had not been designed with bombing in mind in the summer of 1929 the US war department was looking to upgrade the Aging Fleet of observation planes that were currently in use with the Army aircore at the time Douglas was the main supplier of this type of aircraft and they were of course Keen to remain so this led them to develop an all metal monoplane with high-mounted G wings of which a contract was soon awarded for two experimental aircraft to be dubbed the x031 however at the same time as this the war department had also ordered two prototypes of the experimental fuer x27 this was a design that made use of several Innovative features and as such it promised to offer a substantial Improvement in performance and operational flexibility over the other observation aircraft currently operated by the aircore themselves naturally this new development rather worried the directors at Douglas who viewed the the fuer as a potential threat to their position as the leading supplier for observation aircraft and thus they instructed their design team to work on something better this they did in Rapid time and in March of 1930 a design was submitted to the war department for a twin engine all metal monoplane this was then approved in an equally quick time period and a contract was offered for the construction of the x35 and the XO 36 both of these aircraft were very similar in appearance each having high mounted braced Gull wings and each being clad in a skin of corrugated duraluminium and they bore a strong family resemblance to the smaller single engine x031 which had been ordered earlier that year like the design submitted by fuer the gold winged Douglas featured several modern and Innovative Design Concepts chiefly it featured a retractable landing gear with the undercarriage units attracting into the engine Nells though in the interest of reducing damage in a wheels up Landing the lower part of each wheel protruded from the Nel to soften the blow of impact the fuselage was constructed as a semi monococ and this housed the aircraft's four crew members it was to have an observer gunner in an open cockpit in the nose a pilot in an open cockpit just forward of the Wings a gunner in an open cockpit in the rear fuselage and and a radio operator who had the esteemed luxury of being in an enclosed station at midships unlike some later designs the open cockpit Arrangement wasn't much of a problem as the Douglas prototypes were not expected to achieve face ripping speeds above 200 mph that being said it was not expected to be a slouch either this was partly thanks to its aerody Dynamics and partly due to its power plant both were powered by the 25 L liid called Curtis conqueror V12 these were enclosed in Nels attached to the underside of the wing and the fuselage by a series of struts when first ordered the two aircraft were only intended to differ in the model of the engine used with the x0 35 having two geared versions of the Conqueror and the XO 36 having two direct drive models however before the XO 36 was completed the air cor noticing that its predicted performance eclipsed their key Stone aircraft decided to have it completed as a light bomber at the same time as this they also ordered fuer to complete their second prototype as a light bomber as well with the intention that the two designs would be evaluated against each other and so the Douglas was redesignated as the xb7 and the fuer as the xb8 the x35 was the first Douglas model to be completed this flew for the first time in the spring of 1931 before going on to complete manufacturer trials at the conclusion of these trials it was then delivered to rightfield in October for service testing the xp7 was completed shortly after and after a longer series of manufacturer trials it would also go to rightfield in July of 1932 these trials were mostly longer due to the additional structural tests that were required as the aircraft had been slightly redesigned to carry 12200 lb of bombs on racks beneath the fuselage while undergoing trials at field the x35 was extensively damaged on the 11th of July 1932 repaired and overhauled it was then flown again at rightfield and along with the stint of being flown in air maale operations in 1934 it would acre 999 hours of flight time before being too worn out to pass its annual inspection in 1938 by the time both prototypes were flying a right field the air cor's interest in the project had grown and in order had already been placed for 12 service aircraft this order consisted of five y 1035 and seven y1 b7s this order would be completed over the course of 1932 with deliveries taking place between August and November the service test aircraft differed from the prototypes in a number of ways the engines were different with the y1 b7s receiving standardized geared variants of the Conqueror the two models selected either having 640 or 675 horsepower and the y10 35s were also powered by two geared versions that either produced 650 or 675 horsepower the fuselage having been lengthened by 11 in to improve the center of gravity also had its corrugated damin skin replaced by smooth sheet metal along with this an adjustable tab was also added to the rudder to improve handling in the event of engine failure and the tail plane which on the prototypes had been wire braced was Now supported by metal struts along with the external changes the internal fuel capacity was increased by 116 us Gall or 439 L and this was done to comply with a new directive that required all service aircraft to have a minimum endurance of 2 hours plus another two on reserve as surprisingly a shortlight endurance was unattractive in the air force of a country that was the size of a continent aside from this other changes included a modified fuel distribution system improved engine controls and oil cooling systems and some general upgrades to the equipment for both the pilot and radio operator though they boasted improved performance figures including a top speed of 182 mph and a service ceiling of 20,400 Ft their appeal to the air core was rapidly diminishing courtesy of the Sleek new design that was being proposed by Glenn Martin the soon to be realized B10 that we covered in a recent video as a result of this no production orders would be placed for either of the Y 1035 or the y1 B7 however this did not Mark the end of their use in early 1934 the US Civil aircraft industry was being rocked by the air mail scandal in a nutshell this was the result of a congress-led investigation of contracts awarded as part of the 1930 air mail Act these contracts were the result of a meeting between the Postmaster General and the executives of top Airlines at the time this closed door Affair of course prevented any smaller Airlines from competing for said contracts and their subsequent complaints resulted in a senate investigation The Fallout of this resulted in President Roosevelt cancelling all air mail contracts in February 1934 and he then requested the airp to take over the air mail routes while new contracts were being arranged this caught the aircore somewhat off guard as very few of their aircraft were suited to the task but the newly redesignated Douglas 035 and B7 appeared better suited than most and so they were assigned to the mail routs in the so-called Western Zone an area that was particularly challenging this was the most difficult Zone because of the mountainous terrain and the pilots assigned to it urgently needed to famili Ariz themselves with the routs they were about to fly unfortunately it would not take long for the terrain and the elements to claim their first victim as it was during one of these familiarization flights that a B7 crashed in Idaho the pilot second Lieutenant James Eastman was circling the aerodrome waiting for a break in the weather being caught in a snowstorm when his plane stalled and he was killed in the crash 4 days later and in the shadow of that tragedy the air officially began its male carrying duties however it was not an easy Endeavor from the outset they were plagued with severe winter weather and that coupled with being poorly prepared or equipped for nighttime operations led to more crashes and the deaths of 13 Airmen by the time the regular mail service was restored three more b7s had been lost with an overall loss ratio of one aircraft per 353 hours of flight time after this the b7s saw limited use as they were quickly becoming worn out and made obsolete by newer aircraft designs they would eventually be withdrawn from use in 1938 with all of the models ending their days in a scrapyard in terms of designs the B7 was a bit of a dead end and a lot of that can be attributed to the rapid Pace in which aircraft design evolved during this period in the span of just a few years things went from bip plane to monoplanes and many planes were obsolete within months of leaving the hanger for the first time some made it some didn't and the B7 was unfortunately one of the latter episode 17 the hle h70 when a certain political party who shall remain nameless from Fear of angering the YouTube Gods Rose to power in Germany in 1933 they claimed to have rebuilt the German aviation industry from nothing however this was not the case all they really did was provide a quantitative expansion of the industry German companies were already sufficiently well established to take on the demands of the Resurgence and lift waffer and an excellent example of this was the Sleek hle a70 this aircraft also known as the blitz for its high speeds was one that proved to be the Forerunner of the company's modern military aircraft although it was as much a military failure as it was a commercial success and I find it to be an aircraft that is often overlooked in the Autumn of 1931 Lockheed unveiled their Model 9 Orion a Sleek compact monoplane transport with a retractable landing gear that boasted a top speed of 220 M an hour this threatened not only to upset the balance of the rapidly expanding market for smaller civil transports but also rob a German Aviation of its Prestige for at the time their transports were some of the best in Europe as a result of this in 1932 Deutch Lanza commissioned erst hle to design an aircraft with which the airline could maintain said Prestige against the Orion work quickly began on the h65 monoplane however in May this project was abandoned as this design which had a non- retractable landing gear was slower than the Orion and it had been learned that Swiss Air had just taken on Lock's plane in numbers for their zero Munich Vienna route hle quickly moved on to a new low-wing monoplane design the hg70 and he put brother designers Sig freed and volter Gunter in charge of the project every effort was made in the pursuit of aerodynamic refinement so Keen were they to wipe loi's eye the engine a 12 cylinder BMW 6z was enclosed in a closely fitted cowling which blended into the oval cross-section of the fuselage it was cool by ethylene glycol instead of water and the higher evaporation rate permitted the use of a smaller radiator and this radiator was retractable which helped to further reduce drag at higher speeds the fuselage itself was a duraluminium and steel monoco and this was clad in a stressed metal skin that used countersunk rivets which gave a very smooth finish the wing and tail surfaces were elliptical and the wing was a two Spar structure with trailing Edge flaps and highly polished plywood coverings the undercarriage was now retractable with the main Wheels retracting into the wings which was a new feature in Germany but something that would rapidly become in common place with smaller aircraft and fighter designs the h70 was designed to carry two crew members a pilot and a radio operator as well as four passengers who sat in pairs the cockpit was set low into the plane and it had a low wind screen sliding canopy and a long fairing running back from the headrests of the seat that blended with the cabin behind it all of this improved streamlining however it would have made for atrocious visibility for takeoff and landing and so the cockpit was slightly offset to the port side so that the pilot had a good view of the ground by June 1932 the preliminary design work had been completed and soon after this work began not only on a prototype but also on an initial production series the Prototype the hg70 V1 made its first flight on the 1st of December 1932 this aircraft had its undercarriage fixed down for safety and to somewhat counteract this the gear and wheels were enclosed in a streamline fairing the extra drag turned out to be not much of a hindrance as during its test flights the h70 sustained a level speed of 3077 km an hour a speed which outclassed most contemporary fighter aircraft at the time let alone civil transports and it was for this reason that when the first production model the h7a was completed it had the name Blitz painted on the side of its nose something that quickly became general practice for all of the production models it soon lived up to this name as over the course of March and April 1933 flight Captain r unuk a well-known Lanza pilot set eight new speed records across various categories with the H7 V2 this then culminated in the h70 being displayed at the 1933 Paris show in November which did much for the public image of both hle and deuts Lanza after a series of flight trials the h7a entered commercial service on the 15th of June 1934 at the same time as this several examples of the h70 b c and d were introduced these were mostly identical to the a series with the biggest difference on the D model being a newer and improved 750 horsepower BMW engine the same engine would also be fitted to the h7g which would be the last Civil model that was designed the G model also had several other physical modifications the cockpit was moved to the center of the fuselage and it was slimmed down with provision only for a single pilot one of these aircraft would find its way to Britain in 1935 where it was modified to take a Rolls-Royce castl engine here it would remain being used as a flying test bed for Rolls-Royce all the way up to 1944 at one point attaining a maximum level speed of 410 km an hour along with lift hanza the lift waffer still at the time lurking in the shadows also took an interest in H's Sleek monoplane and they acquired more than a dozen of the G1 models in 1934 to be used for liaison and fast transport duties by the time the lift waffer made its presence known to the world in 1935 they also now operated the first military versions of the aircraft and these were the h70e and F series from the beginning the h70 was of great interest to the lift waffer which considered it ideal as a light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft as such the E-Series was designed to carry a 300 kg bomb load and it had a rearm mounted mg17 machine gun for defense meanwhile the f- series was designed for longrange reconnaissance the latter model was powered by an upgraded BMW 6 7.3 Z and it was manned by a three-person crew which consisted of a Pilot radio operator and a rear Gunner the first of these planes entered service with the ltoa in 1934 and in 1936 they equipped at least one of the newly formed longrange reconnaissance squadrons their use as a Recon aircraft would be relatively brief as the appearance of the donier do7 f quickly overshadowed them and while the f- series had been considered an acceptable reconnaissance aircraft there were fewer kind opinions about the eer LT waffer High command viewed the hle favorably partly as a result of some well-placed members being on good terms with ernle himself but LT waffer Pilots felt the plane was unsuitable as a light bomber its defensive Armament was too light and unlike the emerging Ju 7 Stuka it was poorly armored this poor opinion was made worse on the 3rd of June 1936 when the lifafa chief of staff General valter via a well-regarded military strategist was killed in Dresden while personally flying in ag7 the accident turned out to be the result of human error as the aileron locks had not been removed during pre-flight checks but viva's death still left its Mark and indeed it had far-reaching implications Viva was a vocal supporter of the strategy of strategic bombing and he was one of the few men in a position of authority who wanted the LIF waffer to build up a powerful strategic bomber Force his death played a major role in this Force being denied to the lwfa and this of course hampered Germany's Effectiveness with large-scale bombing during the second world war had he lived things may have turned out very differently as with many of the lift waffers pre-war aircraft the h70 made its combat debut in the Spanish Civil War 18 h70 FS were sent in the Autumn of 1936 as part of the Condor Legion during the war They carried out both the roles of reconnaissance and light bombing the reconnaissance role was particularly important as they had the range to reach Republican airfields and more importantly they had the superior speed which allowed them to outrun any Fighters that were sent to intercept them early in 1937 a new design of the aircraft emerged as the h170 and this was specifically an export model intended for Hungary it was equipped with a 910 horsepower 14 cylinder gnome rone radial engine which while powerful somewhat contradicted the Sleek lines of the airframe following the initial prototype 20 H 170s were delivered to Hungary and they served with the First Independent longrange reconnaissance group on the 26th of June 1941 they were flown into action against Soviet Ground Forces however their light defensive Armament made them far too vulnerable to air attack and they were withdrawn from Frontline service after just one month the last aircraft developed was the oneoff H270 which first flew in 1938 this was the most powerful version being powered by a 1,175 5 horsepower damler Benz 601a it was designed as a dual-purpose light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft and it had a top speed of 460 km an hour however its light Armament of just one forward- facing machine gun plus two rear facing defensive guns made it unsuitable for service in light of combat experience gained in Spain and the type never entered production the poor military qualities of the h70 did nothing to endear it to to offer air Crews and their Spanish counterparts seem to have been the only ones which had any liking for the type as a military aircraft nevertheless the h70 fared much better in the commercial sector building much prestige in the Civil transport role the role it was actually designed for and it was a key milestone in the development of hle aircraft its influence can be seen in various designs particularly the hg11 and the h12 altogether 324 examples of the h70 and its various production models were built including 28 for export no surviving models of this often forgotten aircraft can be found today however h7s were still on the Spanish aircraft register as late as the 1950s before finally being scrapped episode 18 the Blackburn Blackbird today we're taking a look at the Blackburn blackbird an aircraft that was designed to be built in large numbers but never was and one that was designed to be easy to handle which it also never was in late 1917 it was realized that the SOP with Kaku while an excellent plane lacked the punching power required for a torpedo bomber admiralty tests had revealed that its 1,085 Mark 9 torpedo was not capable of sinking large warships and so in the Autumn of 1917 the admiralty issued specification n1b this called for a single seat aircraft capable of carrying the larger 1423 Mark 8 torpedo in the near future this specification would be redesignated as the type 22 when the Royal Naval Air Service was absorbed into the Raf in February of 1918 contracts were placed for the construction of six prototypes three would be built by short Brothers limited and three by Blackburn of whom Robert Blackburn went with the inventive strategy of naming the new torpedo bomber by simply changing the last letter of his surname uninspiring naming strategies aside Robert Blackburn was determined to have his new aircraft win the competitive trials against the shorts he was so determined in fact that the company supplied their prototypes to the emeraly at a cost of just £2,200 each or approximately 2/3 of their actual cost the Blackbird was designed by Harris booth and intended for shipboard service aboard Britain's first aircraft carrier The Argus it was a large 3-bay unstaggered biplane with folding wings and it was designed on the simplest possible lines for cheap and Rapid production for this reason the wings maintained a constant cord and uniform cross-section throughout their length so that if need required it they could be ordered and produced on mass the same principle was applied to the fuselage which was built up from four rectangular Spruce box lerant it maintained a constant depth from nose to tail and this combined with the uniform Wing shape made the black bird look like a glorified Matchbox with two rulers taped onto its top and bottom although it was designed to be built quickly it is doubtful that this could have been achieved with the fuselage it looked simple enough however the man hours required to produce the struts and box lingons was considerable particularly as the latter tapered towards the rear and it would have likely been the main production bottleneck had the plane been ordered in large numbers per the admiralty specification the Blackbird was to be powered by a 350 horsepower Rolls-Royce Eagle 8 which drove a two-blade propeller fuel was pumped from a 74g tank in the second Bay of the fuselage and a 9g oil tank was fitted approximately 2 ft behind the engine the weight of this engine combined with that of the mar 8 torpedo presented a bit of a problem in terms of the center of gravity and so during the design phase it was decided to install the Pilot's cockpit considerably further back to the tune of being 9 ft behind this intersection in fact it was approximately halfway between the trailing edge of the main wings and the tail with 14 ft of fuselage in front of it this cockpit offered woefully bad visibility for the pilot and on top of this it was also incredibly basic having a wicker chair for the pilot which would have felt more at home in the summer of 1914 compared to the summer of 1918 not counting the unfortunate position of the cockpit the strangest thing about the Blackbird was its huge undercarriage it was built in the form of a pin jointed parallelogram with diagonal Main legs incorporating solid rubber shock absorbers upon closer inspection of some photos it would seem that this undercarriage would block the release of any torpedo that the Blackbird carried seeing as its axle sat below the torpedo itself however the wheel portion of the undercarriage was designed to be jettisoned before the dropping of said torpedo and the Blackbird was to be landed on the carrier using a pair of skids that were mounted in Board of the wheels and just above the axle that was to be dropped the ability for the wheels to be jettisoned also had the added advantage of making emergency water landing safer as the wheels would not be there to act as a giant anchor which could flip over the plane a situation that's not normally good for the Pilot's Health the first Blackbird was completed in late spring of 1918 and at the end of May it was flown for the first time then on the 4th of June it was delivered to maram Heath for performance and handling trials here it did not itself to the test pilots or martal shim's assessors and when you take a look at their reports it's easy to see why takeoff and Landing was an interesting Affair the Blackbird featured Innovative longpan ailerons which could all be lowered to act as flaps to shorten the takeoff run something that would be very suitable for carry operations however not being double acting when lowered they thus deprived the pilot of all lateral control not so useful for carrier operations after takeoff it quickly became apparent that the Blackbird was only stable laterally and the reports go on to say that it was incredibly nose heavy in almost every regard be that climbing diving or in level flight a trait that persisted even after the heavy torpedo had been released flying the Blackbird was exhausting in fact it was so exhausting that the pilots had to use a rubber bungee to hold the control stick in place so they could relieve their arms of the strain of holding the plane level on Long of flights Not only was the Blackbird dangerous on takeoff and nose heavy but it was also difficult during landing and taxiing it quickly became apparent that the rudder was ineffective especially at slower speeds during landing and this made it difficult to keep the aircraft facing into the wind during slow Landings and it made it impossible to taxi in winds that were greater than 8 mph considering that the bulk of British Naval operations during the war thus far were to be found in the North Sea which was more temperamental than a disgruntled sea goddess it's easy to understand why marim had so many many reservations about the blackbird's effectiveness this was only worsened when the first prototype crashed before its trials could be completed two more Blackbird prototypes were completed per the initial contract the second went to Scotland for torpedo trials before returning to marim for more performance tests by this point it had an enlarged Rudder to improve its Landing performance however its Effectiveness was never confirmed as the aircraft was permanently grounded due to concerns over weaknesses found in the fuselage structure the third prototype was completed at about the same time as the Armistice in November 1918 after spending some time at the development squadron at gosport it was sent to HMS Argus to be operated experimentally by this point however the admiralty had favored the competition the short shell and in a case of extreme irony they had asked Blackburn to build 100 of these aircraft however this order was soon changed again to 100 Sopwith cus as the Emeral requirements in a post-war world had rapidly changed in the end neither of the competing planes were successful and so ends the Blackbird story
