Recent content by MycroftHolmes

You can't simply scale-up losses when the size of the operation increases. If the British had sent 220 Wellingtons to Heligoland Bight, they certainly wouldn't have lost 120 of them - probably 20-25 would have been the maximum, since the German defences were what they were, and couldn't have...

My copy of BoBTaN gives 1887 German losses in the summary table at the back of the book, but the table is inaccurate. If you go through the day-by-day listings the total comes to 1990 losses, and there were quite a few other losses that never found their way into the official loss-lists, as we...

Prior to WWII the plan was for a three-carrier strike on Taranto, but war-losses made this impracticable.

The E-book version of D J Brown's book Carrier Operations has a couple of relevant quotes. The first concerns the Mediterranean Fleet: The second is about Force H: The Sea Hurricane was at least as good as the F4F which implies that the Fulmar would also have been superior to the Wildcat...

I'm afraid those figures are nonsense. They are comparing total RAF losses to all causes - including flak and non-combat losses - to those German planes supposedly destroyed in air-combat - and we know that in 1940-2 the Germans included large numbers of aircraft shot down by the British as...

Those performance figures must be wrong: what other aircraft had exactly the same top speed at 2000, 6000 and 7000 metres? I'd expect the speed at 2000 metres to be closer to 320-330 mph.

Ponting is about as reliable as Mosier.

Hop has pointed out that the Germans believed that the Spitfire would be cheaper to build than the Bf109, and this is reasonable given the greater complexity of the Messerschmitt's wing, and the greater cost of its engine. The Spitfire wing had a complex shape, but a simple structure, so once...

I believe that in Shores' Malta: The Hurricane Years it mentions that the engineering staff on Malta converted a Hurricane into a LR recce aircraft, with extra fuel-tanks and a larger oil-tank in one wing, and this aircraft did 350 mph. If this could be done with the limited resources available...

I guess that the best Spitfire to compare with the P47D would be the HFVIII, since they were both high-altitude fighters. In summary: Speed: The two aircraft were practically identical. With 150-octane the P47D reached 444 mph, the HFVIII did 445 mph (the 'Basta' modification). Range: Again...

Faber's aircraft was tested at higher boost than the Luftwaffe allowed, so its speed and climb were exaggerated.

I suspect that is just putting the official seal-of-approval on something that was already being done by squadrons, since we know that Malta-based Hurricanes were being tweaked well before this.

I've never understood the idea that the Hurricane was particularly bad when it came to ditching. I've no doubt that aircraft with a belly-scoop like the Hurricane or Mustang would be worse than something like the Spitfire, but any radial-engined aircraft would be worse because of the flat nose...

The standard Lancaster used low-altitude Merlins because flying higher would leave contrails, which would serve as a 'This way to the bomber' trail, but the Mark VI Lancaster, which was issued to 635 Squadron in 1944 could cruise happily at 28-30,000 feet as they were fitted with high-altitude...

I don't know where Mason got these figures. The Spitfire claimed somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 kills, while the greatest number I've seen for the Hurricane is 9000, but seems more likely to be about 5-6000.