Recent content by Wingspanner

Well, horses for courses. It all depends on what participants want from this forum. Its a bit like TV. If you like gaudy colours and things kept simple, watch a kids show. If you want to learn more about the thing you profess to be interested in, surely its better to participate in something...

I'm getting to the 'teeth grindy' point of frustration with some threads on this forum. It seems that many debates are based around what turn out to be completely subjective judgements on the relative superiority of one aircraft over the other. What drives me to distraction is the way in which...

Well, the discussion so far was based on what I understood was the main period opposition and the principal Jap fighter which hacked down the Vilderbeestes (though please correct if this earlier assumption is wrong). The A5Ms capabilities were listed by RCAFson as: 109s WERE armoured by the...

On the ground running or when taxiing, not when in the air as far as I've read. Most tropical modifications were to air-intakes and filters. Unless it was a blindingly hot day and the aircraft was operating on the deck, I doubt this was likely to have been a significant issue for this...

Well, IIRC, the Vildebeeste was primarily a torpedo bomber - but perhaps the best way of taking this speculative thought forward regarding whether the Battle would have been more survivable/effective is to simply compare its performance stats with that of the Vilderbeeste. Next question is to...

If the Defiant was acknowledged to have been a capable bomber destroyer (in the absense of manoeverable fighter opposition), then I've always thought that a trick was missed not swapping them for the Hurricanes and Spits in the Northern sector during the BoB. THAT might have been a much more...

What a crazy design! Can you imagine the asymmetric thrust issues with THAT beast, should a jet decide to merely hiccup, let alone fail?!

I once had the pleasure of meeting Walter Boyne - he was a mine of info on the B47 which he insisted was one of the most consistently under-rated aircraft of the period. I've voted Vulcan on the poll based on overall performance and adaptability - but its a close run thing, given that the '47...

There's enough of the key parts of the machine left, so most people would call it a highly modified Jaguar, wouldn't they? They would certainly tell you how versatile the Jaguar was to have allowed them to make such a weird and radical set of modifications... So, what's the difference between...

@Viking - my typo - got my ones mixed. I was referring to the TU-114 Yep - the same Eh? Same engines, wings and landing gear.... but 'an entirely' different aircraft... Do you know what 'entirely' means? I think what we have here is a contradiction in terms. It was a development of the basic...

Hmmm - lots of people seem to spend their time on these forums issuing opinion as though it was fact, which is a bit of a weird one, but hey ho. Just a few points to make on this one. Personally I don;t believe either is best, Yeah, I know, it gets said in every 'which was best' debate...

@ Stona - I spent some time on Johannesburg in the early 90's and an old Tante Ju used to chug over my house once a day doing sight-seeing tours. I think it was finally grounded due to fatigue, but it was wonderful to see the old corrugated iron bird trudging along at a snails pace...