Recent content by yulzari

I have happy childhood memories of the silent comfort of the Paris Metro rubber tyred trains running on wooden rails, especially after the rattling old iron wheeled ones with hard wooden third class seats. I did miss the hiss and watching the exposed pistons closing the doors too.

Just to mention but the Hawker Hector did dive bombing in the BoF. Digressing, all of the variants of the Hawker Hart series could and did dive bomb from Finland to India including Spain, East Africa and Iraq. They were only declared obsolete during 1943, less than a year before the jet Gloster...

That was the same round as used by Belgium for their own build Hawker Hurricanes mounting x4 13.2mm FN Brownings.

Of course if we employed hindsight then Britain would only be making Merlin’s and Cheetahs so the production resources that went into the Napier and Bristol motors would be used to make enough Merlin’s for all. The essence of the Whirlwind was to have as little aeroplane as possible chasing...

Imperial dear boy.Imperial.

The Welkin was built around a completely different role to the Whirlwind. The wings were comparatively thicker and overall was a bigger and heavier aeroplane. Not a route to a better Whirlwind. The Peregrine was not an unreliable engine. Westlands did determine that they could fit Merlins...

Well the 7th of June French Air Force Farman NC223.4 air raid on Berlin did not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7qz_osKC-w

Except for the many nations who were not American and were otherwise engaged in 1939, 1940 and 1941 (read from 1932 for China). For example the Soviet Union which became quite busy in 1941.

Fairey did offer a monoplane design. As you say, a more powerful engine was needed to lift a viable bomb load off the existing decks. Hence the Albacore got the alternative large wing area by using the biplane layout to lift 2,000lb of bombs etc. together with a useful amount of fuel off those...

A valuable contribution to be sure and permitted airborne and air supplied operations but a turning point? Without the C47 the war would still be prosecuted albeit with changes, other, less suitable, aeroplanes substituting and alternative logistics employed. I am impressed by what the C47...

The conclusive turning point in a war is when one side loses. Thus their ability to affect circumstances disappears entirely. The first such turning point was the fall of France in 1940 to which one cannot point to one particular aeroplane. The next could have been the fall of Britain, or at...

Indeed. This is like the fall of France. Something that altered the whole dynamic of the British war effort and required some strategic risks to be taken in order to prosecute the war and defend Britain against the threat of invasion. Which latter was still valid, if increasingly unlikely, until...

The Curtis Tomahawk MkI entered operational war service with no2 Squadron RAF in August 1941 with the ex French ordered Curtis Hawk 81 replacing Westland Lysanders.

There was the odd pilot in the RAF in France who preferred the two blade fixed pitch propellor as it was a better performer within its own window. Well at least one anyway.

It shows Singapore in its intended light as a fleet base for a campaign against the Japanese navy. The OTL Japanese response was not to match the Royal Navy at sea but to take the base from inland leaving the Royal Navy an ocean further away. This is not a new tactic. Possibly one of the most...