Aviation myths that will not die (1 Viewer)

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The sad thing for me is that the battle of the Atlantic and the cracking of Enigma were fantastic examples of international cooperation between countries with a common aim, its just the parts played by the countries involved were not as seen in movies. This discussion centers on the UK and USA but many other countries were involved too and I am sure it narks the Canadians Poles and many others who played a part. The need for movie makers to make money makes them twist what actually happened which results in them making movies which in the course of time were probably best never to have been made.Some people both now and in the future may believe it actually happened as seen.
 
Okay, so here's a couple of aviation myths that continue to pop up from time-to-time.
First we have the James Bond super bullet out of his Walther PPK. A pistol bullet fired inside the cabin of a Lockheed JetStar will not blow a huge hole and cause a rapid cabin depressurization with people getting sucked out.
Second; blood does not boil at very high altitude. According to the Armstrong limit, because of the lack of pressure above 63,000 feet, fluids will boil at 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Blood is within a contained vessel (within the bodies circulatory system) and not exposed, therefore cannot boil. Saliva and moisture in your eyes can though.
 

On Sep 21, 1956 Grumman test pilot Tom Attridge shot himself down in a graphic demonstration of two objects occupying the same place at the same time—one being a Grumman F11F-1 Tiger, the other a gaggle of its own bullets.
How did this happen? The combination of conditions responsible for the event was (1) the decay in projectile velocity and trajectory drop; (2) the approximate 0.5-G descent of the F11F, due in part to its nose pitching down from firing low-mounted guns; (3) alignment of the bore-sight line of 0° to the line of flight. With that 0.5-G dive, Attridge had flown below the trajectory of his bullets and, 11 seconds later, flew through them as their flight paths met..

Here's the link: F11F-1 Shoots Itself Down
 
Any projectile fired from a gun begins to slow once it leaves the barrel.
A instant I read about had a USN fighter firing his cannons, in level flight, then diving , leveling out at a lower altitude, and being struck by his own bullets that he had evidently got ahead of in the dive.
And remember, when a gun of any type is fired forward from a moving object, the velocity of the bullet is equal to muzzle velocity of the weapon, plus the velocity of whatever vehicle it's fired from.

Sounds possible, but awfully remote.

I think that was in a Ripleys believe it or not. Well, or not.
 
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From what I have read on it, he basically flew into his own 20 mm projectiles and subsequently F.O.D.'d his engine. A one-in-a-million mishap. During operational testing nowadays, the flight profile is set up to ensure this type of thing doesn't occur.
 

An F11F on test did shoot itself down, but not because it was faster than the shells from its 20 mm guns -- the F11F was barely supersonic, if at all, so its max speed was about 350 m/s, vs about 800 m/s for the shells from its guns. The story I've heard is that it fired them while climbing, then leveled off and was, by a terrible coincidence, some distance down range at the same time: the shells had a greater speed but the length of their path and their speed along the path meant they took the same amount of time to travel along that path as the aircraft did to travel along a shorter path at lower speed.

Did early jets shoot themselves down because they were faster than their bullets? Does not seem correct to me considering the FPS most military aircraft based weapons fire at in comparison to the max speed of jet.
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I believe your suspicions are absolutely corect. The reason for this is that the projectile's muzzle velocity will be added to the aircraft's speed (for forward facing guns), so the 500 m/s of aircraft velocity would add to the 800 m/s of muzzle velocity and the shell would be seen as moving at 1300 m/s to an observer on the ground (note that this is a very big deal: the ground speed of an A-10 is added to the ground speed of the GAU-8 rounds, which helps them make better holes in tanks). While the shells will slow down and the aircraft won't, they'll also fall towards the ground and the aircraft won't. Some numbers:

The Grumman Alley Cat is flying straight and level at 500 m/s, when it fires off its 20 mm gun, which has a muzzle velocity of 900 m/s. An observer on the ground sees the aircraft go 500 meters in the next second. The shells slow down, losing, say, one-half their muzzle velocity (remember this is relative to the aircraft) and have traveled 950 meters. OK; the plane hasn't caught up. In this second, they've also fallen 5 meters below the flight path, so the plane would fly right over them.

If I reverse that and have the plane traveling at 900 m/s and the rounds at 500 m/s, they'll still drop that 5 meters, and, assuming again they've lost half their muzzle velocity, so they're traveling at 250 m/s relative to the aircraft, they'll have traveled 250 m farther than the plane.
 
Good thing you guys aren't Hollywood execs making the calls on scripts that result in actual movies. Your profits would suffer a lot if you gave up movies that aren't historically factual ... which is maybe, say ... 99% or more. That seems to be what you want, but the general public rather obviously doesn't buy it, as Hollywood is still in a very healthy business.

Anyone who wants to read history should do exactly that, read it from multiple sources, refrain from going to movies, and THINK about what was said. Movies are ALL fiction unless the film you are watching was shot during the actual event. Unfortunately, that seems rather rare. And there are NO closeups, even of beautiful women or disasters in the making ... usually.

There are even people in here that don't understand why the attitude at the time would preclude the U.S.A. from buying foreign military items that we could make oursekves. They jusy don't GET what the thinkign was at the time. Ask anyhone who is 75 or older and LISTEN. You'll get an education.

The U-571 acting wasn't bad, but it also wasn't period behavior ... it is sort of expected today that we will express modern attitudes, isn't it? And they all did that.

Movies are the stuff of imagination and dreams, not even close to factual documentaries ... I thought that was common knowledge. Perhaps I was mistaken. It happens.
 
They have always been used as propaganda tools too. You might argue that Braveheart, with its rather unconventional take on British history, was just that. If it was it worked better than some overt propaganda films.
Cheers
Steve
 
stona said:
They have always been used as propaganda tools too. You might argue that Braveheart, with its rather unconventional take on British history, was just that. If it was it worked better than some overt propaganda films.
Cheers
Steve
Click to expand...
It was and it did. I worked with a guy who had worn out 3 VHS tapes watching it, and delighted in telling me what the ffffin English Bsuds did. I just pointed out that the "baddies" were the same "baddies" in Robin Hood movies.
 
Who knows if a historically accurate movie would fail, when has it ever been tried ?
And if one tried and failed, was it because of the emphasis on historical accuracy, or was there other problems ?

Historians have a hard time coming to agreement on exactly what happened most of the time.

I'm a veteran, with a Vietnam veteran brother, like me. And with a WW2 veteran father, with lots of kin, and friends that were the same. When you could get us all together years ago, there were some things that just could not be agreed on.
 
One thing you cannot put in a modern movie is dialogue because any movie will be sold in the market of someones enemy.

Even in the 50s movie the name of Dambusters Leader Guy Gibsons dog's has been censored recently to avoid offense.
 
You can 'future proof' the language in your movie, but you have to invent your own. Anthony Burgess did just that in the novel, and it was subsequently used in the film of 'A Clockwork Orange'.
This isn't really practical for most films

It wasn't just the dog's name, it was also one of the code words to be transmitted if/when the Mohne dam was breached and instructed the remaining aircraft to attack the Eder dam.
So, 'Goner 710A' would mean that the aircraft transmitting had successfully released its mine and that the mine had exploded against the Mohne dam, causing a large breach. This would have been followed by the transmission of the code word beginning with 'N' to instruct any other aircraft which would have attacked the Mohne to divert to and attack the Eder dam.

Cheers

Steve
 
During early '70s I saw a war movie about the Battle of El Alamein.

"Battle stations!" a British sentinel shouted "a Division of Italian tanks is coming to us!"

Clearly silouetted against the sunset light there were half a dozen of … M-47s.

If Italians have had M-47s at the battle of El Alamein I think history could have been a little bit different….
 
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One only has to look at any, and I mean any, King Arthur film or television programme. They are never dressed or behave like Romano Britons. Instead they are either Hollywood cod medieval or a biker gang doing re enactment. As an Englishman I always cheer for the Saxons. Pesky Britons. Three cheers for Hengist, Horsa and Cerdic.
 

Of course most movies are not based on historical events, and so no great accuracy is required.

But when the events are based on history there should be some effort made for accuracy, or a big fat disclaimer is made up front that the events in the movie are fictional and only loosely based on actual events.

Hollywood is doing so well these days that it seems that half the movies are remakes. They may be struggling for original material.

PS: So would you think a remake of the Dambusters movie showing a brilliant scientist inventing the bouncing bomb after skipping stones over the lake near his home town in the US, going through the motions in Washington to have the weapon built, after which it is to be used by an elite band of bomber pilots and their B-17s would be more profitable than one about the actual happenings?
PPS: A Dambusters remake is an interesting example - it could be made more historically accurate than the original, by removing some of the artistic licence used in the original (eg how the light system was developed) as well as having information which was not available for the original film makers because it was still classified.
 
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