westland lysander

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I found out in recent years that the Westland Lysander was named for Lysander, the Spartan admiral who routed the Athenian navy at Aegospotami in 405 BCE, effectively ending the Peloponessian War and Athenian hegemony in the Aegean Sea. Anyone have an idea why the British Air Ministry chose to name British co-operation planes after mythical and historical military leaders.
 
Audax is Latin for either daring or bold - hence the scientific name for the eagle and there also happens to be a Jumping Spider with Audax in it's scientific name.

But I like my story of the legendary Thracian better!
 
It must be childhood fiction on my part, but I remember back in the 1970s reading some account of the Lysander carrying rocket projectiles on its wheel spats. Would those have been the 3" AP rockets the likes of the Typhoon carried? Anyway, it's impressive enough to carry bombs there.



Credit to Teddy Petter, from Whirlwind to Lysander, followed by Canberra and Lightning. He's up there with the best designers.
 
From what I've read, the 20mm cannon were kind of one-off. The were fitted and sent for trials. Unfortunately the ammo was not sent for the trials. Kits were sent to the Middle East but what happened to them is unknown. "This modification resulted in a comment in the Pilot's notes referring to the "Cannon fire button" - no doubt puzzling more than one pilot as he looked in vain for this beefy armament"
 
British Navy had a great tendency to use mythical personalities and creatures in their naming.
Blackburn Roc,
HMS Agamemnon, HMS Colossus, HMS Persephone, HMS Diomede, HMS Leander, etc.

It is a nice reminder of our western heritage.
 
The US military/NASA did the same sort of legendary naming convention with their rocket program: Titan, Apollo, Mercury, Nike, Mars, Gemini, Thor, Jupiter, Loki, Atlas, Juno, Centaur, Athena, Minotaur, Saturn and Pegasus.
 

The only RAF aircraft I can think of that was named after a real person apart from ancient or mythical figures is the Avro Shackleton, named for the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, I believe the designer's wife was a relative. I spent almost all my five years in the RAF working on Shackletons.
 
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