Picture of the day

Sharps '74 said:
Were those guns manned or remotely fired?
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They appear to be remotely operated from what I can see of the pics I looked up.

The nose guns are a question as well. They appear to only fire down. Not a lot of protection as far as machine guns go IMHO. Maybe intended exclusively for night bombing, as the Brits were wont to do for most of WWII??
 
Remote, I believe. It'd be a loud, lonely place to fight from if they were manned. Here's a similar setup on the Vickers Warwick:

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The folks at Messerschmidt had a similar idea for defense of the 323, but they were manned:

Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-668-7197-16%2C_Reichsgebiet%2C_Flugzeug_Me_323_Gigant.jpg


"Wing's thick enough for a guy to crawl through. Throw a turret on there."
 
Specifications (Vickers Windsor Type 447)
Data from Vickers Aircraft since 1908[3]

General characteristics

Crew: six to seven[4]
Length: 76 ft 10 in (23.42 m)
Wingspan: 117 ft 2 in (35.71 m)
Height: 23 ft 0 in (7.01 m)
Wing area: 1,248 sq ft (115.9 m2)
Empty weight: 38,606 lb (17,511 kg)
Gross weight: 54,000 lb (24,494 kg)
Powerplant: 4 × Rolls-Royce Merlin 65 liquid-cooled V12 engine
Performance

Maximum speed: 317 mph (510 km/h; 275 kn) at 23,000 ft (7,000 m)
Range: 2,890 mi (2,511 nmi; 4,651 km) with 8,000 lb (3,600 kg) bombload
Service ceiling: 27,250 ft (8,310 m)
Rate of climb: 1,250 ft/min (6.4 m/s)
Armament
Guns: 4 × 20 mm cannon in remote controlled barbettes firing to rear[4]
Bombs: about 15,000 lb (6,800 kg) of bombs[4]

Not little .303 popguns.
 
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U of London is still a thing - pretty neat. They offer degrees via correspondence. Not all distance learning institutions are created equal. NSCC for example has some of the worst distance learning courses in all of Canada. Zero support. Of course they are a college, not a university.

So Wallis was not exactly just some guy working in a shed, he recognized he needed the basics which his courses gave him. The rest was him though.

I really hate pinterest hopefully they won't prevent uploading of this pic. Pinterest does not own it. I originally saw it in Life Goes to War way back in the 1970s. In the Life caption it mentioned that it was found that people who found a reason go go on (in this case studying scholarly works at the freezing cold libraries of Leningrad), their life expectancies were found to be longer than those who did not find a meaningful reason to carry on.

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Physics is a harsh mistress.


Also... One would hope the RSO had to stand before a severely unsympathetic Court Martial for this.
 
diopter said:
Specifications (Vickers Windsor Type 447)
Data from Vickers Aircraft since 1908[3]
...
Armament
Guns: 4 × 20 mm cannon in remote controlled barbettes firing to rear[4]
...
Not little .303 popguns.
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Depends on the prototype variant. There were a pair of .303 MG in the nose, and the 20mm cannons in the rear were also swapped for 0.50 cal MG.
 
did someone say 6prd :)

Tsetse.JPG

The RAF then became interested in fitting the Molins Gun in the de Havilland Mosquito, to form an airborne anti-tank weapon to replace the Hurricane IID which had been equipped with a pair of Vickers 40mm Class S guns. The aircraft was duly developed as the Mosquito FB Mk XVIII, popularly known as the "Tsetse", but by this time the RAF had lost interest in the anti-tank gun role so the aircraft were brought into service by Coastal Command for anti-ship (and specifically anti-U-boat) purposes. The Tsetse, of which about thirty were built, served with No.248 Squadron during 1944 and is credited with sinking a U-boat. More unusually, on 10 March 1944, four Mosquito fighter-bombers of 248 Squadron, escorting two Tsetse, attacked the IJN submarine I-29 off Cape Penas, Spain, as it was heading towards Lorient, escorted by eight Junkers Ju-88C-6s from Zerstörergeschwader ZG 1 at Cazaux. In the resulting battle one Ju-88 was shot down, reportedly by a Tsetse. The submarine was undamaged.
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MolinsA1.JPG

http://www.quarryhs.co.uk/Molins.htm
 
Open fire in a screaming dive at 3200' ASL and 300 some odd knots you get off 6 rounds max before you hit the sub. First rounds at a 1000 yards and the last one point blank. The Germans must have wondered at their sanity. 24 rounds of 57mm at 55 rpm and 350+ knots followed closely by the fighter escort. I would hate to be on the receiving end of that.
 
When I click on this thread, first thing I do is look for new pics...then I go back and read the text.
I saw your pic and said "That has got to be one of the uglist plane ever!!!...then I read your text...
:cheers:
donor said:
Contender for "Ugliest plane ever" award:
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Great Lakes made some nice looking planes...that wasn't one of them.
 
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Thank you Sharps-now I know where Grumman got it's inspiration for Duck amphibian.I never heard of Loening planes.

Here is Loening OL-8 from 1923.Another contender for above mentioned award.

6691870719_c59741f698_b.jpg
 
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