Desmond Scott's sutobiography is great.
The remaining Typhoon is at RAF Hendon, north of London

A cool plane, for sure.

But its rudimentary anti-tank rockets were wildly inaccurate. Post-Normandy assessments showed that they had a hit rate of only ~4%.

They were more useful for their psychological effects on enemy morale. Many undamaged vehicles were abandoned by their crews when they came under rocket attack, and captured enemy soldiers related tales of rocket attacks' extreme effect on morale.

The Spitfire gets all the glory but the Typhoon and the Hurricane got it done .

One of our three English teachers at school had been a Tempest and Typhoon pilot in three different squadrons as he got promoted.

His last ever flight took place after he'd shot up a German column on the way to reinforce the defence of Caen. He landed at the water's edge, that deep chin radiator dug in to the shingle and he was catapulted out, leaving both legs below the knee in the cockpit. He had been quite short before the event, but lied about his actual height, and ended up four inches taller that he had been before with his new 'tin' legs.

A real character, he told us off for sending him a get well card when he was in hospital having his appendix removed. He sent it back and had crossed through the word 'Get', and replaced it with 'Become'. He was typical of his era.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tacfoley,

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
The Spitfire gets all the glory but the Typhoon and the Hurricane got it done .

To be fair, the Spitfire dealt with the fighters so the Hurricanes and Typhoons could get it done.

The Typhoon and the Mosquito are my favorite Brit aircraft of WWII.

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
The Typhoon and the Mosquito are my favorite Brit aircraft of WWII.

Typhoon and Beaufighter for me.

Beufighter. Not a bad choice.

One of my favorite WW2 books:

Tempest Pilot by C.J. Sheddan and Norman Franks

Tempest and Typhoon fan ever since. Along with, of course, the Corsair!

Give me a P-38
With props that counterrotate...


My favorite British aircraft was the Short Sunderland Flying Boat.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:

Give me a P-38 With props that counterrotate.

Any student pilot can explain what "P-Factor" is, and why it is one of the three causes of an airplane's tendency to yaw.

The props of most twin-engine airplanes rotate in the same direction, and P-Factor is stronger in the starboard engine for airplanes with props that rotate clockwise. This means that a failure of the port side engine is more difficult to handle than a failure of the starboard engine, so the port engine is called the critical engine because if an engine is going to fail, we do not want it to be the critical one.

Piper produced some light twins with counter-rotating props; these airplanes were touted as not having a critical engine because neither engine produced a stronger P-Factor yaw.

The P-38 also had counter-rotating props, but both props rotated in the "wrong" direction with respect to P-Factor, so in this sense, both engines were the critical engine.

Not easy to explain this with just words, without pictures and diagrams and vector arrows, etc., but if we were standing next to an airplane with the engine not running, I could show you very clearly in half a minute or so.