Another Navy Wings article...

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#181 Post by Pontius Navigator » Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:51 am

TGG, and the Hurricane too. The one that crashed at Wittering appeared to be a heap of scrap metal.
Around the sane time, can't remember the name, but the owner or similar, at Coventry Climax had one rebuilt at Coningsby. He had an engineer at the factory work there. When he had a problem he just looked at the RAF one next to it.

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#182 Post by ian16th » Sat Jun 19, 2021 8:56 am

Isn't there a Sea Fury in a museum in Cuba?
It was responsible for shooting down several B26 of the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
They might accept a reasonable offer.
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#183 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:15 am

ian16th wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 8:56 am
Isn't there a Sea Fury in a museum in Cuba?
It was responsible for shooting down several B26 of the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
They might accept a reasonable offer.
Cuba - The Rage of the Furies...

Cuban Sea Fury.JPG
https://www.laahs.com/bay-of-pigs/

The Douglas Rudd Story
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#184 Post by G-CPTN » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:28 am

An aircraft in a museum isn't necessarily in flying condition - in particular the engine is probably in need of rebuild.

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#185 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:37 am

G-CPTN wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:28 am
An aircraft in a museum isn't necessarily in flying condition - in particular the engine is probably in need of rebuild.
There is no way the Cubans would ever think of letting that Fury go even if it was airworthy. ;)))
The past is not allowed to die. You can touch it in the Museum of the Revolution. The tone is set by the bullet holes on the grand staircase of the ex-presidential palace – reminders of a doomed attempt by students to kill the dictator Batista in 1957. I am lucky enough to be accompanied by my friend Clive Rudd who, despite his English-sounding name, was born and bred in Havana. Clive's father, Douglas, was a fighter pilot in the Fuerza Aerea Revolucionaria (Cuban air force). In the room dedicated to the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 we find a list of 10 pilots who took on the US-backed force – 10 men against Goliath. Two of the airmen have the letter T against their names denoting that they are now considered traitors. We find Douglas Rudd among the untarnished and unlibelled.

Douglas was a celebrated Hero of the Revolution, until he too fell out with the Castro brothers in the mid-1960s. He spent the rest of his life driving taxis in Havana. With a hollow laugh Clive wonders why his dad's name is not also marked down as a traitor.

We make our way to the outdoor section of the museum where the big artefacts of revolution are enshrined. The yacht Granma has pride of place. And a few yards from Fidel's sanctified boat is the Hawker Sea Fury that Douglas flew on those three days in April 1961, playing his own insanely brave part in the survival of the revolution. Eventually, Douglas was allowed to leave the country and died in Miami in the early 1990s, ironically among the very people he fought at the Bay of Pigs. Clive claimed political asylum 16 years ago and now lives in London. In Havana he is a tourist in his own city. I try to imagine the bittersweet emotions he must feel as he stands in front of his father's plane.
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/am ... tml?r=7396
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#186 Post by FD2 » Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:56 am

I guess the second Sea Fury is not flyable but at least we can admire it. I hope some very rich air race enthusiast will pay lots of money for the T20 remains.

On the bright side the single seater is more representative of the front line machines I used to watch when I was a kid.

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#187 Post by ian16th » Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:10 am

Isn't it true that most of the Sea Fury's used for racing in the USA have had engine transplants to American ones that are easier to maintain?
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#188 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:16 pm

ian16th wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:10 am
Isn't it true that most of the Sea Fury's used for racing in the USA have had engine transplants to American ones that are easier to maintain?
Interesting article on one such aircraft and the family business that revolves in and around the air racing scene in the USA.

Sea Fury Dynasty


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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#189 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:29 pm



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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#190 Post by CharlieOneSix » Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:39 pm

Navy Wings and their predecessor RN Historic Flight have a sad history with Sea Furies. Back in 1989 John Beattie had a hydraulic failure in FB11 TF956 after take off from Prestwick for a display. He had one undercarriage leg stuck up and one stuck down. He tried bouncing the extended leg on the runway to release the leg that was stuck up but to no avail. He positioned the aircraft over the Irish Sea and took to his parachute. He hardly got wet as an 819 Sea King picked him up as soon as he hit the water.

A year later John was flying T20 WG655 when the engine failed just after take off from Yeovilton. He landed on a large open field but it had a slope and he slid into two oak trees and the aircraft was destroyed. This is a photo of that 1990 accident...
wg655 1990.jpg
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The remains went to New Zealand and it flew again in 2005, still in FAA markings of WG655. In 2020 once again it crashed after take off from Duxford. At this time it was owned by the Norwegian Spitfire Foundation. This video shows the last take off and the aftermath - note the smoky engine....
ian16th wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:10 am
Isn't it true that most of the Sea Fury's used for racing in the USA have had engine transplants to American ones that are easier to maintain?
I think that for the last incident WG655 was fitted with the P&W 2800 - pushrods and tappets rather than the Centaurus sleeve valve set up.
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#191 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:56 pm

CharlieOneSix wrote:
Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:39 pm

A year later John was flying T20 WG655 when the engine failed just after take off from Yeovilton. He landed on a large open field but it had a slope and he slid into two oak trees and was destroyed. The remains went to New Zealand and it flew again in 2005, still in FAA markings of WG655. In 2020 once again it crashed after take off from Duxford. At this time it was owned by the Norwegian Spitfire Foundation. This video shows the last take off and the aftermath - note the smoky engine....
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=156039
The remains went initially to New Zealand where the wing folding mechanism wound up in Fury ZK-SFR. Chuck Greenhill, who houses his fine collection of aircraft at Kenosha, Wisconsin, has always had an interest in aircraft with Naval connections. He purchased the remains and had them shipped to Kenosha where Tim McCarter and his crew went to work. After thousands of man-hours, the project began to look like a Sea Fury, but with the other aircraft projects in the hangar it was decided to ship the plane to Sanders Aeronautics, the "Sea Fury Kings", for completion.
viewtopic.php?p=295560#p295560 - Sanders who do restorations and the racers and who restored WG655.


WG655 back in 2010.

FAA markings as GN910.JPG
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#192 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Jul 02, 2021 11:05 am

The newsletter is out and it is sad to hear that Sir Peter Harrison KGCN CBE, the man who donated so generously to the refurbishment of the world's oldest Fairey Swordfish, has died...
It is with great sadness we announce that Navy Wings Ambassador, Sir Peter Harrison KGCN CBE, passed away on 18 June 2021.

Sir Peter, who gave his time and support to the charity over many years, made a major donation of £200,000 from the Peter Harrison Heritage Foundation in 2013, to complete the large scale restoration project of returning Swordfish Mk 1 W5856 to the air.

The aircraft, which was built in 1941 by Blackburn Aircraft, is the oldest surviving Swordfish Mk 1 in the world. However, in 2003 she was grounded with corrosion in her wing spars. She also needed a complete overhaul of her Pegasus engine. Many components had run out of life and others including new pistons and cylinders had to be specially manufactured. “It was a meticulous and painstaking job, and it was Sir Peter’s generosity at a time when it was feared the aircraft would remain grounded indefinitely, that made a real difference” said Rear Admiral Tom Cunningham, Chairman of Navy Wings. “Sir Peter’s visionary gift enabled the project to finally come to completion and this absolute gem of an aircraft, the last surviving Mk1 Swordfish in the world, to take to the skies again” continued Tom.

“The story of the Swordfish attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto gripped me as a schoolboy” said Sir Peter “and I was immensely proud to have been able to save an aircraft of such national and historical importance.”

Sir Peter visited Navy Wings regularly during the restoration to see progress for himself and took great pleasure in being the first passenger to fly in the aircraft when she flew again in June 2015.
Fairey Swordfish.JPG

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#193 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:16 pm

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#194 Post by FD2 » Sat Jul 10, 2021 8:22 pm

I think that may have been flown by Dave Poole, ex-Vixens, test pilot trained. He didn't attend reunions etc for years and was thought to have been dead. Happily that was wrong - he had just disappeared into the test flying world.

He's lived in the States for years https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-poole-63a7b876 'Pooligan' is the ideal size and shape for a fighter pilot - short with long arms!

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#195 Post by CharlieOneSix » Fri Jul 16, 2021 10:28 am

From this week's Navy Wings newsletter...an excellent description of initial attempts at helicopter flying in a basic no frills machine. No governors or throttle to collective cam assistance here!
Fixed Wing Boredom to Rotary Activity .
HT1.jpg
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.
In the spring and summer of 1957, I was happily flying round the skies of, mainly southern, England with 796 Squadron at Culdrose as a newly qualified A/S Gannet pilot. The primary task, flying trainee observers around as they undertook the advanced stage of their flying training. Life was pleasantly enjoyable but not very demanding. Warm sunny afternoons on a gentle Navex after an excellent wardroom curry lunch on a Thursday induced terrible drowsiness and I found a few breaths of oxygen from the pilot’s supply did help to offset that incapacitating sensation.

In due course, summoned to appear before the Squadron CO, he demanded that I explain my unwarranted use of this expensive commodity. I made the observation that I found it helped me to remain alert and wakeful during the hours spent trundling through the boredom of a trainee’s Navex. A few days later my presence was required by Commandeer Air. He advised me that to alleviate such boredom I was to be inducted into the excitement and mysteries of helicopter aviation with a S. M. A. C. 9 Course.

Thus, a fortnight later I reported to Lee on Solent and in short order was introduced to a diminutive bubble of a machine. No hours spent in a simulator in those days. After a few brief lectures on Helicopter Aerodynamics, I found myself strapping a Hiller H.T.1 helicopter to my backside in the company of my instructor, Lt. Bill Kerr R.N., for the purposes of aviation, but not as I had previously known it.

As all those with helicopter experience will know, whilst all the controls operate in the normal sense, the main complication is that alterations in one control input automatically requires changes in one, or more, of the others. There was no automatic linkage between the collective and the engine throttle; pull up to go up, push down to go down Thus, either of these movements required a turning of the twist grip throttle. To counteract the change in torque would require an adjustment to the rudder pedals and most likely further adjustment to the throttle. But this might then also require a further adjustment to the collective to maintain the correct height above the ground. And, oh good grief, how, when we started so comfortably in the middle of the airfield are we now so perilously close to the boundary fence. Input to the cyclic stick starts to drift us back to the required position in the airfield but also requires further inputs to the collective and throttle, oh and, of course, the rudder. Initially, at least, this means that the trainee helicopter pilot never has a hand free to scratch that annoying itch on the nose. Despite these novel complications, after six hours or so of instruction I was deemed sufficiently competent to be sent off for “First Solo on Type”.

Most of the difficulties involved in flying this little bug hutch of a machine would be encountered in the hover, in close proximity to the ground. So, a number of intricate exercises were introduced involving white painted circles on the ground with further lines painted between opposite points on the circumference. The trick was, with the aircraft initially pointing head to wind, and keeping it so orientated, to fly around the circumferential circle, with occasional sideways, or even backwards trips across one of the radials to the opposing side. Master that and then, in wind speeds of 15 knots or less, one might try it across wind, first with the wind from port, then with the wind from starboard; one might even attempt similar manoeuvres with the wind from dead astern, but all the time being warned that it is easy to run out of control authority in any out-of-wind heading if the wind speed becomes too great.

There were other new experiences to learn and practise. Autorotative descents and zero or low forward speed landings following simulated engine failure; the perils of entering the Vortex Ring; flying into restricted spaces with trees or buildings seemingly perilously close to rotor blade tips; landings on sloping ground; the novelty of night flight in helicopter mode. For someone trained and qualified in the ethos of fixed wing flying techniques, it all required a swift change of mind set to adjust to this new and novel approach to aviation.

Basic helicopter skills had been sufficiently absorbed after approximately twenty-five hours to permit progress from flying the little bubble-like Hiller to aircraft with more practical uses. Initially this was the Westland built, Whirlwind Marks 1 and 3, with their American engines. Now further new skills would be acquired. How to pluck downed airmen and others from the sea using both single and double lift techniques and that strange piece of human fishing equipment, the Sproule net.

Destined for duty in the station SAR unit at Eglinton further conversion was required following my helicopter course, this time to the Westland Dragonfly, another British built copy of an American aircraft, the Sikorsky S 51, but this time with a British Alvis Leonides engine. Not the most impressive SAR aircraft, with its limited lifting capacity, but one that had already done valuable work in the Korean war and in rescuing civilians from the floods of the English east coast in 1953. And incidentally, quite a frightening machine to recover from a vortex ring state.

Two further appointments to SAR units and to front line helicopter squadrons enabled me to cope well with most activities in the rotary world but few were as much fun as flying the little bubble Hiller HT1.

Fleet Air Arm Veteran Tony Wilson
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#196 Post by FD2 » Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:27 pm

Thanks C16! What a great account of trying to fly such a basic machine. Those hover exercises are still used by some of the instructors to sweat the line pilots during their base checks.

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#197 Post by CharlieOneSix » Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:15 pm

CharlieOneSix wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 10:28 am
....... and that strange piece of human fishing equipment, the Sproule net.
Ever use that FD2? I don't think I ever mastered it. I invited John Sproule's son to join us on here but sadly he hasn't taken up the invite.
SprouleNet.jpg
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#198 Post by FD2 » Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:36 am

My only experience of the Dragonfly was being taken up for a quick circuit and watching some winching practice at Townstal, where they had the hangar. Incredibly noisy with an ill-fitting helmet and uncomfortable, but still exciting. The BRNC staff rotary pilot at the time was Peter Williams who died a few years ago. I suspect the playing fields have been sold off by now for a few quid.

I remember watching an aircraft practising with the Sproule net, I guess about the 1960s. After I had started flying I wondered how much power was needed to overcome the drag of the waves as even winching a dummy with three crew in the 705 Squadron Whirlwind 7s needed almost all of it.

Then much later we came across the Dacon Scoop fitted to the safety boat trawlers and supposedly an approved way of rescuing people after a ditching in the vicinity of a rig or platform in very high sea states...but the less said about that the better!


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/ ... -obituary/

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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#199 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Mon Jul 19, 2021 5:53 am

Following investigation by Lucca Lazara, a Ryanair pilot. the resting place of Fairey Swordfish V4295, one of the Swordfish aircraft to hit the Bismarck, has been located, along with the remains of 3 other Swordfish aircraft.

Laccara spent five years investigating the story of 4 aircraft that had crashed during the 2nd World War, on the coast of his home town Cefalù, located on the Tyrrhenian coast of Sicily about 70 km (43 mi) east of the provincial capital and 185 km (115 mi) west of Messina. By uncovering, Italian archives and documents, not seen by British investigators, Lazara, has now been able to contact some of the families, of the crew of those aircraft, who attended the opening of a memorial to their relatives in Cefalù back in 2019, with further specific details of the actual site of the aircraft remains.

All four aircraft were operating with 830 Naval Air Squadron, which had been dispatched from Malta to intercept an Axis convoy, when they lost their bearings due to radio failure in atrocious weather conditions. One of the aircraft crashed on the beach at Cefalù, while the three others ditched in the sea. Of the 9 crew involved 7 survived and were captured alive.

One of the wrecks lying offshore is that of V4295, which had been transferred to the Mediterranean theatre, and to its final resting place off Cefalù.

V4295.JPG
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Re: Another Navy Wings article...

#200 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Jul 23, 2021 10:14 am

Nice update on the Sea Hawk restoration in this week's newsletter.

Seahwk.JPG

Sea Hawk
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