[jim]

Originally Posted by Captain Eddie

I may have Yorkshire roots, MoMo, as a lot of my family tree is from England.

Great links you posted, lot of reading there!

Captain, Yorkshire is "THE" Gods own country.
So when you comin over for a visit?

[Captain Eddie]

Originally Posted by jim

Captain, Yorkshire is "THE" Gods own country.
So when you comin over for a visit?

Send me the money for the trip, and I'll be there as soon as I can arrange vacation time from work!

[MoMo]

Just apply for Political Asylum, Cap, and the government will fly you here, award you Jim's house and give you a free face-lift and a lifetime's supply of M&Ms. ( Oh, and a swimming pool full of Best Yorkshire Bitter )

[dilligafocau]

Originally Posted by Captain Eddie

Send me the money for the trip, and I'll be there as soon as I can arrange vacation time from work!

You obviously don't know Yorkshiremen very well

[Captain Eddie]

You guys ABSOLUTELY crack me up!!!! Sounds like a great plan MoMo, but I'm not sure I want to LIVE in England. I might say something politically incorrect and get thrown in jail! At least it's not come to that in the States (at least not yet!)

[MoMo]

You guys ABSOLUTELY crack me up!!!! Sounds like a great plan MoMo, but I'm not sure I want to LIVE in England. I might say something politically incorrect and get thrown in jail! At least it's not come to that in the States (at least not yet!)

Anything which you say is bound to be interpreted as being non-P.C. Everyone ( except for me and Jim ) has been brain-washed. ( Oh, this is not taking into account any brain-washing to which Jim may have been subjected to by you-know-who ! )

Must go, I'm watching a brilliant Doc. on Custer's Last Stand on Discovery Knowledge.....it's the one they did after the brush-fire when all those bones and artifacts got exposed or dug up after being detected by a metal detector.

[MoMo]

Yea, the " Custer " documentary was great. I love those programs in which they dig up the evidence and reconstruct the event. Well worth watching if you enjoy the history and the drama!

[Gort]

Originally Posted by MoMo

Yea, the " Custer " documentary was great. I love those programs in which they dig up the evidence and reconstruct the event. Well worth watching if you enjoy the history and the drama!

Some Leading Papers' Coverage of Custer's Massacre:

Variety: "Custer Closes Out of Town"

Pravda: "Big Red Victory."

Sports Illustrated: "Indians Win Series"

Women's Wear Daily: "Feathers Make Comeback"

Reader's Digest: "Sitting Bull Reveals New Cure for Dandruff"

The Washington Post: "Custer Loses Rural Vote"

[MoMo]

Today, I'm watching " Speed Machines " about the M52 and the X1. Too bad that my fellow Scot, Ace Spitfire pilot Eric Brown, never got a chance to break the Sound Barrier first in the M52 because the British Government torpedoed the project !




The Miles M52 - Built in 1943,designed to fly at 1000 miles per hour by Miles Aircraft to meet the perceived threat of a Nazi warplane. The project was cancelled by the British Government 3 months before it was due to fly, after they had given the designs to the United States of America. Many of the innovations in the design (such as fully moving tail control surfaces) appeared in the Bell x-1 and subsequent US experimental craft.

At the close of the Second World War, the first of the three M.52s was more than 50% completed, with test flights only a few months away. However, in February 1946, the new Labour government introduced a dramatic budget cut, and the Director of Scientific Research, Sir Ben Lockspeiser, cancelled the project. The actual reasons for the cancellation of the Miles M.52 were made clear in "Project Cancelled" by Derek Wood's drawing on cabinet papers and other documentation. The driving factor was that Britain was utterly bankrupt post-Second World War and couldn't afford the programme; Miles still required several thousand pounds more to complete the work. Among the other factors contributing were the doubts about pilot safety.

The Miles M.52 is an aircraft that you may or may not have heard of but it was Britains entry in the race for supersonic flight, it never crossed the finishing line but there are some similarites and some direct links to the aircraft that did, the Bell X-1.

It would be wrong to say that the X-1 ripped off the M.52, as there can be no doubt that the X-1 was underway before Bell even knew the M.52 existed as it wasn't revealed by the air ministry until after it had already been cancelled. Despite this the overall shape of the two aircraft are remarkably similar. Both types feature (literally) bullet shaped fuselage's which were the result of entirely separate research on both sides of the Atlantic, they also featured mid mounted unswept wings of extremely thin section and totally blended cockpit canopies, again separately arrived at by each design team.

The differences between them were that the X-1 was an air launched rocket powered type whilst the M.52 was to have been powered by the worlds first afterburning jet engine which was fed by an annular intake that went right around the fuselage aft of the cockpit. Although it was designed to be capable of taking off under its own power for general flight testing it is likely that the test runs for the attempt on the sound barrier would have been carried out with the M.52 being launched from a converted Lincloln or Windsor bomber, the only British aircraft capable of the task.

Another difference was in the tail design. The X-1 featured a conventional tailplane mounted part way up the vertical fin while the M.52 had a revoltionary 'all flying tail' with the tailplanes mounted directly on the fuselage. This arrangement had been test flown on a converted Miles Falcon trainer. The British Government cancelled the M.52 in 1945 with the prototype at an advanced stage of construction and only then was the project, which had been begun in 1943, revealed publicly with the astonishing explanation that "The discovery of German research into swept wings leads us to believe that the unswept M.52 will not work and that in any case man will not fly supersonically for at least ten years, if at all".

Naturally, Miles Aircraft were furious and vehemently disagreed but the deed was done. High level contact was then made with the US ( in order to revive the project with US backing) at which point it was discovered that Bell were already working on a supersonic programme of their own, exchange visits were quickly organised and the level to which both types were alike astonished both companies and convinced the already confident Bell team that they were on the right lines, taking as evidence the fact that an entirely separate design team working in the same area (an area that was completely unknown) was coming up with the same answers that they were.

The one area where the British team brought something entirely new to the X-1 was when the problems of high speed control were discussed and Bell saw immediately that the all flying tail of the M'52 was the answer. This was incorporated into the X-1 without changing the position or shape of the tail and wind tunnel tests proved it to be the only workable solution. As a result it has been almost universally applied to supersonic aircraft ever since. Also Bell decided to stick with rocket power as using the jet engine would require a redesign to incorporate air intakes that would delay the programme for no real benefit and the rest is history.

The stupidity of the decision to cancel the M.52 was shown when more than a decade later Cranwell College, working from the original programme, proved that the M.52 would have worked perfectly although it would have topped out with the W.2-700 (reheat) at 800mph when its design speed was 1,000mph later engines would have allowed this speed to surpassed comfortably with the existing aerodynamics and structure.

Having passed up this perfectly workable research aircraft Britain was forced to muddle along with unmanned rocket models (which all failed) and the converted Vampire that was the DH 108 which although successful in flying supersonically was about two years later (and after the X-1) and also crashed, killing Geoffrey De Havilland Jnr who was flying it . Ironically the cause of this crash was traced to wing flutter caused by the long SWEPT wing of the 108!

[MoMo]

Nadal wins Men's Singles final in the fifth set. Federer just pipped 9-7 after Nadal broke his serve at 7-7!