Two Lancaster bombers!

And you can hear and see them both tomorrow (Friday) at Biggin Hill airport, I will be there and cant wait . cheers Jim.
 
TonyM said:
eliminating P-factor
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Partially true, although the actual direction of rotation of each propeller was important in another aerodynamic way. The propellers rotated outboard (at the top), thereby reducing the downwash onto the wing center section/fuselage juncture. There was evidence that the disturbed airflow, trapped between the two booms had an adverse effect on the horizontal stabilizer when props turned inboard at the top. DD
 
It's a sound that makes your hair stand up and a lump in your throat.... thanks Henry. I may be nuts but I thought i could hear bearings and the blowers. spitties and mustangs. I was born too late. Also, "dad's brother Stanley Johnson was a P-38 pilot." Thanks uncle Stanley. I wasn't born till 15 years later, yet I still feel what they gave for us deep in my guts.
 
The P38 has always been my favorite WWll plane. I was born in 1940, and while playing in my backyard in San Francisco, witnessed what I then thought every P38 in the world do a flyover to land at Alameda. Even to a boy of 4, the P38 can't be confused with any other plane.
 
ford38v8 said:
The P38 has always been my favorite WWll plane. I was born in 1940, and while playing in my backyard in San Francisco, witnessed what I then thought every P38 in the world do a flyover to land at Alameda. Even to a boy of 4, the P38 can't be confused with any other plane.
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Imagine the P38 with a couple of Merlins in place of the Allison. Another great Merlin powered aircraft was the De Havilland Mosquito which was also a twin prop.

GB
 
Thanks Merc, yes those Merlin's do sound great. FYI the Allisons in the P38 were turbo supercharged, so swaping them for Merlina might not have been a good idea.
 
Each year in June we're likely to spot a B-17, B-24, B-29, B-25, Mustangs, Thunderbolt, Spitfire, and other types coming in for WWII Weekend at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading. Couple years ago they had the Canadian Warplane Heritage's Lancaster there as well. Nothing like the sound of big round engines, or tightly wound Merlins to get me out of the house and look skyward.
 
The Allison V-1710 was what I refer to as a smooth running engine. It didn't have quite as much cam as the 1650 cid Merlin did and the Merlin had a 2-speed blower. The Allison with the big Bendix turbocharger, didn't get as much boost pressure as the Merlin did since it was really more for high altitude performance than higher power rating. The Allison had a smooth V-12 sound to it and the Merlin has a bit of a cackle to it. The Allison's performance was better for what it was made for and that was low altitude ground attack. They worked wonderfully in the Bell P-39 Airacobra. In a twin engine arragement like the P-38, it would work very well with the big Bendix turbos and would get better fuel mileage than the Merlin in the same application. Many were used in the Pacific theatre due to the long distances they had to fly over water. One extra engine saved a lot of pilots in the PTO during the war.

We had the venerable P-47 for ground attack so we gave most of out P-39s to the Soviets and they loved them as much as the Studebaker trucks we gave them.
 
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Not wanting to hijack the thread, but here's a great bit of info for my American cousins about the the great Eagle Squadron,...a group of guys who took it on themselves to pitch in an help the old Mother country when we needed a hand....it was an RAF squadron of American pilots, true heroes...this is about one of them ....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924720
 
Henry, that's an amazing story. I had never known of that curious bit of history before! Thank you for posting it.
 
They were a GE design but I got used to refering to them as Bendix units since a lot of the were made by Bendix during the war and had their name on them. Some were made by Westinghouse too. Kind of like Packard Merlins. They were definitely a Rolls-Royce design but built under a quicky licencing agreement due to the war.

My pop flew the old B17 that was designed by Boeing but his was made by Douglas Aircraft in Longbeach,Ca.

I was issued M16 rifles that were made by Maytag and GM Hydromatic Division when I was in the Army.
 
Here's a bit of obscure trivia : While most P-38's had contra-rotating propellors, the first batch supplied to Britain under Lend/Lease did not. The Brits hated them.
 
What kind of oil should I be running in my Merlin? An old timer said run only non-detergent 30 weight.
 
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