Pom Pax (#12020),
This is pure gold ! I want to know: is there a note of the Mark, or (better yet) an Airframe No? I have a DVD of "100 years of the RAF", and remember a flash of a logbook page. I think it came from an old BBC Documentary "The Spitfire Girls" of years ago. But it was too short for my old eyes to take in detail. If you still have the recording (or the DVD), could you give me the min & sec into the showing, please, so's I can (hopefully) find it again.
This may solve an old puzzle. Capt. "Winkle" Brown records that he tested a VV (Mk. unstated) and found it useless as an aircraft (which it was). But also said that it was inferior as a dive bomber to the Stuka, in that the VV could not dive vertically (unlike the Stuka), but only at 60-70 degrees. Now we know the reverse is true (for the Mks I and II - US A-31, anyway). Don't know about the Mk.III (also a US A-31), which only came in with the war over. But who is going to gainsay the (late) Eric Brown, the most famous test pilot of all time ? Our esteemed friend "Chugalug" will remember all this .
But if Brown had been given a Mk.IV (US A-35) to test? Many were supplied to us, the RAAF and just about anyone on earth who would take them off Vultee's hands. They had been modified from the Mks. I-III by setting the wings from zero to a +4 degree Angle of Incidence (at the request of the USAAC, which then wanted no part of any of them, A-31s or A-35s).
Far as I know, the only real use anybody found for the IV was as a target tug. Never flew one, never even seen one, but reckon that with an AoI you could not dive vertically, as even with full nose-down trim, at 300 mph the thing would push up hard off target in spite of all you could do.
RIP Mary Ellis ! All respect to a grand old dame (and all the other girls - and men - of the ATA). Only ever saw one in my time (full story at the end of my Post Page 123 #2455 of "Pilot's Brevet").
You will know that the only VV left on earth is in the (temp closed) Camden Museum. Narellan, Sydney. We have established that it is really a Mk. I, but for some reason, the Museum has re-fitted a 0.50 Browning in the back to replace the twin 0.303s it should have. This is the hall mark of a Mk.IV, which has caused much controversy on these pages.
Cheers, Danny.