The Meatbox was virtually viceless, if you observed a very few simple rules:
Never pop your airbrakes with the gear down
When asymmetric, never let your speed fall below Vmc (about 140 kts) until 400 ft. You are then committed to land.
In event of control loss at M0.8 or over, throttle back, pop the airbrakes and let warmer air lower down sort it out.
Many blokes converted direct from Spits/Tempests/Hornets on their squadrons without benefit of any T7 rides with a QFI
The stall was straightforward with plenty of warning - no sign of flicking except due to compressibility at high Mach. The spin, difficult to provoke, was gentlemanly and recovery textbook. Inverted spins required gross mishandling.
Many chaps used to piston fighters (and myself who converted direct from Harvards) found the fuel consumption at low/medium level and the short endurance nerve-wracking. This was exacerbated by the lack of any on-board nav aid in the earlier Marks. Later models in Fighter Command service had an early form of DME. In FTC, where I was a QFI, and in the Middle East all we had were two VHF boxes (which shared a common power supply).
The Mk 4s in service at the AFSs, and the early T7s, had vacuum-driven instruments with restricted toppling limits and extended re-erection times. After an aerobatic exercise above cloud the earlier part of the QGH (Controlled Descent Through Cloud) and perhaps the GCA had to be flown on limited panel (Needle, Ball, Airspeed ) with some help from a vacuum DI if the magnesyn compass settled down enough for it to be uncaged on anything like a reliable heading. The airbrakes were highly effective, so descent attitude was steep, which didn't help. I think there were a fair number of student fatalities at Middleton and Driffield due to lads getting into spirals and "losing it". Due to the Korean War build-up there was a degree of pressure to graduate courses on time . Students were probably sent off solo in weather with which they could not cope. Neither the Mk 4s, used for solo flying, nor the T7s were pressurised or had ejection seats. A number of students were believed to have died because they forgot to connect themselves to the old economiser oxygen system - or their tube came undone in flight.
I never heard of anyone losing an engine. The Derwents were remarkably reliable. The only excuse for practising asymmetric was the "range/endurance" case. SFC in the old centrifugal engines was most dependent on rpm. When trying to stretch the range or loiter time it was usual to shut down one engine and fly at higher rpm on the other. No 1 engine fed from the front tank and No 2 from the rear, so it was usual to shut down No 2 so that, with the balance cock open, fuel would drain to the front tank during descent. Shutting down No 2 lost the hydraulic pump and the accumulator held enough pressure for one cycle of airbrakes In, flaps Down and u/c Down. A single-engine missed approach involved pumping up the u/c with an emergency handpump while holding on full left rudder - a sporting occupation, that was demonstrated pre-solo and usually required on FHT. I believe that if asymmetric handling had only been demonstrated and not taught, and forbidden to solo students, many lives would have been saved. But you know the CFS culture; if the aircraft is capable of a manoeuvre, that manoeuvre should be taught.
Many more lives would have been spared if FTC and MEAF had told Fighter Command to sod off and bought some ADFs.
The Meatbox was not a delight to fly like the Hunter. But if you were lucky enough to "own" one with all the later mods (spring-tab ailerons, clear-view canopy, "deep-breathers", bang-seat) like my own flight commander's conveyance on 208, there was nothing to complain about. In many situations I would rather have two Derwents than one Avon.
There was nothing wrong with the position of the HP cocks and relight buttons. As a QFI you had to watch out when you pulled the starboard HP cock just after take-off, with the student flying, to simulate an engine failure . Apart from covering the rudder in case he took a bootful of the wrong rudder, you then had to cover the port HP cock in case he tried to pull that off instead of raising the fuel balance cock, which was conveniently situated right alongside it. This happened to a flight commander at Middleton doing a FHT - the only successful dead-stick arrival in a pasture I ever heard of. They were both very lucky.
I apologise for for living up to my nom-de-plume
Reading back over this thread, I see I wrote the same sort of cr*p back in Nov 02. Sorry!
Last edited by Flatus Veteranus; 15th May 2005 at 20:27.