eko4me (#230),
...the following little snippet that Danny might wish to comment on in that other Prince of Threads...
Danny will flag it up on the (one and only) undoubted Prince ! (but, as he himself is witness, I'm sure that many others from there are keeping a keen eye on the proceedings here).
...Quote:
In September 1943, he investigated the crash of a Vultee Vengeance flown by an experienced aviator, and found that when rolling the aircraft to the right it was possible for the pilot's movements to release his safety harness, making it impossible for him to remain in his seat and control the aircraft. Lerew designed and developed a clip to prevent a recurrence of this mishap, which was later adopted worldwide for all such harnesses..
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I can only comment on the basis of some 400 hours on them (all Mks I to III - A-31s). Neve flew a Mk.IV - A-35s), they were only used as target tugs.
This puzzles me. Never heard it before. The VV would do a very nice loop (you had to really wind it up to begin with) and a nice barrel roll to the left (never tried one to the right, but don't foresee any difficulty). So our chap must be talking about Slow Rolls. About these I've said somewhere: "It would need a brave man, with 10,000 ft of clear air below him, even to try (never tried, and never heard of anyone else trying either). For, when you got it on its left ear, it would immediately revert to default mode (brick) whatever you did. This suited us fine, as we always winged-over to the left into the dive. Never tried to wing-over right.
All this is bye-the-bye. What "safety harness" is he talking about ? "Seat Harness". I suppose. All I can remember is that I had a four-point American harness with a centre box (same as a parachute); I seem to recall that the release was a thing like a clock hand, which you tweaked clockwise to open. If the harness was good and tight, no way could he be thrown out in a right turn (and who would want to do a right roll ?) And what was this "clip" ? New one on me. Could he possibly be using a Sutton Harness (never saw a VV with one).
There were all sorts of myths surrounding the type. The OTU at Peshawar taught that you should never dive without a chap in the back - it would move the CoG too far forward to allow pull-out from vertical. All I can say is that I did 100+ practice dives in training on the Squadron, but this was in the early days when you always had a chap in the back to wobble-pump if needed. On 'ops', you would always have a "gunner" (who might be a nav who'd never fired a shot in his life). Apart from that, I did one "demo" dive, with a chap in the back, but the twin rear 0.303s (400 lbs including mountings, ammo tanks and ammo). had been taken out. Dived as normal, no trouble at all.
Danny.