Jet! When Britain Rules the Skies

[ORAC]

Just started on BBC4. Hopefully on player and catch up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01m81f5

[Levelling_the_Land]

Also tomorrow from 9pm on Sky History Channel, 3 Battle of Britain documentaries.

[Asturias56]

When did Britain ever rule the skies? And with jets? 1946???

[salad-dodger]

When did Britain ever rule the skies? And with jets? 1946???
watch the programme, maybe it will open your eyes!

[pr00ne]

Asturias56,

A point that I was about to make, because there was never a period when Britain ruled the skies.

salad-dodger,

Watching the programme only confirms that Britain COULD have ruled the skies...

[Chugalug2]

When did Britain ever rule the skies? And with jets? 1946???

Well, we ruled the skies over SE England in 1940, as evidenced by the excellent programme that followed Pt 2 tonight. The rerun of Spitfire (from 2018) featured inter alia Mary Ellis and Boy Wellum. Mary (100 and counting in 2018) flew 1000 aircraft in the ATS in WWII, of which 400 were Spitfires. She signed her name in only one and it is still legible (just) though written as her maiden name. She was prevailed upon to sign it again (on the inside of the door from ground level this time). So two different names but both signed by the same pilot!

Ah, just realised the date has changed over and it's now the 15th September, BoB Day!

[Lookleft]

Well, we ruled the skies over SE England in 1940,

Only during the daytime.

[Herod]

Only during the daytime.

Maybe, but that was enough. As I understand it, the Blitz was not intended as a prelude to invasion, but more an attempt to wear down the population to the extent they would demand surrender.

[salad-dodger]

Asturias56,

A point that I was about to make, because there was never a period when Britain ruled the skies.

salad-dodger,

Watching the programme only confirms that Britain COULD have ruled the skies...

they certainly laid the foundations for today’s UK aerospace industry that you often remind the naysayers of pr00ne

[just another jocky]

Just imagine if we hadn't given the Yanks the jet engine or the all-moving tailplane.

[pasta]

Just imagine if we hadn't given the Yanks the jet engine or the all-moving tailplane.
At the same time as having to reinvent the nuclear weapon...

[Chugalug2]

Only during the daytime.
That's all it needed to win the BoB, maintaining Air Superiority by day. Even the genius of the Fuhrer didn't envisage an invasion by night!

[MAINJAFAD]

At the same time as having to reinvent the nuclear weapon...

UK didn't Invent Nuclear Weapons. They just (Thanks to the work of two Refugees from the Nazi's and their Australian boss) worked out that a small enough amount of fissionable material was required to make an air deliverable weapon a practical possibility. Said Australian then gets invited into a meeting of the US Uranium Committee in October 1941 and asked what work the US has done on Bomb Development seeing that all of the reports produced by the British Committee have been passed on to the USA. He finds that the USA has done nothing as the chairman of the US Committee has not passed on any of the British reports on to the other members of his committee as he is more interested in building nuclear power plants for submarines than building bombs.

The UK only researched one form of U-235 separation process. The USA came up with another two which were used with the UK method (which the USA had been working on themselves anyway) in combination to get enough enriched Uranium for the Little Boy Weapon by 1945. The British did play a big part in the development of the design of the Implosion explosive system on Fat Man, but were not involved in the production of Plutonium in any major way, which at the time was the quickest way to build bombs.

Just imagine if we hadn't given the Yanks the jet engine or the all-moving tailplane.

Yep, and the Bell X-1 was powered by a rocket motor and was fitted with elevators. There is a lot of Bull**** written about the Miles M.52 mostly based on "Project Cancelled", written by a man whose aeronautical knowledge came out of being a Plane Spotter in the Royal Observer Corps with no access to any official information bar what was published in Hansards or information given out by "We were robbed" merchants like Dizzy Bancroft or Eric Brown (who later wrote a book, but left inconvenient bits of information from the official files out, like wind tunnel testing had found that the aircraft had major stability issues or that Whittle was having major problems getting the engine to work without the afterburner duct melting). The British and US started seriously looking at Supersonic Aircraft in 1943, in fact NACA came up with a lot of good ideas in overcoming the limitations of Wind Tunnels at the time by firstly use of telemetry equipped free fall body shapes dropped from very high altitude from a B-29, followed by rocket boosted models in 1944. When the NACA held the Committee Meeting that decided to proceed with this research led by Bob Gilruth (who latter headed up the development of the US Manned Spacecraft effort that resulted the moon landings) who later recounted the work done in the development of the X-1 as part of NASA's oral history project. In this he mentions the fact that the boss of the Royal Aircraft Establishment was an observer at the meeting and that gentleman said the British would also carry out equivalent research (which they didn't). The all moving tail came out of a research study done by the RAE in 1942 and it was specified as a mandatory part of the Operational Requirement for the design right at the start of the M-52 project. The primary reason being the suspected major changes of airflow over the tail surfaces as the aircraft flew through the trans-sonic regime would causes major trim changes that could not be dealt with by Elevators without a major drag penalty. The effects of the Shock-waves forming over the elevator hinge line stopping the elevators from being effective were not even considered.

The Moving Tail assembly on the X-1 was included in the design of the aircraft from the git go on instructions from NACA for trim control via an pneumatic control systems with limited movement and rate of change. Primary flight control in pitch was via un-boosted manual elevators. Modifications done to the X-1 before Yeager took the aircraft supersonic seem to have been an increase in the movement rate of the trim control to allow that to be used as the primary flight control during trans-sonic flight. The Slab Tail on the X-1 and everything else like the F-86 came later.