'Vampire and Venom Boys'
Join Date: May 1999
Location: Bristol, England
Age: 65
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If you mean my father, I'm afraid he died about three weeks ago, see thread on Gp Capt TH (Dick) Whittingham. Can I help, though?
The 'shock' was how rudimentary the Vampire was compared to the T33
The 'shock' was how rudimentary the Vampire was compared to the T33
Thread Starter
I gosh I am sorry to hear that Alex. He sent me a message suggesting he could help with stories about his time on Vampires and I followed up with an e mail asking him to contact me again. My sincere condolences.
One of the most memorable features of the Vampire T11 (or Mk35 Australian), apart from its painful discomfort, was that you could fly it quite well without using the control column. The pitch trim wheel was very sensitive and required only about half a turn to do a loop, but more remarkable was the secondary effect of rudder input. Smooth input of rudder at most speeds resulted in a reasonably well-balanced turn with little nose drop. On my test flights, I found to my ground crew passengers' alarm, that in smooth conditions, I could take off and land without touching the control column and also do reasonable aerobatics. They could see neither my left hand nor my feet, so I would lean into turns and fwd/back for pitch and they were easily convinced that leaning was sufficient to control the aircraft. I had them convinced that the control column was 'for emergency and testing use only' until one of them mentioned it to one of the instructors.
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Reading UK
Age: 91
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Vampire & Venom
On 16 Sqn at Celle 1953-56, equipped with Vampires then Venoms. Email: [email protected]
And having been on the first JP3 course we found the T11 to be rather basic!!
Bill
Bill
I was on 111 course at 8 FTS Swinderby from October 1956 to August 1957, followed by six weeks filling in time at 7 FTS Valley awaiting a Hunter Course. All the students at Valley were members of the Fleet Air Arm. I remember finding the Vampire being so much easier to fly than the Piston Provost with only one hairy experience in the T11, although high mach number/high IAS control problems in single seat FB5 and FB9 were commonplace during the course. They were grounded for four weeks after two single seat Vampires failed to recover from high speed dives during medium level exercises. Trying to emulate test pilots in the Sound Barrier film frightened the pants off most of us! During the grounding from mid June to mid July 1957 our time was occupied cleaning the single seaters using an evil mixture called virgin's juice. A De Havilland team arrived and all the booms were found to be twisted beyond limits and serious dents in the bullet fairings on the tail were thought to be causing airflow problems around the tail. Not surprising as a lot of them had seen service in Korea!
The T11 incident gave me a fright. The brand new aircraft appeared on the flight line in the early part of the course and we all wanted to have a go in it. I think my turn came three days later for a solo medium level aerobatics and high speed run exercise. Pulling out of a high G dive around 20000 feet there was almighty bang and the aircraft flicked on to it's back. After recovering to level flight I was shocked to see the port wing had changed colour from silver to green! There was a strong tendency for the wing to drop, but it was controllanle and a few stalls confirmed the need to add an extra 10 to 15 knots on finals. The reason for the flick soon became apparent. The port wing was thinner than the starboard wing. One had been built at Hawarden and the other at Hatfield, hence the difference. The thin wing had been corrected by adding a very deep layer of filler, which broke away under stress after a few flight. Another memory - I managed to coax a T11 up to 49700 feet over the Irish Sea on a solo flight from Valley, tip-toeing between a high speed and a low speed stall with engine grumbling away gasping for air.
The T11 incident gave me a fright. The brand new aircraft appeared on the flight line in the early part of the course and we all wanted to have a go in it. I think my turn came three days later for a solo medium level aerobatics and high speed run exercise. Pulling out of a high G dive around 20000 feet there was almighty bang and the aircraft flicked on to it's back. After recovering to level flight I was shocked to see the port wing had changed colour from silver to green! There was a strong tendency for the wing to drop, but it was controllanle and a few stalls confirmed the need to add an extra 10 to 15 knots on finals. The reason for the flick soon became apparent. The port wing was thinner than the starboard wing. One had been built at Hawarden and the other at Hatfield, hence the difference. The thin wing had been corrected by adding a very deep layer of filler, which broke away under stress after a few flight. Another memory - I managed to coax a T11 up to 49700 feet over the Irish Sea on a solo flight from Valley, tip-toeing between a high speed and a low speed stall with engine grumbling away gasping for air.
Last edited by brakedwell; 10th Jun 2018 at 18:11.
No Vampires saw service in Korea.
I remember seeing a mid air between 2 T11's over Colwick near Nottingham. I was crossing the school playground and for some reason my heaad snapped up and left in time to see the aircraft hit each other I'd say at about 25000ft sorry cant give date
