Somebody found this for me, praise be to Google.
Tiz not the one I was speaking of but spectacular never the less.
When I think about it the one of a F100 escaping from a barn in a cloud of smoke and fire may have been a still photo.

http://www.airspacemag.com/asm/Web/S...100launch.html

You know if I'd thought about that, for anything more than two seconds I'd have realised, honest. In my rather limited defence it was pretty late when I wrote that.

Thats the one I was thinking of, thanks Mr J.
:rolleyes:

This link
http://home.freeuk.com/rmarg/harwell_catapult.htm
will give you almost all you want to know about an enormous experimental catapult trialled at Harwell during WWII.

Mike W

BEagle.

Of course you can patent an idea, isn't that what all patents are? The only problem for Tony D is that having brought it out into the public domain before patenting it he would not now be able to apply for patent, something to do with difficulty of proving it was actually his original idea. The moral, if you have a dynamite idea keep it to yourself UNTIL you've filed.

Happy new year to one and all.

No. Only 'inventions', not ideas can be patented.

See http://www.patent.gov.uk/patent/definition.htm - but it's marginally less exciting reading than the AP&FS Newsletter!

Drapes, It had been thought of before, and this bit does surprise me. The Manchester, from which Roy Chadwick developed the Lancaster, had a beefed up structure designed for catapult launch! Words below from ‘Lancaster at War 2’ – Garbett & Goulding.

‘Two factors in the original Manchester specification and design provided the (political) “escape route” which led directly to the Lancaster Mk I. Air Ministry specification P13/36 had called for an airframe structure capable of sustaining the loads arising from catapult launching, amongst which was the high inertia drag loading in the wing structure. This load had been taken care of by using relatively thick skin plating. By the time Chadwick pressed ahead with his four-engined Manchester, catapult launching was no longer a requirement. Increased wing span on the other hand was now an obvious necessity, and could readily be obtained simply and at little tooling cost or delay in production. One simply “stretched” the original wing. All existing wing ribs were retained, pitched, however some three inches further apart. The spars were stretched to suit by extruding longer booms, which could be machined on the existing Avro designed milling machines, the base of which could easily be adapted to suit. The limiting factor was the ability of the extrusion press at High Duty Alloys to work continuously at maximum capacity without breakdown until a bigger press could be built. I have recollections of a very heated high level meeting at Chadderton where Avro, High Duty Alloys, Air Ministry and Ministry of Aircraft Production representatives hammered out the risks and benefits involved. Fortunately Avro and HDA were given permission to proceed. With no catapult load requirement it was possible to use thinner skin throughout the end product was a wing of 102ft span, lighter and stronger.

I seem to recall being shown the site of a rubber deck trial on salisbury Plain, near Upavon. Anyone with further info?

Captain Eric Brown was indeed at the recent GatBash as our guest of honour. I was sitting with him at dinner and asked him about the famous picture of him flying a Spitfire at Farnborough - with the catapault rig still attached.

He said "I couldn't climb an inch! But I eventually got rid of it."

He also said the idea of catapault launches came from Winston Churchill himself.