The AEO in my crew on Victor tankers had been a Signaller on Neptunes in his early days. He had an usual logbook entry - a three day flight! The aircraft took off at 2345 and landed at 0015 the day after next - 24.30, covering three dates.

I assume they carried two crews - I hope so at least!

Liffy, thank you for that link. I can get Youtube directly on my TV but never tried before nor looked for full length films so double thanks.

I wonder why Crabbe got a GM and not a GC. Perhaps wavy navy were considered as civvies.

Nearly a half of all awards of the George Medal to date have been to service personnel (c. 850), so Crabb's award is not particularly unusual. Not sure if he was RN or RNVR but the latter were certainly not classified as civilians. The George Cross is an extremely scarce decoration (also awarded to both service and civilian recipients). It ranks immediately below the Victoria Cross, so conditions for its award are particularly stringent and presumably Crabb did not meet the criteria for the higher award.

Incidentally we had a station commander at Marham with the George Medal, Gp Capt Vic McNabney. He had won it as a Flying Officer when attempting to rescue a glider pilot who had crashed into a waterfall.

Tankertrashnav ...

I guess your AEO was flying in a modified Neptune to give it a 3 Day flight duration.

Here is an interesting narrative on the Truculent Turtle (Neptune P2V-1) historic flight from Perth Australia to Columbus Ohio in 1946 ... some 11,236 miles taking 55 Hrs 17 Mins NON-STOP :eek:

Historic Neptune P2V-1 Non-Stop Flight

The record established by CDR Tom Davies and the crew of the Truculent Turtle stood for decades. The distance record for all aircraft was broken in 1962 by a jet-powered B-52. The Truculent Turtle’s record for piston/propeller driven aircraft was broken by Burt Rutan’s Voyager, a carbon-fiber aircraft, which made its historic around the world non-stop flight in 1986... more than 40 years after the Turtle landed in Columbus, Ohio.

Best regards ...

Coff.

GC and VC are equally-ranked, I understand. The VC is for actions directly in the face of the enemy, GC (if awarded for a military action) where the enemy are not present.

Typerated, Herkman ...

I understand the P2V-5F variant had a pair of J34 jets mounted on the wings ... which apparently had a common fuel system with the R-3350-32W piston engines ... so they ran on AvGas. :eek: How does that work :confused:

Best ...

Coff.

TTN, in the film Crabbe was portrayed as RNVR. I know the VC stands alone and hadn't realised that the GC did too with GM as a another. I had mistakenly assumes the DSO/DSM type hierarchy.

Knew VM when he was a flt cdr on 44. Definitely a good guy.

The P2V's with the jets ran them on avgas and still do. Originally 145 Octane but now 100LL. There is a tanker operator near here in Missoula MT., Neptune Aviation, that has several and they work just fine.

A C130 will also run on a mix of jet fuel and avgas if jet fuel is not available. the temperatures go up a bit and the range goes down. Or, as Canadian C130Flight Engineer once told me, we can run on anything other than TCP!!! Tom Cat Pee!!

Speedbird 48.

As far as the RAF was concerned, until the advent of the Valiant tanker force, jet aircraft were being refuelled from piston-engined tankers using Avgas.

Here's a Meteor being refuelled by a Lincoln c 1949

http://www.meteorflight.com/wps/mete...oln_and_f4.jpg

ScouseFlyer,
it was a long time ago but the name rings a bell. I seem to recall he was a F/L at the time and we were on 48 (?) then back at Lyneham. Does this fit ?

ancientaviator62

Yes that sounds right.

SF

Slight thread drift but I seem to recall that the Pegasus had a switch on the side of the engine that would allow the Harrier to burn anything from Brent Crude to hydrazine!

The other example of a jet engine burning AvGas is the Viper 203 fitted to the Shackleton MkIII, although the run times were limited and after 30 hours at full throttle they were removed for some serious fixing!

pm575

The Turtle
 

Anybody recall it burning its brakes out landing at St Eval on its celebratory post record tour? :)

I did not fly an Shackletons but Neptuns, a number of friends flew in both and all preferred the Neptune


Neptune’s came to be supplied to the RAF because we had MR Lancaster’s with H2s radar and not much else in Coastal Command and the US said there were not good enough for the cold war,


I flow in the MR Lancaster’s at ST Morgan and operated the H2S radar and also in Neptune’s at RAF Kinloss an RAF Toppclife operating the an/aps20 radar the Americans were right the aps20 was by far better radar .the Neptune was also equipped with additional equipment that the Lancaster lacked, electronic counter measures equipment, sonic equipment, magnetic anomaly detection gear, etc.


The Neptune had crew comfort in mind, sound proofing padding, two bunk beds , a cooker and ash trays if needed

I have a copy of P2V In Action (pub Squadron Signal No.68) and Page 29, shows a photo of P-2V s/n 51-15956 destined for UK albeit in ferry and US markings still.

I was not aware that the batches we had under the MDAP , had the MAD tailboom but just the early versions without or with turret? Came across this on a pictorial book of the RAF from the year dot to the 1970s

Cheers

I was not aware that the batches we had under the MDAP, had the MAD tailboom but just the early versions without or with turret?

The first batch of RAAF Neptunes for Australia in 1951 were P2V-5s (before the P2V-7s a decade later) and were in an early configuration similar to this, but not quite.

The first were what we referred to as the Mark 1: three gun turrets (nose, tail, mid upper), no tailboom, no jets. Later the nose guns were removed.

The Mark 2, removal of nose and tail gun positions, addition of MAD boom and clear nose.

The Mark 3, removal of dorsal turret, so looking more like the final variant - MAD boom, no guns, clear nose cone.

Mark 4, the P2V-5F, in 1959 modded with J34 jets under the wings.

After the 1962 US designation changes, these became the P-2E, some say the SP-2E. The P2V-7 was delivered as the SP-2H.

Roadster as a % of GDP, it's not changed a lot defence spending wise from the 60's up to today

Charts of Past Spending - UkPublicSpending.co.uk

Nut, cracker, answering a question over two years ago.

You haven't got a clue have you? Even based on your own link there has been a massive a shift.

S-D