382 mph @15k on the Allison motor, amd 700 mi range on internal fuel ;at the time the front line fighter for RAF was the Spitfire V thay was getting ripped apart by the FW-190A ( during the Dieppe raid a Canadain pilot in a Mustang blew apart an FW 190) It was the Brits ( RAF) who first took the Mustang- then powered by a merlin variant engine to Germany as bomber escorts and used the Mustang when the USAAF was stuck on the tubby P-47 and maintenance plagued P-38. When the Spitfire XIV came along , the UK still used the Mustang (III/IV) to shoot down V-1 rocket bombs The Brits had the marvelous Spitfire, the sturdy Hurricane amd loved the P-40 warhawk but they knew the P-51 Mustang was a thoroughbred thay complimented their stable of Spitfires.... " the Mustang can't do what a Spitfire can but it can do it over Germany "
I am making a new film about the Grand Slam bomb and would like to feature the black and white footage of the loading. Can you let me know where the original footage can be obtained showing the Grand Slam bomb on the H Trolley being reversed under the aircraft.
Glad I stumbled into this video. My Father… Frank A Michalek was one of the Original test pilots for this aircraft. I remember him telling me stories of this plane.
Wow! Incredible archive footage of a magnificent flying machine from almost a century ago. Perhaps in another 100 years, advances in material technology will bring the return of colossal airships - filled with helium of course.
I figured that a steam engine would be too heavy for powered flight, where you wouldn't have a sufficient power to weight ratio for it to fly. I stand corrected.
I don't know whether or not it would have been physically possible (towing a glider adds a lot of drag and massively reduces range and top speed), but the mission was already complex enough without adding an extra one. Plus there were plenty of better, dedicated bombers available at this point, and there was a real shortage of planes and crew for airborne operations (so it was probably best to preserve them as much as possible)
Wellingtons were not used as glider tugs. Tugs such as the Halifax had bomb cells within the wings. When dropping Parachutists or towing gliders the wing cells were used to drop supply canisters. By 1945 some had their fuselage bomb bays converted to paradrop armed jeeps.Operation Amherst is a great example of this technique.
Interestingly its maximum bomb load of 87,000 pounds is even greater than the 70,000 pound max bomb capacity of any B-52 model, and more than the B-1B with its 75,000 pound max load. The B-2 only has a 40,000 pound load max. In fact, the B-36 carried the heaviest bomb load capacity EVER.
Some of you have commented on the drone of the engines. After watching the fly past, the deep bass sound once it passed the camera was very familiar to me. The reason is the SRN4 hovercraft which used to operate from both Ramsgate and Dover also used four proteus engines and I watched it arrive and depart from the Dover Hoverport many times (it sounded the same from behind). The Bristol Britannia aircraft also used these engines. The Princess was an amazing machine but there was no market for it.
40 we had flying wings, 50 we had hovering ovnis, in 60 we had supersonic airplanes that flyes in space, in 70 we had stealt tech and landed in the moon, in 80's he had nothing????
