Such a big respect for ww2 veterans. No lock on missiles, no night vision, no fancy computer, no barriers when landing on an aircraft carrier, damn respect
Irreplaceable historic film gives a great insight to how the Spitfire was maintained and a great insight to the “inside “ of the aircraft, I wonder if she made it back after the battle of Brittan?
The 1 bit of info that was not told is that the ammunition belts were 9 yards long, each. During the Battle of Britton and when pilots had returned to the Aerodrome from a scuffle, they were asked by the ground grew, "Well, how'd it go?" The Pilot's reply sometimes was, "It took the Whole 9 Yards", having expended the entire compliment of ammunition.
@@ChrizRockster Thanks for the reply. I don't know it all and did a bit of research and some reading. You are correct about the 9 yard bolt of fabric. Read here; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_whole_nine_yards. I love learning about new things!!
Note the black-and-white painted underside. That didn't last long, you don't get to see it often. It does have the bulged hood - the very first ones weren't bulged.
In the last 30 seconds or so (loading the ammunition belts) the black-and-white undersides are gone - these are probably the duck egg green used later. And for some reason the last few frames was of what looks like a FW190 Dora starting up.
Some are pre-flight checks that would normally be done prior to flight in peacetime. I guess that they did lots of checks on the ground in between flights so that the aircraft was scramble ready.
Interesting video. The tracer however was quickly shifted to random locations in the cartridge belts, as the Luftwaffe soon became aware that their opponents' ammunition was about to be depleted...
Aww he gotta wind up the clock, so cute, and a watering can for the oil. Lovely details. The Mk1 had a two blade wooden prop i thought, with the 3 blade on the Mk1a.
Mark 1a is the mark 1. ‘A’ is just the armament, being 8 browning machine guns. ‘B’, on the other hand, was two Hispano cannons and 4 machine guns. ‘C’ was more generalised. Mark 2 would follow this pattern and so on
Wing types don't apply to the Ia, the a there does refer to some updates. However before the standardisation of the Ia over the I, there were a lot of changes in production and retrofits to older airframes that have them given newer features like the 3 blade constant speed DH prop.
I've seen turn a co-ordinator freeze on a cold day in a Piper Warrior (I guess the tube contained some sort of contaminant as it should be resistant to freezing by using paraffin etc). So god only knows what could freeze up on this complex type.
The Spitfire is a MkI (Roman numeral) not Mk1 (Arabic numeral). Spitfire versions up to and including MkXX (20) where designated using Roman numerals. After that they were numbered using Arabic eg 21, 22, 23 and 24.
Pilot visibility was the main problem. A Spitfire pilot had poor visibility during take-off and landing even in the day, due to the long nose, narrow canopy and the wings being directly below the cockpit. In the day the pilot would pick a reference point that he could see (such as a tree, building or a distinctive-shaped cloud) to maintain his correct alignment on the take-off run or in the final stages of final approach and landing. At night this was impossible, so the pilot had to take-off and land essentially blind. The landing lights only illuminated the ground immediately in front of each wing, and a lot of the illuminated area was blocked from the pilot's view by the nose in any case. The few squadrons that operated Spitfires at night suffered high aircraft casualties, nearly all in landing accidents. There were also a lot of reported problems with flames from the exhaust pipes destroying pilot's night-vision. The Merlin was prone to shooting flames from the exhausts when running at high power settings, and various sparks and flashes when running at low throttle. So at the two times the pilot needed his best vision - the attack and the final approach to landing - the aircraft would blind him! Although this was widely reported as a problem when flying the Spitfire at night, both the Hurricane and the Defiant were successfully used as night fighters with the same engine. Maybe the relative position of the pilot's eye line to the exhausts was different? Not unique to the Spitfire, but there was also the problem of being able to see the targets. The RAF radar system could direct a fighter to the general location of the enemy, but in order to shoot it down the pilot had to rely on the enemy aircraft being caught in searchlights from the ground so he could see it. The German bombers quickly learnt to fly high enough that they could not be found by searchlights, meaning that the intercepting fighters were shooting virtually blind unless there was good visibility and a full moon. The advantage of the Defiant, Beaufighter and Mosquito as night fighters was firstly that they had at least one extra crew member to help spot the target and then that they were large enough to fit the early air-search radar sets, which the Spitfire could not. The landing lights were fitted to MkI, MkII and MkV Spitfires before it was realised that night operations were simply to be avoided if at all possible.
"Once oxygen tanks were fitted it didn't take air crews long to realise that three quick breaths of it were an instant cure for a hangover." Oh yeah, definitely, this is a British video about a British plane 🤣🤣🤣
