Just watching this evenings episode and thy are lifting a fuselage with a ratchet type cargo tiedown hooking the end hooks together. While probably strong enough it's certainly not approved and tested lifting gear! Just to top it off they then had two guys worlking under the suspended fuselage. At £2M for a re-build you would think they could afford a proper sling / strop. Then they were fitting the wing with pictures of "fettling" a rear attchment bolt hole with a file and then driving the main spar bolt in with a hammer. Contrast recent Guy Martin Spitfire build TV program where the same bolt was precision ground to original tolerance (0.0005" IIRC) and then having to let it sit on the bench for a while because the heating from Guy holding it in has hand caused enough expansion to stop it going in the fitting.
I'm not impressed by The Spitfire Company.

Robert G8RPI.

No, we are not.
The restorers are not working under wartime production pressures or doing battle damage repairs.
There is no excuse for not using proper lifting equipment, even worse when you are being filmed.
Even the wing bolt tolerence from the Guy Martin program came from the original drawings. Incorrectlty made or installed wing attachmens can and have caused fatal accidents. More than one Tiger Moth (wrong maerial or improperly made threads in lowwer wing tie) and a Chipmunk (undersize spar bolt) as well as the Reno Mustang (worn out fibre locknut) comme to mind. On the other hand "lapping a bit of canvas on a hole" was and is the accepted way of repairing damage on fabric covered aircraft. Assuming the "canvas" is the correct fabric (linen in WWII) and a bit of are is taken that is.
I have worked on several "warbirds" over the years including Spitfires.

Robert G8RPI.

Always difficult to get at the truth in complex situations, and WW2 was as complicated as it gets. Doesn't help that the subject is overlaid with propaganda, where both sides fibbed about losses for good and bad reasons. The Luftwaffe was exceptionally dishonest and made the mistake of lying to itself, which caused severe problems as the war progressed.

History tends to concentrate on pilot and aircraft performance, which is misleading. TV always over-simplifies, and a good example I watched last year featured a Battle of Britain Spitfire vs Messerschmidt comparison, in which the German plane was declared winner because it had a 20mm cannon.

True enough, but the programme ignored the fact that the Me109 has a narrow undercarriage and was often damaged landing on the bumpy grass airfields the time, usually injuring the pilot. Accidental damage is as important as battle damage, and the Me109 was accident prone.

The programme ignored many other important factors. The complexity of German aircraft design made it necessary to centralise the Luftwaffe's Ground Repair Organisation. Only simple repairs could be done at the airfield, otherwise the plane was sent to a repair depot, probably by train. It took ages. German airfields became littered with unserviceable aircraft, many of them with relatively minor faults, which reduced training time as well as combat availability.

The Me109 suffered other disadvantages during the Battle of Britain: it flew into a efficient air defence system featuring radar plus sophisticated command and control; the plane only had fuel for about 20 minutes over South East England, and if shot down over England Germany lost the expensively trained pilot as well as the aircraft.

Bottom line is the Luftwaffe failed to overcome UK defences because they couldn't match RAF availability. Systems and logistics were more important than small technical details. All that mattered was the 1940 Spitfire being good enough to take on an Me109 despite the cannon, and there were more Spitfires available than Me109s.

Everyone in WW2 put considerable effort into keeping planes airworthy. Aircrew, especially fighter pilots, are enormously costly to train and take a long time to become effective. Yes people were sometimes flung into the air in poorly serviced equipment, but it meant something was badly wrong – some deeper failure of the fighting machine had forced them into action, and it usually ended badly. Perhaps the best example were the Kamikaze. When Japan's position became utterly desperate obsolete aircraft were stripped all but the bare essentials to save weight, no navigational or safety equipment, unarmed, simplified controls, including no fuel gauge, and packed with explosives to make a giant bomb. A minimally-trained pilot flew his death trap on a suicide mission. But even 100% disposable Kamikaze planes weren't flung together carelessly; the ground crew worked hard to make sure they would fly reliably to the target.

Dave

Interesting to see what’s still available ‘used’ and ‘old stock’

**LINK**

http://spitfirespares.co.uk/Instruments%20fuel%20gauges%208.html

MichaelG.

Different story at sea too. Cunningham had pushed for good radar outfits for the navy, so by the time of the Bismarck sortie in 1941 quite a few British warships had radar that could find and shadow enemies around and beyond heavy gun range. When Bismarck tried a salvo at the shadowers, the gunfire put her own forward radar out of action.

The Germans never caught up. By the time of Scharnhorst's fatal sortie at an Arctic convoy in 1943, their Admiral Bey didn't even turn his radar on for fear of counter-detection, and a hit from the RN cruiser screen soon took away that capability anyway.

It's true. Chain Home radar was so primitive the Germans decided the signals couldn't be a detection system. Apart grom the transmit frequency being ridiculously low, the pulses were triggered by 50Hz off the mains, which is exceptionally low tech. But it worked well enough.

A more advanced British radar had been captured from the Army at Dunkirk but Germany's scientists failed to realise it was only a prototype lash-up. Compared with beautifully made German equipment, it was a heap of poo, so it was assumed British radar was years behind, no threat at all. Seriously misleading! Never underestimate the other guy…

Dave