This NG is turning

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
As usual you are wrong. The Brits had the Sopwith triplane.

Snoopy was a Brit?

Doesn't Snoopy fly a Camel?



Yes. Sopwith made more than one model aircraft, just like Fokker did.




--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN


http://www.mortimerschnerd.com

Dale wrote:

Everts Air is still flying C-46s in Alaska hauling fuel/cargo.

Yes! I found some pics of them at Fairbanks last night. Looks like
Everts have two or 3 of them and all in good nick.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/636071/L/

Very pretty plane. (Some amazing pics of all sorts of things on
airliners.net too - easily while away hours on the search button...)

Dave.

Would you like your very own C46? I just remembered when Miami built
the Dolphin Expressway, which runs parallel to and just south of MIA
9Right, there was a C46 parked south of the right-of-way on airport
property. The owner was warned but never got around to moving it and
the Expressway effectively imprisoned the '46. It was still there
around 1980, walled in by apartment buildings, borrow pits, and the
expressway. I suppose all the goodies have been stripped from it.
FWIW the history of the C46 was sort of a precursor of the C82 and
C119. Air Force loaded it too high, just as they did with the 82/119,
and when an engine failed a lot of times the bird went in. The CAA/FAA
had a whole chapter on operating the C46 specifying loadings a good
deal under those used by the military in WW2. I knew a pilot who
ferried one from Burma to Karachi - single-handed. He said the only
snag was fuel management - he had to trim it real good and then get
up, go back, and switch tanks. He was a champ ping-pong player; guess
the celerity came in handy on that trip.
Walt BJ

FWIW the Brits had a quadraplane and the Italians had a nonaplane
(enneaplane?). Neither were any good; the 9-plane crashed on its first
takeoff. Supermarine made the 4; Caproni the 9. The worst ever built
was the monoplane Christmas Bullet; they made two; on the first flight
of both they became 0-planes. the sad part was they were made and
flown sequentially. Why the second pilot ever tried to fly the second
bird is beyond me. The wings were flexible and could be pushed up and
pulled down by hand!
Walt BJ

Would you like your very own C46?...... It was still there
around 1980, walled in by apartment buildings, borrow pits, and the
expressway.

I neglected to mention that one is now parked at the Curtiss Museum in
Hammondsport, New York. Might be that one. It was trucked in in
pieces, I'm told.

vince norris

On 12 Sep 2004 23:54:10 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

Are those percentages derived from actual numbers or just crude estimates?
If you can show the numbers used in your calculations I'll believe you.
Otherwise this gets the same regard as the other drivel you post here.

Jack G.



Speaking of drivel would you tell us all about your combat experiences?

You need combat experience to calculate percentages? What in the
hell are you talking about?

--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft

"vincent p. norris" wrote in message
...

I neglected to mention that one is now parked at the Curtiss Museum in
Hammondsport, New York. Might be that one. It was trucked in in
pieces, I'm told.

vince norris

Maybe indirectly, perhaps. The one at the Curtis Museum was moved there
from Wings of Eagles Museum, Elmira.

Tex

In article ,
(WaltBJ) wrote:

FWIW the Brits had a quadraplane and the Italians had a nonaplane
(enneaplane?). Neither were any good; the 9-plane crashed on its first
takeoff. Supermarine made the 4; Caproni the 9. The worst ever built
was the monoplane Christmas Bullet; they made two; on the first flight
of both they became 0-planes. the sad part was they were made and
flown sequentially. Why the second pilot ever tried to fly the second
bird is beyond me. The wings were flexible and could be pushed up and
pulled down by hand!

You wouldn't happen to have been reading Gilbert's "World's Worst
Aircraft"? Love that book.

Walt BJ

I've seen little reference to them in Europe.

They were used in Operation Varsity, the crossing of the Rhine,
earning a mixed reputation for survivability in the ETO threat
environment. The gist of it is that they were supposed to catch fire
too easily, and in a uniquely engulfing way, when hit. Some claim
this is more anecdotal than statistical (i.e., did that formation just
happen to encounter particularly intense and effective ground fire?).
Fortunately the defeat of Germany was not far away by then.

See for instance
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...Jun/boston.htm
as well as
http://www.brooks.af.mil/HSW/HO/ww2plane.html
and page 404 and footnote 8 on page 407 of
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil...reen_light.pdf
[modem users should note that this document takes a while to download]
Compare
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...Jun/boston.htm

Certainly it suffered by comparison to the C-47's reputation as a
tough and dependable aircraft, even though, as far as I know, that
revered plane didn't have self-sealing fuel tanks either (they were
experimented with, but I don't know whether that ever come to fruition
operationally).

Finally, here is a link to an interesting story by someone who flew
the C-46 (not during WW2) under different circumstances at a couple of
points in his life:
http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/182136-1.html

Note that I speak without firsthand experience or deep research
knowledge in the above matters -- just some pointers to what others
have written.

Cheers,
--Joe

Ad absurdum per aspera wrote:
Finally, here is a link to an interesting story by someone who flew
the C-46 (not during WW2) under different circumstances at a couple of
points in his life:
http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/182136-1.html


Fantastic link! Thanks for posting it.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN


http://www.mortimerschnerd.com