Gallery content

[Garry Russell]

Don't be concerned Eric

A Royal pardon to all

It the fault of us moderators, if anyone ,for not beating you lot around the head enough before #

Just something that has slipped a bit and the edges became blurred

It's very much a 'from now' thing

Garry

[Nigel H-J]

The reason for the phantom dive was due to the fact that the The Meteor 7, with its deeper nose than the fighter
variants, was directionally unstable with airbrakes out and undercarriage down, should the airbrakes be selected out and a turn made at the same time at circuit airspeed the aircraft would suddenly go into a dive. Pilots' were warned that once in circuit with the undercarriage down the airbrakes should not be extended when turning.

It became known as the 'Phantom Dive' due to no-one actually realising the cause, once the reason became known it was found that at least 3000ft would be needed to recover from it.

Nigel.

[FlyTexas]

I never would have guessed that the Meteor was such a lethal aircraft to fly.

Brian

[DaveB]

Well.. it wasn't really Brian. They were very much delving into the unknown and even the experts of the day weren't really experts. Once the problem was realised, it no longer became a problem

ATB

DaveB

[Garry Russell]

Indeed Dave

There were lots of crashes in those days by many different types.

Crashes of prototypes were almost routine then as they pushed the boundries into what seems obvious now but they had no idea what was ahead and couldn't predict somethings until they got "into a situation" and then they had to find a fix. In the meantime the earliest versions had a job to do and the guys on the squadrons got on with it as best they could

Nowdays they'll fly it all out on a computer before the metal is cut.


Garry

[Garry Russell]

To put things in perspective...take a look at how common crashes were in normal operations let alone high performance jets

For example 30 Jan 1946 the RAF lost three Dakotas in three seperate crashes.

http://aviation-safety.net/database/

Garry

[Sl4yer]

"Meatbox" = in the early days no, repeat no, ejection seats in quite a few Meteors.

The NF14 at my ATC squadron had no ejector seats! Can't imagine many Meteors did (maybe just the final single seat fighters?). The Vampire T11 we had was suitably equipped of course.

James

[Sl4yer]

Actually, having just looked at the STUNNING pics of the Forth bridges, is there a place somewhere for an off-topic Gallery? Bearing in mind that most (if not all?) of the pics are hosted elsewhere?

James

[Garry Russell]

IHI James

t's been considered but we feel we don't wish to greate too many sections.

Garry

[DaveB]

Yup.. E&S is the perfect place. Expect the unexpected

ATB

DaveB