Comments by "David Elliott" (@davidelliott5843) on "Imperial War Museums" channel.

  1. The lens being cleaned at 4:05 is a “Leylight”. They had one on each wing angled to focus at the bomb aiming point. The radar would lose the Uboat at a predictable distance where the lights were powered up. Pilot kept going straight. Bombs released when the conning tower appeared in the crossed beams almost always scored a hit. They were so effective that Uboat crews believed there was a special weapon in use. RN listening stations used radio direction finding to determine location of U-boats radio signals. A bomber was directed in and used radar to find the surfaced sub.
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  2. The Falkland Islands were British at least 70 years before Argentine came into existence. The lands which eventually became Argentina were parts of the Spanish empire.  1690 The British John Strong landed on some remote Atlantic islands, and named them after Viscount Falkland, treasurer of the British navy 1765 The British, were the first to settle West Falkland. 1770 The Spanish, pushed out the British after buying out a French settlement 1771 The British regained the outpost on West Falkland wafter threat of war with Spain 1774 The British withdrew for reasons of cost but retained their claim to the Falklands. Spain maintained a settlement on East Falkland (which it called Soledad Island) until 1811. But the land remained a British possession. 1825 UK officially recognised Argentine independence. The Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation was signed. 1833 Less than a decade later, the British ejected Argentinian invaders from the Falklands. The islands were quickly settled with British farmers. 1892 The Falkland Islands became a British colony. The inhabitants were now officially British subjects with British passports, etc.
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  3. The Spitfire Mk-9 was introduced very quickly. It must been planned a good while before it was needed.
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  4. The Vulture engine was supposed to make double the power of a Merlin. It failed spectacularly so Avro went back to proven Merlin engines.
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  5. A jammed cannon would cause horrible yaw when the good one fired. They eventually went to two in each wing which reduced the unbalanced recoil effect when a gun jammed.
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  6. 109, Spitfire and the Mitsubishi Zero are all built to turn fast. The latter even achieved an enormous range by making everything as light as possible. As engine power increased, it became clear that fast turning was less important. Eventually the bigger aircraft could take out the nimble 109 and Spitfire. Germany introduced the easy to build FockeWulf 190 but the sheer manufacturing might of USA with its fast heavy fighters, won the day.
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  7. The Vulcan had a design problem with the windscreen whereby the seals could not be checked and would fail without warning. At least the glass could not blow out.
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  8. I worked with a guy who flew 4 tours on duty as flight engineer in Halifax bombers. They did the same standard job as the Lancaster.
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  9. Big wing just meant delays getting the planes formed up. Far better to get the individual wings up and out into battle.
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  10. Cornish engineer Stuart Tresilian told RR they should build a smaller engine going at 2x the revs. That would make the same power with even less weight. He was of course ignored but post-war engineering proved him right.
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  11. The final shot of Mk24 shows a frighteningly deadly but absolutely stunning looking aircraft.
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  12. European fascists including the British version were hard left statists only slightly removed from communists. There was therefore genuine concern that some workers would rise up against the government as some say had happened in France. It never happened (or it was suppressed) but that it might have done was hidden and rubbed out of the history books.
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  13. The Marines told the landing ship commandos that men should be taken off immediately. Instead, the Navy dithered and the ships were hit.
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  14. After HMS conqueror sank the Belgrano, Argentina put it's aircraft carrier into dock for the duration. They had no intention of supporting the island invasion.
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  15. BF109 went through a number of significant changes so although the name stayed the same, is it really true that early and later versions were really the same aircraft? For example USA’s Grumman F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat, F7F Tigercat, F8F Bearcat, etc. Under Messerschmitt convention they were the all the FxF Cat with different marks.
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  16. Russian reactive armour is often nothing more than boxes filled with sand. Those that contain explosives don’t have reliable trigger systems. This is evidenced by how few of these pads explode when the tanks get hit.
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  17. The British at 2nd Battle of El-Alamein (North Africa 1941) used the 57mm Six Pounder anti tank gun to murderous effect against German armour. Compared to an ATGM it’s huge, but back then it was a very small target crewed by just three men. They were set up to ambush tanks with minefields to funnel them where you wanted them to go. Much like Ukraine today really.
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  18. UK basically screwed Frank Whittle over. His designs were given to Rover (cars), because Rolls-Royce were too busy making piston engines. Rover were basically incompetent and RR eventually got involved. Their Nene used a centrifugal compressor basically the Merlin/Griffon supercharger. Russian MIG-15 used a copy of the RR jet engine entirely because the British post-war Leftist government gave some RR jet engines to Stalin.
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  19. The wing IS NOT a laminar flow though it does have a larger area of laminar than a Spitfire wing. The Allison engine was competitive with the early Merlins with similar spec blowers. It was not designed for high altitude. Fully fuelled, the aircraft was very tail heavy. Pilots had to empty the rear fuel tank before they emptied the drop tanks. If they had to fight too soon they could run into problems. The P47 had the potential range but the US Generals refused to import enough drop tanks. Funnily enough, P47 drop tanks miraculously arrived just as the Mustangs came into service.
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  20.  @WHJeffB  The 109 E and later was considerably different to the earlier types. Spitfire just evolved. The biggest step change was the two stage Merlin 60 needed to counter the Focke-Wulf 190. But that was really just a longer nose and bigger radiators.
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  21. Harrier had relatively little payload and range when using vertical take off. But a runway take off (or even ski jump) allowed a perfectly respectable pay load.
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  22. Ukraine needs all the necessary equipment to beat Russia. If that doesn’t happen it won’t matter how much equipment was kept behind because you are going to need 10x as much to stop a reinvigorated Russia in a few years time.
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  23. Ford did pretty well in Germany during WW2. No surprises he wasn’t keen to make a war winning engine.
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