Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered" channel.

  1. He regularly attended the reunions in England. He knew Norwich very well.
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  2. One of my uncles was on the AA batteries at Malta. He recalled when Ohio slowly crawled into the harbour. It seemed the whole island turned out from their ruined homes, which were little more than rubble, and cheered her in. A brass band played, the lot.
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  3. This sounds like some irrigation schemes in California that failed.
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  4.  @pentuplove6542  wrote: "Same went for Federal USA who planned to go to war with England " You must stop making things up.
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  5. Despite keeping planes back, the RAF won the air battle of Dunkirk.
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  6.  @allangibson8494  North American were only six years old. They had no experience of leading edge fighters. None. The Air Ministry would have to hold their hand, and did. The Air Ministry directed them to leading edge advancements to incorporate into the package. There is no way they would let them go away, then return expecting them to come up with the goods. A dog's dinner would probably be served up. NA had experience of producing training planes. The Wirraway was an adaption of a training plane.
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  7.  @TheHistoryGuyChannel  The Mustang is revered in the USA, not so much in the UK, despite it pretty well being a British plane. My auntie test flew them as a teenager at Liverpool mainly where final assembly for the ETO was. Then delivered them to their units - British and American. The American pilots would be amazed to see all these new shiny planes coming in all together, and then a bunch of girls getting out of them. The girls would show the pilots the basic controls and give their opinion on how best to take off and land.  I recall one US pilot would not take instruction from the girls.
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  8.  @KillingDeadThings  The British got an empire they did not want. Trade spread the empire. The British were traders. Private companies (British East India) had men of war ships and private armies to protect their trading posts, putting no burden on the British taxpayers. When matters got bad the Crown was forced to intervene. Hence the spread of territory controlled by the Crown, which costed. The British were very good organisers and fair people, so were welcomed in many parts of the world. They promoted wealth.
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  9.  @jamesbarton1969  Britain made more from Jamaica alone than the 13 colonies.
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  10. ♦ The Irish forbid allied planes to cross Ireland. They allowed only air-sea rescue. When U-Boats were operating off the western coast sinking Free World ships unable to be got at by allied planes, they forbid planes flying over. ♦ German bombers were using Dublin as a beacon to get to Liverpool, the prime convoy port, which is directly east of Dublin. DeValera ordered Dublin to have more street lights. ♦ The British, best with US or Canadians, should have moved to secure the two western Ireland ports. The rest leave alone as it was of no use. The survival of the Free World mattered. ♦ The despicable act of of DeValera sending condolences to the German embassy. ♦ DeValera never went to the US embassy to give condolences when Roosevelt died; ♦ The vid never mentioned that Irish ships were protected by the Royal Navy, being welcome into British convoys. ♦ The vid never mentioned that the students of University College Dublin on VE Day burnt the Irish flag, in protest of the country's stance in WW2. ♦ The act of treating volunteers to the British Army like dirt after WW2, with laws passed discriminating against them, again shows what side they leaned to. ♦ Ireland's stance in WW2 was despicable and shameful for the Irish people. .
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  11. The Delorean was designed by Lotus and made in Northern Ireland.
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  12. whispjohn You did not understand what he was describing.
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  13.  @allangibson8494  The Mustang was basically a British plane made by an the American manufacturer for them. The British Air Ministry directed a six year old inexperienced company, North American Aviation, to the design points they wanted for their plane. They assisted North American who drew it up, as a university lecturer would do in directing students to research various points in a project. The students run off do the research with the lecturer assessing what they did and how it fits into the project as a whole. The Mustang was a British plane made by an American company for them. There was no US forces involvement in the concept, specifications or design. Many Americans lose sight of these fundamental points. The Rolls Royce Merlin engine made the Mustang perform superbly. The plane initially used an Allison engine, which was only good at low level, as RR could not meet the supply of Merlins at the time, so the Alison it had to be. The US were behind the British in engine supercharging with the Tizard Mission giving the USA details of advanced super charging.  Also the cylinder head design of the Alison was not good enough for full supercharging. Stanley Hooker of RR developed the auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging technology which was given free to the USA. The first use of the Mustang by the US military was for ground attack because of the poor high level performance of the Allison engine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4lH2whhjk In the early stages of WW2, the U.S. government allowed the British & French to by-pass them allowing direct approaches to U.S. aircraft makers, as would the British government approach say Hawker. The British needed all types of planes urgently, even the P-40 which was inferior to their own front line planes. But warplanes they were being useful in certain theatres and for training. In early February 1940 the British asked North American Aviation's President Dutch Kindelberger to supply P-40s made under licence from Curtiss, as Curtiss could not supply demand. Unlike Curtiss North American were far from near full capacity. Kindelberger told the British, without any detailed drawings or plans, "I can build you a better airplane, and I can get it built fast". Contrary to popular belief in the USA, North American did not have a prototype ready design which the Brits just happened to have snapped up under the noses of the US military. North American were first approached in Feb 1940, who had no "detailed drawings or plans". The British gave this young inexperienced company a chance but they would have to hold their hands. In May 1940 as France was falling, North American still never presented any detailed plans, mailing a "design concept" to the British delegation in New York. This never had the famed laminar flow wings. The British Air Ministry accepted the inferior Allison engine as Rolls Royce were working flat out 24/7 unable to meet demand for Merlins. New Merlin factories were being set up but not yet fully on-line. In the interim from Feb to May, three months, the British Air Ministry were forming the fundamentals of the design concepts directing North American to Curtiss and NACA the developer of the laminar flow wings, to ensure a fighter with some leading edge design points, not produce another P-40 fly-alike wasting valuable time. The Air Ministry directed NAA to the Curtiss XP-46 experimental plane with all the leading edge design points of top European designs, with a few of their own, rolled into one. It never worked as the individual points never complimented each other when merged into one complete whole. NAA were ordered by the British Air Ministry to buy the plans and test results of the XP-46 plane from Curtiss if they wanted the job, at a whopping $52,000, a lot of money at the time. Curtiss engineers always said the Mustang was their design. Not quite as the British Air Ministry had a lot to say in the leading design points - they were paying and calling the shots as it was their plane. There was a danger the Mustang may end up the same way as the XP-46 - a plane with leading edge points that never performed as expected.  The British Air Ministry took a major gamble with NAA so were active in approving the emerging design points. The Ministry wanted something better than the poor P-40, being prepared to wait, but realistically never expected Spitfire performance. Initially that was the case with the first deliveries using the Allison engine - better than a P-40 but no Spitfire. The initial Allison engined Mustangs filled an RAF niche, so no problems for the British at that point. A niche the plane filled was that the RAF needed a long range reconnaissance plane that could also perform ground attack being able as a low level fighter if the need was there. The Spitfire was a short range fast interceptor. With the fall of France the RAF needed a plane with range to penetrate over the German border from English air bases. Reading many US books on the Mustang you would think the concept of the plane was to escort US bombers. That is way off from the truth. The last thing the British Air Ministry were thinking of when laying down the points of the plane was US bomber doctrine. The US were not even in the war. Initially the US military overall didn't want to know the plane. The Mustang was not even in U.S. service when it was shooting down FW-190s by the RAF over France. The Air Ministry gave the U.S. military two planes which were left in the corner of a hangar for a long period. They initially never assessed it. Quite amazing, as the USA never had a decent front line fighter at the time. The excuse not to take up the plane by U.S. forces was that it was liquid cooled and vulnerable in frontal attack. This was a poor excuse to reject the plane because it wasn't theirs. What went over their heads was that the world's two best fighters locked horns in the Battle of Britain, both with liquid cooled engines. With British support, the Mustang finally was noticed by the U.S. Army Air Force. The US military had to go to England to fully assess the plane as it was finished off in Liverpool being flow by the RAF. They did eventually adopt the plane calling it the Apache and P-51 when in U.S. service. UK and U.S. Mustangs for the European war theatre were finished off in Liverpool. They were test flown then delivered to the units by young English girls, many of them teenagers. The Mustang was built to British specification and design guidance without a doubt. They specified and paid for it. It never performed at all like the short range interceptor the Spitfire, not having the manoeuvrability of the Spitfire. It was 'fine' and reasonably fast at low altitude with the Allison engine. It could operate over France and even Germany at a push escorting bombers because of the longer range that the British Air Ministry specified. The Mustang filled a niche role for the British. continued......
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  14. ...Continued... Rolls Royce. Rolls engineers under Ron Harker went to North American to advise on how to install a Merlin engine in the Mustang. They also gave advice from their work with the RR Mustang X. Rolls-Royce made the first proposal to North American regarding a Merlin 45 engine Mustang in 1940, after Stanley Hooker improved the power by 30%. This was before the plane was operational an still in the R&D stage. The RR Merlin was superior to the Alison engine, also to what it was in February 1940 when North American were first approached by the Air Ministry. The later Merlin 61 had the two-stage auto controlled superchanging developed by again by Stanley Hooker. This gave an extra 70 mph and 15,000 feet of operation to the Merlin. A quantum leap. The pilot just went where he liked without degradation in performance. RR sent three engineers led by James Ellor to supervise the adaption and manufacture of a Merlin 61, built under licence by Packard, the same type that was already being considered for the Rolls Royce Mustang X experimental series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Mustang_Mk.X On 9 June 1942, the first memos from W/C I.R. Campell-Orde of the RAF Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, revealed that an effort was being made to convince North American to adopt a Merlin-powered Mustang. Work in the US was setback due to an initial lack of interest and also to mechanical failures of the first Merlin engines built under licence by Packard. Both projects commenced at nearly the same time with the first Mustang X in the air about a month earlier than the North American XP-51B. The RR Mustang-X programme was 5 or 6 airframes each with different experimentation. RR attempted to have North American accept British Merlin 61s (the two-stage superchargers) in American airframes, it is clear that the prime contractor (NAA) wanted to control the project as control was looking like it was to move over to the UK. NAA was essentially building production-standard aircraft rather than the experimental series that saw each of the RR Mustang Xs trying out new variations of design. An offshoot was the mid-engine RR Griffon engined Mustang that actually made it to the mock-up stage, albeit with a Merlin installed amidships. On the success of the RR Mustang-X built in Nottingham, the Air Ministry ordered hundreds from RR, who declined wanting to remain specialising in engines. NAA remained the prime contractor. Rolls Royce mass produced Merlins in Crewe, Manchester and Glasgow, also licensing Packard in the USA, using idle US industry. The US made Merlins were to supply the Canadian aircraft factories - to avoid a two-way trans-Atlantic trip and give extra manufacturing when the engine proved very popular with many airframe makers. An agreement was reached in September 1940, with the first Packard built Merlin engine running in August 1941. Early in 1944 the P-38, P-51B Mustang and P-47C, were dived by the British for compressibility testing at the RAE Farnborough, England at the request of the USAAF. They had trouble when these planes dived onto attacking German fighters when providing top cover for the bombers. The results were that the Mach numbers, the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the P-38, Mach 0.71 for the P-47, and Mach 0.78 for the Mustang. The corresponding figures for the FW-190 and Me109 was Mach 0.75. The tests resulted in the Mustang being chosen for all escort duties. - Page 70, Wings On My Sleeve by Eric Brown, who did the test.
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  15.  @QuantumRift  When the threat of the French was eliminated by British forces, those in British America became more greedy. Most people in British America were not in favour of independence. Most of those who signed the declaration were greedy landowners wanting to get their hands on lands to the west, Indian lands, which London forbid. They were taking a massive gamble at the time. If they did get independence, what was to stop the French or Spanish moving in and taking the lands? The only reason the minority in British America got independence was because of the help from the French and Spanish. If either of those moved to take the lands a few years later they could do nothing. The British would not care too much. They left themselves bare and open.
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  16.  @Kevin-mx1vi  You need to do some more reading on this topic. The British won the war of 1812, despite Americans attempting to say it was a draw. 1) The British acheived their aims in ejecting the invaders from Canada restoring the situation there. 2) The USA failed in achieving their aims, which was the subjugation of Canada by force. The British won. The British were totally disinterested in occupying the USA.
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  17.  @jamesbarton1969  The loyalists were called Tories.
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  18.  @KillingDeadThings  The USA would not have those ridiculous gun laws for sure.
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  19.  @eoindee7007  About half the Irish army deserted to join the British army.
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  20. If the US had held out on an island like Malta, Hollywood would be into its 10th film about the episode.
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  21. The Germans bombed Dublin by mistake, a synagogue amongst the bombed buildings. The Germans paid to rebuild it.
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  22. The Eighth Army chased Rommel 1,000 km from El Alemein in 17 days. I believe the fastest and longest advance in WW2. Rommel had to turn 180 degrees to face the Eighth Army saving the US forces.
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  23. There is an excellent BBC series about design, The Genius of Design. BBC The Genius Of Design 3 of 5 Blueprints For War 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_0z1kvM6ns&list=PL745-VcJ1xdWXorY43gHI2YMxmT928l1H&index=3 Episode three was about war design. Peter Gudgeon claims to have fired the shot in a Churchill that disabled Tiger 131, after it disabled his friend's Churchill, killing his friend. As the series was about design, the Tiger was featured (131) as an example of how not to do it. It was considered a waste of time and resources, being too expensive, over engineered and unreliable for such a war. One point that the TV series put over was that one of a product's design goals is reached when it is just good enough. for its intended function. The same episode features the Sten machine gun, a product of how to design it right for war - minimalistic with only 48 parts of off the shelf items, including a bed spring, that did exactly what it was supposed to do, super cheaply, made fast (by Triang, a toy company), very small & light, being stamped out in the millions, which could also be made in a garden shed.
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  24. London was known as, and still is is to a far lesser degree, as The Smoke.
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  25. Thatcher actually dropped defence spending. By 1982, the Ark Royal carrier was decommissioned, which seriously cut the edge of the task force that went to liberate the Falkland Islands from the Argentinians. The Falkland Islands patrol vessel was cut. Missile systems that should have been introduced were delayed meaning the navy still used outdated systems. If the defence spending stayed the same as when Thatcher came to power in 1979, retaking the Falklands would have been a lot, lot easier. Or more likely the Argentines would not have invaded.
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  26. The first solid state electronic component was the cats whisker detector in 1904, by an Indian, Jagadish Chandra Bose, in England. Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, a Pole, invented a solid state amplifier, what a transistor is, as mentioned in the vid, in the 1920s. The men at Bell Labs (a telephone company) developed the transistor to improve the sound of speech on long distance phone calls, using his patents. They based it on Lilienfeld's patents, not giving him credit, so hence were charlatans, not deserving a Nobel prize. The Japanese, Sony, took it from Bell, improving it to use in radio sets. The men at Bell Labs laughed at the Japanese who visited them thinking they could never do that. They did. Credit must also go to the Sony men. Sony was more back street outfit at the time.
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  27.  @Finglesham  DeValera was about the only one who did think that way. Franco never, not siding with Germany fearing occupation of Spanish territory by British forces. The Turks never thought that either. The Turkish ambassador stated that the British would win as they could raise an army of 40 million from the largest empire the world had ever seen. This point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India to fight the Japanese. All this DeValera was not aware of. Some prime minister.
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  28. Yes, a number of people can claim to have invented TV. But the first to broadcast moving pictures without wires, was John Baird. The first person on TV was a youth who he grabbed in from the street, giving him money to sit in front of the camera.
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  29. The Ghurkas were involved because they were not there.
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  30. Many of the Scandinavians were not just raiders. They came and settled bringing women with them.
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  31. Excellent.
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  32. Tiger 131 was used in Fury.
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  33.  @dukecraig2402  The Alison engine could not have the Stanley Hooker two-stage, two-speed supercharging without major rework. In fact, after being given the technology by the British, the Americans did sort of mange it after WW2 which was not a complete success. Even the USAAF was not going to play around getting an engine to work when they already had one in the Merlin. It would be crass to do such a thing when a war was on with time critical. The slightly longer, superior RR Griffon engine replaced the Merlin, even in WW2. The later Spitfires had the Griffon. The Griffon was not used in the Mustang. The Alison engine was good at low altitudes for sure. To say that the Alison was superior to the RR Merin, an engine with a racing lineage, is pushing it too far. Nationalistic fervor has got the best of you.
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  34.  Call Me Ishmael  The Thunderbolt was so large because the USAAF only wanted air cooled radial engines - why they ignored the Mustang with its water cooled engine. As a part of the deal to approach directly US manufacturers using them to make any sort of plane, the British had to give two planes of any type made to the USAAF for assessment. They did with the USAAF leaving them in the corner of a hangar. To get the power in those radial engines they needed to be big with a large diameter. Hence a large fat body behind. The Thunderbolt's prime attribute was ground attack. The Thunderbolt was large, time consuming to make, being very expensive. Bang for buck the Mustang was vastly superior. In WW2 it was a matter of getting the planes with the air forces ASAP.
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  35.  @dukecraig2402  More drivel. You are trying to say black is white. A voice in the dark no one listens to. The USA was way behind two-stage, two-speed supercharging. Look at the Stanley Hooker link I gave. The British gave them it to them US free. When the British asked the US to look at their Norden bomb site they said "no". Very nice of them in this two way cooperation. The Air Ministry directed the design of the Mustang for sure. It was their plane, being built for them They were paying! They would not trust some six year old outfit famous for making training planes to make a leading edge war plane. You have been looking at too many Hollywood films and those awful History Channel documentaries. And also take your stars and stripes glasses off.
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  36.  @remielpollard787  You are writing complete nonsense. The Mustang was not a private venture at all. North American never had the expertise and money to embark on such a project. Without the Air Ministry the plane would not have been. It is best you read what I wrote and understand it, instead of regurgitating Hollywood history. I never made it up.
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  37. Look at the Bond Bug.
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  38.  @paulcallicoat7597  This about Malta/North Africa.
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  39. HMS Warspite sailed into Pearl Harbor in mid 1941. The Warspite's crew commented on the minimal anti-aircraft guns seen on the US ships especially USS California. I am not sure if they received more guns before Dec 1941. Royal Navy ships when in port, if the port was attacked, would open up their anti-aircraft guns aiding the shore based AA.
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  40. What is on bearer?
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  41. You need to focus on Liverpool in England which was the defacto home of the Confederate fleet. Forgotten in the USA. Many vids can be made from this. During the American civil war, Liverpool was the unofficial home of the Confederate fleet. Three significant acts of the war involved Liverpool: The first act of the war - the first shot of the civil war was fired by a cannon made in Lydia Anne Street. The very last act of the war - Captain Waddell of the CCS Shenandoah walking up the steps of Liverpool Town Hall surrendering his vessel to the Lord Mayor, after sailing 'home' from Alaska to surrender. The last shot fired in the conflict was by CSS Shenandoah on  22 June 1865 at a Northern Union whaling ship in the North Pacific Ocean.  The last official lowering of the Confederate flag - Was on CSS Shenandoah on the River Mersey at Liverpool overseen by the Royal Navy. https://localwiki.org/liverpool/Liverpool_-_The_Home_of_the_Confederate_Fleet
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  42. Most these days can only remember TVs being flat screen, never mind black & white.
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  43. My uncle manned the Khyber Pass.
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  44.  @matehavlik4559  The country defend itself from what?
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  45.  @joeottsoulbikes415  Yes, like Thatcher, Trump and Johnson.
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  46. You need to read the history of the British in Afghanistan. ... properly.
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  47.  @johnrichard9606  You will find the British also wiped out Afghans as well. The first effective display of the machine gun was by the British against Afghanistan. From 1919 until Indian independence, Britain effectively ruled Afghanistan. Britain was responsible for its foreign policy. Most of the British soldiers were Indians.
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  48.  @johnrichard9606  I never mentioned glory, just fact.
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  49.  @johnrichard9606  Look up the Big Game.
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  50.  @johnrichard9606  Oh an ex Hippy. Afghanistan is between empires. 31 million people is not small. Yes, British v Ruskies.
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