Quotulatiousness

October 23, 2023

The RAF’s true workhorse fighter in the Battle of Britain – the Hawker Hurricane

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

William Loneskie sings the praises of the Hawker Hurricane, the main fighter plane of the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain in 1940:

Hawker Hurricane Mark I. This is the only airworthy Hurricane with a genuine Battle of Britain history. Since 2015 she has lodged with the Shuttleworth Collection and is seen displaying at the 2017 Season Premier Airshow at Old Warden, Bedfordshire, UK.
Photo by Alan Wilson via Wikimedia Commons.

In the popular mind it was the Supermarine Spitfire which carried the day for the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain. The grace of RJ Mitchell’s design was appreciated by the public as something very special, as it was for the pilots who flew it.

But it was the slower Hawker Hurricane which accounted for most of the German airmen killed in 1940 and destroyed most of their Heinkels, Junkers and Dorniers. Although nearly 200 Hurricanes had been lost in the Battle of France there were 32 squadrons of Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain compared with 19 of Spitfires.

By the time air battles commenced over England in 1940, the RAF had a secret weapon – BAM 100. This was British Air Ministry 100 octane fuel which had been developed and manufactured in the United States, bought for cash by the UK government, and shipped across the Atlantic by tankers. Compared with the previous 87 octane petrol, the new fuel boosted the speed of the Hurricane and the Spitfire by around 30mph. The Luftwaffe pilots were taken by surprise and couldn’t understand where the extra power came from until later in the war German technicians tested fuel from a downed aircraft.

Side by side the Spitfire and Hurricane, both powered by the iconic Rolls-Royce V12 Merlin, were very different. The Spitfire with its elliptical wing and perfect proportions “looked as if it could fly”, as Sergeant Cyril Bamberger of 610 and 41 squadrons said. But the Hurricane, if not quite an ugly duckling, had an ungainly appearance.

While the Spitfire was of all-metal construction, the Hurricane’s structure was a halfway house between fabric covered biplanes, such as the Gloster Gladiator, and all-aluminium monoplanes. An unintended consequence of the Hurricane’s fabric-covered fuselage was that German cannon shells could pass straight through without exploding. Its pilots soon realised that the Hurricane could take a lot of punishment, and the ground crews, the unsung heroes of the battle, could often repair the aircraft on station unlike the Spitfire, which was difficult to produce, maintain and repair.

Getting airborne in a squadron scramble, or landing on a grass airstrip, the Hurricane was safer than its compatriot because Camm had designed its undercarriage to open outwards, not inwards, making its track wider.

In the air the Hurricane shrugged off its ugly duckling appearance and became a killing machine. Flight Lieutenant Peter Brothers of 32 and 257 Squadrons said: “It was a superb combat aircraft … it was a better gun platform than the Spitfire”. Squadron Leader Tom Dalton Morgan said that, although he had flown more hours on the Spitfire, “as a fighting machine I preferred the Hurricane”.

The Hurricane could out-turn a Messerschmitt Bf109. Its turning radius of 785ft compared with 895ft for the German machine and 860ft for the Spitfire. The Hurricane’s thick wing allowed a different configuration of its eight .303 Browning guns giving a closer concentration of fire at a rate of 19 rounds per second.

Hero-worship of Admiral Nelson seen as (somewhat) harmful

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On Saturday, Sir Humphrey noted the anniversary of Trafalgar and indicated that the Royal Navy’s idolization of Admiral Nelson somewhat obscures the rest of the Royal Navy’s historical role:

“Danish privateers intercepting an enemy vessel during the Napoleonic Wars”.
Oil painting by Christian Mølsted, 1888 from the Collection of the Museum of National History via Wikimedia Commons.

There is an argument, which the author has sympathy with, that the RN has perhaps idolised Nelson too much. That while he did much good, the adoration of him comes at the cost of forgetting countless other leaders and battles which have relevance to this day. This is not to denigrate or play down the impact of Trafalgar, but to ask whether we should be equally aware of other parts of Royal Navy history too. Understanding the Royal Navy of the late 18th and early 19th century can provide us with much to consider and learn from in looking at how to shape the Royal Navy of the early 21st century. If you look at the Royal Navy of today and of Nelson’s time (and throughout the Napoleonic Wars), a strong case can be made that although the technology is materially different, the missions, function, and capability that the RN offers to the Government of the day are little changed.

While we tend to fix attention mostly on the major battle of Trafalgar, the RN fulfilled a wide variety of different missions throughout the war. The fleet was responsible for blockading Europe, monitoring French movements, and providing timely intelligence on the activity of enemy fleets. Legions of smaller ships stood off hostile coasts, outside of engagement range, on lonely picket duties to track the foe. The Royal Navy also maintained forces capable of strategic blockades in locations like Gibraltar and the Skagerrak, relying on chokepoints to secure control of the sea.

The UK was a mercantile nation with a heavy reliance on trade, and with the land routes of Europe closed by Napoleon, the Merchant Navy was vital to victory. The Royal Navy played a key role in escorting ships in convoy, ensuring their protection from hostile forces and helping ensure vitally needed trade goods arrived in British ports. This included timber from colonies in North America, vital to building and repairing warships. Similarly British policy to defeat Napoleon relied on supporting continental land powers, and a steady flow of munitions and materiel were sent by sea, escorted by RN warships to Baltic ports to help support nations fighting France.

The Royal Navy maintained forces of small raiding craft to hold the French coast at risk throughout the wars, sending vessels to attack French coastal locations, capturing intelligence and tying down hundreds of French coastal artillery batteries and thousands of men who could have been deployed elsewhere to protect French soil. More widely the UK engaged in strategic raiding and blockade, for example operations in the Adriatic Campaign (1807-14) where a small number of British warships blockaded ports, conducted amphibious operations and engaged in surface combat with different foes. In the same vein the UK found itself targeted by Danish & Norwegian raiders too, who fought the so-called “Gunboat War” from 1807 to 14 against the UK, where many small scale actions between British brigs and small ships against gunboats in the Baltic. This often forgotten campaign saw violent clashes and victories on both sides with the sinking and capture of many RN vessels to protect convoy trade.

More widely the Royal Navy worked closely with the British Army in a variety of amphibious operations, providing ships to deploy and sustain the Army on campaign. There were a number of impressive amphibious failures, but also some successes too, particularly in the West Indies and Egypt, where working as part of a jointly integrated force, the Royal Navy provided fire support (and even operated Congreve land attack rockets for shore bombardment) as the British Army fought the French ashore. In the Peninsular War the RN was vital for ensuring the supply of Wellington’s forces and, where necessary evacuating them, such as during the retreat from Corunna.

Icon of Canadian Search and Rescue For 40 years; the story of the CH-113 Labrador

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Polyus
Published 3 Sept 2021

The Boeing-Vertol CH-113 Labrador was an icon of Canadian search and rescue for 40 years. It served on both the right and left coast and undertook many life saving rescues in its day. Originally ordered as two models, an army transport version and a search and rescue version, they were all converted to a common standard when the army took possession of their Chinook helicopters. As a dedicated search and rescue helicopter it excelled at its role. Its replacement is a long story for another time but involves several facepalm moments thanks to short sighted decision making. As a result it was kept in service longer than anticipated but still did the job well.

0:00 Introduction
0:27 Previous generation of search and rescue
1:18 Acquisition of the CH-46 Sea Knight
4:10 Definitive CH-113 Labrador model
5:53 Replacement and retirement
6:38 Conclusion
(more…)

QotD: The real meaning of “Watergate”

Filed under: Government, History, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I was reflecting this week on my brief stint, many years ago, as a newspaperman. It was a job I loved. I signed on not too many years after the Watergate scandal, and journalists were still flush with heroic ideas about themselves. Woodward and Bernstein — and all reporters by extension — had toppled a corrupt presidency and saved the republic and the Constitution from the kind of behind-the-scenes government tyranny dramatized in such thriller films as The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor.

[…]

Recently, reading Mark Levin’s Unfreedom of the Press, I was reminded that, before reporters went on their great crusade against Richard Nixon, they had overlooked a whole lot of corruption in the Democrat presidents who preceded him.

Levin tells how John F. Kennedy, with the knowledge of his brother and Attorney General Robert, nudged the IRS into auditing conservative groups. With Kennedy’s approval, the FBI was also employed to investigate those the administration disliked, including Martin Luther King Jr. Lyndon Baines Johnson would later increase the politically motivated auditing and spying. None of this was uncovered until later on.

Ben Bradlee — the editor of the Washington Post, where Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate story — was well aware of his pal Kennedy’s misuse of the tax and investigative agencies. Not only did he not report it, he allowed himself and his paper to be manipulated by information JFK had wrongly obtained.

This totally changes the Watergate narrative. Nixon’s dirty tricks and enemy lists may have been creepy and wrong, but the press exposure of these misdemeanors came after years of ignoring similar and worse malfeasance by Democrat administrations.

That changes what Watergate means. That transforms it from a heroic crusade into a political hit job, Democrat hackery masquerading as nobility. The press turned a blind eye to the corruption of JFK and LBJ, then raced to overturn the election of a man they despised — despised in part because he battled the Communism many of them had espoused.

Andrew Klavan, “‘Watergate’ Doesn’t Mean What the Press Thinks It Means: The press turned a blind eye to the corruption of JFK and LBJ, then raced to overturn the election of a man they despised”, The Daily Wire, 2019-08-31.

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