DH Mosquito

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: cjcride
From Janes Aircraft Publishing

Mosquito FM.MK XIX Night Fighter
First Flight April 1944
2 Rolls Royce Merlin 25 engines @ 1,635 HP each
Max Speed 378 MPH
Service ceiling 34,500 feet
Range 1,830 miles
Weight gross 21,750 lbs
Armament 4 20mm Hispano Cannons


more data here
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mosquito/mosquito.html

 

[Number_35]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
No, the uni, and those around the world with Finite Element capability were all being utilised to work out what was happening (I thought it was structural failure AROUND the latch/hinge, rather than the mechanism itself - semantics probably)...that was the year ahead of me, they did these presos to us second years with the usual F.E. reds and yellows).

Astro14, yeah, I know the Comet was different, the uni was teaching us about metal fatigue, using the Comet and the pressurised pools that they tested the airframe in at the same time as the Boeing cargo door was being investigated.

Still fatigue, still due to unanticipated cause and effect.
Read Nevil Shute's brilliant novel No Highway in the Sky - I always thought it was based on the Comet's metal fatigue issues, but in fact was published in 1948! Prophetic - and a shame the Comet's designers didn't heed it.

 

[DeepFriar]

Quote:
Read Nevil Shute's brilliant novel No Highway in the Sky - I always thought it was based on the Comet's metal fatigue issues, but in fact was published in 1948! Prophetic - and a shame the Comet's designers didn't heed it.


A watchable movie was made of that with (Brigadier General) Jimmy Stewart at his bumbling, crazy professor best.

 

[DeepFriar]

Originally Posted By: Virtus_Probi
My pop was a big fan of the Hawker Typhoons, he said they helped save his butt when his US 2nd Armored division faced off against the 2nd Panzer at Celles during the Bulge...the German ran low on fuel and then got softened up by the Typhoons' rockets and cannons. It was still a [censored] of a fight to basically wipe out the 2nd Panzer, but dad told me that they expected to lose a tremendous number of men and tanks (maybe to the point of mutual annihilation) and the 2nd Armored was, fortunately, still an effective fighting force after the battle. And, dad survived to begat me later in life.



I didn't know much about the Typhoon (I remembered the fish face) so I went looking. Amazing aircraft, amazing engine! Twenty four cylinder Napier. I found a quite recent documentary that you might like to see. Lots of interviews with the pilots.

https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=qexMo-2ZLos


There is also a vid about the much improved version known as the Tempest.


https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=HA08Y_tc63s

 

[emg]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Yeah, the original design of this jet proved to have fatal flaws resulting in a number of losses in service, but everyone who followed learned from these failures and avoided the design errors DH made.


The Comet wasn't so much a design error as a manufacturing error. The metal around the windows was stressed significantly more than the engineers had calculated, but, as far as I remember, the big problem was that the windows were designed to be glued in, but someone decided to rivet them instead. The rivet holes caused cracks that spread until the windows gave way. Had they been glued, that wouldn't have happened.

 

[cjcride]

That's what I read too.
The movie link was enjoyable.
The stress cracks in the Comet window frame were partly due to them being square shape not rounded. After a certain amount of pressurization cycles it failed.