It looks as if the mounts for the cheek guns are built out from the nose (if that makes sense), which would most likely make it a G.
'Taint a G unless it has the chin turret, and that one doesn’t.
I love WW 1 aircraft. In London, I went to the Imperial War Museum and saw a Camel- it was so tiny. Those guys were crazy to fly that (apart from its legendary pig like manners).
I talked to a guy who owned a P-51D and a two-seat Spitfire Mk.IX (the one with the extra bubble on the turtledeck). He said the Spit was the sweetest flying aircraft he’s flown; but if he were in a fight he’d take the Mustang every time. The Mustang can’t touch the Spitfire’s aesthetic elegance though.
I haven’t counted. Maybe a dozen or so.
They flew a Camel at the aforementioned Chino air show, and it had an original engine. Very nice!
From what I’ve heard the Camel was anything but a ‘pig’. The main issue was that the rotary engines of the day were not like the radials we’re familiar with. In them, the crankshaft was fixed and the cylinders rotated around it creating a huge gyroscopic effect. This caused some pucker-worthy effects in right turns.
Found another site saying the cheek guns start with the F model, but I can’t actually see enough detail in that pic to tell if they are there. I’m going to look and see if I can find details on that particular plane. Can’t be many still flying.
I would agree with you, since the nose turret was standard equipment in a G model. However, according to the Vintage Flying Museum website, the plane is indeed a G model. The turret must have been removed at some point.
Psssst!
Hey kid - you wanna ride?
http://www.libertyfoundation.org/
They come to Atlanta quite often, and I’ve been priveleged to ride in both the Liberty Belle as well as the P-51 they bring along sometimes.
They travel across the country, so check the schedule to see when they’ll be in your town.
It’s an opportunity that can’t last forever, and I highly recommend you seize it if at all possible.
Dammit, Boyo Jim! I was going to post that!
Here’s a thread started by a volunteer who worked on ‘Chuckie’.
Johnny L.A.- please don’t ask for a cite as I don’t have my books with me, but I understand the Camel was a difficult plane to fly if you weren’t an experienced pilot. From memory, it was the engine type and the cpacity for very savage turns.
I understand that it was indeed a difficult airplane to fly. ([Biggles]If you can fly a Sopwith Camel, you can fly anything![/Biggles]) The engine had a large gyroscopic effect that caused the nose to pitch up in left turns and to pitch down in right turns. It was also tail-heavy and didn’t have elevator trim, which added workload to the pilot. It was short-coupled (the empennage was relatively close to the wings). This is good for maneuverability; not so much for stability. Another issue was a finicky engine, which might stop if it was mishandled.
I’m not very well-versed on WWI aircraft, but the one thing that I’ve always heard about the Camel was the nasty torque effects caused by the rotating engine.
I remember reading a book where some pilot from the 30’s flew a Camel and declared it the most difficult aircraft he had flown. (Something like that).
Sorry to hijack the thread, but would a pilot of today be able to jump into a Camel and fly it- or would the differences be too extreme?
(Yay- I have found my copy of “Flying Fury- Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps” by James McCudden VC- but it wasn’t the book I was after)
Is that a replica jacket, or the real thing?!? One of the instructors in my classes had a picture of that pinup in their office–and now that I think of it, one of the technicians I visited yesterday had one in their shop, too. That would be an awesome coincidence!
I am also a bomber buff. Granted, I love airplanes, but I am a fan of the “heavy haulers,” like the Handley Type Os, the B-17s, the B-25s (which my neighbor from back home flew), the B-47s and B-52s. The earlier the airframe, the better. Granted, now the B-52G and H models are very computerized and electronic, but the earlier “analog” ones mean more to me. Not to overly romanticize it, but there was a time when conflicts were fought by men (and women) with guts, steel, and machines–back when war was fought in person using a person’s actual skills and gumption. Now it’s simply hit a button, and nuke 'em from orbit. :rolleyes: [sub]War should be so horrible, lest we grow fond of it.[/sub]
These bombers to me epitomize the best in technology a nation could muster, and to me are a tribute to the aircrews who flew them and ground support troops who got them aloft.
In any case, I’m down at Eglin AFB right now, and the airfield that Jimmy Doolittle used to train his crews for the Tokyo strike is actually here! It’s abandoned and overgrown, but it’s still here. Rumor has it, you can still see some of the markings he had painted for training. If I can get to it in the next few weeks for some pictures, I will. I have to do some research first, but I do have a good start. And that link is useful for all 50 states.
Tripler
I have some work to do. Pictures (and details) to follow. 
I’m a fan. I’ve never gotten a chance to go for a ride though. Hopefully someday.
The jacket is one I bought from Avirex (The Cockpit) in the late-1980s. Also in the '80s I bought a copy of Vintage Aircraft Nose Art, and of all of the nose art in the book ‘Visibility Perfect’ was my favourite. (My g/f at the time liked ‘Bell of the Brawl’ – she’d seen it before I got the book – and wanted that on her jacket. She never got it.) I have a friend who is a painter (among other things), and asked if he could paint my jacket. I did some searching and found an image of the original pin-up art and of a professional reproduction jacket. I gave him the images and he did a bit of research on what paint to use, etc. I’m pleased with the results. The only real mistake he made was on the AAF shoulder ‘decal’. While he included a faint brown outline to simulate the clear part of an original decal that was applied to original jackets, he made the ‘decal’ four inches in diameter instead of three. I guess I should have specified. Great job on it though, including the lettering underneath. And in fact the originals did tend to wear off after use and were often repainted or repainted with a non-standard design, or replaced with a cloth or leather patch of some sort. So while it’s not ‘correct’, it’s ‘authentic enough’.
The original pin-up artist was Earl Moran, and it was published in 1942.
Quite understandable. I guess there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance in appreciating machines created to cause death and destruction. In the case of the Foundation’s Nine-O-Nine, it never saw combat. It was a firefighting air tanker for many years, so I suppose you coud say it did “good deeds”. What always intrigued me about the B-17 and it’s brethren is how people figured out how to put those things together–isn’t it possible to view them as works of “art”?
At any rate, the Collings Foundation isn’t entirely Allied-centric in their efforts . If you have $26,000 to spare, you can sign up to fly a German WWII jet fighter in their Messerschmitt Me 262 Project!
It was definitely one of the classics.
Already answered, it was a ‘G’ (sorry, was away from the thread). If memory serves, Doc Hospers told me it was being used for aerial spraying when he bought it (against fire ants). I’m pretty sure they had to remove the spray nozzles as part of their restoration. Last time I saw the Chuckie, they’d installed (or re-installed) a chin turret.
Interesting anecdote: During airshows, while the plane was parked, we had a big problem with kids/teens/jerks ignoring the signs, and grabbing the barrels of the tail and waist guns (some would attempt to swing from them). The Hospers’ hit on the solution of coating the barrels with a thick layer of nasty black grease. Hilarity ensued.
The Spitfire is definitely prettier.
Slightly off topic, I find it unspeakably cool that the upcoming F-35/Joint Strike Fighter has been given the Lightning II moniker in honor of the P-51 and English Electric Lightning.
I walked (crawled?) through Nine-O-Nine last year when they were at Moffett. My dad’s older brother flew B-17s and ended up as commander of the 95th BG just at the end of the war. My brother and I always made models of the B-17, and definitely thought it was a cool piece of machinery, even if its mid-thirties styling looked a little retro next to some of its workmates.
My flight that day, however, was in the B-25, “Todelayo,” my brother and I giving a flight to our dad as a gift for his 88th birthday. He had flown 98 combat missions in an A-20 in New Guinea and the Philippines, but had also flown the B-25 in non-combat roles (beer run to Australia, delivering Brass to various places), and this was as close as we could get. He was able to swap B-25 stories with the 40-something pilots and enjoyed the experience, especially since nobody was shooting at him.