A pair of clean F1CR‘s returning “ensemble” to base with the usual panache. Not Deltas, but who really cares.
Monthly Archives: June 2017
CAC CA-13 Boomerang: Just because.
Over Mareeba, Queensland. March 18, 1944. Sublime photo of No. 5 (Tactical Reconnaissance) Squadron RAAF (of course) “U-Beaut 2”, a CA-13 Boomerang (A46-128) piloted here by F/L D. H. Goode. Info source.
With the cockpit canopy gloriously open. I only miss some pineapple.
Sukhoi Jet Engine Powered Aircraft: We must begin somewhere.
This was Pavel Sukhoi’s OKB first attempt into the jet aircraft design. Conceived as a purely research aircraft in late 1942, this dandy artifact had an annular intake scoop placed the fuselage just behind its teardrop-shaped cockpit capsule. The nose section would have housed both the cockpit and a fuel tank, and was to be attached to the larger diameter central fuselage by four pylons. The central fuselage was to contain the “half-step” composite jet engine: a classic air-cooled engine -with an oil cooler- driving a pair of co-axial propellers was employed to supply compressed air to a sort of jet engine’s fuel injection/combustion chamber placed in the tapered tube. Complex enough?. The project never left the drawing board.
Very Soviet style artist’s impression of the subject. It could have been really something.
NAA P-51D Mustang: Green Broke.
This magnificent photo depicts a dorsal fin fillet-less early P-51D-5-NA (44-13366) just off the production line on a test flight near its birth place, the Inglewood North American plant (California) in 1944.
Slick it sure was. Photo: LIFE.
Nieuport 24: “How do we put the wings?”
Some sort of ultra low-aspect ratio experiment undertook by the Japanese in the 1920’s(?). They took this Nieuport 24 (or Nakajima type Ko 3) fuselage and equipped it with this bizarre, and I mean bizarre, wing structure. Sadly, the photo came with no really trustful data.
Hawker Typhoon Mk.1B: “I Got Stripes”.
A Typhoon Mk IB photographed by Flight magazine before its delivery to the RAF in April 1943. Exhibiting its gloriously aggressive lines to advantage; nice way to show us its 12in black and 24in white bands. As I’ve commented before, one of the Typhoon’s problems -especially in early service- was that it was easily mistaken with the Fw 190. This was the solution.
Photo. IWM.
Dassault Mirage IIIDBR: As intense as ever.
The fastest tasting another kind of speed. Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna in the rear seat of a two-seat F-103D (Brazilian denomination) in April 29, 1989. Utterly proud of his country, Senna said after this flight: “Se todos tivessem a oportunidade de sentir a mesma emoção, teriam mais amor a pátria” / “If all Brazilians would have the opportunity to feel this same emotion, they would love more our country”. No nonsense man.
Senna is wearing the standard Brazilian AF headgear of the era: a single visor HGU-26/P helmet with a MBU-5/P oxygen mask……, but in magnificent “samba” colors.
Such a gorgeous inflight portrait. Two of my addictions nicely joined here.
