Noel

Beautiful.  He's giving that plane a real workout compared to a lot of vintage-plane videos I've seen.  Thanks.

Edited November 12, 20214 yr by JNS

Excellent, now lets have 5 minutes of the Hurricane. The hero that isn't praised enough. The real reason we won the Battle of Britain. 

Although of course the Spitfire is awesome and utterly iconic. And that merlin engine was a masterpiece. In fact the P51 was rubbish until it got the Rolls Royce Merlin engine. 

 

48 minutes ago, martin-w said:

Excellent, now lets have 5 minutes of the Hurricane. The hero that isn't praised enough. The real reason we won the Battle of Britain.

I thought the real reason we won was because those Polish and Czech pilots who made up five percent of the RAF’s fighter pilot force were responsible for fifteen percent of the Luftwaffe’s loses?

Just enough to persuade the Germans that they were on a hiding to nothing.....

I've seen several documentaries and read quite a bit about the Battle of Britain.

I think the reason the Spitfire is mentioned more than the Hurricane is because they had different missions.  The Spitfires were tasked to go after the German fighter escorts...the ME-109s...while the Hurricane's mission was to go after the bombers.  Dog fighting is always the most spectacular and glamorous mission.

Both were the real reason you won the Battle of Britain.  Had the Spitfires not kept the ME-109 escorts busy the Hurricanes would have had a much more difficult time going after the bombers.  And if the Spitfires had to go after both the escorts and the bombers the battle would have been lost.

They deserve equal praise because without both the battle would have lost.  Neither Spitfire or Hurricane could have done it alone.

There was also a third element without which the Battle of Britain would have been lost.  Radar.  Those radar operators and the tacticians directing both the Spitfires and Hurricanes to their targets deserve a lot of praise too.

But the Spitfire is a sleeker looking airplane and an eye catcher.

Another thing that saved Britain was word not allowed's decision to open up the Eastern front at the same time.  Had the aircraft used to bomb the Russians been instead added to the fight against Britain the outcome might have been very different.

Noel

 

@birdguy, there was another reason we won and it was down to an element of luck and a bad judgement call by AH. The Germans accidentally dropped some bombs on London when they were forbidden in doing so.

That lead to a retaliatory raid by the RAF on Berlin. AH was so incensed he ordered the Luftwaffe to switch from airfields to London. That allowed the RAF to repair the damaged airfields and regroup.

That decision cost Germany the BoB and eventually, the war.

Yes Ray, and that led to the intentional bombings of civilians in cities such as the Dresden raids in February 1945 and the Tokyo Raids in March and April 1945 creating firestorms.  Finally ending with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Those raids changed the concept of avoiding civilian casualties to deliberately bombing them.  

Noel

@birdguy, this discussion is entering a sensitive area. That’s me out.

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@birdguy, this discussion is entering a sensitive area. That’s me out.

Let's all take Ray's hint and carry the bombing discussion(s) no further!

Agreed.

Noel

20 hours ago, JNS said:

Beautiful.  He's giving that plane a real workout compared to a lot of vintage-plane videos I've seen.  Thanks.

Love the PBR textures.😁

the cameraman was talented!

The same camera guy and YT channel.

In case you wanted to know how in Nordic legend the end comes for Wotan of the Wagner Ring operas. Loki the fire god of chaos in the operas sires a half dire wolf son Fenrir who vows to tear Wotan to pieces at Ragnarok. Ragnarok is Midnight of the Gods, like Gotterdammerung is Twilight of the Gods.

Fenrir is a giant wolf like the dire wolf of Canada (the Yukon gray wolf).