Barrcuda's !
Reputed comment of American Navy Officer on British Carrier Re : Fairey Barracuda ,
"That sure is a marvellous flying machine ,
But it will never replace the Aeroplane " ! Youd need a look at a full size there.
An uncle parted this world a few weeks back, reckond he worked on design of electrical installations on them .
seem to recall he said they made a fair sort of THUMP as they went in .
Base was out on some eastut with big mud flats at low tide .
Mk 5 , Griffon engined , wasnt as underpowered.
Initialy Barracudas had a major problem with Gyroscopic Prcession .
Trimed for full dive , at full throttle
maybe 1.500 hp , if the pull out was abrupt with the dive brakes pulled up still at Full Throttle , Theyed
do a hard right , 180 deg. roll, and stick the nose in the drink . cause of the 'nose up' trim ,inverted .
low level pull outs were baned untill this was investigated .
Oh well , they hit the Tirptz anyway .Mightve gone quite well with a Turbo prop .
Another amusing Navy story was a carrier ordered to trim all props 6 in. for deck clearance.
Later found the order was intended for the carriers SeaFire's . The Barracudas take of wasnt helped by red line r.p.m.s in this case ,either.
edit. Thinking back , I think it was the Evading hard right , if simultaeneous with pull out ,that caused the Tourque Roll.
Cumulative forces takeing over. The Mk5 had an enormous fin strake to counter this . Plus more span .