On 13 Jul 2005, at 09:24, Paul Jakma wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, Niall O Broin wrote:
>>> They had taking off gear, which was jettisoned on take off and reused
>> for some other poor schmuck.
>> They did??
According to Wikipedia, yes, though we all know now that that is a very
unreliable source. But when you think about it, it makes sense. Towards
the war's end, Japan was making really cheap wood and canvas aircraft
solely for kamikaze use. Giving such an aircraft retractable gear would
have probably been impossible, and leaving gear on it would have led to
reduced range from drag. So basically propping the fuselage on a
trolley, more or less, made sense in a number of ways.
> Also, the British fitted catapult-launched fighters (Hurricanes) to
> some merchant ships:
>>http://www.aviation-history.com/hawker/hurrcane.html>> in an effort to provide some measure of air protection for convoys, as
> the germans had a rather spiffy long-range bomber, the Focke-Wulf
> Condor (developed in the 30s under guise of a civil aviation
> airliner), which could range far out into the atlantic..
>> These Hurricanes still had landing gear though, though that wasn't
> much use if they weren't launched close to land - the pilot would have
> to ditch near a ship and be picked up.
Damn but that was an expensive defense mechanism - they used up an
aircraft at every launch?
Niall
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