bdk wrote:
JDK wrote:
Actually keeping them flying isn't the issue, it's been refurbishing them to fly. Most flying preserved Mosquitoes remained airworthy to the end of their flying days.
James, that's like saying that you had found something in the last place you looked!
No, not really. Sorry if you missed the precision.
(OK, I put it badly.) They were rarely grounded due to structural / airworthyness issues; and also got through the massacre of the innocents of lighter wood-construction British aircraft of the 1960s. Given the problems of wood-design aircraft servicing that is an achievement. However once out of service, they would deteriorate from airworthy condition much more quickly than an equivalent metal type - and were harder than an equivalent metal type to restore to flightworthy condition. Modern NDT might have helped, but repairs for voids etc. would still be hard.
bdk wrote:
JDK wrote:
Also reading the online Flight accounts of the 1920s and 1930s, it's interesting to note how suspicious British aero-engineers were of all metal construction, regarding it as more risky than wood-fabric or metal-fabric construction. Early accounts of Junkers of Lockheed all-metal airliners show amazement they don't suffer from structural problems. Sounds odd, now, but then, that was clearly an issue.
Could this have been suspicion of aluminum specifically? Certainly steel was well respected in that era as a structural material.
Not being a practicing historian in metallurgy, I wonder if the heat treating of aluminum was not very well understood back then (or the processing methods were unreliable).
Good question. I'm certainly no metallurgist either; however my impression of the suspicion of the Junkers F13 airliner and questions put to the Junkers representative, and later the Lockheed 10 examination certainly smells a lot of the 'Not Invented Here syndrome'.
Oh, and the Brits are still suspicious of that American material 'aluminum'. They prefer aluminium.
If I refind the quotes...
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