I was at Duxford in 2003, with Gary Edwards (formerly of the Olympus List),
when the Fairey Firefly of the Royal Naval Historic Flight crashed.
I watched him enter a barrel roll quite a way from crowd centre (east of the
M11 motorway) and then watched as the nose dropped way too far and failed to
recover. I spoke to a colleague who has flown a fair number of historic
aircraft and he understood that the aircraft had been fitted with a detuned
Merlin and it needed a highish entry speed for any vertical manoeuvres. The
pilot in this case had probably entered the barrel roll at too low a speed.
Barrel rolls are pretty dangerous manoeuvres at low level and have to be
treated with the greatest of care. I watched a Typhoon (Eurofighter) enter a
low-speed barrel roll in 2005 (I think) at Fairford and then lost sight of him
behind a single-story marquee. His timely selection of burner on the massive
engines in that aircraft stopped him hitting the runway, but he came within
feet of dying.
Two friends of mine have died in low level barrel rolls, one in a Jet Provost,
one in a Hawk.
Chris
On 18 Sep 2013, at 12:16, Piers Hemy <piers@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Fairey Firefly, methinks. But I have never seen wing roundels that small,
> nor with a yellow edge.
--
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