GAL38 Fleet Shadower

[DispatchDragon]

From Ted Cook - at the Pond now



Quite probably the ugliest looking British Aircraft I have ever seen.

Thank you Ted for graciously giving us another wonderful gift

Leif

[ferryman]

'ooray-'ooray-'ooray! - I've been wanting one of these beauties for ages. Mind you, I'll have to be careful where I park it -don't want to frighten the Austers.

[TSR2]

beauties

Did you forget you glasses this morning

[DaveB]

I gotta say Ben.. even the 360 looks pretty by comparison! It's so ugly it could be Russian!

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[ferryman]

Of course it's a beauty! 4 Pobjoy Niagaras must have sounded wonderful, and it's a fine piece of aerodynamic engineering (try finding anthing else which will potter quietly along at 39mph without stalling). Not a pretty aeroplane, I grant you, but it's sister (the Airspeed AS39) is arguably even less pretty. and if you were casting an aerial version of "Cinderella" the pair of them would surely play her stepsisters.

Mind you, my views on aircraft beauty has been shaped by living close to EGHI, and consequently having daily doses of Bristol Frighteners (as a child) and Clockwork Tristars (more recently).

[DaveB]

You'd really be hard pushed to say one was less pretty than the other mate.. peas in a pod springs to mind

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Rich]

Thanks Ted, just did carrier proving on HMS Victorious steaming at 29 kts in Manila Bay, without a hook, stopped in about 40 ft. Took off again with no assistance, no problems. This is in FSX but going to fire up Fs9 to see if I get simmilar results with a 20 kt wind over the deck.

Maybe a bit slow for some but I like it.

[Fodda]

WOW! There is something inherantly beautiful in things that are so funtionally utilitarian. I'd never heard of this fleet shadower project before, and that GAL is a superb design. What a shame it was cancelled before introduction into service.

One thing that puzzles me though, a slow aeroplane cruising at lowish altitude above an enemy fleet would surely be an easy target for ship-borne AA guns?

[SkippyBing]

WOW! There is something inherantly beautiful in things that are so funtionally utilitarian. I'd never heard of this fleet shadower project before, and that GAL is a superb design. What a shame it was cancelled before introduction into service.

One thing that puzzles me though, a slow aeroplane cruising at lowish altitude above an enemy fleet would surely be an easy target for ship-borne AA guns?

I think the idea would have been to shadow from outside AA range! Which actually isn't that far vs the visual detection range for a fleet of ships, at the time very few if any ships would have had radar so they may not even have noticed it was there. Versus the German Navy it may have been ok due to their lack of air power, but it would have been mincemeat against the IJN.

[ferryman]

A surviving flak-gunnery officer from "Bismark" explained that one of the reason that Swordfish attacks were so successful was that the target speed dials used to calculate deflection had a lowest setting of about 100kts.

Apart from the Shadowers, the RN had some other extremely "un-pretty" aircraft - the Seamew and Barracuda come to mind (especially the Barra in wings-folded mode :o ).