| Welcome to 72nd Aircraft. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Westland Whirlwind | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 5 2017, 05:01 AM (197 Views) | |
| J.C. Bahr | Nov 5 2017, 05:01 AM Post #1 |
|
Hero
![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Edit: Eh, never mind, would seem the chaps at this website have knowledge about it, but I didn't see anything about it being checked out. Had forgotten about these guys: http://whirlwindfighter.blogspot.com/ My original unedited post: So I'm going through an old Kookaburra book on the Whirlwind and it has individual histories of each aircraft built. One stuck out to me... "P7002 - SF-W of No. 137 Squadron. Ditched in Channel off Deal April 4th 1943 after 278 flying hours." Given a good chance that it should be largely intact... wonder if anyone's gone to check it out for possible preservation? RAF Museum anyone?!?! P7052 was also ditched at sea, but doesn't say where. Several others crashed or disappeared at sea also... so one would think something could be cobbled together from all the wrecks. This aircraft has always been a favorite of mine and it's a crying shame that none exist or not even a replica has been attempted (yet?)
Edited by J.C. Bahr, Nov 5 2017, 06:29 AM.
|
|
J.C. Bahr "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" - Leonard Nimoy | |
![]() |
|
| Mark Schynert | Nov 5 2017, 08:31 PM Post #2 |
|
Yeast
![]() ![]() ![]()
|
'Ditching' might result in salvable remains, but most crashes at sea would probably result in disintegration of the airframe on impact. Maybe, if you're lucky, you could find a Peregrine more or less intact, but the rest of it would be in small bits, if not outright consumed by fire or explosion. Even with ditching, the airframe is bound to be severely stressed (consider the leverage of the engines/mounts on the main spar, frex), and the subsequent plunge to the ocean floor could tear up the airframe and/or scatter it over a wide area. The other problem with any Whirlwind submerged in sea water for 75+ years is the aluminum and magnesium parts and even the steel might corrode away. Maybe some of the alloys would fare better (again, look for Peregrines), but finding complete wrecks is highly unlikely. |
![]() |
|
| jvenables | Nov 7 2017, 04:03 AM Post #3 |
|
Hawk
![]() ![]() ![]()
|
It's a nice thought that a Whirlwind could be recovered but I tend to agree with Mark. And even though the approximate location of the ditching is recorded, I would think that locating the wreckage would be... to borrow a quote from "Saving Private Ryan":.. like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. Even if the aircraft survived the ditching relatively intact, currents at the time and since could have moved it, shifting seafloor sediments could have buried it, etc. There are certainly the tools available these days to locate such wreckage and parts thereof but the economics of doing so could easily outweigh the value of undertaking a search and recovery. |
|
James from Brisbane, Australia Now living in Laos Nil illegitimi carborundum | |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · General Discussion · Next Topic » |





![]](http://z4.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)



12:54 AM Jul 11