Macchi Mc 72 - Aircrew

Following up on the current Aircrew feature in Aeroplane magazine for October 2011, here's a couple of the online items that can't be presented in print.

Perhaps the most important online offering is this link here which gives what is claimed to be the sound of the Mc 72 - a spine-tingling sound.  If you've read this far the link is just above.  Stop. Go back!

This video above from BomberGuy, has a good selection of period footage of the aircraft, pilot Francesco Agello, and engine, at 52 seconds after an intro of general still shots.

The surviving, record-breaking Mc 72 in the Italian air Force Museum. James Kightly.

And here's a link to the reference in the period issue of Popular Mechanics. For particular - and now odd-seeming - reasons, this magazine never mentioned manufacturer or trade names.

Emphasis on the propellers, but also how little frontal area the aircraft has. James Kightly.

The original team, pilot and aircraft.

The Fiat AS.6 engine:

And joint between the fore and aft halves:



[Aeroplane's monthly Aircrew feature is built around a specially commissioned central illustration by my artist colleague Ian Bott (his website here) while I write and compile it.]

Young Spring Eagle

What could be better than a young eagle getting some exercise?

This Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation CA-25 Winjeel* was being brought out after winter hibernation and a few circuits to remember what it was about.



*The name 'Winjeel' is supposed to be an unspecified Aboriginal language name for 'Young Eagle'.

Film 'Into The Wind' gets a UK TV release

I'm delighted to hear that Steve Hatton's film Into The Wind, of Bomber Command veteran interviews, has been picked up for UK broadcast on the Yesterday Channel.


Electric Egg, Steve's company's press release says:

Electric Egg are delighted and proud to announce that our first self-produced feature length documentary, Into the Wind, has been acquired for UK broadcast by the Yesterday channel, part of the UK TV group.

Millions will now see Into the Wind, directed by Steven Hatton, when it airs on the popular digital channel, whose stablemates include Dave and GOLD.

The film is an insightful and touching documentary relating the experiences of Second World War aircrew veterans of Bomber Command through their own words and sadly in many cases for the last time. As well as a document of unique historical value and significance, Into the Wind is a record of deeply personal stories, tales of friendships gained and lost, the perpetual possibility and proximity of death, the importance of love and family, the moral implications of warfare and their shared love of flying.

Into the Wind explores the passion for flying shared by many of the veterans including Adge Boal who pilots a light aircraft over his old operational airbase as he recounts the tragic story of the loss of his first crew. The film also features Bomber Command pilot Ken Wallis who, at the age of 95, still flies his self built and designed autogyros from his home in Norfolk and also Ken Harder, who emotionally revisits his old crew position in a taxi run of a wartime Lancaster bomber. Shot across three continents, the documentary features contributions from former aircrew from across the commonwealth including veterans from Australia, Canada, Guyana, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago and the UK.

Into the Wind features a evocative original score by composer Hugh Cowling, previously unseen archive material and is director, Steven Hatton’s first feature length documentary. It will be aired on Yesterday in November 2011 and will also be released on DVD before the end of the year. A seperate announcement will be made about this soon.

Steven, who with Neil Baker founded Electric Egg in 2005, said: “We would like to thank all those who have supported us throughout the making of the film, it has been a long and rewarding journey and we are extremely pleased to make this announcement that these stories will be shared with such a wide audience.”

For more information on the film, trailer, screening times and the DVD release date; please join our mailing list by emailing us or visiting the film's website.

For further information on the Yesterday channel and UK TV please visit their website and for more information on current and future Electric Egg projects please visit our own website.

We would also like to point you in the direction of the composer Hugh Cowling's website. Into the Wind is Hugh's debut documentary score and his work deserves a wide audience.

We carried an article by Steve in Flightpath magazine here in Australia [Vol.22 No.4]. Steve touched on many aspects of the story that were, I think, very interesting and thought provoking in a degree such documentaries often are not. One item Steve touched on was the diversity of Commonwealth nations represented, and Steve said:

It was very interesting to hear the experiences of black Bomber Command veterans and their experiences coming to Britain in the 1940s. One veteran, the late Cy Grant, described a very ambiguous relationship with his wartime career and one that he only began to consider and discuss in his later years. Cy flew three Bomber operations before being shot down and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp. Despite this wartime service he was prevented from following his profession of law at the end of the war due to the colour of his skin. Despite this knock back, Cy ultimately pursued a career in acting, music and writing in which he enjoyed a great deal of success.

This experience of Black Commonwealth crews links back to an earlier post I made on the Tuskegee Airmen, the Black American fighter pilots, here, and particularly relates to a discussion (at the bottom of the post) that occurred afterwards.

But back to Into the Wind. I would highly recommend a viewing of the excellent trailer, here. I hope further screenings, maybe even in the Antipodes, eventuate.

Unreal

All thanks to the volunteer team at Chino's Planes of Fame we can see this uncanny, historic, and unique Northrop N9MB in the air.

Remarkable.

Rolling...

A practice with the repaired long lens at Thursday's RAAF Museum's Interactive with Mike Falls in Shortstop's SNJ.

Stringbag incoming

First Fairey Swordfish to the EAA's Airventure. Well done the Canadians.

Hit by the shovel...

A National Railway Museum's Explainer runs through how a steam engine works. Good, but no steam. [James]

One of the hardest things to get over accurately, and one of the main areas museums have lacked in the past is the importance of understanding how people use tools - or more how our predecessors artefacts are used, and thus how they really inform us how our predecessors live. Or not.

It is a core part of what's known as 'intangible heritage' and a fine example of it seemed to leap off the page and hit me like the implement in question.

[James]

We are on the footplate of a locomotive in a railway museum:

"It felt strange after so many years to stand where he had stood as a young fireman (and later driver), and he needed a moment to gather his thoughts.

...he picks up the fireman’s shovel and laughs. 'No man could wheel this for six hours.' The shovel is wrong, too heavy. 'These engines were veracious monsters, with an endless need for coal. It was like feeding the fires of hell trying to keep them fed.'

He explained the drivers chose their fireman and then you worked as a team, even taking turns firing: it was the only way the beast could be fed. You carried an extra shovel – your hands were so wet with sweat, the shovel could fly out of your hands into the firebox. It was back-breaking, gut-wrenching work."

The Fireman's shovel was an essential and - in a very precise sense - specialised tool, easily overlooked or misread by those, later who were not users. To a real Fireman of the day, one of the elite in the field, the weight (and probably, balance and feel) was crucial, and a spare potentially vital. But unless the company specified the 'right' shovel and a spare, that information, that user's insight, could well never get documented.

It is all too easy to see a locomotive curator laying in a suitable shovel for display, or a rough and ready, but hardly vitally weighted and backed-up example, for an occasional outing in steam. Thanks to Russell Holowood's blog from the National Railway Museum in the UK, we now have this little tale and a great case study both documented, recorded and in the public domain.

It is a small part of the complex system that is steam railway, yet the lack of a spare would be a classic horseshoe nail. There's a lesson in understanding, a terrific anecdote for making the crews' lives real for the museum's visitors and something intangible - around the shovel - so easily lost.

Mallard's tender. No coal, no water, no intangible heritage? [James]

Museums and academia are littered with false but authoritatively-presented assumptions by non-users of the real user's capabilities. The academic dismissal of claims for the achievements of Ancient Greek trireme crews based on calculation were sunk by the construction of a full size replica trireme Olympias, which with faults and all proved that with this example of experimental archaeology, the Greek writers' and historians' claims were perfectly feasible in practice.

I wonder what the aeronautical equivalents are?

[Thanks to the museum curator 'B1' who introduced me to the concept of intangible heritage via his studies; and to Rob Langham who pointed me at the blog via his own by recommendation.]