Pagoda mast indeed!

Early Spitfires with two blade fixed pitch wood prop; prototype K5054 in 1936, which was only barely faster than the Hurricanes then in service until the propeller design was improved


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1937 K5054 belly landing
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K5054 was destroyed on September 4th 1939 at Farnborough, the day after Britain declared war on Germany. The cockpit was crushed when it flipped over on landing, killing the pilot. If you watch the video above that pilot, at least, sat extraordinarily high in the cockpit and it's easy to imagine how the accident could be fatal
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No 19 Squadron, first to be equipped with Spitfires, formation flight shortly after acceptance October 1938
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Mounted on display at the McLellan Galleries, Scotland, as part of the the 1939 Royal Aircraft Exhibition
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I've always thought two bladed pre-WWII fighters that ended up further developed into better/faster/3 bladed versions looked goofy. But cool.

Solothurn S-18/100 20mm anti-tank rifle

Wonder if that's a vintage photo at the quary.....

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Another two blader. HE-112 in Spain, 1938.

I wonder how many here today will get the reference?  

The French Dewoitine D.500 series also started out with a fixed wooden two blade prop and evolved into variable metal three blade.  The original French D.500 had rifle caliber cowl guns firing through the prop arc with interrupter gears, the D.501L for Lithuania and the D.510 for the French had rifle caliber wing guns and a 20mm firing through the hub.

Lithuanian D.501L
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French D.510
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A few of us will......

Taxi accident in heavy fog on an English airfield.

Yep, a few.  It's just the consequences of being well-read, nothing more.

After the first one, the rest come at a discounted rate.

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The fastest a production propeller driven fighter has ever flown and survived was 620mph/Mach 0.92 by this photo recon variant Spitfire Mk XI flown by Anthony Martindale in April 1944 in a sustained 45 degree dive from high altitude during RAF high speed research.  At top speed the reduction gear failed and the propeller went into the mother of all overspeeds and was torn off.  The shift in balance made the aircraft tail heavy and threw Martindale into an uncommanded 11G zoom climb, knocking him unconscious.  He awoke at 40,000 feet and glided the Spitfire back to base, where he made a nice gentle landing.  It was found that his Spitfire's wings had been forced up and back several inches into a slightly swept shape.  

A month later Martindale had reached 600mph in another Spitfire XI when his supercharger exploded and the engine caught fire.  He was over a town at the time so instead of bailing out he flew the burning aircraft out to open country.  With his windscreen covered by oil he almost hit high tension power lines and was forced down in some woods.  He struggled clear of the burning wreckage and then, despite a spinal injury, returned and recovered the flight recorder.

Martindale on the left; legendary test pilot Eric "Winkle" Brown, who was in the same program, third from left, sitting on the cowling.
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(Brown's a small guy, only 5'-7".  He survived several crashes similar to the crushed Spitfire K5054 cockpit that killed others because he was able to curl up into a very compact ball)

That pun wasn't unintended.

Captioned "31st August 1940 A mechanic repairing the propeller of a dive bomber aircraft. Pilots are receiving training in dive bombing at a Royal Air Force station in England"  
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The narrow nose this guy is straddling had me stumped for awhile, it doesn't resemble any dive bomber the RAF would have had handy in 1940 and I thought it looked most like a Boulton-Paul Defiant, the RAF turret fighter.  Turns out it probably is a Defiant, they were trialed as dive bombers in 1940 after it was realized they made poor fighters.  Alas, they also made poor dive bombers.
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Not a whole lot of boom, four 20lb bombs on each rack (or two 40lb)
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AKA "Cooper Bombs".  I've come across them out here.

Looks like a wasted sortie, not nearly enough effect on the enemy to justify the effort and risk.  I found a reference that says the RAF dropped more than 232,000 of these 20lb and 40lb bombs, with larger numbers dropped late in the war: LINK  

A few years after the Defiant carried eight 20lb bombs light weight Mustangs were hauling 48 30lb cluster bombs
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By 1943 or so the Spitfire was sometimes carrying two 250lb and one 500lb bomb
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RAAF Kittyhawk in Italy
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F/O Guy R Branch, lost the propeller on his Hurricane ETA standing in front of a Blenheim with missing propeller. Later KIA August 1940, RIP
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Maintenance crew fight the Battle of Britain every night, Spitfire Rotol propeller overhauled
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A lever made from a plank and some rope changes the blade pitch while working on a Hurricane DH Variable propeller hub, Egypt June 1941
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RAAF Hurricane Rotol propeller replacement, Egypt
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Free French Spitfire MkV
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Hundreds of back alley workshops in Cairo were recruited to repair airplanes; 1942 Egyptian welds a brake drum, propeller being carried away for work
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Pretty sure F O Branch is NOT standing in front of a Hurricane. Radial engine, looks to be a twin.

Pretty sure that's a Bristol Blenheim.

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The cowl supports look right for that.

Oops, that was dumb of me.  Mea culpa.

First one is very expensive, after that they're all free.

OP, thank you for this awesome thread, and thank you to all the contributors.  I've learned so much, and saved so many photos.  Wished I had more to contribute, but my knowledge base only extends to building WWII model tanks and aircraft.  Very cool thread.

Hamilton Standard Ground Adjustable Propeller, could hardly be simpler
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I've enjoyed the propeller, seaplane and other rabbit holes we've gone down.

Inside pics of U-995
more pics

continuing the maintenance theme...

British Empire & Commonwealth Forces in the Far East-SE Asia 1937-1946
April 28, 2015
 ·
Mechanics service the Bristol Hercules engines of a Handley Page Halifax B Mark IIIA of No. 1341 (Radio Countermeasures) Flight at Digri, India. 1945. (IWM)
Note: The aircraft above was one of five such Halifax's specially modified for the tracking of Japanese radar and radio transmissions.

I don't know the proper name for them, but I like what I call cheese grater exhausts on certain British aircraft

RAAF Boomerang
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Stirling
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RAAF Beaufighter
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You'll see those types of exhausts on aircraft that operated at night.
They dropped power a little, but the lack of an exhaust flame was worth it.

WAVES and SNJ Texans; Naval Air Operational Training Command, NAS Jacksonville
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That one looks like trouble
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WAVES mechanics at NAS Pensacola
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Ms. Violet Falkum putting her back into it, September 1943
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Amelia Earhart fondles the Variable's counterweights on her Electra
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WASP pilots study B-17 Hydromatic, Lockbourne Air Force Base, Columbus OH
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Failed Hydromatic, Thurleigh Airfield England
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B-29 crash Iwo Jima
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Why are the prop failures on an inboard engine?

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@distrflman  Interesting observation.  Partly it may be because enemy fighters were more likely to aim for center mass, the cockpit or fuselage or the inboard engine/wing root area, so the inboards got hit more often.  Ditto aimed low altitude flak, though of course high altitude flak barrages didn't aim for anything in particular, not even a particular aircraft.  

I think it's also survivorship bias, that planes with inboard prop failures in flight were more likely to land intact to have their photo taken than those with outboard failures.  When the engine was dead and feathering failed the prop began windmilling, so the pilot has to deal with both the loss of thrust from that engine and a great deal of drag from that engine's propeller.  Plus it's likely the engine nacelle or nearby wing surface is torn up by battle damage adding more drag out there.  The further from the centerline of the aircraft this occurs the more rudder input is needed to counter the asymmetric loss of thrust/increased drag, and at some point the pilot runs out of rudder, especially if the rudder itself is also damaged.  Then he's got to cut power to good engines on the other wing to maintain control, leaving him short on power and he loses altitude and speed.  Becoming a sitting duck, power inadequate to remain airborne, or loss of control is more likely to happen when an outboard engine loses a prop.

Outboard propeller loss B-17:
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I’m about halfway through the book DEVOTION, it’s Korean war F4U stuff, but the corsair was a great WWII aircraft

…..we should start a Korean war photo thread to go along with this one and my WWI thread


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What are you waiting for?

I have a shit ton that I inherited from my grandfather

@DOW


Home from work, here we go !

https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Korean-War-photo-thread/5-2630812/

B-29 inboard successfully feathered despite severe damage
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Crew surveys damage from outboard engine propeller failure


Runaway inboard propeller beats the hell out of neighboring outboard prop and engine over Tokyo
https://donmooreswartales.com/2010/06/11/robert-wallace/
"Our plane, with the other crew in it, got its inboard port engine shot up by antiaircraft flak. It was running out of control when the prop came off and flew into the No. 1 engine beside it. With both engines out, the pilot limped all the way back to Saipan, because we hadn't taken Iwo Jima yet," Wallace said. "It was a big deal to fly a B-29 with two engines out on the same side. The pilot did a hell of a job getting the plane back to Saipan."  
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1956, a B-29 transferred to the US Navy as a patrol bomber and then made a test plane mothership (designated P2B-1S, nickname "Fertile Myrtle") experiences a failed outboard propeller
https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/22-march-1956/246772main_e56-2200_full/

NACA research test pilot John MacKay, in the cockpit of the Skyrocket, had called "No drop!" because of problems with the rocketplane, but he was jettisoned so that the mothership could maintain flight and make an emergency landing. McKay dumped the Skyrocket's propellants and glided to the lake bed.

"Each rocket-plane pilot had worked out, in conjunction with the pilot of the mother ship, a procedure to follow if any emergency developed in either plane. Jack McKay, who had developed into a very able test pilot, and I had agreed with Butchart that if something went wrong after either of us had entered the cockpit of the Skyrocket and had closed the canopy, he would immediately jettison the rocket plane, leaving the rocket-plane pilot to look after his own hide. As a matter of fact, McKay and Butchart later ran into such an emergency. One day something went haywire in a propeller on the B-29 mother plane. As agreed, Butchart instantly cut loose the Skyrocket. A split second later the B-29 prop tore loose and cartwheeled through the space the Skyrocket had just vacated. McKay landed without difficulty; but had Butchart not cut the parasite plane loose, the prop would have ripped into its fuel tanks, causing an explosion that would have killed everyone, including McKay."

Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket drops just in time
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The propeller spider and inner hub clamshell remains, but an outboard blade flung off the engine cut through the inboard engine (which had to be shut down and feathered), through the fuselage, and bounced off the inboard engine on the other wing, while assorted engine shrapnel shotgunned the fuselage.
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Ok,not an action picture or sexy one.

Here’s a family photo taken about 1941, my uncle Louis is in back left wearing the RCAF uniform as a Sgt. pilot, dad is next to him in uniform right before he started flight school.

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This is a photo of the pilots getting the final briefing the night before the Ploesti mission
“Tidal Wave” on Aug. 1 1943.
My uncle Louis is the one circled, he was lost in action.

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Sorry about your uncle. When I saw he was a RAF pilot sergeant, I was going to ask whether he transferred to the Air Corps.  Second photo answered that question.

This 351st BG B-17F was originally named 'Eight Ball' until a propeller flew off and sliced away part of the nicknamed painted on her nose. When repaired she was renamed 'No Balls At All'.

Repair patch:
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http://awspow.net/3rd.html#
All crews were ordered to fly. All aircraft that were airworthy would fly. After twenty three missions, the "No Balls" (B-17F-25-DL, serial number 42-3136, code DS-P) had seen better days. Art's single 50 caliber machine gun, spring mounted in a hole in the Plexiglas nose, would also become a problem later on in the mission.

Takeoff was at 0600, and it would be in foggy weather. Art was loading one of the 50 caliber cheek guns as the "No Balls" was taking off. For some reason, it started firing. The gun was aimed at the hangars, and had to be stopped quickly. Art threw the ammo belt over the gun to jam it. It stopped firing, but the gun would be useless the rest of the day. Art always wondered what would have happened if they had returned from the mission that day. He never knew if anyone along the flight line was hit....

...Then, before they reached the target, the #3 engine was hit with flak. They lost oil pressure and couldn't feather the propeller. It began wind milling. The overheated engine was not only causing a tremendous drag on the airplane, but was now throwing red-hot parts, as well. Art looked out the nose window and moved as far forward as possible to avoid being hit by any of the parts being thrown from the engine....

After crossing the water, they thought they might be over England. Jim Ellis even saw a truck with the word VAN on it thinking it might be a moving van. They pulled up a bit, and all hell broke loose. The VAN was Van Der "something-or-other." They had just overflown the Zuyder Zee, and were in German occupied Holland. Anti-aircraft fire took out the three remaining engines in a matter of minutes. LeClerc saw a plowed field ahead, and prepared to make a dead stick belly landing. Art laid down in the nose with his feet against the Plexiglas, and awaited the inevitable. He looked up between his feet anticipating obstacles....

Wreckage in a Holland ditch
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German soldiers
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Ethiopian resistance fighter, 1941.  The Italians invaded in 1935, organized fighting ended in 1937, and the country was occupied until the British organized their expulsion in early 1941
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Interesting that he has a Mauser 98.

Austria is why that Ethiopian is carrying a Mauser.

First recall that Italy was militarily superior to Germany in 1934 (before German rearmament was in full swing) and Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss was a personal friend of Mussolini who was modeling his government on Italian Fascism, with no interest in joining Nazi Germany.  Hitler attempted the Anschluss in 1934 without doing enough prepwork, ordered a coup which assassinated Dollfuss in Vienna and caused a minority uprising and the beginning of a civil war.  Mussolini personally informed Dollfuss' widow and his children of his death, as they happened to be vacationing at his home at the time, and he furiously ordered the Italian Army to march to the Italian-Austrian border and prepare to fight the Germans if they tried to intervene.  Hitler lost a "nobody will react with force in time" gamble for once, he didn't like the odds against the Italian Army, so he didn't march into Austria to aid the anemic uprising, which got the shit kicked out of it in a matter of days by the Austrian Army.  Hitler and Mussolini were enemies at this moment, who disliked each other and had opposing interests.  

Hitler needed to isolate Italy politically,  get them hooked on the German economy, and keep their military busy somewhere not Europe, so when they obligingly invaded Ethiopia in 1935 he sold weapons to the Ethiopians for awhile - the first foreign power to sell them any arms - to bog the Italians down.  Had the Italians won in a couple months nobody would have complained too much, but the Ethiopians embarrassed and exposed them to censure by making a real fight of it with the few guns they had.  Hitler thus ended up getting everything he could ask for: the League of Nations discredited themselves in 1936 in their first crisis with weak sanctions against Italy that set a terrible precedence for dealing with German aggression later; Italy withdrew from the League, markedly weakening it and isolating Italy, as desired; Italy was stuck fighting in Ethiopia for years, destroying their relationship with France in particular, which Italy had been quite friendly with in 1934, and it took their eye off of Europe.  By 1937 Mussolini had been forced into the German orbit and was negotiating with Hitler as an equal, and in fact had the weaker military now.  In 1938 Hitler did the prepwork right, had packed on a lot of military muscle, and had the League of Nations' and Mussolini's passivity in hand so Anschluss '38 went smooth as silk.  Hardly anybody remembers how bad he fucked up Anschluss '34.

If I recall, the Belgians made & sold lots 98's at FN (model 1924 & 1930) for countries all over and the Czechs did too (Vz-24).

I'm not a Mauser history fanatic, but what I've found is that before the war Ethiopia bought 17,500 FN 1930 Gewehr 98's and 7,500 carbines and 25,000 German "Standardmodell" civil/export G98's (along with a number of other non-Mauser European rifles). During the war Hitler sold them another 16,000 G98's of one sort or another along with 600 sub-machine guns, 10 million rounds, and maybe a couple anti-tank guns, to screw with Italy.  The G98 was being phased out as the German service rifle at the same time, so I wonder if they got surplused rifles from reserves.  Czech Mausers seem to have been a post WWII thing.

3cm Flakvierling 103/38

I adore this article, "Japan Is NOT An Air Power", January 1941, Flying and Popular Aviation Magazine

The cover, featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, is telling of how seriously they took Japan at the time.
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"...above are a typical Japanese pilot and gunner.  They are generally inferior in quality to those of other nations... Japanese planes are also the poorest qualitatively"  

The Zero is notably absent, although it had been scoring kills over China for four months before publication. I suppose that's understandable, but the Val had been in combat in China for 14 months without appearing here in any way.  The Kate is lumped together with other "Type 97's" and dismissed as woefully obsolete, which is kind of true, except they were a lot better than our woefully obsolete torpedo bombers and the Japanese were initially able to use them to superb effect regardless.

They weren't far wrong about the extremely narrow training pipeline though.

Half the article and all the photos below, full text here
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"At first sight, the Japanese seem to be well off: seven aircraft carriers more than either the United States or Great Britain has are in commission. But here the equality ends. Japanese carriers, surface ship for surface ship, are inferior to the British. And the British are far inferior to the American....

If relatively little is known about the numbers and distribution of Tokyo's air arms, even less is known of the ships they employ except that they are not big league in quality or performance. Fortunately, however, the Japanese have a curious numbering system which enables the outsider to make a pretty good guess at the caliber of Japanese warcraft.

Models produced originally in Japan in 1935 are known as Type 95: for example, Type 95 pursuit and Type 95-1, 95-2 and 95-3 trainers. Ships produced in 1936 are Type 96; in 1937, Type 97. There are Type 97 observation, pursuit, light and heavy bombardment planes. Now it happens that Type 97 models, produced in 1937, are no better than 1935 models developed in Europe and the United States. Japan was thus at least two years behind the parade two years ago (the 97 series of models did not go into service until 1938, of course). Despite Herculean efforts to catch up, the Japanese are undoubtedly further behind today. The stimuli of war in Europe and the armament program in the United States have boosted air performance in the West way beyond levels attainable in Japan."
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^ Akagi's deck was refit full length in 1939

"Japan's aircraft factories, following several years of intensive effort on the part of the government to encourage their development, now are in a position to produce about 2,500 planes a year of all types if they can get the materials. Raw materials are a difficult problem. Neither Japan nor China, for example, produces much bauxite, the ore from which aluminum is extracted. In the past, Tokyo has met a considerable part of its aluminum requirements by purchases in the United States, but the urgent need for aluminum in this country and the possibility of an embargo make the U. S. an unreliable source for Japan...

But there is an even more compelling series of reasons for the current state of affairs. It must be remembered that Japan arrived late on the modern industrial scene. The experience of the Japanese people with mechanical gadgets is definitely limited. They have not yet gotten much beyond merely imitating what others have done. At that they are the world's finest, but imitativeness is little help in aeronautics. In the first place, aeronautical developments are more closely guarded by the major powers than are any others. Anything the Japanese obtain via the imitation route is bound to be three years old. Which is not extremely satisfactory at a time when every fighter plane designed is between 10 to 50 m.p.h. faster than its predecessor.

In the second place, planes being the most complicated and highly developed type of machinery in existence, a certain amount of native ingenuity is needed to make them work, even after you have been presented with the blueprints. And third, the Japanese system of small factories employing only a few semi-skilled workers which system dominates Japanese industry is not well adapted to the high degree of precision required in planes.

Some day, perhaps, the Japanese will have accumulated enough experience in a mechanical way to catch up, but that day will not come soon. One of the factors holding up its arrival is the educational system in Japan, which turns out a nation of blind patriots but gives only limited schooling in the mechanical arts. The general level of education in Japan is low. It takes a good educational system to turn out a nation of mechanics  and a nation of mechanics to run an air industry and air force. The Japanese' blind patriotism is undoubtedly pleasing to Japan's rulers. But it doesn't cut any ice with a 1,000 h.p. motor. Motors just don't understand noble sentiments...

The Japanese have come a long way since then, particularly in bombardment and observation operations, through their practice in the China war. They now are quite proficient in these operations although how they would perform against real opposition is not known. The relatively high toll taken by the few Chinese planes indicates, not too well. In loyalty, courage and readiness to follow orders, the Japanese pilot is second to no one, however. So far, the Japanese have shown no understanding of the tactics of massed aerial warfare on the World War II model.

In summary, the Japanese air force can be described as the sixth in the world in numbers and quality, as adequate to the job it has so far had to do. But it would not be adequate in the event of an encounter with either possible major opponent, the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R., unless-in the case of the U. S. S. R. simultaneous war in the west drained too many planes from Siberia."