Warbird Information Exchange

So I'm watching the Military Channel "Great Planes" on the P-51 and they claimed the Brit Malcolm designed the bubble canopy and that it was called the malcolm hood/canopy. I thought the Malcolm was the bubbled out razorback on the B/C and that the D bubble came from NA. Did I learn something or catch something today?

PS They seemed the need filler shots for the one hour show and while describing Mustangs used D's when speaking of A,B, and C's and sometime used Stukas, p47s and P40s. At one point they used a scale model P51.

The British did design the Malcolm P-51 B/C sliding canopy. The US designed the "low Back" full bubble canopy on the later P-51's.
The writers of those shows don't always know exactly what a "Bubble Canopy" is. So they probably meant the B/C hood but didn't know what they were really describing.
Jerry

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I saw Bud Anderson speak at NASM late last year and he was asked whether he liked the "B" or "D" better. He said he really preferred the "B" with the Malcom Hood, since the hood was bubbled out and gave the pilot better visibility, specifically downwards. He said that the ability of the pilot to stick his head out into the bubble was a tremendous advantage.

What? The History Channel putting out incorrect info? Hogwash!!!

Yup, saw that hogwash as well! wanted to throw something at the TV but decided I couldn't afford a new one right now. Then there were the clips of Stukas they inserted at least twice in that show....WHY!!!!! They had absolutely NOTHING to do with what was being talked about (other than that they also were in WW2), then the new shots of P-51s cranked to B&W with a bunch of garbage thrown in to make it look "old".

Alas, I do watch the blasted show because they do show old film clips, many of which I have not seen elsewhere. Perhaps we could get a History Chanel film editor to "pre-screen" a film for us WIXERs and have us critique it before they threw it at the general public. Now THAT would be fun!!

i havent seen it but so far it sounds like a bad show.

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History Channel- Isn't that the one with the shows about the lumber jacks, and the ice road truckers, and some other stuff? Didn't they used to show lots of shows relating to history rather than mainly reality shows with a few history tidbits?

Robbie

I missed the show on the Mustang but caught the P-40 episode which followed. It was just as dissapointing with bad information and film of different aircraft thrown in for no reason whatsoever. While talking about the P-40 prototype they were showing the XP-51 and then, while discussing the Allison they are showing footage of radials on the production line! Those are just two of many "highlights" from the show. They really need somebody with a bit of historical background on the subject to do their research and pre-screening. I would be embarrassed to be associated with something so poorly written.

Yup....they would be talking about the lack of firepower on the B and C models and showing the front end of an F model. They actually showed the F model quite a bit while talking about the Allison models.

Great Planes could have been a great show. I have been disappointed with every one I've seen. Maybe they could have checked in, oh I don't know, maybe someplace like here.

They were completely and utterly wrong. I was as amazed as others in the terrible research and verification Military/Discovery Channel exert on their productions.

As you surmised the Malcolm Hood was a modification performed on P-51B/C, and not completely simple one at that - IIRC about 50 hours as it involved not only the canopy but also the radio mast.

The Bubble canopy was 100% North American for the D/K model and the one on the P-51H was a different (longer) version. In fact there were only a very few common parts between D/K and H.[/b]

This sounds familiar ...

http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.o ... p?p=248743

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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."

I was thinking very same thing, Like what happened to the Dogfights? Now, they are just showing crap

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Gary Lewis
J.A.F.O.