Warbird Information Exchange

What is the rationale for the British seemingly preferring single pilot operations of their heavy bombers? To my knowledge, they're the only country that did that. You would think that with the long missions over Germany, if for no other reason than fatigue, safety and an extra pilot to bring the crew home in case one of the pilots was incapacitated, that the preference would be to have two pilots flying the bomber. I've never understood this philosophy.

While the Short Stirling had a 2-pilot cockpit, we'd been at war since 1939, and we simply didn't have the luxury of limitless personnel to train as pilot aircrew....or rather the need to find double the amount of pilots to fly a certain number of aircraft....so the later Halifax and Lancasters got the single pilot cockpits...which followed the earlier twins, such as the Hampden and Wellington. The RAF just wasn't really used to two pilot crews.
A lot of the Lanc/Halibag pilots took it upon themselves to instruct at least one of their crew in the rudiments of flying/aircraft handling in case of emergency if they were fully or partially incapacitated.

Thanks for the explanation, Firebird. That makes sense.

A dear departed friend of mine flew as a bomb aimer navigator in Hudsons during 1940/41.
he told me that his pilot taught him how to bring her home.
He said that he would bring her to within a few feet of the runway before his pilot took over.
"He never did let me land it"

Andy

A non-pilot sitting in the right seat of any properly trimmed, well balanced airplane on a calm day would be surprised how effortless it seems to bring the aircraft down to the moment-before-flare with a competent pilot in command there with you. Even the flare itself is a non-event for a beginner when everything is set up correctly.

True, but that is assuming a perfect day with a perfectly trimmed and operational bomber with no problems. The scenario stated above would most likely involve one or 2 engines out, a non-trimmed airplane and one that has been shot up with directional control problems. I don't believe a novice with little to no training would be able to handle an aircraft under those conditions very well. Could they point the aircraft to fly across the Channel or point it towards "good-guy" land to bail out over friendly territory? Sure, but landing a stricken, shot up 4 engine bomber with probable directional control issues would be difficult even for an experienced pilot. I don't think a novice could land the aircraft very well under those conditions.

I don't think the point here is to do with any novice aircrew member being able to pull off a respectable landing. The majority of cases where this sort of thing happened resulted in an 'untidy' arrival where the aircraft suffered damage upon contact with the ground or from a ground loop. The main desired outcome was that some or all of the crew actually survived the 'landing'.

BTW - I'm not sure what landing damaged Lancasters has to do with P51 Market Analysis as in the thread title?

_________________
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Does anyone remember what Ken Scholz's N5416V (44-84896) recently sold for at auction ?

https://blog.globalair.com/post/The-Ult ... 0000!.aspx

Forgot about that one. That scheme always looked good on a Mustang as well as the inverse black w/gold trim. How strange, selling the engine separate from the airframe...

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$851,000 Sold with engine.
A second engine was auctioned separately-
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51171&hilit=auction&start=45