My brother lived in PNG for over 12 months, mainly on the North Coast during the 1970s. It was apparently quite hairy flying from there to Port Moresby on the South Coast by light aircraft that were often barely able to clear the Owen Stanleys. He recounted one flight where they loaded a fully grown Bull Salt-water Crocodile over 5 metres in length down the central aisle of the aircraft. It was doped up but even so, it started waking up mid-flight and started to flex in the confined conditions. The aircraft apparently creaked quite a bit! Now that was unusual and definitely wouldn't have been repeated in 1942, but it gives you some idea of what it was like up there.
Malaya What If
- Thread starter Fatboy Coxy
- Start date
Bristol Bisley prototype first flown in February 1941, No belly pack, solid nose with four machine guns, very clean at this stage of development.
Fitting AI would increase the drag but this would IMVHO be a very useful night fighter in Malaya in late 1941.
Now have some bright-spark decide to graft the four cannon mounting from a Whirlwind into this solid nose and any Japanese aircraft that gets hit will have a very torrid
time!
Fatboy Coxy
Monthly Donor
Hi Ihagambia, yes formed in Singapore, it's really just a renumbering of RAF 243 Sqn, providing more identity to the Kiwi contribution
Even with GPS telling you exactly where you are the old traps are still waiting. That's awful.
Yes in 1941 Torpedoes are some of the most expensive and complex weapon systems then in existence
A bomb and a depth charge are staggeringly simple by comparison and to store your best weapons in another nations base would require USN maintenance armorers to be present there.
Also 20,000 lbs is not a lot of weapons
The RAAF regularly used to conduct training on Carabou transport aircraft into the Owen Stanleys. There was one village airstrip that was a real test apparently. It went up hill on a ridge and was at right angles to the valley. Apparently they had to approach it and then turn sharply unto the runway and grind to a quick stop. It was apparently quite a test and was given to new pilots so they could, "prove their worth". Most made it, a few didn't. The old hands could do it in a DC-3, which was before the adoption of the Carabou.
The "old traps" including rain that is locally heavy enough to change the air through which the plane flies into a much heavier gas-liquid mix that would require a very different "aerofoil" to generate lift; and rain that is locally heavy enough to interfere with combustion air intake and cause engine stall; and unpredictable downdrafts, rapid velocity shifts and spiraling turbulence as pressure-front air mass flows are squeezed through the same mountain notches that you're trying to fly through...all of which can result in intersecting the ground even though you know exactly where it is.
The only significant difference from WWII is that WWII pilots *didn't* know exactly where the ground was...they just knew it wasn't far away, down, left and right.
OTL, Singapore was Hart's preferred fall back base. Hart suffered a massive insufficiency in fleet train. He had one large seaplane tender ,the Langley, that at times served also as an aircraft transport,which could handle 12 aircraft, 2 converted destroyers each capable og handling 4 Aircraft,,and a converted mine craft capable of handling 4 aircraft. Hart had 28 PBYs. 5 J2Fs, 5 SOC-3, and 1 OS2U.
Hart moved those munitions because his Tenders were full. He had also 1 destroyer tender, 3 submarine Tenders, ( one a converted cargo ship) and 2 oilers.