Well, I for one, remember it fondly, as did Capt Eric "Winkle" Brown, who to this day holds the record for having piloted the most different types of aircraft, many of those flights being as a test pilot. He claimed that the Hornet was his favourite plane, being capable of doing aerobatics on only one engine! In another video he mentions that the Hornet had virtually NO vices, and was "bliss" to fly! On top of all that it is a truly beautiful plane, taking second spot in my favourites list after the Spitfire, with the Mosquito in 3rd spot, followed by the Me262 in 4th spot.
Good reply, interested that these planes ( as far as I know ) weren't used in Korean war shortly after WW2 - could supplement our limited nos of Jets we had shortly after WW2 and could still be useful in panning North Korean and Chinese targets in Korea. Although in warmer & damp climates the Glue and woodern sandwich structure probably wouldn't last all that long in these climates.
The engines were wide V12s, 110 degrees, not 65. Gives lower profile/drag. The engines rotated opposite directions, so no torque on take-off. Lovely aeroplane! Metal under wings.
65 degree, I believe. I flew many times in RR Merlin engined Argonauts to Africa unaccompanied....refueling in Libya, 1am; 105F, humid, smelly, flies everywhere......on take-odd, brakes on, power to FULL, the whole a/c shaking, then surging forward, the trolley crashing to the back, then up....the Sahara a dirty brown, not yellow. As I said, the Hornet had low profile 110 degree engines. RAFVR pilot here; built C-IAVW.@@johnkenyon6910
Yes. The engines were originally 2200HP but de-rated to 2020HP. ....I flew tail draggers. Take off really hard at first. No time to react, just let your body do it or you ground loop!..... "Red formation, rolling, rolling, GO." Surging forward, the lead's wing just feet away; No more UP/DOWN, just that wing position....so much fun! @@elmonte5lim
Wow, if they'd have produced the Mosquito sooner (when the concept was actually presented to them) they might have developed this plane in time for service during the war. What a fighter it would have been!
Given those performance details, if produced earlier, it would have been the ideal counter to the 262, just as fast, but ten times more manoeuvrable, and better armed. That loop manoeuvre Brown talked about, was used by Mossies to evade and attack 190s.
That transitional post war period produced a lot of what ifs. Clearly the military overall was under pressure due to the need to reduce expenditure but also oversee Britains withdraw from empire. We still managed to produce some great aircraft for the time and the Hornet was one of them.
It would of been interesting to see this plane be produced a few years earlier. It just looks like such a powerful machine without looking at numbers. Imagine putting an antitank gun on the front...
Seeing the success of the Hornet just makes me sad for the short history of the Westland Wasp. Twin engined, single seat, four cannons it was let down by poor engines and lack of development under the pressure of wartime production. Eta - I meant the Whirlwind, honest
@@chrislloyd1505 d’oh! You’re right, I meant the whirlwind. Something in the back of my head I must have just ran with the ‘flying stinging thing’ naming scheme.
The Spitfire with it's eliptical wing and almost no sharp edges anywhere? No way, man! 😄 As an American I may laud the P-51 for its overall performance/design. I definitely love the P-38 for its distinctively wild good looks and its specialized performance (the plane of our top scoring ace and the plane that killed Admiral Yamamoto). It is still the Spitfire which is the queen bitch of the air when it comes to elegance and beauty. When I think of one aircraft of the war that would be chosen over all others to have its portrait hanging in the Louvre or the National Gallery of Art in D.C. it's the ol' Spit. Capture on canvas (or in sculpture for that matter) the graceful aesthetics of that warbird in a shallow or sharp bank and it becomes placeable next to the Mona Lisa.
@@simongee8928 the Kestrels were so bad they powered the Bf109 and Ju87 prototypes and 47 other aircraft. The Peregrine was a development of the Kestrel.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 And the Vulture that was used on the Manchester was as bad. Seems that the RR development team didn't really get their act together until the Merlin. The Whirlwind was loved by all the pilots that had the chance to fly one. 🙂
I'll bet there are a whole bunch of British pilots who wished that this aircraft had been in production before the end of 1944. I suppose more than a little of the delay in getting this plane built was due to the unwillingness to disrupt the production lines of the Mosquito in any way while the war in Europe was still going. The only question about the reliability of this aircraft that I would have is its ability to hold up structurally in the southwest Pacific. Resin impregnated wood laminates would appear to be vulnerable to rot induced by the hot wet climate and any number of fungi or other organisms that would love to eat it. Wood does not last long there.
Little? hardly. Worked with these on Eagle in the 50s If I remember rightly they had the props turning inward as opposed to the Mossie outwatds..thus no vicious swing on take off from deck or concrete runway... I remeber seeing a mech stepping on the wing near the cockpit and petrol oozed out...!! The only Hornet retro step was that the Observer was seated on a folding down parish hall tyoe seat remote behind the pilot lwith a hatch at his feet for bailout if required First lift seat..release hatch -> get out!
I read somewhere that they did overcome that issue with the Mosquito. Anyhow, I'm sure that it must have been solved for the Hornet or they would not have been designing it for Pacific operations.
Alas, other than a few bits and bobs, and maybe one cockpit/nose section IIRC, the Hornets all vanished a long time ago. Probably due to their wooden construction, and not being a very well known aircraft deemed worth saving.
Figure it out for yourself it's hardly a difficult calculation to do quickly, but it's much easier to whinge and complain and be mentally lazy and pathetic isn't it
For those who believe in real "aircraft speed" designation, 760 kph = 475 mph, or 396 kt. None too sluggish for a twin. The Lockheed Lightning max'd at 414 mph, 345 kt.
"However, the Hornet did have an Achilles Heal. The glue which deHavilland used to bond its plywood skins proved susceptible to breaking down in the high heat and humidity of the tropics. The resulting delamination problems, coupled with termite issues, caused the early retirement of the RAF’s fleet in the Far East. The last operational sortie by an RAF Hornet took place on May 21st, 1955, and the remaining airframes in the Far East were broken up on site."
As someone said...an E-type Jag with wings. Imagine this instead of the Whirlwind in 1940 likely with a top speed around 400mph on the 100 octane fuel the RAF had in the MERLIN III. Why not stretch imagination a little further and have the RAF reject the limitations of the drum-fed Hispano 20mm in 1936 and develop the .50 cal BMG into a belt-fed reliable auto cannon instead of rejecting that weapon? The .50 cal was essentially an up-scaled version of the .30 cal Browning. OK, hear me out ! The Japanese took exactly that route and copied the BMG into the 20mm Ho5 and used it against the Americans. The round was a shortened version of the Hispano round albeit with less power due to late-war metallurgy limitations. So a Battle of Britain Hornet - faster than anything, 4 cannons in a no-deflection pack and exceptional visibility. "Kanalkrankheit." The unease German aircrew suffered when crossing the English channel.
There is one surviving wreck at PIONEER AERO at Ardmore in Auckland. It really is a pile of bits but maybe Elon Musk could afford the project ,cheaper than twitter.
BRITISH DESIGN FOR THE HORNET: Take the excellent Mosquito, graft on a single-seat cockpit, make 1,000 other detail changes, build it on the same production line as the discontinued Mosquito, easy for Mossie pilots to transition. GERMAN DESIGN FOR THE DORNIER PFEIL: Build a fighter with no commonality of spares with other aircraft, hard to build, difficult to fly, requires skilled pilots when there's insufficient fuel to train them, can only use concrete runways when every runway has been cratered to oblivion, a flawed push-pull design concept which will scarcely be used by any other aircraft in the next 80 years and needs years of development even though they're needed in their hundreds next week. And people wonder why they lost.
Well, either would be appropriate. I don't think I'd even bother relating the mossie with the hornet in it's own video because people are already familiar with it.
Had to stop watching this, because all the speeds measurements etc are in French metric instead of Imperial the standard measurements of the time, so frustrating because because other than that its good to see the something about the Hornet, could you please give both measurements so my 60yr old brain doesn't have to do maths converting the sizes and therefore loose concentration on the video .
I was considering using Imperial measurements but went with metric because the speed numbers were bigger. If I were to make this now, I would be using the measurements used by the country of origin and most likely have the converted units in brackets somewhere on screen.
@@tutekohe1361 Metric is not used in aviation, where the standard units are nautical miles, knots, and feet. North Korea might be the remaining exception using metric in aviation. They are not called the Hermit Kingdom for nothing.
What a clean looking aircraft.
Well, I for one, remember it fondly, as did Capt Eric "Winkle" Brown, who to this day holds the record for having piloted the most different types of aircraft, many of those flights being as a test pilot. He claimed that the Hornet was his favourite plane, being capable of doing aerobatics on only one engine! In another video he mentions that the Hornet had virtually NO vices, and was "bliss" to fly! On top of all that it is a truly beautiful plane, taking second spot in my favourites list after the Spitfire, with the Mosquito in 3rd spot, followed by the Me262 in 4th spot.
Good reply, interested that these planes ( as far as I know ) weren't used in Korean war shortly after WW2 - could supplement our limited nos of Jets we had shortly after WW2 and could still be useful in panning North Korean and Chinese targets in Korea. Although in warmer & damp climates the Glue and woodern sandwich structure probably wouldn't last all that long in these climates.
Thanks for that. I've never even heard of the Hornet. Brief but glorious career it seems. 🇬🇧
Beyond Beautiful.
Another beautiful and efficient airplane that got short changed by Time and History
One of the few twin engined fighters that were approved for spins and this could be used in combat .
Balsa is sandwiched between two thin sheets of plywood making for a very strong structure.
Aluminium straight spar also
Winkle Brown adored this aircraft.
What an aircraft!
Really interesting subject matter and good narration. Thoroughly enjoyable.
I have never heard of this plane .. looks Beautiful.
Never heard of this little darling. Would have really impacted WW2 if it was a bit earlier.
Mosquitos perfect,but the hornet even better in every respect must be a blast to pilot,red bull plane if any exist still....
Is this the most perfectly proportioned plane ever, or what.
It’s beautiful!
I’m so
Absolutely! Just perfect!
The engines were wide V12s, 110 degrees, not 65. Gives lower profile/drag. The engines rotated opposite directions, so no torque on take-off. Lovely aeroplane! Metal under wings.
RR Merlin is a 60degree V12
65 degree, I believe. I flew many times in RR Merlin engined Argonauts to Africa unaccompanied....refueling in Libya, 1am; 105F, humid, smelly, flies everywhere......on take-odd, brakes on, power to FULL, the whole a/c shaking, then surging forward, the trolley crashing to the back, then up....the Sahara a dirty brown, not yellow. As I said, the Hornet had low profile 110 degree engines. RAFVR pilot here; built C-IAVW.@@johnkenyon6910
Contra-rotating?
About bloody time!
Yes. The engines were originally 2200HP but de-rated to 2020HP. ....I flew tail draggers. Take off really hard at first. No time to react, just let your body do it or you ground loop!..... "Red formation, rolling, rolling, GO." Surging forward, the lead's wing just feet away; No more UP/DOWN, just that wing position....so much fun! @@elmonte5lim
@@elmonte5limNo, COUNTER ROTATING, not CONTRA ROTATING. They are not the same thing.
Wow, if they'd have produced the Mosquito sooner (when the concept was actually presented to them) they might have developed this plane in time for service during the war. What a fighter it would have been!
The Hornet , what a wonderfull piece of natural aviation evolution , looking forward to seeing the real one evolve
What a beauty ! The Ferrari of the sky 👍
True that
This thing would STILL be the star at most airshows if only some would've been kept around...
Beautiful aircraft never heard of this one
Thank you a good look back
Well I have heard of the Hornet but my father was a master carpenter who served in the RAF when they entered the service,.
Ooh!
I WANT one!
Given those performance details, if produced earlier, it would have been the ideal counter to the 262, just as fast, but ten times more manoeuvrable, and better armed. That loop manoeuvre Brown talked about, was used by Mossies to evade and attack 190s.
The little sister _Legend 👍✌🙏🙏
..see also the Westland Whirlwind, and mini-Mossie like plane. Both delightful designs.. ;)
That transitional post war period produced a lot of what ifs. Clearly the military overall was under pressure due to the need to reduce expenditure but also oversee Britains withdraw from empire. We still managed to produce some great aircraft for the time and the Hornet was one of them.
Very interesting video. Never heard of this aircraft before. Too bad it didn’t come out earlier in the war. It would have been devastating.
Balsa? you mean plywood surely. I've just found out that it was a sandwich of ply then balsa then ply, just to clear that up. 👍
Yes it did carry 0.303" inch guns and flew in MPH
She's beautiful. Another "what if?" 👍
Beautiful aircraft.
Well thanks for sharing, I had never heard of this one.
It would of been interesting to see this plane be produced a few years earlier. It just looks like such a powerful machine without looking at numbers.
Imagine putting an antitank gun on the front...
Seeing the success of the Hornet just makes me sad for the short history of the Westland Wasp. Twin engined, single seat, four cannons it was let down by poor engines and lack of development under the pressure of wartime production.
Eta - I meant the Whirlwind, honest
@@ballaghI think you mean the Westland Whirlwind.
@@chrislloyd1505 d’oh! You’re right, I meant the whirlwind. Something in the back of my head I must have just ran with the ‘flying stinging thing’ naming scheme.
"noticeably faster than the Mossie". Holy krap.
I read that one was being restored in NZ as of 2017.
Quite a while ago, so no idea what is happening with it.
Cool video mate, didn't know about this.
Thanks
Even prettier than the spitfire
The Spitfire with it's eliptical wing and almost no sharp edges anywhere? No way, man! 😄
As an American I may laud the P-51 for its overall performance/design. I definitely love the P-38 for its distinctively wild good looks and its specialized performance (the plane of our top scoring ace and the plane that killed Admiral Yamamoto). It is still the Spitfire which is the queen bitch of the air when it comes to elegance and beauty.
When I think of one aircraft of the war that would be chosen over all others to have its portrait hanging in the Louvre or the National Gallery of Art in D.C. it's the ol' Spit. Capture on canvas (or in sculpture for that matter) the graceful aesthetics of that warbird in a shallow or sharp bank and it becomes placeable next to the Mona Lisa.
If the Westland Whirlwind had been given Merlins instead of the rubbish Kestrels, it may have been a differnt story - ! 😊
Err, don't you mean RR Peregrines?
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Er, yes, but just as bad as the Kestrels - ! 😆
@@simongee8928 the Kestrels were so bad they powered the Bf109 and Ju87 prototypes and 47 other aircraft. The Peregrine was a development of the Kestrel.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 And the Vulture that was used on the Manchester was as bad. Seems that the RR development team didn't really get their act together until the Merlin.
The Whirlwind was loved by all the pilots that had the chance to fly one. 🙂
@@simongee8928 Correct!
Why Kilometers/hr and not Knots/hr ??????????
Kilometres meant a Bigger number. If I were making it now I'd use the units from the origin country and have conversions in brackets.
I'll bet there are a whole bunch of British pilots who wished that this aircraft had been in production before the end of 1944.
I suppose more than a little of the delay in getting this plane built was due to the unwillingness to disrupt the production lines of the Mosquito in any way while the war in Europe was still going.
The only question about the reliability of this aircraft that I would have is its ability to hold up structurally in the southwest Pacific. Resin impregnated wood laminates would appear to be vulnerable to rot induced by the hot wet climate and any number of fungi or other organisms that would love to eat it. Wood does not last long there.
Wow, just Wow !
I want one. Are the plans still available?
Little? hardly. Worked with these on Eagle in the 50s If I remember rightly they had the props turning inward as opposed to the Mossie outwatds..thus no vicious swing on take off from deck or concrete runway... I remeber seeing a mech stepping on the wing near the cockpit and petrol oozed out...!! The only Hornet retro step was that the Observer was seated on a folding down parish hall tyoe seat remote behind the pilot lwith a hatch at his feet for bailout if required
First lift seat..release hatch -> get out!
Everything the Whirlwind promised but couldn't deliver.
Why not performance details in Imperial not metric?
I never knew the Hornet existed
Its looks remind one of the Me410 Hornisse.
While it would have been quickly obsolescent I wonder what a Jet Hornet would have been like
"Jet Hornet" = Vampire.
Still built from plywood.
Interesting did not know much about this aircraft i assume being smaller than the mosquito it was a two engined fighter
Are there any still around or flying today?
I heard there's one in bits in New Zealand; dunno if it's being restored though.
Ngl you can probably get a foam RC A-10 and a Mosquito (same scale size duh) and DIY them together
Sublime!
Hornet sounds like XP-82 Twin Mustang
Superb Plane - shame it didn't see much combat
Did the Hornet have any structural problems in the Tropics? I imagine the heat would work to delaminate the wooden construction.
I dunno, probably.
Yes.
I read somewhere that they did overcome that issue with the Mosquito. Anyhow, I'm sure that it must have been solved for the Hornet or they would not have been designing it for Pacific operations.
Are there any Hornets left in flying condition?
Not that I'm aware of.
Alas, other than a few bits and bobs, and maybe one cockpit/nose section IIRC, the Hornets all vanished a long time ago. Probably due to their wooden construction, and not being a very well known aircraft deemed worth saving.
I bet test pilot Eric Brown didn’t talk in kph. How fast does it fly in mph? What are its imperial dimensions? I thought this was a British plane!
No, he would have given the speed in Knots.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Yes, knots please. That is the international aviation standard and the best way to compare aircraft speed.
Figure it out for yourself it's hardly a difficult calculation to do quickly, but it's much easier to whinge and complain and be mentally lazy and pathetic isn't it
Balsa???
Yes, ply balsa ply sandwich.
Please answer, the Mosquito is the hornet's brother or sister?
it's older sister
Of course.
Its lunch mate!
It's the Mossies angry little sister, and winkle brown was totally in love with her if you read Wings on my sleeve ( which is an amazing read)
For those who believe in real "aircraft speed" designation, 760 kph = 475 mph, or 396 kt.
None too sluggish for a twin.
The Lockheed Lightning max'd at 414 mph, 345 kt.
"However, the Hornet did have an Achilles Heal. The glue which deHavilland used to bond its plywood skins proved susceptible to breaking down in the high heat and humidity of the tropics. The resulting delamination problems, coupled with termite issues, caused the early retirement of the RAF’s fleet in the Far East. The last operational sortie by an RAF Hornet took place on May 21st, 1955, and the remaining airframes in the Far East were broken up on site."
That's interesting; thanks for sharing that.
*Heel
@@tutekohe1361 D'uh! Thanks.
@@JJ_Simulation The Kiwis are trying to rebuild a flyable aircraft..
@@jimmiller5600I imagine they will succeed. The Kiwis are remarkable aeroplane restorers.
Not balsa! Probably Spruce.
As someone said...an E-type Jag with wings. Imagine this instead of the Whirlwind in 1940 likely with a top speed around 400mph on the 100 octane fuel the RAF had in the MERLIN III. Why not stretch imagination a little further and have the RAF reject the limitations of the drum-fed Hispano 20mm in 1936 and develop the .50 cal BMG into a belt-fed reliable auto cannon instead of rejecting that weapon? The .50 cal was essentially an up-scaled version of the .30 cal Browning. OK, hear me out ! The Japanese took exactly that route and copied the BMG into the 20mm Ho5 and used it against the Americans. The round was a shortened version of the Hispano round albeit with less power due to late-war metallurgy limitations. So a Battle of Britain Hornet - faster than anything, 4 cannons in a no-deflection pack and exceptional visibility. "Kanalkrankheit." The unease German aircrew suffered when crossing the English channel.
There is one surviving wreck at
PIONEER AERO at Ardmore in Auckland. It really is a pile of bits but maybe Elon Musk could afford the project ,cheaper than twitter.
BRITISH DESIGN FOR THE HORNET: Take the excellent Mosquito, graft on a single-seat cockpit, make 1,000 other detail changes, build it on the same production line as the discontinued Mosquito, easy for Mossie pilots to transition.
GERMAN DESIGN FOR THE DORNIER PFEIL: Build a fighter with no commonality of spares with other aircraft, hard to build, difficult to fly, requires skilled pilots when there's insufficient fuel to train them, can only use concrete runways when every runway has been cratered to oblivion, a flawed push-pull design concept which will scarcely be used by any other aircraft in the next 80 years and needs years of development even though they're needed in their hundreds next week.
And people wonder why they lost.
aha so true, had a good laugh at this.
Cant really get over the name, considering a hornet is WAYYY bigger than a mosquito. Doesnt make much sense.
What's the gender of the fighter De Havilland Mosquito, can you guess?
No idea, has it been given an official one?
No, but I just asked if the member of the De Havilland Mosquito heavy fighter is brother or sister?
Well, either would be appropriate. I don't think I'd even bother relating the mossie with the hornet in it's own video because people are already familiar with it.
So, is that Mosquito brother or sister? Speak directly.
@@tuankiettran2079 - ships and planes are always ‘she’, even if they have a male name. It’s bad luck to have a male ship or plane.
Not 'Balsa' - Plywood!
Makes you wonder how accurate the rest of it is. I stopped watching as soon as he said this.
Balsa plywood, perhaps
Shame it came out too late....
More like the Westland Whirlwind
Much better than a Whirlwind, though.
Nice. But dont use kph no one understands.
Had to stop watching this, because all the speeds measurements etc are in French metric instead of Imperial the standard measurements of the time, so frustrating because because other than that its good to see the something about the Hornet, could you please give both measurements so my 60yr old brain doesn't have to do maths converting the sizes and therefore loose concentration on the video .
I was considering using Imperial measurements but went with metric because the speed numbers were bigger. If I were to make this now, I would be using the measurements used by the country of origin and most likely have the converted units in brackets somewhere on screen.
Aircraft speed is in Knots !!! it makes navigation easy....and I did fly with captain Eric Brown in a Whirlwind 7 on Lossie SAR...
My 63 year old brain just converted it, keep up. Do you still buy gallons of petrol?
Metric is global, or rather it’s everywhere except USA and somewhere like North Korea.
@@tutekohe1361 Metric is not used in aviation, where the standard units are nautical miles, knots, and feet. North Korea might be the remaining exception using metric in aviation. They are not called the Hermit Kingdom for nothing.
The bigger plane is called a mosquito, the smaller plane is called a hornet ...
Bloody amazing we won, really.
"Gnat" just doest have the same ring to it.
Looks very similar to the fw187