Hopefully, this turned out okay. I am more comfortable explaining history than mechanics but I like challenging myself and making videos where I get to learn too.
Your video turned out great! Thanks for teaching me about this. The part about manually moving the propeller to mess with the cylinders was especially interesting to me. Edit: The "enGAUGING" was clever.
You'd be lucky to start it with something as small as a 12 gauge. I wouldn't recommend mixing up your Coffman cartridges with your shotgun cartridges either. It'll F**k up the starter and prove very ineffective against a pheasant.🤣🤣
It is true. They use surveyors and some mines use that same shotgun type shell firing it straight into the Earth and the sound waves that come back go into a computer and people can see what kind of rocks and fissures lye under their proposed mines or survey.
Except that this one is a blank where the gas pressures are used and the dig site ones are actual shotgun slugs being fired into the ground to see the sonar. In the fossil finder's case, you can use a regular shotgun if you want, the whole structure for it was just to ensure it went perfectly vertical.
And for those 24oz cans, the rule of thumb for the carburetor hole for the air and for the gravity controlled fuel injector hole to work at maximum capacity flow, the bigger the better.
Thanks, I was an air cadet when we still had the Canberra bomber in service. And on a field trip to the local Airforce base, we stood beside or near the bomber and they did the shotgun start for demonstration purposes. Really loud & a bit scary when you are a thin 15-year-old.Cheers
My Father was a Australian Navy aircraft tech in the 1950's. He told me a lot about shotgun starters. They were basically more reliable and robust compared to the electric starters of the time.
I worked on canberras in the early 80s at RAF Marham. The cartridges you refer to are number 9 and 10 engine starter cartridges. As you say around 3 or 4 inch dia and around 10 inch long. Regards, Paul Fowell. @@gilburton
Back in the 1970’s I worked for an oil field company. If we were low on air pressure we had cartridge starters. They were larger than a shotgun shell but bigger than a 10 or 12 gauge. They’d work in a bind !
The shells were all powder, no shot. The pressure would spin the impellers on that air starter. I can remember being covered with black smoke. They could have been black powder. That’s been 50 years ago , A giant cloud of smoke. I think the engines were 4-71 General Motors Diesel.
I didn't even know aircraft engines needed any type of starters or assistors until i watched Top Gun Maverick where they needed something extra to start the Tomcat.
A lot of Navy jets need external Huffer Carts to provide electric power and compressed air to start. The Navy expects to mostly operate from carriers where the carts can be easily provided and the weight savings are nice to off set the increased weight of a carrier capable jet. The USAF has some self start capable jets, usually with a jet fuel starter, a very small jet turbine that can be cranked by onboard battery power and starts the first engine.
Coffman style cordite shells were also used as a propellant source in the WW2 Australian 'Murray' Flame tank prototype, which was intended to replace the Matilda Frog flame tank, but never entered service due to the conclusion of the war. The intention was for the cordite shells to be loaded into a breach mechanism, with the expanding gasses actuating a piston which would generate the pressure to expel a charge of flame fuel from the piston chamber.
I have a starter shell in my collection from a Canberra Bomber. It's so cool to see the Canberra start, three shells go off at once and there are three plumes of smoke and the engine just screams away. Really cool
Yep, the Canberra start was very impressive with all those plumes of (black) smoke from the motors. I've seen a great photo of the RAAF Canberras at Phang Rang showing five or six aircraft all starting at the same time.
I love that your videos are so concise. You give us just the pertinent info without any filler. Almost all other channels pile on a bunch of useless crap just to make the videos a certain length. Thank you.
I only clicked on this because of Flight of the Phoenix (the '65 version). I remember it was on TV when I was a kid (I was born in '65) and I thought it looked like it was going to be a snore but by the end I was cheering when the engine turned over too. Still one of my favourite films.
That iconic scene made a similar impression on me as a kid, no idea why they remade an already perfect movie but Hollywood is notoriously cannibalistic.
The first movie was one of the greatest movies I have EVER seen. Remake I have no desire to see. Every time I see the original at the engine start scene I still get tears in my eyes. All were great in this movie!
Agreed. The remake tried to "improve" a bunch of things that didn't need improving. Funny, when I read "shotgun start" in the title, I immediately thought of this movie.
Albanian here. Here, many of our famous million Mile Mercedes W123 300D Turbo’s have been rigged up with shotgun shell starter mechanisms from tractors, so they can be fully run without batteries/electricity, as they use mechanical fuel injection and have compression ignition.
A cartridge starting system is used to start engines on B52 bombers so they can get airborne quickly. This is very important if a nuclear attack is detected since anything on the ground will not be useful after the first exchange. A rapid starting system is much more economical than keeping a large number of bombers in the air at all time, which was the practice at the height of the cold war.
Good one, Johnny. It's a long way from aircraft engines, but a lot of the concrete batching plants in the U.K. used 8 gauge blanks to de-scale the OPC and fly ash tanks. A buddy of mine used to visit them and collect the empties for reloading his waterfowl cartridges.
Foundries, mills and other facilities would sometimes lease kiln guns with what's essentially an AAMG tripod and other associated gear for blasting slag and other deposits off the insides of their kilns and furnaces, in fact they exist in this legal niche where they can be owned by non-certificate holders but the companies who lease them out are usually pretty active at retaining them though it's a bit of a security-by-obscurity situation.
But the 8 bore cartridges used for concrete blasting will not fit a shotgun, they are different to prevent them being used, many good 8 bores have their chambers altered to take these.
Is that right? Oh well. You know what they say about hunters, fishermen and the truth. Thanks for that. I'll bear it in mind the next time somebody tries to spin that yarn.@@453421abcdefg12345
I spent a few months working in an abattoir and I think I encountered the coolest use of blank shotgun shells of all time. It was a sledgehammer except the head of the sledgehammer had a break action and you put a blank shell into the head, then it goes off when the head hits something. Like some sort of fantasy zombie killing melee weapon that super-charges your swing. It didn't get swung, it just got tapped lightly onto the forehead of cows and the shell going off instantly knocked them out. I think the point was that it was always the right amount of force to incapacitate the animal so it was very reliable.
I used to have this silly thought in which one of the tools I use in vehicle maintenance is a suppressed machine pistol that I stick to the engine of a car and shoot actual rounds (not too dissimilar to how a power drill is operated). Turns out my idea wasn't that far-fetched.
I remember while I was in the U.S.A.F. watching a couple of F-111s use "start canisters" during alerts back in the mid 1980s a couple of times. These were like number 10 tins of probably black powder with a bunch of holes in the sides like a colander and when they burned produced a huge cloud of black smoke while some turbine went FWEEEEEEEE! while it was running. Once it died down, after a few seconds you could hear the low hum of one of the engines spooling up, and soon followed by the second engine. It was cool to see because when it happened I learned how they can launch so many planes in short order during a real wartime scramble. The usual method to start the planes was to roll up a wheeled cart, the size of a small trailer that contained a small jet engine that used it's compressor pressure through a flexible hose rated at 2000psi into the same turbine that canister used. The cart was noisy enough that we never heard the little turbine when it was running. I did see one start canister go off, but then followed by frantically pushing the standby start cart into the shelter next to the plane to start it up when the canister failed to start the engine.
I also was in the USAF, in the mid 70's. I was a crew chief on the KC-135. When I pulled alert duty we'd get alerted in the middle of the night to get them all going. We had a coffee can size container with something like gunpowder in it. We'd shove it inside an engine from the side, give the pilot the all clear and kaboom. Went to 90% in about 5 seconds. Then they started the other J-57's from the bleed air of the first one. Standing about 6 feet away was a big boom. Maybe that's why I'm now a boomer. And very deaf using hearing aids. But, hey, we were young and tough and didn't need those pansy ear protectors.
Very fascinating! Now I know how these cartridge starters work. It is a simpler system than I thought. Thanks for making this. I always wondered about them.
James Stewart and Flight of the Phoenix is almost certainly the most famous example of the Cauffman starter in film. I always thought that Canberra in pronounced Can-bare-ah. But the online pronunciation guide tells me that you nailed it. I tip my hat sir. Apparently Canberrans say Can-bra. That was news to me too.
There's a great scene from the Great Escape where Hendley(James Garner) and Blythe(Donald Pleasance) find a plane and use it to make their getaway. It was an observation plane, and had an inertial starter, a crank near the cockpit. The nearly blind Blythe has to crank the motor while Hendley is prepping the plane for takeoff. 😮
That was a great sequence but I wanted them to make it! They had just minutes to go and they would have made it. The little trainer must have been low on fuel---it probably wasn't filled up after a heavy day of training.
Learn something new every day, I thought that shotgun starter on flight of the Phoenix was made up just like the plane being pieced together, never knew that kind of starting system was a thing !
Modern F22s have cartridge starters too, heard one going at an airshow. Didn't recognize it at first, but the regular bang, and whine of the engine, and another bang as the pilot gave it another go a few minutes later, gave it away. The local airport I was at for the show didn't have the right equipment or couldn't get access to the normal start cart, was during COVID if memory serves - lots of logistics struggles at that time.
The "Blank Cartridge" starter (Coffman) system is used on the older engines of the B-52 bomber as well as the 4.5 generation F5G / F20 tactical fighter.
The B-52 used a much larger cartridge that a shotshell. It is about 6 inches in diameter and and fit into its' container attached to the starter part of the jet engine. With the plans to re-engine the planes a modern APU system most likely will replace it. Of Note: The F-4 Phantoms J-79-GE 15 &17 engines were capable of using the same system as the B-52 did.
@@ditzydoo4378 I've done 2 full starts on F-4's many moons ago. They put out ALOT of smoke. Also, the crew chief had to watch the exhaust port for possibly a flame. No flame, good start. If a flame came out and was sucked to the Aux air door next to it and did nothing, ok start. HOWEVER, if the flame went in and came back out the Aux door....the chief was advised to RUN. Flight crew sees the Chief run and they would bail quick, no need to explain it to them.
During the 1920s and 1930s, some aircraft had both electric and Coffman starters. Batteries were heavy and inefficient, and were often shifted from one mounting point to another as an adjustment for weight and balance. This meant that sometimes they were several feet further away from the starter motor, so an aged, hot or cold battery might not have enough energy to fully and reliably spin up the weight that turned the Bendix. The Coffman shell cost a few cents for each try, but would get the engine going, even after the battery had been tried and found lacking. The Napier Lion (water-cooled W-inline 12-cyl) was one that offered a dual-starter accessory pack, but only on engines sold to North America -- engines put on British planes and boats were electric-only, so the used of a "trolley-acc" battery cart was necessary, just as on the Hurricane and Spitfire (whose batteries were not strong enough to crank the engine).
Thank you for always making your content so concise and to the point. So many other channels would take 15+ minutes to convey the same information you did in less than four minutes.
I remember going to the theaters to watch the remake of flight of the Phoenix with my dad and him being so mad that he walked out and we just went home and watched original.
I think most people became first aware of the Coffman Starter from the classic 1965 film "The Flight of the Phoenix", during the nail-biting scene where Jimmy Stewart is trying to start the engine. I remember wondering at the time how a shotgun shell could start an engine. Thanks very much for this informative video!
The most famous shotgun starting sequence was in 'Flight of the Phoenix.', But the aircraft used , the Fairchild C-82 Packet did not use a Coffman starter. It had an electric starter. I think the same applies to the C-119 used in the remake. The reason the Coffman starter sequence was in both films was because it was in the original book. But the aircraft in the original book was a fictitious Salmon - Rees Skytruck Mark II which had twin inline liquid cooled V12 engines (type not specified). In the book the crash survivors distil some of the engine coolant to get water, That is why in the film they had to add a plot point that the aircaft was carrying drums of anti freeze which they then distil to get water.
But he says they can be "added to most aircraft" at 2:55. The C-82 and C-119 may not have ben equipped with a Coffman starter from the factory, but almost certainly could have been retrofitted as a failsafe if they're frequently far from well-stocked maintenance facilities. The older an aircraft gets, the more likely it is to be "subject to change without notice," I would think.
I always thought this was more myth than reality, when I watched Flight of the Phoenix. Thanks for ridding me of my ignorance once again, Johnny! Keep up the solid work, man.
Always the most interesting videos, im taking my ATPL license and have always been interested in history, like many i remember the flight of the phoenix movie and the last shell that started the engine, in flight school we learned engine starters most of them electric nowadays, still its most fascinating looking back at how it was done before. Keep up the good videos, i find them very interesting and very well explained and summarized both the history part and the mechanics/ engineering.
The Coffman engine starter (also known as a "shotgun starter") was a starting system used on many piston engines in aircraft and armored vehicles of the 1930s and 1940s. It used a cordite cartridge to move a piston, which cranked the engine. The Coffman system was one of the most common brands; another was the Breeze cartridge system, which was produced under Coffman patents. Most American military aircraft and tanks which used radial engines were equipped with this system.
Thank you so much. I was thinking this movie yesterday (one of my all time favorites) and was unsure if the starter system really existed. Now I can see the many benefits it has.
The B52 uses a shotgun starter it is much larger than a 12 gauge round but it’s for combat situations when they needed to scramble within 4 minutes they start four of the eight engines via oversized shotgun shells and use the four turning to get the other four. This is referred to as Cart start on the b52s
Ah yes the flight of the Flight of the Phoenix, both movies bring me back to my childhood, thanks for that . i was wondering how this system worked, and love your humor as always , keep it coming
Well there you go. I had never heard of shotgun starters. I know a guy who used a shotgun on his lawnmower that wouldn’t start but that’s a whole different kind of thing.
We had both F-4Es and F-105F/G models, the F-4 J-79 engines could be cartridge started, but if fouled the engine, they used up our supply of 32-60 power cart/engine start units. The J-75 in the f-105 was pretty much started with clack powder charges all the time. Watch any video of them starting and you'll see the plum of black smoke from the fuselage vent.
"A model plane has to fly itself. There's no pilot to correct the trim. Therefore if anything, a model plane has to be designed for greater stability that what you are pleased to call the real thing." Heinrich Dorfmann, Flight of the Phoenix (1965)
Then again, they have more room for error with the materials and therefore the strucural integrity, since the strength of most metals/wood is much better in small scale than in big scale. Something about "increasing diameter by x2 will increase weight by ^2
Thanks for the reminder of the most dramatic scene in Flight of the Phoenix: James Stewart using all but one of the remaining cartridges to spin up the engine and clear it out prior to its final chance at starting.
Except those cartridges are about a gallon in size. The power is ignited, burning slowly, and the exhaust is fed thru the standard bleed air starter to rotate the engine.
Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the second largest moon in the Solar System after Ganymede. Unlike other moons in the solar system, it has a thick atmosphere mostly composed largely of methane as well as a lot of lakes. These lakes are not filled with water, but rather liquid ethane and methane.
Venus is the second planet from the sun and the hottest planet in the solar system. It has a uniquely thick atmosphere for rocky planets composed of mostly sulphuric acid at a temperature hot enough to melt lead
Even the giant B-52 uses a version of this. Small explosive charges are used to rapidly start the engines in case of a scramble situation, such as an incoming nuclear attack.
I immediately thought of Jimmy Stewart, from his scene in the great film Flight of the Phoenix. And sure enough you showed a couple clips from the movie and spoke to the process as featured therein. I never doubted it was a real practice, but before your episode here I didn’t understand the particulars. (I recall how he utilized one shell just to clear the cylinder of carbon!) Thanks for the education!!
Wow. This... was completely new to me. I always thought this loud *bang* on engine startup was something similar in principle, to a car engine going into high rev for a second upon ignition.
I was a big fan of the Corsair but didn't know they used a shotgun starter! It's just a real good-looking plane not to mention how well it performed! At least on screen anyway!
If you look closely at pictures of Japanese aircraft carriers during ww2, they had a tall cart with a crane that attached to the propeller and spun it to start the engine on the aircraft... Idk if anyone else did that, and its something ive never heard discussed
Battery cats are still very much a thing even for relatively small aircraft and especially in cold weather. Gotta protect those expensive onboard cells.
Flight of the Phoenix ,staring Jimmy Stewart ( an actual WWII pilot) is one of my favorite movies! Didn’t know until 35 years later that Paul Mantz was killed while filming this , he was the actual pilot of this plane in this movie! RIP Paul Mantz, Frank Tallman and the cast members of this classic!
Way back in 1969 I watched 4 c-119s shit gun start at FT. Benning, Georgia during jump school. I will never forget the experience as no one told us about it. That is how they were started
The DeHavilland Chipmunk used a cartridge starter…..there was a big bang, the cockpit filled with cordite smoke, the instrument panel shook like hell, and when the smoke cleared the engine was ticking away :) The Dak/DC3/C47 had a flywheel which was electrically spun and then clutched/engaged onto the engine…..or a manual starting handle which was large enough for 2 gorillas to operate …..or a short rope with a horse feeding bag on the end pulled over by one person, plus a long rope wrapped around the propellor boss and pulled by about 4 people who ran like hell once the horse bag was used. In my later career we called for the engineers…..that always worked !!
For some reason this video reminds me of British comedian Les Dawson, who said that his mother-in-law had a job at the airport ... kick-starting Jumbo Jets.
Hopefully, this turned out okay. I am more comfortable explaining history than mechanics but I like challenging myself and making videos where I get to learn too.
Your video turned out great! Thanks for teaching me about this. The part about manually moving the propeller to mess with the cylinders was especially interesting to me. Edit: The "enGAUGING" was clever.
Your videos always come out great mate, very interesting!
Honestly you are getting better and better at explaining historical technical subjects and a surface level look is what your videos excel at anyway.
Bruh, you did great, I didn't notice you struggle at all. Another top-tier video!
You did great Johny, as always.
“Sir the plane won’t start!”
“Nothing a 12 gauge can’t fix!”
Get Basil Fawlty onto it....😊😊
Yep, he'd give it "a damn good thrashing"!@@eamonnclabby7067
😂especially with them silver dimes👍🏻✌🏻💥
You'd be lucky to start it with something as small as a 12 gauge. I wouldn't recommend mixing up your Coffman cartridges with your shotgun cartridges either. It'll F**k up the starter and prove very ineffective against a pheasant.🤣🤣
A 4 gauge, more like.
Fun fact: In the Montana dig site scene from Jurassic Park, a special shotgun shell is also used in a similar way in a device called a Betsy Gun.
It is true. They use surveyors and some mines use that same shotgun type shell firing it straight into the Earth and the sound waves that come back go into a computer and people can see what kind of rocks and fissures lye under their proposed mines or survey.
That’s a stretch. The only similarity is the shotgun shell.
@@jumpingjacks5558 Yep, now they use gamma guns.
Except that this one is a blank where the gas pressures are used and the dig site ones are actual shotgun slugs being fired into the ground to see the sonar.
In the fossil finder's case, you can use a regular shotgun if you want, the whole structure for it was just to ensure it went perfectly vertical.
From what I understand, and having seen one work, the shotgun shells they use do not have any projectiles in the shell@@Rose_Butterfly98
"Shotgunning" was a similar way of quickly injecting "fuel" during my misspent youth.
"Shotgunning" was also featured in the film Platoon, but it wasn't fuel being "injected" ;)
And were you "flying" after a few of those too?
And for those 24oz cans, the rule of thumb for the carburetor hole for the air and for the gravity controlled fuel injector hole to work at maximum capacity flow, the bigger the better.
Thanks, I was an air cadet when we still had the Canberra bomber in service. And on a field trip to the local Airforce base, we stood beside or near the bomber and they did the shotgun start for demonstration purposes. Really loud & a bit scary when you are a thin 15-year-old.Cheers
My Father was a Australian Navy aircraft tech in the 1950's. He told me a lot about shotgun starters. They were basically more reliable and robust compared to the electric starters of the time.
Didn't the chipmunk have a cartridge starter...early models did I'm sure.
@@gilburtonAs a Canberran I always get a bit excited when I see my city name!
@@geradkavanagh8240 And nice and light, too.
What were the RAN flying in those days?
I worked on canberras in the early 80s at RAF Marham. The cartridges you refer to are number 9 and 10 engine starter cartridges. As you say around 3 or 4 inch dia and around 10 inch long. Regards, Paul Fowell. @@gilburton
It's hard to gauge what a blast a starter like that would be.
Could it have been a 10 gauge? My grandfather brought home a German flare gun from WW 1 that looked to take that size.
😂😂😂
@@charlesyoung7436, it wasn't a question, it was a play on words.
"...it was said he was let go, but a man of his calibre would never be fired."
I dunno, you could give it a shot
Back in the 1970’s I worked for an oil field company. If we were low on air pressure we had cartridge starters. They were larger than a shotgun shell but bigger than a 10 or 12 gauge. They’d work in a bind !
What if you mistakenly put in a real shotgun shell and blasted the engine full of buckshot ?
8 GAUGE?
Bigger, just powder back in the early 1970’s so I couldn’t give you any exact dementions
@@winnon992 COOL... I "Promise" I won't replicate one... 🙏
The shells were all powder, no shot. The pressure would spin the impellers on that air starter. I can remember being covered with black smoke. They could have been black powder. That’s been 50 years ago ,
A giant cloud of smoke. I think the engines were 4-71 General Motors Diesel.
I didn't even know aircraft engines needed any type of starters or assistors until i watched Top Gun Maverick where they needed something extra to start the Tomcat.
The F-14 needed a power cart and a huffer which blows air into a duct that spins the turbine
A lot of Navy jets need external Huffer Carts to provide electric power and compressed air to start. The Navy expects to mostly operate from carriers where the carts can be easily provided and the weight savings are nice to off set the increased weight of a carrier capable jet. The USAF has some self start capable jets, usually with a jet fuel starter, a very small jet turbine that can be cranked by onboard battery power and starts the first engine.
SR-71 needed some Cadillac engines to start
What surprised me is that even piston engine aircrafts need starter power.
Well, how did you think they were started? Batteries and electric motors (i.e. starters) are extremely heavy, not something you want in an airplane.
Coffman style cordite shells were also used as a propellant source in the WW2 Australian 'Murray' Flame tank prototype, which was intended to replace the Matilda Frog flame tank, but never entered service due to the conclusion of the war. The intention was for the cordite shells to be loaded into a breach mechanism, with the expanding gasses actuating a piston which would generate the pressure to expel a charge of flame fuel from the piston chamber.
I once saw a Martini Henry with a curved barrel that would be loaded with blanks and used to ignite boilers on ships
That sounds like something that Gun Jesus should make video about
thas cool
I have a starter shell in my collection from a Canberra Bomber. It's so cool to see the Canberra start, three shells go off at once and there are three plumes of smoke and the engine just screams away. Really cool
Yep, the Canberra start was very impressive with all those plumes of (black) smoke from the motors. I've seen a great photo of the RAAF Canberras at Phang Rang showing five or six aircraft all starting at the same time.
I love that your videos are so concise. You give us just the pertinent info without any filler. Almost all other channels pile on a bunch of useless crap just to make the videos a certain length. Thank you.
I only clicked on this because of Flight of the Phoenix (the '65 version). I remember it was on TV when I was a kid (I was born in '65) and I thought it looked like it was going to be a snore but by the end I was cheering when the engine turned over too. Still one of my favourite films.
That iconic scene made a similar impression on me as a kid, no idea why they remade an already perfect movie but Hollywood is notoriously cannibalistic.
@@bobroberts6155 And the remake didn't measure up.
Man. I didn't know there was a remake, I love the original I was 11 at the time !
Do we count the "girl dancer" as a actress? If not, it's the ONLY movie I can think of that was 100% men casting.... (Damn good movie too).
The first movie was one of the greatest movies I have EVER seen. Remake I have no desire to see. Every time I see the original at the engine start scene I still get tears in my eyes. All were great in this movie!
The 1965 Flight of the Phoenix is a good classic. A hundred times better than the 2004 remake
Agreed. The remake tried to "improve" a bunch of things that didn't need improving.
Funny, when I read "shotgun start" in the title, I immediately thought of this movie.
So, the remake was more like Psycho or The Stepford Wives than Cape Fear, 3:10 to Yuma (apologies if that became a timestamp), or True Grit, correct?
It's a great film.
@@kaasmeester5903
You can't improve perfect.
I refuse to watch the remake. Remakes never improve on a classic and the original FOTP is a masterpiece.
Albanian here. Here, many of our famous million Mile Mercedes W123 300D Turbo’s have been rigged up with shotgun shell starter mechanisms from tractors, so they can be fully run without batteries/electricity, as they use mechanical fuel injection and have compression ignition.
Cheers Johnny - as always, it was a blast 😊
It’s not called birdshot for no reason
Better than my joke 😂
Damn good one
[squidward face]
Good one❤
Well the shotgun starter was basically just filled of gun powder
dude you have been killing it lately.
Thanks for the history lesson Johnny. I never knew of this starting method. Always thought crank or electric dolly was used in WW2.
A cartridge starting system is used to start engines on B52 bombers so they can get airborne quickly. This is very important if a nuclear attack is detected since anything on the ground will not be useful after the first exchange. A rapid starting system is much more economical than keeping a large number of bombers in the air at all time, which was the practice at the height of the cold war.
Good one, Johnny. It's a long way from aircraft engines, but a lot of the concrete batching plants in the U.K. used 8 gauge blanks to de-scale the OPC and fly ash tanks. A buddy of mine used to visit them and collect the empties for reloading his waterfowl cartridges.
Foundries, mills and other facilities would sometimes lease kiln guns with what's essentially an AAMG tripod and other associated gear for blasting slag and other deposits off the insides of their kilns and furnaces, in fact they exist in this legal niche where they can be owned by non-certificate holders but the companies who lease them out are usually pretty active at retaining them though it's a bit of a security-by-obscurity situation.
But the 8 bore cartridges used for concrete blasting will not fit a shotgun, they are different to prevent them being used, many good 8 bores have their chambers altered to take these.
Is that right? Oh well. You know what they say about hunters, fishermen and the truth. Thanks for that. I'll bear it in mind the next time somebody tries to spin that yarn.@@453421abcdefg12345
I spent a few months working in an abattoir and I think I encountered the coolest use of blank shotgun shells of all time. It was a sledgehammer except the head of the sledgehammer had a break action and you put a blank shell into the head, then it goes off when the head hits something. Like some sort of fantasy zombie killing melee weapon that super-charges your swing. It didn't get swung, it just got tapped lightly onto the forehead of cows and the shell going off instantly knocked them out. I think the point was that it was always the right amount of force to incapacitate the animal so it was very reliable.
I used to have this silly thought in which one of the tools I use in vehicle maintenance is a suppressed machine pistol that I stick to the engine of a car and shoot actual rounds (not too dissimilar to how a power drill is operated).
Turns out my idea wasn't that far-fetched.
I remember while I was in the U.S.A.F. watching a couple of F-111s use "start canisters" during alerts back in the mid 1980s a couple of times. These were like number 10 tins of probably black powder with a bunch of holes in the sides like a colander and when they burned produced a huge cloud of black smoke while some turbine went FWEEEEEEEE! while it was running. Once it died down, after a few seconds you could hear the low hum of one of the engines spooling up, and soon followed by the second engine. It was cool to see because when it happened I learned how they can launch so many planes in short order during a real wartime scramble. The usual method to start the planes was to roll up a wheeled cart, the size of a small trailer that contained a small jet engine that used it's compressor pressure through a flexible hose rated at 2000psi into the same turbine that canister used. The cart was noisy enough that we never heard the little turbine when it was running. I did see one start canister go off, but then followed by frantically pushing the standby start cart into the shelter next to the plane to start it up when the canister failed to start the engine.
I also was in the USAF, in the mid 70's. I was a crew chief on the KC-135. When I pulled alert duty we'd get alerted in the middle of the night to get them all going. We had a coffee can size container with something like gunpowder in it. We'd shove it inside an engine from the side, give the pilot the all clear and kaboom. Went to 90% in about 5 seconds. Then they started the other J-57's from the bleed air of the first one. Standing about 6 feet away was a big boom. Maybe that's why I'm now a boomer. And very deaf using hearing aids. But, hey, we were young and tough and didn't need those pansy ear protectors.
Very fascinating! Now I know how these cartridge starters work. It is a simpler system than I thought. Thanks for making this. I always wondered about them.
Very informative, it really clarified how the shells were used to start the engine.
James Stewart and Flight of the Phoenix is almost certainly the most famous example of the Cauffman starter in film. I always thought that Canberra in pronounced Can-bare-ah. But the online pronunciation guide tells me that you nailed it. I tip my hat sir.
Apparently Canberrans say Can-bra. That was news to me too.
I had to record that part twice because my brain wants to pronounce it the other way too lol
Nup its Can-bra I was born there and I still live there although on more formal occasions we will accept can-bar-ah
The problem is...the English can't pronounce English words properly...
...like Jaguar.
@@snotnosewilly99 Perfect example.
Yes, but Aussies pronounce everything upside down. I wouldn't trust that.
There's a great scene from the Great Escape where Hendley(James Garner) and Blythe(Donald Pleasance) find a plane and use it to make their getaway. It was an observation plane, and had an inertial starter, a crank near the cockpit. The nearly blind Blythe has to crank the motor while Hendley is prepping the plane for takeoff. 😮
He has to tell Blythe not to move otherwise he'll get a face full of propeller blade.
@@actioncom2748 Yep. It was so sad when Blythe died...😵😭 Love that movie.
That was a great sequence but I wanted them to make it! They had just minutes to go and they would have made it. The little trainer must have been low on fuel---it probably wasn't filled up after a heavy day of training.
@@philiphatfield5666 I guess we'll have to settle for the ending in Top Gun Maverick
@@philiphatfield5666 Me too...😭😭😭
All these years I've been reading about old aircraft & I had no idea that this was a thing. Thanks! 👍
Learn something new every day, I thought that shotgun starter on flight of the Phoenix was made up just like the plane being pieced together, never knew that kind of starting system was a thing !
I recall aged about 6 years my grandfather held a 12 bore for me to sight and fire,have to say it gave me a hell of a start.
I was today years old when I now learn that some aircraft used a damn shotgun shell to start up. The more you learn.
Modern F22s have cartridge starters too, heard one going at an airshow. Didn't recognize it at first, but the regular bang, and whine of the engine, and another bang as the pilot gave it another go a few minutes later, gave it away. The local airport I was at for the show didn't have the right equipment or couldn't get access to the normal start cart, was during COVID if memory serves - lots of logistics struggles at that time.
That was a great movie...flight of the Phoenix.... now I gotta watch it again...
Many moons ago as a kid I used to start my dads tractor with a Coffman black power shell [hit it with a hammer] - great fun...
The "Blank Cartridge" starter (Coffman) system is used on the older engines of the B-52 bomber as well as the 4.5 generation F5G / F20 tactical fighter.
So just ask Grandpa Buff if you want to learn more.
The B-52 used a much larger cartridge that a shotshell. It is about 6 inches in diameter and and fit into its' container attached to the starter part of the jet engine. With the plans to re-engine the planes a modern APU system most likely will replace it.
Of Note: The F-4 Phantoms J-79-GE 15 &17 engines were capable of using the same system as the B-52 did.
@@paulzaborny6741 yep, it takes a bit more Umph to spin-up a jet's turbine.
@@Nugire Lol, ^~^ and Grandpa Buff is getting new engines as we speak.
@@ditzydoo4378 I've done 2 full starts on F-4's many moons ago.
They put out ALOT of smoke. Also, the crew chief had to watch the exhaust port for possibly a flame.
No flame, good start.
If a flame came out and was sucked to the Aux air door next to it and did nothing, ok start.
HOWEVER, if the flame went in and came back out the Aux door....the chief was advised to RUN.
Flight crew sees the Chief run and they would bail quick, no need to explain it to them.
Flight of the Phoenix was my favourite movie as a kid and I must have seen it 50 times.
During the 1920s and 1930s, some aircraft had both electric and Coffman starters. Batteries were heavy and inefficient, and were often shifted from one mounting point to another as an adjustment for weight and balance. This meant that sometimes they were several feet further away from the starter motor, so an aged, hot or cold battery might not have enough energy to fully and reliably spin up the weight that turned the Bendix. The Coffman shell cost a few cents for each try, but would get the engine going, even after the battery had been tried and found lacking. The Napier Lion (water-cooled W-inline 12-cyl) was one that offered a dual-starter accessory pack, but only on engines sold to North America -- engines put on British planes and boats were electric-only, so the used of a "trolley-acc" battery cart was necessary, just as on the Hurricane and Spitfire (whose batteries were not strong enough to crank the engine).
Thank you for always making your content so concise and to the point. So many other channels would take 15+ minutes to convey the same information you did in less than four minutes.
I remember going to the theaters to watch the remake of flight of the Phoenix with my dad and him being so mad that he walked out and we just went home and watched original.
Thanks, Ive searched for explanations on how this worked. Not just examples of it being used. Pretty much how I imagined it worked.
I think most people became first aware of the Coffman Starter from the classic 1965 film "The Flight of the Phoenix", during the nail-biting scene where Jimmy Stewart is trying to start the engine. I remember wondering at the time how a shotgun shell could start an engine. Thanks very much for this informative video!
The most famous shotgun starting sequence was in 'Flight of the Phoenix.', But the aircraft used , the Fairchild C-82 Packet did not use a Coffman starter. It had an electric starter. I think the same applies to the C-119 used in the remake. The reason the Coffman starter sequence was in both films was because it was in the original book. But the aircraft in the original book was a fictitious Salmon - Rees Skytruck Mark II which had twin inline liquid cooled V12 engines (type not specified). In the book the crash survivors distil some of the engine coolant to get water, That is why in the film they had to add a plot point that the aircaft was carrying drums of anti freeze which they then distil to get water.
But he says they can be "added to most aircraft" at 2:55. The C-82 and C-119 may not have ben equipped with a Coffman starter from the factory, but almost certainly could have been retrofitted as a failsafe if they're frequently far from well-stocked maintenance facilities. The older an aircraft gets, the more likely it is to be "subject to change without notice," I would think.
I always thought this was more myth than reality, when I watched Flight of the Phoenix. Thanks for ridding me of my ignorance once again, Johnny! Keep up the solid work, man.
Classic or remake?
@@michaelandreipalon359 remake. Is the classic worth a watch?
@@benitoharrycollmann132 Wholeheartedly yes.
@@benitoharrycollmann132Far better than the remake. Definitely recommended.
That scean in flight with Jimmy is one of my favorites I love that
Always the most interesting videos, im taking my ATPL license and have always been interested in history, like many i remember the flight of the phoenix movie and the last shell that started the engine, in flight school we learned engine starters most of them electric nowadays, still its most fascinating looking back at how it was done before. Keep up the good videos, i find them very interesting and very well explained and summarized both the history part and the mechanics/ engineering.
The Coffman engine starter (also known as a "shotgun starter") was a starting system used on many piston engines in aircraft and armored vehicles of the 1930s and 1940s. It used a cordite cartridge to move a piston, which cranked the engine. The Coffman system was one of the most common brands; another was the Breeze cartridge system, which was produced under Coffman patents. Most American military aircraft and tanks which used radial engines were equipped with this system.
Love your videos Johnny! your narration, the movie clips, learning so much and having a blast!
This is the first video I've seen that shows the components of a Coffman Starter, Thank You! / B.
I genuinely learnt a new thing today
Ever since i first saw flight of the Phoenix I've always wondered how this worked. Thank you for a very clear and entertaining explanation.
Dinner?
@@bobbylee2853 Bloody typos. Should have read "since". Thank you for catching it. Edited.
I still flinch every time I think about unplugging the GPU, standing 3ft from a spinning prop on a Swearingen Metroliner. That was 20 years ago.
I use a shotgun starter on myself every morning to get out of bed. Great video by the way.
I just tried starting my drone with a shotgun starter. I'm not a fan.
Thanks for another fun and interesting video.
You had no choice but to start this with James Stuart! Perfect
Thank you so much. I was thinking this movie yesterday (one of my all time favorites) and was unsure if the starter system really existed. Now I can see the many benefits it has.
The B52 uses a shotgun starter it is much larger than a 12 gauge round but it’s for combat situations when they needed to scramble within 4 minutes they start four of the eight engines via oversized shotgun shells and use the four turning to get the other four. This is referred to as Cart start on the b52s
That guy in the Canberra was performing extremely dangerously in proximity with the ground.
Ah yes the flight of the Flight of the Phoenix, both movies bring me back to my childhood, thanks for that . i was wondering how this system worked, and love your humor as always , keep it coming
Well there you go. I had never heard of shotgun starters. I know a guy who used a shotgun on his lawnmower that wouldn’t start but that’s a whole different kind of thing.
We had both F-4Es and F-105F/G models, the F-4 J-79 engines could be cartridge started, but if fouled the engine, they used up our supply of 32-60 power cart/engine start units. The J-75 in the f-105 was pretty much started with clack powder charges all the time. Watch any video of them starting and you'll see the plum of black smoke from the fuselage vent.
I remember these on Chipmunks. Also the ones used on Canberras. The trolly Accs were used an awful lot in the RAF in the 50s and 60s. Good video.
I will always think of the original Flight of the Phoenix whenever I think of shotgun shell starting.
so that's what my uncle used to do when he was servicing Corsairs. Thanks for showing it in action.
The scene in the original Flight of the Phoenix where the aircraft designer admits he's only designed model airplanes is priceless.
"A model plane has to fly itself. There's no pilot to correct the trim. Therefore if anything, a model plane has to be designed for greater stability that what you are pleased to call the real thing." Heinrich Dorfmann, Flight of the Phoenix (1965)
Then again, they have more room for error with the materials and therefore the strucural integrity, since the strength of most metals/wood is much better in small scale than in big scale.
Something about "increasing diameter by x2 will increase weight by ^2
Thanks for the reminder of the most dramatic scene in Flight of the Phoenix: James Stewart using all but one of the remaining cartridges to spin up the engine and clear it out prior to its final chance at starting.
Another fun fact is that the B-52 uses starter cartridges to start very quickly in case of an emergency.
Except those cartridges are about a gallon in size. The power is ignited, burning slowly, and the exhaust is fed thru the standard bleed air starter to rotate the engine.
I found this video very interesting and informative I new about these starters I saw it on that old movie FLIGHT of the Phoenix.
Cart Start, a classic. I'll bet they are still in use in some form or another.
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "Fire it up!"
Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the second largest moon in the Solar System after Ganymede. Unlike other moons in the solar system, it has a thick atmosphere mostly composed largely of methane as well as a lot of lakes. These lakes are not filled with water, but rather liquid ethane and methane.
Venus is the second planet from the sun and the hottest planet in the solar system. It has a uniquely thick atmosphere for rocky planets composed of mostly sulphuric acid at a temperature hot enough to melt lead
Irrelevant, but thanks.
Ah, I was wondering about that after watching this video. Thanks for clearing that up.
So…. The no smoking rule is heavily enforced?
Even the giant B-52 uses a version of this. Small explosive charges are used to rapidly start the engines in case of a scramble situation, such as an incoming nuclear attack.
Learn something new everyday. Good job.
I immediately thought of Jimmy Stewart, from his scene in the great film Flight of the Phoenix. And sure enough you showed a couple clips from the movie and spoke to the process as featured therein.
I never doubted it was a real practice, but before your episode here I didn’t understand the particulars. (I recall how he utilized one shell just to clear the cylinder of carbon!)
Thanks for the education!!
I remember watching them trying to start the plane with shells in Flight of the Phoenix.
Wow. This... was completely new to me. I always thought this loud *bang* on engine startup was something similar in principle, to a car engine going into high rev for a second upon ignition.
I was a big fan of the Corsair but didn't know they used a shotgun starter! It's just a real good-looking plane not to mention how well it performed! At least on screen anyway!
If you look closely at pictures of Japanese aircraft carriers during ww2, they had a tall cart with a crane that attached to the propeller and spun it to start the engine on the aircraft... Idk if anyone else did that, and its something ive never heard discussed
I just learned something new today! Thanks!
Battery cats are still very much a thing even for relatively small aircraft and especially in cold weather. Gotta protect those expensive onboard cells.
😄 JJ's topics are always short, informative, & interesting, and the closing message is also intriguing & relevant 😆
Flight of the Phoenix ,staring Jimmy Stewart ( an actual WWII pilot) is one of my favorite movies! Didn’t know until 35 years later that Paul Mantz was killed while filming this , he was the actual pilot of this plane in this movie! RIP Paul Mantz, Frank Tallman and the cast members of this classic!
Have you thought about talking about the battle of the beams? It's some pretty neat history, and R.V. Jones was a really interesting character.
As a former A and P this is a very accurate video. Thanks
Way back in 1969 I watched 4 c-119s shit gun start at FT. Benning, Georgia during jump school.
I will never forget the experience as no one told us about it. That is how they were started
Never knew this.. Thanks for the video.
Cheers Johnny, really nice video
Glad to see the field Marshall get some much deserved attention
The DeHavilland Chipmunk used a cartridge starter…..there was a big bang, the cockpit filled with cordite smoke, the instrument panel shook like hell, and when the smoke cleared the engine was ticking away :)
The Dak/DC3/C47 had a flywheel which was electrically spun and then clutched/engaged onto the engine…..or a manual starting handle which was large enough for 2 gorillas to operate …..or a short rope with a horse feeding bag on the end pulled over by one person, plus a long rope wrapped around the propellor boss and pulled by about 4 people who ran like hell once the horse bag was used.
In my later career we called for the engineers…..that always worked !!
Interesting video. Some cool footage you dug up!
The de Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk used a shotgun cartridge, it was a basic trainer for the RAF/ Air Cadets in the UK.
Whoa, The Ignition Pistol in the Sky Gunner intro makes a whole lot more sense now 20 years later.
Loved that film, always wondered about that system.
Thank you for the new knowledge...
For some reason this video reminds me of British comedian Les Dawson, who said that his mother-in-law had a job at the airport ... kick-starting Jumbo Jets.
3:15 The Merlin engines in the early Spitfires - and Hurricanes - had Coffman starters, but were quickly replaced with electric start.
I've used the cartridge starter on a late friends vintage Field Marshall tractor it was a very reliable system. An interesting video JJ. 👍🇬🇧
Hawker Typhoon/Tempest had the Napier Sabre engine which used a shotgun cartridge to start.
I never knew this was a thing, thank you for the education
i love the clip of the Canberra shotgun starting
Immediatlely reminded me of the movie Flight of the Phoenix