You won't find anything about Mr Morrison, he was just an "ordinary" guy, as I said:

"Written by a chap called Stewart R Morrison, an air gunner on the Liberators of No 215 Squadron based in Calcutta and Dubulia."

He Joined the Royal Observer Corps in 1986, becoming an Observer Commander, and died in 1989. That's it.

The words in here are all mine, not his, to avoid copyright problems (unless I mark as a direct quote), so you can attribute any details to him, but not necessarily anything else, due to paraphrasing.

I don't know what your problem in accepting the fact that from 1933 onward, Adolf Hitler systematically purged Germany of thinkers in favour of those with racial and militaristic tendencies, but if you won't accept it, then of course "... imagine if there had been enough brains left in Germany to develop it earlier!" won't mean anything to you, and I can't explain it any further.

"Two thirds of [Me]262 crashes..."

I think the point being made here is simply that two out of three 262 crashes were systematic, and due to causes that could have been avoided had the engineering been up to the job. By simply (and I use the word with care) attending to the engineering deficiencies, they could have effectively upped production by the same number by keeping those aircraft in the air instead of destroying them in unnecessary crashes, costing them aircraft and pilots. The other third would have have been attributable to multiple factors (yes, including sabotage I'm sure) but atending to any one would hav had a minimal effect by comparison.

"With a life expectancy of only 7 to 8 months, what incentive was there not to sabotage! I'd guess sabotage, rather than technical and engineering inadequacies, played a major role in many of the teething problems suffered by the Me 262."

Er... no.

The teething problems involved only the prototypes, and lasted for almost 4 years until the aircraft went into production. Only when it went into production would it have been 'prey' to the attention of the forced labour.

I would dispute the incentive aspect to sabotage, as the detection of sabotage would, I'm sure, not have been detected at an individual level, but at a post-production test (I know this from tank history). The result would not have been the beating and execution of an individual, but of everyone involved in the production line concerned, and/or possibly hostages held as a great disincentive, with tens or even hundreds despatched in response to sabotage or disobedience. The intent being to threaten not those who carried out the act, but someone beside them so they would be responsible for the deaths or beatings of others,

This was, for example, used to keep the various Resistance forces in occupied countries in check. Kill a German soldier, and twenty civilians would be swept off the street at random and shot, more if an officer was killed, and even more if high ranking (Heydrich - Hitler initially wanted to kill 10,000
Czechs to avenge the death of his friend).

Just got reminded of an intriguing little anecdote related to British aircraft. Early on, Dowding specified bulletproof glass for his pilot's cockpits, and the Air Ministry apparently ridiculed the suggestion, and turned him down.

Dowding retorted by asking why, if Chicago gangsters could have bulletproof glass in the windows of their limousines, couldn't his pilots have it in their cockpits.

His pilots got 2 inch bulletproof glass in the front of their cockpits

Regarding the possible sabotage of Me-262's, I do remember once reading that a number of the Heinkel 162 Salamanders had been sabotaged in their underground production facility.  Apparently scratched somewhere on one of these aircraft were the words "I am unhappy in my work".

It's a shame about all the dribbling inebriates that fill the likes of YouTube with their inane attempts at asserting their own importance. It means that it can be overlooked in terms of the valuable footage that has been uploaded. A simple hunt for our subject here nets a number of interesting films, many more that I'll pop in here for easy access, and a look there is worthwhile, provided you can avoid the brain dead zombies

I haven't had time to look at all of these, just flitted through some, but they seem too good to miss:







Me 162 Salamander - according to Eric Brown, looooong take-off, and the tail might snap off if turned too fast!






And, one to lighten things up a little, and make you wonder (but I'll not suggest at what you should wonder ):

Yes, Apollo, I was aware of the chap called Stewart R Morrison, but an air gunner can go on to get-one's-name-on-the-net stuff.

We are agreed on one thing... the need to come up with a new name for these war postings.

"...two out of three 262 crashes were systematic, and due to causes that could have been avoided had the engineering been up to the job... "

Now this Apollo, is a statement which I think would be rather difficult to embroider with examples. If the engineering had been up to the job would the Comet disaster have been avoided? Likewise, if the engineering had been up to the job would the TG306, disaster and the death of Geofrey de Haviland, have been avoided? (If the answer to these questions is "yes", might this be the result of America having purged post-war Britain of thinkers?).

I could of course go on with further examples of crashes involving new aircraft, much like the crashes of the Me 262, but I think my point should be quite clear: crashed aircraft constitute a learning part in the building of new aircraft, and does not necessarily reflect on the competence of the engineers and technicians involved.

By the way, I don't know what the difference is between an aircraft crash and a  systematic aircraft crash. I'd guess the latter refer to a crash resulting from some system which is part of the aircraft... like the radar system or the armament system.

My problem with " ...accepting the fact that from 1933 onward, Adolf Hitler systematically purged Germany of thinkers in favour of those with racial and militaristic tendencies...", is just the same as your problem with accepting the falsehood of "Germany had purged all its thinkers at the start of the war...". I still believe the development of the world's first operational jet, the Me 262, offers a fair measure of support for my assertion that Germany had not purged itself of all thinkers

"I would dispute the incentive aspect to sabotage, ..."

The following is an extract of an article written by a man who had served in Hamburg as a flak-tower gunner during the latter days of the war.

"There were hellish battle situations but one had, here especially, the feeling that one could defend one's self. To be sure, we suffered under very difficult battle conditions, because the 128mm caliber ammunition which we were firing came out of a munitions factory which employed "forced labour", and probably also prisoners, who were busy carrying out sabotage. They sabotaged the shell by drilling into it so that the propellant and the explosive material of the actual shell were ignited when firing took place. The result in the most favourable case was a ruptured barrel, and in the most unfavourable case, an exploding barrel. After one of the numerous heavy air-raids we found our tattered barrel again in the neighbourhood at a distance of 100 m and it looked like the skin of a banana that had been ripped off in strips"

This example strongly supports my contention that sabotage continued in Germany right up until the end of the war... whether there were repercussions or not. I am convinced sabotage played some role in the construction of the Me 262, regardless of whether it was a production-line model or a prototype machine.

"It's a shame about all the dribbling inebriates that fill the likes of YouTube with their inane attempts at asserting their own importance. It means that it can be overlooked in terms of the valuable footage that has been uploaded. A simple hunt for our subject here nets a number of interesting films, many more that I'll pop in here for easy access, and a look there is worthwhile, provided you can avoid the brain dead zombies"

I haven't had time to look at them either, but i did look at some. The one which interested me the most was the one which showed, quite clearly, two of the four 30mm cannons carried by the Me262. First of all, we might note that this was an immense fire-power at that time.

The Avro-Canada aircraft, the CF-105 (which never got beyond the building of five prototypes), used American cannon which had been developed from the German 30 mm guns. This was in 1955, and at that time these guns still hadn't been perfected by the Americans... ten years after the end of the war. (their speed of fire was too fast !) This gives an idea of how time-consuming it can be to resolve some of the problems which occur in developing new aircraft hardware.  By the way, this cannon had no recoiling parts: no breech block as used in the British Hispano 20mm cannon.


cannon

Quoted from Dugald

By the way, I don't know what the difference is between an aircraft crash and a  systematic aircraft crash. I'd guess the latter refer to a crash resulting from some system which is part of the aircraft... like the radar system or the armament system.

Sorry, slipped into "work mode" and used an innocent jargon term we bandy about without thinking.

Systematic failures have nothing to do with systems failures, but can describe them if they happen to be involved.

Systematic is really just a convenience term, which allows us to describe errors and failures that have arisen from something designed into a system (where system can be anything: aircraft, program, engine, television or whatever), and means that the problem was basically man-made and caused by something like a mistake or oversight. You could think of it as something that could land you in court, since any resulting problem could have been avoided.

The alternative is random, which refers to errors and failures that arise from external influences outside the control of the designer. These tend to be natural influences over which one has no control, but still has to take account of. Although one may have no control over them, failing to take account of them can still land you in court. As a trivial illustration, bird-strikes on aircraft happen at random, but if you don't design the hardware to survive a strike, you'll find yourself liable for the subsequent crash when one occurs.

The classification of contributions as either systematic or random, and of their relative significance in a particular application, can lead to much heated debate, and disagreement until they have been analysed. Refer to the bird-strike, which has a random cause, but a systematic failure if the designer had omitted to make the cockpit strong enough to withstand the event.

Analysis can run to pages before agreement is reached - thankfully, my own need for such analysis usually fits on one or two pages, with 10-20 contributions of significance, although it's worth pointing out that the list can be considerably longer, since it's still necessary to identify all the contributions, even if they are assigned a relevant value of 0 and considered negligible, they still have to be accounted for.

Now that's a very detailed explanation about the use of systematic aircraft crash Apollo, for which i thank you. Needless to say, the expression is not what i guessed it meant. I was involved in a wee bit of aircraft crash-investigations myself once, but, I hasten to add, only at the wrench and ball-peen hammer level, nothing at the engineering-design level at all. This investigation I'd have labeled as  a 'systematic aircraft crash". The system in this case was the seat-ejection system, which involved explosives, but it wasn't referred to as a "system" crash; this is what prompted my question to you. (The observer in the rear seat couldn't eject because of wind stream ... curtains).

That was a nasty one - I'm surprised at the ejection failure - was high air speed a major factor (as opposed to just being in the wind stream at around 100 knots?).

I remember the films about the early ejection seats, where the occupant was likely to be liquidised by ejecting from a fast jet when they hit the air, or even punching through the canopy if it was smashed by explosives first.

The current versions are most impressive, and (within reason of course) able to throw the pilot out from an inverted aircraft near ground level, detect their inversion and fire rockets to turn the seat right way up and to a suitable height to deploy the parachute - that that's a system

Yes Apollo, inverting the ejection seat to right-way-up is a level of technical sophistication away beyond the Martin Baker ejection system on which I worked. The accident with which I was associated probably involved the earliest Martin Baker seats. The aircraft accident happened on a routine CF-100 test flight. There was an aircraft engine failure (not sure about this) which required the aircraft to be abandoned harmlessly over Lake Ontario. The pilot ordered the observer to eject. The observer was supposed to pull his canvas face-cover, which in turn was supposed to cause the first cartridge to be fired and start  the sequence of cartridge explosions which would shoot the seat clear of the aircraft. The observer couldn't get his hands above his face to pull the face-canvas because of the slip-stream.

The pilot successfully ejected after having waited as long as he could, The observer went down with the plane. The pilot was one, Jan Zurakowski, one of the flight-test pioneers of the Gloster Meteor (not sure, it could have been a secret jet aircraft that Gloster was working on). Zurakowski wasn't the most popular fellow around Avro after ejecting and leaving the observer to die.

Martin Baker sent an engineer out to Avro in Canada and I worked as his  "helper". Dummies were tested in a series of ground level ejections and the decision reached by other test engineers, to solve the problem. The solution was, as hinted/mentioned in your post, was to punch through the canopy. One strong steel spike was installed on each side of the drogue box, and the seat 'chopped' its way through the canopy, and at the same time, setting the ejection charges in motion, thus affording the observer's seat the chance to eject. All the hundereds of CF-100's already built had to be modified by either the RCAF or Avro... quite a job!

Let me think - the observer's stuck and there's nothing I can do. I know, I'll stay here and go down with him in case I'm not popular for escaping in case people think I didn't bother to unstrap and climb into the back and try and help him.

I'm sorry, I'm not making light of it, but you'd think the folk at Avro would know better. Once you're strapped in to an ejector seat, you're strapped in until you get unstrapped on landing, or hit the release after ejecting.

There's another account. These are his own words from a talk he gave in 1978:

During one of these tests, an unexplainable explosion occurred at 5000 feet in the rear of the aircraft, which locked the flying controls in a position that forced the aircraft to turn and dive. I jettisoned the rocket pack and prepared to abandon the aircraft. After jettisoning the canopy I heard another explosion and assumed that my observer John Hiebert had ejected. Then I used my own seat ejection. When my parachute opened I realized that my right ankle was probably fractured. I landed on my left foot in a hard field near Ajax.

In the hospital I learned that the second explosion was not the ejection of my observer, but rather another explosion which probably damaged his ejection mechanism or incapacitated him. He was killed in the crash.

My impression was that the cause of the accident was probably ignition by an electric spark of fuel spilled in the rear fuselage from fuel lines fractured by excessive vibration of the aircraft with the rocket pack down.

The daily press stories that I was trying to save populated areas by directing the aircraft to open fields have no relation to the facts. After the first explosion I was unable to move the controls even a fraction of an inch.

Zurakowski seems to have been quite famous. An interview about the Avro Arrow, which seems to have been a political hot potato - this might have been what you were thinking of? Found an obit and mention of the CF-105 Arrow.

I've never heard of him, why should I of course, but he makes interesting reading. One of the most revealing remarks he makes is about his time at Gloster, and getting out and heading to Canada and Avro. As the test pilot, you'd think his job would be to test the aircraft and fly them to find out where they go wrong - not so it appears, if you were working for the British Gloster company. It seems that he was expected to fly the aircraft to a preset programme, set by the designers, intended to keep their aircraft flying where they operated best, and provide glowing reports about their performance when analysed, keeping the designers in a job, and their bossed and the money men happy. Jan thought different, and tried flying the aircraft where his experience told him there would be problems, so the designers re-wrote his reports for him!

Might not have been aircraft, but I had business partners like that - month on month they'd "adjust" the sales and turnover to show performance as they predicted, and ignored me as I told them that all they were doing was obscuring the losses, and making it harder to attain those figures in the following month. Eventually it moved into the realms of fantasy, as they convinced the accountants to accrue planned and upcoming work as if it was real cash in the current month - big mistake, it's not just aircraft than crash.

"Let me think - the observer's stuck and there's nothing I can do. I know, I'll stay here and go down with him in case I'm not popular for escaping in case people think I didn't bother to unstrap and climb into the back and try and help him."

Yes Apollo, an hilarious interpretation of Zurakowski's lack of popularity at the Avro plant following the accident... viewed I hasten to point out, through proverbial 20/20 eyes. Oh, you're not the first one to express thoughts similar to these Apollo. Zurakowski's own words about the incident are well known and have been around since the time of the crash. Anyway, the need for them dwindles with time and before much longer they'll be totally redundant.

Yes, "Zura", as he was affectionately known, had been associated with a variety of aircraft. As far as I'm aware none of the aircraft which he worked on was ever any great success... perhaps the Meteor, but he was not very popular with the Gloster people.  Certainly the CF-100,  the "Clunk", as it was affectionately known by RCAF personnel, was too late and too slow, and out of the hundreds built Avro only managed to sell about 50! Yes, yes, i know, Zura didn't design it, he just flew it.

With regard to the "Arrow", the CF-105, I suppose one could say it had been a  "political hot potato". It wasn't really. Diefenbacker, Canada's Prime Minister, got the blame for scrubbing the whole programme but it was not his decision to scrap the plane, it was the decision of the the Canadian Chiefs of Staff, therefore a military decision! The "Arrow", and Zura by association, has become a piece of Canadian folklore. The aircraft cost an enormous amount of money and was away beyond the means of Canada's coffers. You won't read too much about the CF-105 in this vein, the whole thing makes great press... and is generally incorrect!

The village where Zura lived has a monument to him in the form of a CF 105,  an aircraft which never went into production... like the Bennies(?)  railway rocket.on the Crow Rd. Zura's connection with the Arrow  was as the first pilot to fly it. I don't know if he was the only one of Avro's several test pilots to fly it.

Zura was a great favourite with the Canadian media. He was not the only test pilot at Avro who had been a fighter pilot in the RAf. Peter Cope, a British RAF fighter pilot,  had a few German aircraft to his credit too, but didn't receive anything like the publicity Zura got from the press. This was at a time when there seemed to be a desire in Canada to distance itslef from Britain... but you won't read about this in the media either.

I just noticed the second video about the 262 (a few posts back) was dead. Since I just grabbed these in passing, I've no idea what it was.

However, it gave me the chance to replace it with another clip, which is much more interesting as it covers the technical problems which beset the aircraft, and their causes, together with their implications for production, so it's worth going back along to that posting and having a look at the second video clip. It even has the production numbers, but ends just as the later numbers were about to be announced.

I don't know the date of the documentary these clips are taken from, but it's noticeable that they follow closely the words of Stuart Morrison's article that I referred to earlier, and have the original version of, and it would be interesting to see if the programme is following his words, or if he took his lead from the programme.

Slipping back to Duguld's observation, "Yes, Apollo, I was aware of the chap called Stewart R Morrison, but an air gunner can go on to get-one's-name-on-the-net stuff.", when I'd said he was just an ordinary guy that you wouldn't find on the net, what I meant was that since he had died in 1989, and written his article a few years earlier, he wouldn't have featured on the web - since it didn't exist for "ordinary" people (just geeky folk like me prepared to trawl bulletin boards with achingly slow dial-up modems), so the only way he'd get on the web is by someone like me posting about him, or creating an article or page. His original article, although published in a magazine, only circulated amongst those serving in the Royal Observer Corps, which was itself to "die" only a few years later, when stood down in 1991. I shouldn't even have the article, which only came to me by chance.

Thanks for the rcommended Me-262 site Apollo. Very interesting , but man, it takes ages to go through them... haven't managed to do them all yet.

Quoted from Dugald

"Let me think - the observer's stuck and there's nothing I can do. I know, I'll stay here and go down with him in case I'm not popular for escaping in case people think I didn't bother to unstrap and climb into the back and try and help him."

Yes Apollo, an hilarious interpretation of Zurakowski's lack of popularity at the Avro plant following the accident... viewed I hasten to point out, through proverbial 20/20 eyes. Oh, you're not the first one to express thoughts similar to these Apollo. Zurakowski's own words about the incident are well known and have been around since the time of the crash. Anyway, the need for them dwindles with time and before much longer they'll be totally redundant.

I hate to be a killjoy (sometimes ), but I should probably say this one wasn't light-hearted, and meant to take a swipe at those making virtuous comments from the safety of the ground. I see the humorous side, but it wasn't in mind - this time

I know what you mean about the video stuff. I don't know how some people come up with great long lists of these - maybe they just lift them by name and don't bother about the content. Even if I don't watch them through at the time, as I hinted above, I do vet every one I pick to make sure it is relevant before I pass it on, and then go watch in full later. That said, some are watching through as they are found - and an hour or two can vanish without even being noticed!