Monopropellants frighten the living poo out of me. If you can find a copy, there's a fabulous book called "Ignition! The History of liquid fuelled rocketry" which talks about monopropellants, including the story of the people who suggested a stochiometric mixture of liquid methane and liquid oxygen as such.
Apparently it could be made to detonate by shining a bright light on it.
Suffice it to say that (a) the entire worldly goods required for a four week family holiday in Scotland, including an almost complete series of Observers Guide To..., camping gaz stove, picnic table and chairs, and jacket and tie for the males for the evenings, *can* be fitted into a Hillman Imp if it's packed *properly*; (b) packing a car boot *properly* can never take less than one morning; (c) the entire 1,000 mile journey can be undertaken without referring to roadsigns en route as every turning will have been planned on Ordnance Survey maps months in advance[1] and transferred to The Itinerary (along with timings and odometer readings[2]); (d) a Hillman Imp requires slightly different road conditions to a four-tonner; and (e) said Itinerary always ignored the need for a three-year-old child to have periodic Vomit Stops.
Even the SAS don't train at Cape Wrath.
Owain
[1] and years out of date. I remember going round and round and round a Walls ice-cream factory somewhere in The Midlands because they'd built a motorway...
[2] The sort of thing the AA website can do now in seconds, but this was all done on an Imperial Model 7 typewriter.
It sounds like the Consolidated - Vultee (later Convair) "Peacemaker" B36 A (failed) competitor to the B52.
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"A 600-room hotel, or 120 five-room houses could be heated by the anti-icing equipment installed on the B-36 superbomber. In an hour the giant plane's anti-icing equipment turns out 4,290,000 BTUs."
Just checked the film, yes they are B36s, numbered 049 and 072.
I loved "The RAF's tremendously powerful weapon to come is the Valiant" on the soundtrack. It's only seven minutes of film, but full of nostalgia for an RAF brat like me whose family were quartered for a time by the runway at Honington. I can recall both the Valiant and the Victor squadrons but we left before the arrival of Buccaneers.
My parents were never in the forces, they spent WW2 sewing uniforms in the tailoring factories in Leeds, in addition to them both doing different fire watch shifts several nights per week. Apparently putting incendiary bombs out was quite good fun.
In the early 1950s the term "Bomber" was used to describe any large aeroplane. It seems a little incongruous now to think of a mother comforting her frightened child by saying when a DC3 came over..
"Hush, hush go back to sleep, it's alright, **It's only a bomber**.
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