Bluebird Rebuild. Read Between the Lines.

[Lakesailor]

While there are lots of retired and unemployed aircraft fitters, they are are going to be expensive to keep even if just their bed and food was paid, and without that I doubt they'd get many staying long, especially at Lake District prices.

Problem solved. The boat is being restored in Tyneside. This Bill Smith bloke who is doing it also seems to be a bit egotistical. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21478855
He found it, he brought it up, he is restoring it. 17 years? I'm sure that it could have been rebuilt by (say) Rolls Royce or BAE apprentices in a year.


BTW. Did I not include a link in my OP to the original story? I though I had done. It's here http://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co...E_NEWS__Restoring_Donald_Campbell_s_Bluebird/

 

[Seajet]

SJ
I had a look in Duxford a couple of tears ago and they had recieved a Zero airframe. It was pretty corroded and they guy told me that they would not try to restore it, just stabilize the structure for display. ( it was incomplete too, more or less the centre section and fuselarge, no engine)

DownWest,

I think the structure of Bluebird would make a Zero child's play n comparison; remember the thing had the Orpheus jet engine from a protoype Gnat...

 

[NOHOH]

Grief is a very strange thing and can go on for decades. If this is what Gina Campbell wants to do.......then who has the right to question it? If it gives her even an ounce of closure....it can only be to the good. We have no right to intrude on her grief.

 

[Lakesailor]

If she is funding everything, maybe.
What I am saying is that the concept doesn't make a good museum exhibit and that working hand-in-hand with an established museum with an existing considerable Donald Campbell collection would be a better outcome.

 

[trying]

I gather the 'restoration' is being carried out by volunteers and funded by donations and the intention is to run it again on the lake once completed...

I've always been interested in this, personally I would rather it had been left. A grave.

 

[Lakesailor]

So would many people. This Bill Smith became obsessed with it. Gina Campbell, for her own reasons, wants it restored to pristine. Almost like trying to wind back the clock.

But it won't alter the fact that Donald Campbell died there, in Coniston. That is the history.

 

[Seajet]

Lakesailor,

maybe I'd skipped the links in your post - now I've seen them I'm more convinced than ever it's madness in every way, the proposed run, the rebuild, and as an exhibit.

Also the bit about ' just like before ' was a laugh, seeing the CAM milling etc.

I am not calling Bluebird a dinosaur, I think it was a magnificent, faulted effort, but it is history; when they brought history back in ' Jurassic Park ' that went well didn't it ?!

 

[tcm]

Lakesailor,

maybe I'd skipped the links in your post - now I've seen them I'm more convinced than ever it's madness in every way, the proposed run, the rebuild, and as an exhibit.

Also the bit about ' just like before ' was a laugh, seeing the CAM milling etc.

I am not calling Bluebird a dinosaur, I think it was a magnificent, faulted effort, but it is history; when they brought history back in ' Jurassic Park ' that went well didn't it ?!

I see the point here - the moment it's back in one piece there'll be speed attempts,, perhaps? And then a fleet of identical speed machines, perhaps a craze of speed-machine rental companies offering matched Bluebird type machine for drag racing up and down the lake, leading to numerous high speed crashes every weekend and Gina Campbell crying "why didn't I listen???" while lakey tut-tuts and shakes his head in the background as the dead and dying are carted off to hospital, all just like Jurassic park...

 

[Seajet]

You may jest; but I'd bet a fleet of 'em racing on the lake - all under his control and named after him - would be an absolute dream for that bloke in charge of the restoration.

I suggest they ought to have a BIG speed log with a dayglo marker at NE - Never Exceed...

Or even a horizontal tailplane which in hindsight was the thing which caused the crash, by not being there.

 

[Alfie168]

Is it Gina that owns the Bluebird restaurant in Lymington? Campbell's Bluebird record breaking landspeed car is now on display in the Speedway museum here in Daytona and by chance(we were lunching in a local cheapie Bob Evans restaurant opposite) We watched them crane the car off a low loader truck when it arrived at the Daytona Speedway racetrack.

Which Bluebird? There were quite a few over the years. I have Sir Malcolm Campbells autograph on a photo glued in the front of a Biography dated 1932. Some 1930s books on motor racing were given to my dad by the widow of one of his team. We had loads but I only have five books and I think another brother purloined the rest and I have no idea what happened to them. They were all just in a box until I liberated them when my dad died.

Tim

 

[Alfie168]

Lakesailor,

maybe I'd skipped the links in your post - now I've seen them I'm more convinced than ever it's madness in every way, the proposed run, the rebuild, and as an exhibit.

Also the bit about ' just like before ' was a laugh, seeing the CAM milling etc.

I am not calling Bluebird a dinosaur, I think it was a magnificent, faulted effort, but it is history; when they brought history back in ' Jurassic Park ' that went well didn't it ?!

They buried 'Babs' at Pendine after the car decapitated ParryThomas in 1927. Then in the 70s Owen Wyn Owen dug it up again and completely rebuilt it and it runs from time to time when its not on exhibition duty or museum dsiplay, but nobody tries to break the Land Speed record in it. I don't see a problem. It doesn't change history, it just adds another chapter in a continuum.

I'd much rather see it restored as a tribute to the engineers who designed and built it and its predecessors. There is/was a replica at the Lakeland Motor Museum (I've not been since the museum left Holker Hall. I sort of knew the bloke who set the museum up originally at Holker, Don Sidebottom, but his involvement ended some years ago I think). The replica was impressive enough. As to running it.....well its no more dangerous than running an old aircraft, provided you don't start trying to do 300 MPH in it. It would be perfectly safe in the right hands up on the plane at 100 mph in steady conditions, but I don't really see the point. We know what it can and cannot do. Its just a magnificent machine from an earlier age.

I remember I had a model of the Land Speed record car 'Thunderbolt' driven...unsuccessfully as it happens, by Sir George Eyston. It was such a mean purposeful looking machine. I was quite miffed to find out it was destroyed in a London bombing raid in WW2. I'd much rather have seen the beast in a museum or doing display runs. It just oozed brute power and speed just looking at photographs of it.

Tim

 

[Seajet]

Robin,

yes the ' Bluebird at Lentune ' restaurant at Lymington is or at least was owned by Gina Campbell.

She's done a fair bit of high speed mobo driving - racing - herself I believe.

 

[Seajet]

Tim,

yes I thought of ' Babs ' as soon as I heard of the plan to rebuild and run Bluebird K7.

I don't for a minute think they'd try to go really fast with K7 ( if it ever gets that far ) and it'd have the world's biggest ' VNE ' on the guage !

By another token, a twin seat Spitfire which crashed at Goodwood a few years ago killing both has been rebuilt virtually from the 1" long straight bit which was about all there was left; I can see much more point to that as there's a big demand for Spitfire trainers ( this was one of those cobbled up ones which didn't really give the instructor a view out - the poor sod was flying under the influence of cold cure drugs and clipped a tree...).

Also, in my time at Dunsfold the wreckage of a B-25 was recovered from the canal where it had been dumped.

It had come back from a raid with a hung up bomb, the skipper gave the crew the chance to bail out but they all stayed with him; the moment it touched down it exploded, killing all 7.

After the aircraft bits were recovered in the 80's someone made very skilful little B-25 models out of some of the alloy, they were well done but I certainly didn't want part of something which had killed 7 brave blokes.

I was a bit uneasy about Babs, but there's definitely something about restoring Bluebird K7 which strikes me as very poor taste.

Edit - also I was irritated by the usual ' easy to swallow by BBC ' stuff about keeping to all the original bits, sticking in little cornflakes, then saying the sponsons were somehow difficult to make nowadays, it's all being kept pukka - then showed a marvelous CAD/CAM job milling out a single solid piece of structure, and other bits incredibly well bored out - my aircraft engineer father watched that video last night and agreed with me it was no way how they'd have done it in the 1960's.

So effectively what this bloke has done is take a piece of history which a very brave guy died in, and turn it into a hybrid 21st century high tech speedboat.

 

[Lakesailor]

Yes. I don't quite see how the new machined part sits in with the concept of re-using everything they can. The old parts look poorly restored and then there is a up-to-the -minute piece of metalwork that looks like it's from the Shuttle programme.
Surely anything built from scratch needs to be "of the time". I can't see how sponsons are difficult to make. Do they mean they are not prepared to get aluminium metal-rolled to shape?

 

[Seajet]

The sad thing is, this sort of bolleaux always, without fail, gets straight past the TV crew and published, doesn't it ?!

If you or I had been told the sponsons are a miracle which only a wizard like Merlin could reproduce, we'd give the guy a slap and direct him to an alloy boat, car, sidecar or aircraft bodger...

 

[Alfie168]

.

I've always been interested in this, personally I would rather it had been left. A grave.

Guess what happens to graves? They get robbed, and Bluebird K7 had already become a sitting duck for souvenir hunters and the rest by the time this feller decided to raise it. I think allowing it to be steadily removed bit by bit by thieves is the least dignified of all outcomes, and thats exactly what was already happening.

Tim

 

[Seven Spades]

Why does everyone remember Donald Campbell and no one ever mentions John Cobb? Most young people have never heard of John Cobb yet his story is almost an exactly the same as Campbell's.

 

[Seajet]

Tim,

I thought it was agreed that once the location of Bluebird's wreck - and Campell's remains - were identified, both had to be raised, or the place would be looted by souvenir hunting divers - that was agreed long ago ?

The difference of opinion lies where I and others think the project's remains should have been kept intact.

If the bloke who restored Bab's had fitted a big Mad Max welland supercharger and used it for doughnuts behind Halfords would that have been OK ?

So the differences are less obvious, but it's the same in essence, it's either the real thing in every painstaking detail, or a bad thing to do re histrory - aircarft restorations go the same route, obviously the ' every nut & bolt the same ' gets expensive.

It's a huge shame IMO what has happened here, the worlds ' historical ' and ' vandalism ' spring to mind, seems irrelevant if temporarily available relatives are around, Bluebird as she was would have been iconic into the future.

As in ' FFS fit a tailplane next time Smithers ! '

 

[Seajet]

Why does everyone remember Donald Campbell and no one ever mentions John Cobb? Most young people have never heard of John Cobb yet his story is almost an exactly the same as Campbell's.

Well I do.

 

[Seajet]

Why does no-one remember Tony Richards ?

He was co-pilot navigator with John Derry in the prototype DH-110 ( later Sea Vixen ) when it broke up in a dive over Farnborogh air show, distributing them, the engines, and airframe into the crowd.

Everyone remembers John Derry; well if anyone takes a look at the navigator's position of a 110 . Sea Vixen, it really is awful, only a tiny 4x2" window and the hatch shut over one.

It was known as the ' Coal Hole ', I've had a look - I've done a bit of flying inc jets and in a harness outside an aircraft, but don't know I'd be brave enough to be there - pretty sure I'd say ' no thanks ' even if it meant flying in a classic aircraft, this is the one I'd count out !

It's extraordiarily easier to be the pilot at any time, with the controls to hand; so remember the courage of Tony Richards. who willingly put himself in that coal hole to record data and knew even less of what was happening...

Remember Tony Richards.