Westland Lysander Nicknames: Lizzie; Flying Carrot The Lysander was the first British airplane stationed in France during World War Two but was soon found to be vulnerable because of its relatively slow speed. Withdrawn from frontline service, this two-seat, high-winged monoplane would soon become famous for its nocturnal flights into occupied Europe, dropping supplies and agents behind enemy lines. In 1935 the Air Ministry issued Specification A.39/34 calling for a two-seat army cooperation aircraft to replace the Hawker Hector. The Royal Air Force manned and led these squadrons but they supported, or cooperated, directly with the British Army. The pilots of army cooperation airplanes performed numerous missions including reconnaissance, artillery spotting, communication, and tactical liaison between Royal Air Force ground attack aircraft squadrons and British Army troops at the front. One of the companies invited to submit a design proposal was Westland Aircraft Limited of Yeovil, Somerset, England. The company was engaged at the time in building the Hector under license from Hawker. Before World War I, Westland had established itself as a maker (under the name Petter) of small oil-burning engines used in agricultural and dairy applications. In 1915 the company approached the government and offered its services for the war effort. With no previous experience, the British Admiralty asked the firm to build airplanes and a tradition began that continues to this day. Westland's design proposal for Spec A.39/34 was called the P.8 and it was mainly the work of Arthur Davenport, under the technical direction of Edward (Teddy) Petter, grandson of the company's founder. According to rumor, an earlier design for a single-engine interceptor was rejected because no one had bothered to ask the Royal Air Force what kind of airplane the service needed. Determined not to repeat the mistake, Petter sought opinions from the Royal Army squadrons that would operate the new aircraft, and he even interviewed his own engineers and pilots. The consensus that emerged favored an airplane with good visibility from the cockpit, the special performance necessary to take-off and land from extremely small areas, and excellent handling at very slow flying speeds. To see well from the cockpit, Davenport raised the wing to the top of the canopy and braced it with two pairs of sturdy struts. The wing shape was unusual for three reasons. To boost the low-speed characteristics of the airfoil, the wing was thickest at about mid-span but shrank by nearly half at the wing roots. Viewed head-on, the wing bends slightly like the wing of a seagull. The inboard, leading edges tapered toward the tail to allow the pilot to see through the top of the canopy during very steep turns, and the outboard trailing edges tapered forward to give the airplane a snappy roll rate, again to improve maneuvering at slow speeds. To make very slow speed flight possible, the P.8 was the first British service aircraft equipped with trailing edge flaps and leading edge slats. These devices operated automatically and no action by the pilot was required. Fabric covered the fuselage behind the pilot's cockpit and sheet aluminum covered the nose section. Provisions were made for a flexible .30 cal. machine gun behind the pilot in the observer's cockpit. The distinctive landing gear was the result of some conceptual back and forth between Davenport and Petter. Davenport's original design called for retractable landing gear, but Petter overruled him and insisted on fixed landing gear streamlined with enormous rounded fairings. A landing light and provisions for a machine gun were built into each fairing. The outboard side of each fairing carried fittings and when the need arose, short, stub wings were attached. These held either light bombs, supply containers, or other stores. In September 1936, after modifications to the horizontal stabilizer, the Air Ministry chose the Westland design and ordered 169 aircraft. It was then the British Army's custom to name cooperation aircraft after classical warriors. Lysander was chosen for the P.8, after a Spartan admiral who defeated the Athenian fleet in 405 BC Westland started production and began delivering finished airplanes in 1938. By the time war broke out in September 1939, seven British Army Lysander squadrons were ready to fly. When the Germans invade France in May 1940, Britain threw as many airplanes as it could spare at the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) including the slow and poorly armed Lysanders. They were decimated. The Lysander excelled in the role for which it was designed but it stood no chance against overwhelming numbers of German fighter aircraft. Lysanders were also not at all suited for ground attack. They were too slow and carried a pitiful load of bombs. After France capitulated, many Lysanders were reassigned to new roles. Some remained army cooperation aircraft, but modified fighter airplanes increasingly flew this mission. As aerial combat moved over the English Channel and British Isles during Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, a critical need arose for air-sea rescue aircraft. The Lysander could locate airmen downed at sea and drop them life rafts and supplies. Because an amphibious invasion by German forces could come at anytime, a number of modifications for the Lysander were also proposed. Most involved increasing the armament to make the airplane effective at repelling invaders that managed to land on Britain's shores. One proposal sought to add a 20mm canon to each undercarriage leg. Other ideas included adding a ventral gun position (a version nicknamed the "pregnant perch"), or turrets behind the wings or near the tail. The tail turret also necessitated a revised stabilizer with two vertical fins and rudders. Late in 1940, the threat of invasion eased and none of these modifications was adopted. As the war entered its third year, the ultimate Lysander mission began to take shape. The Special Operations Executive formed three squadrons of these slow-flying aircraft, 138, 161 and 357 Special Duties squadrons, and began to fly the Lysander to aid the various resistance movements in occupied Europe. They dropped ammunition, explosives, radios and other equipment and transported agents to and from the continent. Westland equipped the Lysander IIIA (SD) specifically for this role, removing the rear guns and adding a ladder near the rear cockpit so that agents could quickly board or exit the airplane. An external fuel tank was also added to increase range. Many times, Lysanders operated from small, unlit fields. These missions were possible only because the airplane had outstanding STOL (short takeoff and landing) performance. Lysanders flew in other theaters of the war, including the Middle and Far East. Turkey, Ireland, Portugal, South Africa, and France flew the aircraft and the United States used 25 Lysanders to two aerial gunnery targets. The Canadians flew more Lysanders than anyone outside England. They also built 225 aircraft and were tooling-up to supply more airframes to ship to England for final assembly when the war ended. Specifications (Lysander III): Engine: One 870-hp Bristol Mercury XX nine-cylinder radial engine Weight: Empty 4,365 lbs., Max Takeoff 6,318 lbs. Wing Span: 50ft. 0in. Length: 30ft. 6in. Height: 14ft. 6in. Performance: Maximum Speed: 212 mph Ceiling: 21,500 ft. Range: 600 miles Armament: None Number Built: ~1,650 Further development of the Lysander resulted in the following types: Lysander Mk II: powered by the Bristol Perseus XII (675 kW) Lysander Mk III: powered by the Mercury XX (649 kW) Lysander Mk IIIA: powered by the Mercury 30 Lysander TT.Mk I: Converted Mk I's to serve as goal-towing aircraft. TT.Mk II: about the same conversion as the TT.Mk I TT.Mk III: about the same conversion as the TT.Mk I and TT.Mk II TT.Mk IIIA: about the same conversion as the TT.Mk I, TT.Mk II and T.Mk III http://www.zap16.com/mil%20fact/westland%20lysander.htm http://www.nasm.si.edu/nasm/aero/aircraft/westland.htm http://www.warbirdalley.com/lysander.htm
Anouther good post as usual KP ! I wonder how it got the name Flying Carrot ? It does not look like a carrot to me.
Thanx Ta152! Anyway, Found this in the net whether or not it´s true... Nicknamed by some "The Flying Carrot", thanks to the shape of its fuselage. http://www.64-baker-street.org/transport_lysander.html By the way, here´s a list of nick names for planes... http://web.mit.edu/btyung/www/nickname.html FRED Lockheed C-5 Galaxy (Fantastic Ridiculous Economic Disaster) etc...
London, Friday 16th November 2001 http://www.64-baker-street.org/people_hugh_verity.html Group Captain Hugh Verity, who has died aged 83, was a member of the small group of RAF pilots who flew clandestine missions to support Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents and the French Resistance during the Second World War; they also picked up aircrew who had been shot down in Occupied France. When Verity and his fellow pilots were picking up "Joes", as their unidentified passengers were known, the enemy's occupation forces were danger enough; but this was compounded by the preference for operating on moonlit nights. Piloting a high-wing, single engine Westland Lysander, Verity flew some 30 lonely and demanding missions. Apart from flying the aircraft without the benefit of advanced navigation aids, Verity had to find the small field where a reception party would be waiting for him. On one sortie he was south of the Loire when he encountered impenetrable fog over his landing ground, forcing him to abort the mission. This was especially frustrating because he was to land Jean Moulin, the co-ordinator of General de Gaulle's Resistance networks in southern France. Having decided to return to his base, Tangmere in Sussex, Verity first had to escape the attentions of enemy searchlights. When he finally found his home airfield, it too was blanketed in fog. Believing his wheels to be just above the runway, Verity cut the throttle; but he was 30 feet too high, and the Lysander smashed into the ground. Miraculously, it did not catch fire - and Verity, always the complete gentleman, apologised profusely in French. Moulin responded in kind, thanking his pilot for "a very agreeable flight". Verity had come into this line of work in the fortuitous way of so many who became involved with SOE. He had long suffered from what he termed "a private shame" for his "physical cowardice" on the rugby field at school, and was determined to overcome it. Consequently, in the winter of 1942 he arranged to get an introduction to Wing Commander P C Pickard, who commanded No 161 Squadron; this was designated to SOE and comprised Lysanders, Halifaxes, Wellingtons and one Hudson. Pickard in turn introduced Verity to his station commander, Group Captain "Mouse" Fielden, previously the Prince of Wales's personal pilot and captain of the King's Flight. Verity was soon accepted on to the team. At the time, Verity's wife Audrey was expecting their second child, but he assured her that his new job would mean "very few operations and a lot of home life, which would be great fun". However, on the night of his first Lysander flight, November 6 1942, he was called to the telephone for the news that his second son had been born. Verity soon became a hero to his French passengers and reception parties, sometimes flying a Hudson and picking up as many as eight people at a time. He was awarded the DFC and DSO in 1943. France awarded him the Legion d'Honneur in 1946. Hugh Beresford Verity was born in Jamaica on April 6 1918, and educated at Cheltenham and at Queen's College, Oxford. After a brief period teaching at a prep school in Northern Ireland, he was granted a short service commission in the RAF. In September 1940, he was posted to No 608, an Avro Anson general reconnaissance squadron, and five months later to No 252, a Bristol Blenheim, later Beaufighter, squadron, stationed in Northern Ireland. Having been detached briefly to Malta, he was on his way home when bad weather forced his plane to make a belly landing in Eire, where he was interned. MI9 - the War Office escape organisation - managed to free him in a secret operation in which Verity wore disguise. He then moved to No 29, a Bristol Beaufighter night fighter squadron, in the autumn of 1941, serving afterwards on the night operations staff of Fighter Command's No 11 Group and also at Fighter Command headquarters. After his exploits flying into France, he became an SOE air operations manager organising drops and agent landings in Western Europe and Scandinavia. In the autumn of 1944 Verity supervised clandestine air operations in South East Asia, then worked with the Recovery of Allied Prisoner-of-War and Internees organisation, arranging the dropping by parachute of medical staff into remote prison camps throughout South East Asia Command. Following a period in Singapore, Verity was posted to Quetta (then in India) as a member of the directing staff at the Army Staff College. Here he contracted polio and was invalided home. He was later delighted to be passed fit to fly, and in early 1948 he received command of no 541, the photographic reconnaissance squadron equipped with the Spitfire XIX, at Benson, Oxfordshire. The next year Verity was posted to the Central Fighter Establishment as wing commander weapons, but he seized the opportunity to learn to fly jets. After two years he went to the Joint Services Staff College. From the spring of 1954, as wing commander flying at RAF Wahn, he was responsible for three Gloster Meteor jet night fighter squadrons. In 1955 he took over No 96, a Meteor squadron. Verity's subsequent postings included spells on the bomber operations staff at the Air Ministry and at the CENTO headquarters in Turkey, and command of the RAF station at Akrotiri in Cyprus. Finally, he returned to the Air Ministry, charged with special and operations staff duties. Verity retired in 1965 and joined the recently established Industrial Training Board. In 1978 he published a book about his wartime experiences, "We Landed by Moonlight". He married, in 1940, Audrey Stokes; they had two sons and three daughters. [ 27. May 2003, 05:45 PM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]
Very good post, Kai! I had already heard of this nice aeroplane and its brave pilots daring missions in some documentary... It's good that you refresh my memory now and give me more details. I am surprised that Martin hasn't seen this...
More on our sister forum at: http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/43886-lysander/ Published as an E-Book and with an extensive Preview on Google Books: The Westland Lysander in Indian Air Force Service By P V S Jagan Mohan http://books.google.ca/books?id=naVPXyIEQw8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Westland+Lysander+in+Indian+Air+Force+Service++By+P+V+S+Jagan+Mohan&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gttfUffROOWJiAL0t4CoDQ&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=The%20Westland%20Lysander%20in%20Indian%20Air%20Force%20Service%20%20By%20P%20V%20S%20Jagan%20Mohan&f=false
My Father in Law was landed and picked up by Lysander in 1944 when he went into France pre-D Day. He was 17 as a native French speaker he went to contact the resistance including his own Father who lived in France.
..Jean Moulin made his first trip back into France in a Lysander too. There was a ceremony at Tangmere to commemorate this important flight back in February
You seen this one Kai...I think I posted it a few years back on another topic....Versatile machine...
Westland Lysander in Action It earned its considerable reputation dropping off and picking up SOE operatives in France throughout the war, starting off in August 1941 with 138 Sqdn (SOE.) Performance Maximum speed: 212 mph (341 km/h) Range: 600 miles (966 km) Service ceiling: 21,500 ft (6,550 m) Rate of climb: 1,410 ft/min (7.2 m/s) Wing loading: 22 lb/ft² (109 kg/m²) The STOL characteristics (Short Take Off and Landing) are illustrated very well in this clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRYCx_G25ro
