3\" 60Lb rocket motor underwing pylon clips

[pzgr40]

Question withdrawn as posting pictures is not possible. (for question see Wk2 ammo forum)

copy of pzgr40 post from wk2ammo

Hi folks, can anybody help me on this subject?
On the motor of a 3\" WW2 Brittish rocket these underwing pylon clips were placed. They look quite different fron the type in the WW2 pictures. Can anybody confirm if these clips are correct? Or are they from a different type of 3\" rocket launching weapon / later or earlier type ?
Thanks in advance , DJH
Pictures in following posts.

 

[spotter]

Re:3" 60Lb rocket motor underwing pylon clips

clips are these correct see other picture to see differences

 

[spotter]

Re:3" 60Lb rocket motor underwing pylon clips

clips on rocket different mark ???

 

[pzgr40]

Re:3\" 60Lb rocket motor underwing pylon clips

Thanks for repairing the posting, there was no way I could get the picture of the clamps on the forum, even when it was scaled down to 20Kb.
Regards DJH

 

[spotter]

Re:3" 60Lb rocket motor underwing pylon clips

These pictures may be of interest to you,,,,i believe this is from a Typhoon in Hendon museum

 

[spotter]

Re:3" 60Lb rocket motor underwing pylon clips

 

[spotter]

Re:3" 60Lb rocket motor underwing pylon clips

 

[pzgr40]

Re:3" 60Lb rocket motor underwing pylon clips

Thank you very much. That was the picture I was waiting for. So now wait if someone has a picture of the type on my motor.:unsure:
Maybe a stupid question - or maybe not-, can anybody help me on a pair of these clips as depicted on the museum rocket straight above?
Thanks in advance ,
Regards ,
DJH

 

[spotter]

Saw these on a rocket today at EdenCamp Museum in north yorkshire,

 

[spotter]

 

[Madbomber31]

Hi,

I had a few 100 of them 2 year ago.All taken away bye RAF Eod.

Cheers Mad

 

[pzgr40]

Thanks Madbomber for these pictures. So these clips with the tumbling middlepart do exist. They must be for another weapon with a 3" diameter warhead. Does anybody know for which rail launched waepon platform.
Thanks in advance DJH

 

[Madbomber31]

Hi Pzgr40,
This one was on the 60 Lb SAP under the Typhoon.
Cheers Mad

 

[Nudelmannrichter]

Hi Spotter,
well aware that your contribution is almost 10 years old, I have to ask a question. The pics of the rocket motor sitting in the EdenCamp Museum show some "unusual" fins. I know that there are rectangular shapes and beveled ones around. What these "ordinary" ones have in common is that the L-profiles which reinforce the fins have full length of the fin. The ones you show have shorter L-Profiles and the very end of the fin "hangs" freely.
Another feature that this type has an additional round hole in the vertical part of the L-Profile near to the rectangular cutout in the fin. Last but not least the width of the fin is not 5 inches as the usual ones but 2.75 inches.

I ask because I got hold of a fragment of even such a fin you showed and I wonder which special type of rocket this is.
Maybe one of the air-to-air types?
Do you have any information on this?

I attach a pic of my fragment.

Thanks and best regards
nudel

 

[kahu1]

Nice fragment.
These fins seem to be late post war('60s-), used on the likes of Vampires and Hunters.
I would guess it was to provide more clearance for the closer fitting rails and different styles of stacking often employed on jet aircraft.
The 3" motor was unchanged, these angled fins might retain the same area as the square fin but with a lower profile.

 

[kahu1]

Image of museum example,for DH Vampire air-to-ground 3" rocket,tail fin detail.


My theory on the area of the fins was obviously a bit faulty,as these have quite a bit less.Maybe only needed smaller fins as the jet aircraft launch speed would have been greater?.

 

[Nudelmannrichter]

kahu1, thanks a lot for your input. Now I am a bit confused as the fragment together with a bunch of blown up rocket motors came from EOD scrap here in Germany. So I was sure that this was from WW2. Ok in our region a lot of British troops were stationed and of course we had British air fields like Weeze and others. So maybe these parts came from a post-war training or ammo disposal site which might have been cleared by the EOD recently. I have to re-confirm that of course.
The idea of needing smaller fins at higher velocity sounds good. On the other hand there are a lot of smaller fins on WW2 3"rocket patterns.
So the question is if this fin type we see here must be post-war or if this also existed in WW2. I crawled the we b a lot but hard to find good documentation about that.
Thanks again
cheers
nudel

 

[Nudelmannrichter]

another thing:
I edited your picture a little bit to point out some details
You see the rectangular cut. This is visible at all different types of these 3" fins.
Am I right that in this cut sits a small piece that is movable like a slider? If so I wonder if this is to fix the fins after attaching them.
Next is the circular hole. Until now I have only seen this at the specific fin type you and spotter showed pics of and which seems to be the same type as my fragment.
I wonder if this hole would be used as a bearing if you want to push the slider down with a special tool to fix the fin. I don't know how the tool looks like but my guess is that it could look like a type of face spanner.

It would be very helpful to find "user manuals" for the 3" rocket, war time and post-war to find out how the detailed procedure was to unbox the rockets, attach the fin and make them ready for service. Any idea where to find such a manual?





thanks
nudel

 

[kahu1]

Yes, the rectangular cut is for a slider(key), to lock the fin in place once located on the motor,the standard tool for moving the slider appears to be a screwdriver!.
I have seen a series of film on the 3" rocket (The 3" Aircraft Rocket,Installation/Sighting/Firing/Tactics(1945),goes into detail about fitting the rockets and components,unfortunately haven't seen a lot of documentation about the 3",though it must be out there.
Have only seen pictures of these type of fins on aircraft from post WW2.

'British Explosive OrdnanceTM9-1985-1' has some details of both air and ground types.

No mention of the round hole,maybe for another screwdriver?

A quick google came up with these,including 1950s RAAF Meteor(Korea),there goes another theory!


RAFGermany alone would have had Meteor,Vampire,Venom, Hunter plus other types.Other forces would have had similar types at times.

I often find it can be more productive to search the platform not just the weapon.

cheers
Bob

 

[Nudelmannrichter]

Thanks Bob, I agree that all the fin types which are similar to the fragment look to be found on post-war planes. I have the British Explosive Ordnance but in the Naval version from 1946 called NAVORD OP 1665. It has also the chapter on the 3" rockets where most of the drawings on the net are from. Dunno if the TM9-1985-1 has more or different. Do you have a link to the film series you mentioned? There used to be serveral websites who offered old military films online. Some of the best have gone as I noticed today. They had good previews. There are others but way not as good as the ones I used before. Anyway - I will look around a bit more and see if I can get hold on some more info on that. Thanks a lot for your help. Cheers Stefan