I can't hear you.

So after another couple of days of out of town stuff, I'm back again and hope to shed some light on a little known piece of jet plane history.

The British were the only other WWII participant (the first being the Germans) to have operational jet aircraft. They did not meet in combat, but the Gloster Meteor is credited with shooting down over a dozen German V-1 flying bombs.

Now things moved fast at the end of the war and many new types of jet aircraft came out of England then. An example is the deHavilland DH-100 Vampire which came out in 1946. One version of the airplane was a swept wing oddity called the Swallow. The real name was the de Havilland DH 108. It had no tail wing and resembled early German rocket powered death traps. The Swallow was no easier to fly.

The swept wing design and stubbiness of the fuselage made the plane quick in the turns but broke just about every other engineering rule it could. The first one out of the gate could barely hit 300 mph, but a second version, powered by a more powerful engine, broke apart during a high speed dive. It had anti spin parachutes attached to the wingtips, as it was near impossible, given its design and shape, to break the spin using normal techniques.

These aircraft were flirting with the sound barrier and on September 9, 1948, with John Derry at the controls, a Swallow broke the sound barrier. Although not the first ever, it was one of the first jet powered aircraft to do so.

No matter, every prototype crashed. Next, Horton hears a who.

People are passengers too.

Ok, readers, back on track. More of what we love. Explosions, flaming crashes and all done in the name of science.

No surprise at all that by the end of WWII, the military jet was moving ahead almost daily in capability, range and, dare I say it, ease of use. Fires, flame outs, explosions all dropped off as engineers and pilots got a grip on the new technology. Purpose built aircraft with real performance began to emerge and find their way into the next wars.

So too, as the years after 1945 dragged on, the technology began to leak out into the commercial sphere. The jetliner was close.

The first "jetliner" was a modified Lancastrian. So just what is a Lancastrian? They were modified Lancaster bombers used for transport and passenger service during the tail end of WWII and through the early 50's.

The airplane was used to test jet engines for use in commercial airliners. Typically the outer 2 piston engines were replaced with jet engines. They were still a little leery of equipping this rig with 4 jets. The very first flight occurred in the fall of 1945. Powered by 2 Nene turbojets and 2 Rolls Royce Merlin power plants this was the first jet powered aircraft to carry passengers.

All sorts of variants ensued but the most noteworthy was the 1947 version that used the de Havilland Ghost 50 turbojet engine, the engine slated to power the first real jetliner, the Comet 1.

At least one version had captured German rockets tied under the wings too. Now that's more like it.

get yer hammer

American folk guy ( I was going to say icon, but he wouldn't like it) Pete Seeger turned 90 yesterday. Born in New York City May 3, 1919, to a family of thinkers and doers. His dad a musical historian, his mother a violinist and teacher. Aunts, uncles and siblings were either musicians, poets or in one case, an astronomer.

Pete's first instrument was the ukulele, odd considering the number and quality of trained musicians around his home growing up. But a uke means you gotta have something else to hold the audience, and for Pete it was the grace, charm, wit and respect that flowed from the stage when he performed. He learned early on to captivate listeners with his voice and a simple instrument.

In college, his life changed musically when he heard a banjo for the first time. He was so crazy learning the banjo and messing with politics that grades began to slip. He dropped out in 1938 and looked about for something meaningful to focus his creative talents on. He was a puppeteer briefly, but it was a stint helping folk historian Alan Lomax that got him on the radio and the exposure to a wider audience.

So how good was he? Lessee, formed the Weavers, worked with the likes of Woodie Guthrie and Leadbelly. Monster good actually. At 90 he's still works for what matters with people who care.

Turn the lights out when you leave.

So now that jet engines made things go fast, it became increasingly obvious that shit would happen correspondingly faster too. Meaning that if trouble did strike, there was a lot less time to save your butt.

Enter the ejection seat. The first ones were arguably conceived by Germany in the years between the wars when they were spending a lot of energy not arming themselves to the teeth. I say this because there is debate the the Brits had a few ideas of there own too about the same time.

No doubt as aircraft performance increased, the possibility of simply climbing out of the stupid thing, walking to the edge of the wing and jumping off with your parachute, decreased.

The early plan was a lot like a Wyle E. Coyote episode. That is to say the ejection from the aircraft was accomplished by a really big spring. Nice. Of course, the pilot opened the canopy first. Otherwise he had a headache.

The Germans actually did work out the concepts before the UK. In fact they had a few workable ideas in the early 30's. They thought of the spring under the seat method and and external style spring powered device that was like a small crane above the pilot that yanked the pilot free from above and tossed him kind of like a trebuchet. I'm thinking I might want to walk off the end of the wing.

The British version of the spring thing did not eject the seat, only the pilot. Christ. In reality, they never got farther than the drawing board and didn't look at the idea till after the Second World War when they had a chance to look at captured German aircraft.

Cooler, and smarter heads prevailed and by the start of the war they had moved on to compressed air and explosive charge systems.

The butler did it.

News today that the asteroid impact 65 million years ago do not immediately snuff out the dinosaurs. The Daily Mail is reporting that researchers from Princeton University have come up with evidence that suggests the Chicxulub crater in Mexico is about 300, 00 years older than the time lines generally agreed to be gospel about when the dinosaurs winked out. This is the spot the asteroid actually hit.

The resulting explosive gases and dust shrouded the earth and the rest well, is real ancient history. But, not so according to research head Professor Gerta Keller. Seems those nasty Indian volcanoes went off about the same time. I'm talking about a coincidal series of huge eruptions at an area in India called the Deccan TrapInstead she found that bore holes showed clearly a very slow gradual layer of sediment, taking round about 300,000 years to develop, just above the time of the impact. In fact the layers are about as natural and ordinary as can be. So there.

I thought it was the booze all along that killed them off.

The old folks will still have their Buicks.

For those of you who have spent the day nailed to a board in the basement may not have heard that GM is killing the Pontiac and keeping the Buick. Those of you who haven't been in a cone of silence will note with some sadness the passing of a sometimes cool automaker. I mean cars like the GTO, Firebird and the Bonneville, all classy.

Started in 1926, Pontiac didn't set anything on fire until the addition of designer John Zachary DeLorean (yes, the Back to the Future car guy) in 1959. Delorean was responsible for a number of innovative ideas including the "ropeshaft" drive shaft introduced in the 1960 Pontiac Tempest. The base engine for this car, a spunky 4 cylinder, was literally half of the current Pontiac 389 cubic inch V8. Tests proved that half the V8 ran just fine so tooling costs were cut since half the parts were already in production.

I for one will miss the Pontiac, but am slightly pleased that Buicks are still easy to spot on the highway.

Where the hell have I been post.

Well, I have been thinking about history while I've been off the radar. The job took me away for 3 odd parts of weeks and then I got lazy. I did eat more breakfast cereal the last little while. Our new family favourite is Lucky Charms. Oddly enough they have just about the exact same nutritional values as a very highly advertised "heart friendly" brand, but taste like candy. The wonders of chemistry.

I am getting back to looking at what is good to read and watch, starting with the offerings to the left. The first one will make you want to build your own. The second one is a good fun. Learn a few for your next management meeting.

There will be a new one with every new post, so don't get caught snoozing.