July 2001

Friday 6th July 2001

Hi all,

sorry for the absence, two main reasons for this. Firstly there isn't a great deal of activity within the project and secondly we're all still trying to catch up after 9 months in Coniston.

I have been checking the guestbook and a couple of things in there are worthy of comment. There is an entry there that suggests that we get the boat out of our factory and into a situation where it can be properly preserved and displayed. With regard to her preservation. She spent 34 years ( a very short period of time from an arcaeological point of view) in a virtually oxygen free environment. She is constructed mostly of aluminium which has remained in excellent condition. Much of her blue paint is still on though inevitably some of it will be lost. Unfortunately there is little that can be done about it and in actual fact, all of the conservation experts that I have spoken with agree that paint is sacrificial. It would be unheard of to try and preserve a car, aircraft or indeed a boat without giving it a fresh new coat of paint. We have treated the Union Flags and the Bluebird logos with a consolidant called Paraloid B73 so they at least will remain original. The undersides of the tail and engine cover panels have been cleaned and painted with etch primer and the hull has been cleaned of mud. We were visited this week by a student of consrevation who is going to spend a couple of weeks writing a proper plan for the preservation work. This plan will be passed to whoever gets the job when she finally makes it to a museum. One thing though that is absolutely certain, Bluebird could sit in the factory for another 34 years and suffer no ill effects. She is stable and will not deteriorate any further.

Of course we would like to get her into a museum but these things take time. The wheels are turning, there is an application for planning permission in place for the Ruskin museum in Coniston to build an extension but you can probably guess that it will take some time yet. We'll get her there in the end.

Another interesting discussion on the guestbook is this question of Donald not refuelling and it's possible contribution to the accident. It is well established that he had come back without refuelling on several occasions, Christmas day being one of them, and he'd got away with it. Although it has not been mentioned for a while, the most likely cause of the accident remains the failure of the front engine mount. We had a full metalurgical examination carried out on the part, as well as comparing it to the Rolls Royce drawings of the original installation. (Bristol were taken over by RR who still support the engine.) We had the drawings faxed over via the AAIB. The facts are these.

1. The upper engine mount was NOT the original Bristol part, it had been re-designed in such a way that the angles through which it acted and the forces it had to transmit, were completely different to those envisaged in the original design intent of the part

2. Metalurgical examination proved that although the part was machined from a solid billet of 40 ton steel, the lack of material around the bearing at the top mount made the part almost exactly half as strong as the original.

3. Both locking nuts were missing from the adjustable rod that formed the engine mount. Although this wouldn't necessarily contribute to a failure of the upper mount, it does suggest that the build quality wasn't all that it should have been.

4. The mount failed in completely the opposite direction to that in which it would have gone in the crash. There is severe impact damage to the top of the jetpipe that could have only occurred if the engine was free to move on its middle mounts.

5. All of the engineers who have looked at the forward engine mount installation have declared it completely inadequate for the boat installation. It would work in a plane but not in the boat with the severe shock loading associated with high speeds on water.

6. This mount was the only means by which the damping effect of the engine was transmitted to the hull. The gyroscopic effect of the rotating part of the engine provided a great deal of damping to the pitching movements of the boat. Without the foreward mount, the boat would rapidly become unstable.

What is most likely is that Donald hit the wash from his first run and the front engine mount let go at its top fixing. This would allow the boat to pitch around the engine which could no longer provide any damping effect. It wouldn't take long before the wind got under the front end and picked it up. Donald would almost certainly feel the change in behaviour of his boat but would be at a loss to explain it. The most sensible thing to do would be to slow down. As the situation developed, he put the water brake out but it was too little too late.

Monday 9th July 2001

Got a couple of interesting bits of news today, it seems that we may shortly have an answer on who actually owns the wreck of Bluebird. The solicitors are trying for an early date in court. We're talking in weeks rather than months, I'll keep you in the picture as things develop. It's a bit frustrating not knowing what I'm allowed to say about it but best to be safe rather than sorry. I'll probably write about 2000 words about it when it's done and bore everyone to death!

Our second development is that we should shortly have the services of a full time conservator on site. If all goes according to plan, we'll be joined by Mark Campbell (absolutely no relation) who is a third year student of museum conservation at DeMontford University. He will be working towards compiling a proper plan for Bluebird's future in accordance with the correct rules and regulations for valuable artifacts. It will be a job that will take years but Mark will be laying the foundations. He will have the assistance of professional conservators as he goes so this is an excellent opportunity not just for him but for us as well. We will be welcoming him onto the Bluebird Project team in the near future. I'm sure that he'll be more than willing to post details of his work on the website as he goes.

Tuesday 10th July 2001

There are more and more people wondering what happened to all the bits that were recovered from the crash site. In actual fact they were re-assembled into the cockpit section. They were gathered from a piece of lake bed about 120m long by 50m wide and were painstakingly put back together.

This was part of the process that allowed us to locate Donald on the lake bed. By rebuilding his cockpit we were able to prove conclusively that he was ejected from the boat the millisecond that it struck the water. This gave us a very small area to search and that is why we were able to locate him. He was lying almost level with the mud, a very difficult target not just for the sonar operator but practically invisible to the ROV's. We wouldn't have had a chance without the evidence from the rebuilt cockpit. Our crash investigator Steve Moss pointed to a spot on the map of the debris field quite early on in the search for Donald. He was almost spot on which proved the benefit of taking advice from experts like Steve. Another expert who so far hasn't been mentioned is Air Commodore Dr Tony Cullen. an eminent RAF pathologist. His information was both extremely helpful and accurate. I must stress that both men gave their time on an unofficial basis. Neither the AAIB or the RAF were involved in a professional capacity.

What we actually have now is two big pieces of wreckage, the back end that everyone has seen, and the entire front end complete with front spar. Presumably, whoever owns the big bit also owns the pile of small bits that have been rebuilt. I would hope that the whole lot will be re-united one day in order to go on display. The engine fuel controls are still in the "ON" position, placed there by Donald 34 years ago. It's a strange experience to look into the cockpit.

On a different note, I might be wrong here but wasn't Parry Thomas killed in "Babs" on Pendine sands? If I remeber correctly he had his head cut off by a flailing chain, his car was buried, subsequently dug up, restored and put on display somewhere. Just thought of that because someone was bugging me about how horrible it was to think of displaying a vehicle in which someone lost their life.
Help me all you speed freaks....

We were thinking of setting the project up again in September to go back to Coniston and recover a few missing bits. The round badge from the nose is missing as is the instrument panel. We know where the cockpit canopy went but so far we only have one piece of it. What does everyone think? should we go back and clear up or should we leave some bits down there to mark the site? Answers on the guestbook or via prvate e-mail..

Thursday 12th July 2001

Having pondered the question of whether we should go back for the rest of the cockpit wreckage, We've been flooded with positive input. We particularly wanted to get the instruments back. Of the cockpit equipment we have so far only recovered the high and low pressure fuel cocks. They were both mounted in the right hand cockpit wall and they came up with a piece of space frame and the seat assembly. That piece of wreckage was about the middle of the wreckage trail. The cockpit floor separated into two sections, the forward bit with the flow directors on it and the larger underside of the cockpit where Donald sat. This large section was with the seat and fuel cocks.

Donald left his cockpit fowards and slightly to his right taking both cockpit rails with him, from the divers report of 67, we know that the steering column came from the Southern end of the debris trail investigated by the divers back then but they missed the point of impact because it was actually to the West of where their wreckage trail ended. They would have seen no good reason to look West as the boat was travelling South / North and their debris trail followed this trend.

Donald, in the meantime was lying at the point of the initial impact. When he left the boat he took the steering column with him and therefore, presumably, the instruments as well. The column travelled about 25 metres from the place where Donald hit it so presumably the instruments travelled some distance too. They wouldn't have been as heavy as the column which had bits of spaceframe hanging from it, so we are probably looking somewhere between the point of impact and the Southern end of the debris trail where the steering column turned up. We'll see.