John May

Former BBC Sport now teaching the young pups the tricks

[Don McGowan @donmcgowan]

I've seen a very dark side of this platform over the bank holiday weekend.

I wrote a post supporting teachers — thousands of replies telling me that they hate teachers.

Posts in which I called out Robert Kenyon's misogyny — thousands of replies telling me that he's 'proper bloke' and plenty of women saying they'll happily vote for him.

Allowing for the 𝕏 Bot Factor, I am really quite shocked by how many people are so entrenched in beliefs I thought we'd left behind in the 1980s.

Reform UK has dragged a sizeable proportion of this country back decades.

Racism.
Misogyny.
Anti-education.

A trifecta of bigotry being used to weaponise the far-right.

Very disturbing but, thankfully, in the UK, it's only around 23% of the population. Not enough for Reform to win a General Election.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@YogurtyBull @EastleighFC Alongside my old man, Jack May. They were the last two survivors of the first ever Swaythling Ath team of 1948.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

Every time a German Messerschmitt pilot wanted to escape a Spitfire on his tail, he did the same thing.
He pushed the nose down.
In a dive, the German engine kept running — it used fuel injection. The British Spitfire's engine cut out. For one and a half seconds the Merlin went dead, the aircraft shuddered, and by the time it caught again the German was gone. Worse: if a German was behind a British pilot and the British pilot dove to escape, the German could follow and keep shooting while the British engine was silent.
Pilots were dying because of a carburetor.
The engineers at Farnborough knew about the problem. They were working on a long-term solution — a redesigned carburetor that would take years to perfect and manufacture.
A woman named Beatrice Shilling fixed it with a washer.

She was born in Hampshire in 1909 and was the kind of child who spent her pocket money on Meccano sets and tools. At fourteen she bought her first motorbike. Her mother, with the inspired instinct of someone who understood what her daughter actually was, found the Women's Engineering Society and arranged an apprenticeship at an electrical firm.
She went to Manchester University — one of the first two women ever to study engineering there — graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, stayed another year for a master's in mechanical engineering, and in 1936 joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough as a scientific officer.
By the late 1930s she was one of the best carburetor engineers in Britain. She was also one of only three women to hold the British Motorcycle Racing Club's Gold Star — awarded for lapping the Brooklands racing circuit at over 100 miles per hour on a motorcycle.
She had reportedly told her future husband, an engineer named George Naylor, that she wouldn't marry him until he earned his own Brooklands Gold Star first.
He earned it. They married in 1938.

The problem with the Merlin was specific and lethal. The SU carburetor used a float chamber to regulate fuel flow. Under negative g-forces — the forces experienced in a sudden dive — the fuel flooded to the top of the float chamber and starved the engine for 1.5 seconds. Just enough time for a German pilot to turn the tables entirely.
The RAF had known about this since the Battle of France. The formal solution — a redesigned pressure carburetor — was in development but wouldn't be ready for years.
Shilling was thirty-one years old, working in carburetor research, and she designed a fix in weeks.
A brass thimble with a precisely calibrated hole in the center — later simplified to a flat washer — fitted inline in the fuel line just before the carburetor. It restricted maximum fuel flow to just enough to prevent flooding without cutting off power. The key breakthrough: it could be fitted without taking the aircraft out of service. No downtime. No factory return.
The old guard at the RAE looked at it and called it a plumbing fix. They called her a plumber. The first batch of 5,000 units was made by a Birmingham firm that normally manufactured plumbing fixtures, which they found embarrassing.
The RAF pilots who flew Spitfires with Messerschmitts on their tails called it something else.
They called it Miss Shilling's Orifice. With deep affection.

By March 1941 she had organized a small team and was personally touring RAF fighter stations across England — traveling between bases on her old racing motorcycle — fitting the device to every Merlin engine they could reach. Squadron leaders all over the country were demanding installations. The word spread faster than the official channels could keep up with.
The Germans noticed. They couldn't explain why British fighter pilots had suddenly started following them into dives. They were baffled by the new aggression. They didn't know about the washer.

(More story replies)

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@CliffPledge @Deano230 Sad day. Staging the Senior Cup final at The Dell/St Mary's has always reinforced the link between Saints and the Southampton football community.
Could be the thin end of the wedge.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@scottbalaam @TibsNews @SolentUni @Luke_Augustus29 Who?
Never heard of him!!

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@AlfieHouseEcho That's why they appointed him.
It's called forward planning.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@DuncanHolley https://t.co/esgENIP8Qn

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@TibsNews Great piece Luke.
Sobering and thought-provoking.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

An important read for anybody who aspires to be a sports journalist.

[Paul Hayward @_PaulHayward]

Football journalism, how 'match reports' have evolved and why writing needs defending against metrics and 'content.'
My commentary for ⁦@ObserverUK⁩ https://t.co/obFdcA6tt3

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@stephenjones9 @_PaulHayward @ObserverUK An important read for anybody who aspires to be a sports journalist.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@AlfieHouseEcho When Manning curled that free-kick in I had more than a sneaking feeling they would go on to win.
Typical Saints. They owe that to Bazunu more than anybody.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@AlfieHouseEcho You are it's not Home & Gardens?

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@J_Tanswell @andrewstone85 I'm very well, thanks Jake.
Retirement is pretty good.
Keep up the great work, you and others like you are the best advert Solent Uni's sports journalism course could have.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@Deano230 @ChloBoyne @SolentSportsJ Well done Chloe.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@AlfieHouseEcho You did a bang-up job Alfie.
You and George do Solent proud.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@ChloBoyne Top stuff Chloe, well done.

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@joethomlinson As former Stoke manager Alan Durban once said when his team was accused of dour football; "If you want entertainment, go to the circus."

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@_PaulHayward @ObserverUK Got mine!

[John May @Johnnybmay68]

@Chris_Nighty @benb556 Deepest sympathy and condolences, Ben.