Skyscraper that whistles in the wind
QUESTION
What is the purpose of the grille-like structure on top of Beetham Tower, Manchester’s tallest building? BeeTham Tower is a 47-storey skyscraper named after its developer, the Beetham Organisation. With the steel and glass ‘blade’ at the top, the building is 554 ft tall.
The top 23 floors of the concrete frame building are cantilevered 13 ft out from the bottom 24, creating a top-heavy effect, an unusual form in British skyscrapers. The tower ranks as one of the narrowest skyscrapers in the world, with a ratio of 10:1 in height to width.
The building includes a five- star, 285bedroom hilton hotel up to the 23rd floor with the hotel’s Cloud23 bar on that level.
From there up, the tower consists of a variety of apartments. The architect, Ian Simpson, owns the duplex penthouse apartment, worth a reported £3 million, taking after erno Goldfinger, who designed the controversial Trellick Tower in London and also lived in his designs.
The blade or grille-like structure of Beetham Tower’s south side ‘acts as a facade over-run accentuating its slim form and doubles as a lightning rod’. The merits of the blade are hotly debated in manchester. Its most telling feature is an ominous low hum emitted by the glass blade in the wind, earning the building the nickname the ‘whistling tower’.
Foam pads were installed in 2007 to eradicate the noise, aluminium nosing was added in 2007 and further work done in February 2010. This has dampened the effects, but attempts to eradicate the noise completely have been unsuccessful.
Michael Horton, Wilmslow, Cheshire.
QUESTION
A recent episode of War And Peace featured a cannonball rolling along the grass with a burning fuse that subsequently ignited the explosive inside. When did cannonballs change from a solid ball of iron to such a device?
FUSED shells were in use at the time of the Battle of Borodino in 1812, the conflict shown in that episode of War and Peace.
The three types of artillery ordnance used at Borodino and other battles of the Napoleonic era were round shot, case shot and the fused shell. Solid round shot, better known as cannonballs, remained in use until the 1860s, when rifled barrels made artillery more accurate.
They were used to blast apart physical defences as well as to kill troops. They were replaced by shells, hollow metal canisters filled with explosives and triggered by a percussion fuse in the nose.
Case shot was developed in the late 1700s for use with ordinary field artillery. These were light metal canisters packed with musket balls. The case burst after firing, peppering the enemy with projectiles. The first recorded use of an exploding shell was by the Spanish at the siege of the dutch fortress of Wachtendonk in 1588.
These early shells were hollowed- out metal cases filled with gunpowder, lit by a fuse. The shell was propelled over a defensive wall using a high-angled cannon, such as a mortar or howitzer.
In 1784, British artillery officer Lieutenant harry Shrapnel invented a fused shell for the same purpose. It was first used at the Battle of maida in 1803. The shell could be fused to burst directly in front of, or above, enemy infantry. Shrapnel’s name came to be synonymous with all metal fragments propelled from an explosion.
It wasn’t uncommon for soldiers to see the flight of the round shot: it often hit the ground and rolled, giving soldiers the chance to avoid them. Inexperienced soldiers sometimes tried to stop them with their feet, which usually took their limb off.
Showing the shell landing and spinning in the manner depicted in War and Peace is poetic licence. Few gunners would have fused a shell so badly that it hit the ground and fizzed for several seconds.
however, fused grenades — much smaller than shells, but otherwise similar in appearance — had been in use for almost a century and a grenade might have behaved in the manner shown. The use of exploding shells is recognised in the american national anthem The Star Spangled Banner, where the line ‘the rockets bright flare/shells bursting in air’ refers to the war of 1812 against the British.
Napoleon started his military career as an artillery officer and valued the contribution of artillery on a battlefield.
One russian messenger at the battle of Borodino recalled that the continual bombardment caused him to have to keep his mouth open in order to equalise the pressure in his head, such was the effect of the cannon firing. This phenomenon, caused by mass artillery fire, was well known during World War I.
Bob Cubitt, northampton.
QUESTION
Did the Russians once develop a plane that could fly backwards? AN EARLIER answer pointed out that Bae’s harrier had VSTOL flying capabilities, included an ability to ‘ fly backwards’, a novel and delightful part of the harrier’s routine at air shows around the country. It was in 1982, however, during the Falklands conflict, that this wondrous manoeuvrability came into its own.
Argentine air Force Super-etendard fighter pilots found, to their great dismay, that when engaging harriers in combat, their high minimum stalling speed was a distinct disadvantage when the transonic harrier fighter they were chasing and catching effectively ‘stopped’ in mid-air — and in a few short seconds they would find themselves in the British pilot’s sights.
Tex Waite, Trowbridge, Wilts.
ANOTHER British plane that could ‘fly backwards’ was the Westland Lysander.
With a strong enough headwind, putting the aircraft at the right angle enabled reverse flight. This was a reconnaissance aircraft used to drop and pick up agents during World War II.
Chris Wilson, london nW9.
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