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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0409.PDF
MAY II, i9l6- IfilGHfl CORRESPONDENCE. Wind Currents. [1920] I thank Mr. Hearne for his courteous reply, and am glad to see him sound on the generally accepted belief re wind currents and airships, because I gathered a quite different view from his previous article. So much for that. Now as to his special pleading re intermittent blasts or trains of air. I'll admit the irregularity of wind close to earth : this is especially so near big obstructions, such as hills, big buildings, cliffs, &c.; but as you get clear of this, or to the open sea, so does the wind become less irregular, and probably at great height the air is on the whole fairly homogeneous. Still, I'll admit the irregularity even here, and what happens (leave the snow speculation and only consider the wind impact). If you meet this suggested train of air, the airship would almost instantly check its speed till it resumed its normal air travel pace, and so the effect would be merely momentary, because an airship has an early limiting speed and relatively small weight so inertia would not carry it far. Then, as Mr. Hearne suggests later, the contrary occu'S, when you are shot out of a fast into a slower train of air ; and this would be negative to the same degree as the other was positive, consequently if you are shuttled into and out ol irregular trains of air the total effect would average practically to the condition of homogeneous air. But this is getting rather near to dialectics which does not interest me. Otherwise I find Mr. Hearne's remarks quite interesing, and there is plenty to dilate upon, such as the feasibility of zones of in flammable gases round a Zepp tin, the d fficulties of housing and getting them out of their sheds in wind, and other details seldom appearing in print. CHAS. S. DYER. Engineers and the Air Services. [1921] I. The present agitation for a better air service misses one of the most vital points of possible improvement. 2. Most of the talk centres around the cooperation of naval and military administration, which is inevi ably difficult, if not im possible, to arrange on the lines suggested. 3. The Air Services, as fighting units, are at present essentially adjuncts of the Navy and the Army, and must so remain to the end of the present war at least. 4. In the future, possibly, the Air Service may become an inde pendent unit, but we are concerned most just now with the imme diate improvement of things as they exist. 5. What is, however, essentially common to both branches of the Air Service is their engineering aspect, and it is in this direction that co-ordination of effort can most usefully be tried and might more profitably be insisted upon. 6. It has frequently and truthfully been stated that this war is an engineers' war, and it is all the more remarkable, therefore, that so little endeavour has heen made systematically to organise the engineering personnel. 7. At the present time we are still without a Corps of Mechanical Engineers. 8. The Royal Engineers is a Corps mainly concerned with engineering in the field, while the engineering branch of the Navy is mainly concerned with work on board ship. 9. We have no properly constituted branch of either Service con cerned with engineering in the factory. 10. Until the formation of the Ministry of Munitions, there was not even a department of the Government for co-ordinating contracts and accelerating output. 11. The Ministry of Munitions is essentially a civil department of the State, as at present constituted. An engineer cannot enlist into the Ministry of Munitions. IZ. If there were a Corps of Mechanical Engineers into which every qualified engineer and mechanic could now enlist, it would afford the means of more rapidly developing the various organisations that need such men at the present time. 13. Incidentally it would, I think, greatly facilitate both branches of the Air Service in the production and inspection of the high-class engineering work they require. 14. The inadequacy under which the Air Services labour is not one of administration, but of material. 15. The administrative requirements are fundamentally different for the two branches of the Service, but the nature of the material is fundamentally the same, and I firmly believe that much might be done to accelerate production by co ordinating the engineering aspects of the situation. 16. The proposal that I make for the formation of a Corps of Mechanical Engineers goes far beyond the immediate question of the Air Services, inasmuch as such a corps would form the nucleus of a general Co-ordination of engineering effort on the technical side. 17. Primarily, the function of the Directorate of the Corps would be to classify the country's available engineering personnel. It would keep track of the whereabouts of every qualified engineer and mechanic, and would supply drafts of such men wherever their services might most urgently be required. 18. For example, suppose the Aeronautical Inspection Depart ment of the War Office required more Examiners and Inspectors ; men from tbe Corps of Mechanical Engineers would be attached to the Inspection Department for that special duty- 19. Similarly, if the Royal Flying Corps or Mechanical Trans port, for example, required engineers to undertake the maintenance of material in the field, they would obtain them from the Corps of Mechanical Engineers, and if at a later period they could be released from service, they would revert back to the Corps of Mechanical Engineers with that much additional experience to their credit. 20. While the duty of the Directorate of the Corps of Mechanical Engineers would be mainly to assist existing organisations to work efficiently, it would also endeavour, as far ns ix.ssiblr, to arrange for uniformity of method, where such uniformity would facilitate progress. 2t. \tor example, there is nothing that so influences production as the question of detail inspection, and there is a marked difference in this work as at present carried out under the War Office and the Admiralty administrations. 22. It would be the duty of the Corps of Mechanical Engineers to unify the technical procedure, so that a manufacturer building a certain engine, for example, for both the Admiralty and the War Office, would not build it under entirely different conditions, as is in fact the case to-day. 23. In doing this, an endeavour might also be made to broaden the basis of inspection by regulating it more closely by the evidence of actual performance. 24. One of the chief criticisms levelled against detail inspection is that it makes insufficient allowance for practical requirements. 25. This defect would te cured if instructions to Inspectors of Workmanship were prepared by Inspectors of Performance specifically told off to observe the actual behaviour of machines in service. 26. Inspectors of Performance would spend their time partly with the Army in the field and partly in the works, and each piece of mechanism would be under the special observation of a group of men who would work in co-operation and would become experts in their particular subject. 27. They would keep the engineers in the factory advised of the difficulties experienced in the field, and at the same lime would keep the engineers in the field advised of the special defects experi enced at home. 28. In this way there would be established a link lietween the man at the Front and the man at home, such as does not at present exist, but which would, I feel sure, exercise a material benefit on all concerned. 29. There would be no difficulty on the score of militarising engi neering labour, because the works organisations could continue as at present, on a civil basis, by transferring all men so engaged to the reserve. This is, in fact, the condition of those engineers who have attested, but who are still engaged in civil employment. 30. The essential point gained by the creation of the Corps of Mechanical Engineers would be that all qualified men now U-ing released by engineering factories would pass straight into the Corps of Mechanical Engineers and would lie drafted thence wherever their services were most required—if necessary into Infantry and Artillery regiments. The point is that the Corps of Mechanical Engineers would always know their whereabouts and would have the authority to get them lack again if their particular skill waj more urgently required elsewhere. 3«. Similarly, in the case of all the engineers now in the Army outside those in the Royal Engineers, arrangements would be made to obtain their names in case their service might be required ; but obviously no dislocation of existing conditions would be permitted unless the urgency of the case warranted it. 32 At the present time no organisation dealing with the country's engineering personnel exists, and since the beginning of the war our strength in this direction has been frittered away by the release of men from factories direct into the Army, without any attempt to keep track of them. 33. The Ministry of Munitions has, of course, taken the question of the supply of engineering lalxwr in hand to some extent, but the Ministry of Munitions does not deal with all the grades that would 409
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