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Aviation History
1919
1919 - 0153.PDF
JANUARY 30, 1919 stations at home and abroad, which have been tabulated and discussed, provide a rich store of material ready for the investigation of special subjects, and the preparation of new data could be economically met by an extension of the present arrangements. The Forecasting service will probably have to be arranged on the basis of continuous duty, so that enquiries can be dealt with at any time, and, besides the general forecasts issued at fixed hours, the Forecast Service should tele graph sufficient meteorological data to Local Warning Stations to enable them to follow the weather conditions of their districts and to give warnings of disturbances likely to affect them. The connection between Meteorological Research and Practical Aviation could be facilitated at Aeronautical Research Centres, where a trained meteoro logist could not only contribute his own observations, but also bring the practical experience of pilots to the knowledge of meteorologists, and demon strate the bearing of advances in meteorology on aeronautics. H. G. LYONS. Meteorological Office, . London, July 27th, 1917. APPENDIX C. Meteorological Services in aid of Aerial Transport. Meteorological Office, South Kensington, August, nth, 1917- D. O. Malcolm, Esq., Civil Aerial Transport Committee. DEAR SIR,— In reply to your letter of August 4th, I quite agree with the lines of Major Lyons' Memorandum of July 27th, 1917- I should add to the preamble some words about taking advantage of favourable meteorological conditions as well as " reducing the dangers and obstacles" of unfavourable ones, because, on the whole, the weather is beneficent, and its favourable moods are as well worth considering a* its occasional ill-tempers. That, however, is merely a matter of form. 2. In substance, I gather, Major Lyons suggests an extension of the present public meteorological service to meet the special and local needs of a regular service of aerial transport. A public meteorological service is essentially an organised " enquire within " upon all questions in which the weather is concerned. It must be prepared on demand to supply an answer to any question about the weather past, present or future, in any part of the world to which, in the present state of our knowledge, an answer can be given. It must, therefore, have all its information and its knowledge ready in advance before it knows what question is going to be asked. We are quite used to that situation so far as surface weather is concerned. The underlying prin ciples of the present scheme of the meteorological service are :— (1) The collection and organised arrangement of trustworthy information about past weather from every part of the globe. (2) The periodical notification by telegraph of the present weather from stations representing as wide an area as possible surrounding the United Kingdom, to form the basis of maps upon which forecasts of weather are based in accordance with the recognised teachings of meteorological science. (3) The distribution of the information so collected either in summary or detail in reply to specific enquiries or in anticipation of enquiries in common form. (4) The study of the information collected in conjunction with that obtained at the special observatories and stations of the Office in order to improve by investigation and research, the position of the Office in relation to replies to enquiries of every kind. 3. The new features introduced by the needs of aerial transport are, first, that the subject of possible questions is extended to include the atmosphere up to 20,000 ft., a region that, until recently, we have studied only for the light that it throws upon meteorological science ; secondly, that the scientific questions that arise are rather more recondite and require more specific answers than those which have commonly been addressed to us from outide the Office in the past; and, thirdly, that the airman's horizontal range is wider: he needs to draw upon information from a wider area, and to have the informa tion at his disposal in a compendious form practically at any aerodrome-and at any time of the day or night. In other words, there must be provision for studying the structure and properties of the atmosphere from the special point of view of aircraft, which involves some extension of our organisation for study and research, and for obtaining the material necessary for that study ; and there must be some extension of our means of communicating general and special information to those interested in aircraft. 4. What Major Lyons obviously realises is that the provision for conveying information to aircraft pilots is not complete unless the pilot has an oppor tunity of discussing the situation with a meteorological expert, by which I do not mean an inspired weather-prophet who makes an oracular statement that enables the pilot to dismiss the weather from his thoughts, but simply an educated person who knows what information weather maps do, and do not, contain, and what it means ; what additional information is available and where and how it is to be found. In fact, a pilot wants access to a " map room." where he can consult a weather map just as he would consult a topo graphical map; but as the weather map is changeable from day to day. ant! even from hour to hour, it cannot be drawn once and for all and carried in the l>ocket on a long journey ; it must be re-drawn periodically on the spot, and the person who drew Jt should be there to explain its meaning. 5. At present the only public provision tor consultation of this kind is at the Meteorological Office in London. Many useful consultations with bal- loonists have been held there, but that is not sufficient for regular aerial transport. Adequate information of the same kind is wanted in other localities. The recognised provision at present for other places is to send a copy ot the Daily Weather Report, which is theu somewhat belated, and has generally to be read without the advantage of an expert to consult. 1 he alternative to posting or delivering the llaih Weather Report is to make • reply to a definite question sent by telegraph ; but one question and one answer are insufficient, everyone wants to ask li.rtncr questions in rase the answer to the first is not exhaustive, as it seldom is. 6. Assuming that aero ironies will be connected by telephone with what. on the analogy of railways, may be called " termini." an obvious step would l>e to have local meteorological establishments at those termini, such as rdinburgh or Glasgow, Liverpool, Dublin, yueenstown, Cardifl, Plymouth, and, perhaps, other places. Each establishment should consist of a " map room in charge of an expert, who would keep a suitable library of reference. and would discuss the meteorological situation orally or over the telephone with pilots and others. These experts should be attached to the staff of the Meteorological Office and take regular turns of duty at the Office, so that they may be kept quite up-to-date both as to information and methods. Each expert would require a junior as learner, or two if the station is to be open continuously. These are the Local Warning Stations which Major Lyons enumerates under (4). The men to be employed on these posts should be men with ample knowledge and practice of mathematics and physics, who have had a regular course of training at a University or Technical Institute. 7. Provision of this land is necessary in the public interest, not only for the information of airmen, but also lor all the many classes of the community who are interested in an adequate knowledge of the ways of the. weather •is affecting, e.g., shipping and other forms of transport—agriculture and horticulture—and catering. It has already been undertaken bv the Officer for the Air Services at South Farnborouph and for the Armies in France and Salonika. The principal difficulty that has had to be met is the lack of men with suitable training. When the war began there were not more than 20 all told on the ()ffice establishments. Some 50 more have been passed through the Office for the meteorological service of the Armies, and many of these will be available after the war. 8. Another difficult but equally important part of the programme is the instruction of pilots and others in the methods of modern meteorology, carried sufficiently far for them to know the kind of question to which meteoro logical science can give an answer, so that they may not find themselves at cross-purposes in consultation with a meteorological expert. This requires the preparation of suitable official handbooks, and some provision by way of lectures or teaching for discussing the contents with the airmen. It seems important that the handbooks should be official, because they should be guides to the use of official intelligence, and that object wants to be kept steadily in view ; but it will require some pressure on the Meteorological Office to get handbooks prepared, because when a subject is developing daily under one's own hands it is very difficult to shut off and stereotype one's knowledge in a book. In a university or technical institute there are long vacations when other work is shut down, but in an office the increase of information goes on continuously, and to the writer the work gets out of date while it is in his hands. Still, it is important that this work should be done by the Office Staff. 9. There remain what Major Lyons calls " aeronautical research centres." It would be natural that these should be organised in connection with courses of aeronautical engineering and aeronautical theory at teaching centres— universities or technical institutes. The aeronautical researchers should, somehow or other, be in close communication with the aviators, but a much-frequented aerodrome in the highway of aerial traffic is not a good place for meteorological apparatus that has to project a considerable way from the ground, or that uses steel wire, as for kites and captive balloons, so the com munication is best arranged through a teaching centre which is common ground. Moreover, the direction of experimental researches in the physics and dynamics of the atmosphere requires not only high professional quali fications, but also the assistance of a body of students with a good deal of available time. 10. I have set these things out at length in order to lead up to the vital question of your letter ; by what means the Civil Aerial Transport Committee could best assist in seeing that Major Lyons' suggestions should be carried out. The best means seem to me to be, first, to ask the Meteorological Committee, which has the requisite experience, to set up by way of experi ment at one of the terminals mentioned a local meteorological establishment of this kind which I have indicated herein as necessary for the purpose which the Committee has in view ; and, secondly, to ask the Imperial College of Science and Technology and/or the Universities or Technical Institutes of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Liverpool, Cardiff, Southampton and Plymouth, to set up a teaching centre for Aeronautical Engineering, Aeronautical Theory and the structure of the atmosphere : or perhaps a circular prepared by the Committee asking universities and technical institutes to make a point of giving students the opportunity of learning those subjects which would lead to the provision which is required. (Signed) NAPIER SHAW. APPENDIX D. Meteorological Establishments. (This is not printed). APPENDIX E. Memorandum by Captain B. C. Hucks, R„i.F., and the Assistant Secretary (Technical), as to Accidents and Accident Investigation, with an Annex Summarising the Work, Prior to the War, of the Public Saf<tv and Accidents Investigation Committee of the Royal Aero Club and Aeronautical Society. 11 is proposed to deal with the subject under the following beads :— I. An outline of the most common forms of accident at the present time. 11. The necessity for an investigation of accidents, even some of those not having serious results, with a view to the determination of their causes. III. Methods of obtaining reliable information. IV The necessity for an expert examination and classification of data obtained. V The use to which the results of examination can be put. I. CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS. Aeroplane accidents are, as a rule, due to one or other of the following causes, or sometimes to a combination of such causes :— A.—Engine stoppage, &c B.—Errors in Piloting. (1) Want of experience and hurried teaching (2) Real errors of judgment. (3) Rashness. C.—Faulty construction. (1) Design. (5) Construction. 3) Materials. D.—Dangerous manoeuvres. E.—Meteorological conditions. F—Fires. G.—Illness of a pilot while in flight. Before examining very briefly some ot the accidents due to one or other of these causes, or a combination of any of them, it should be noted that with pilots who are fully experienced and know their engines, grounds, winds and weather signs, accidents under the peace conditions of flying should become rare. A. Engine Stoppage, &c.—The stoppage of an engine in the air should not, under favourable circumstances, imply any serious risk of accident. His mechanical power gone, the flyer must necessarily descend. He can and must maintain the forward speed of his machine and the support of its planes by gliding downward in a gradually descending path ; but if he is over thickly- wooded, broken, or mountainous country, it may be difficult for him to find a suitable' landing point, and he may, should he make his contact with bad ground, break some portion of his alighting gear, or perhaps damage his machine more seriously. But if he is dexterous he may, and usually does, save himself and his passengers from serious injury. To many flyers, the sudden stoppage of their engine is disconcerting, lead ing them to errors of judgment they would not be guilty of under normal conditions. So it may happen that at a moment when exceptional judgment is demanded of him/a flyer is not in a condition to act correctly and with unswerving precision. When his engine has failed a flyer's first thought, naturally, is to make a descent at some point where the ground is suitable, and where he will avoid damaging his machine, or injuring himself or bis passengers. If he is near an aerodrome he will endeavour to reach this aerodrome. It has in the past happened not infrequently that an engine has failed—say through some dis organisation in the petrol pressure feed as a result of " taxying " a machine prior to a flight—not long after a • achine has left the ground and before it has gained altitude. The instinct of the flyer under such conditions is to endeavour to turn his machine in the air and glide back to the aerodrome ratber than make a landing in any field or open space which may lie within reach. But while in the act of turning—remembering that he has been more or less disconcerted by the sadden failure of his motor, and remembeiing also thatowing to the rapid growth of the art of flying thoroughly experienced pilots are few—he may make the mistake of gliding at so fiat an angle while on the turn that the air pressure under the inner wing of his machine falls so 153
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