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Aviation History
1931
1931 - 0584.PDF
FLIGHT, JUNE 19, 1931 its own ground forces. It does not go to the War Office and ask for armoured cars. If it did, it would have to spend (or rather to waste) considerable time in training the personnel of the car sections to work with aircraft. Car sections raised by the R.A.F. and manned by R.A.F. officers and airmen start with a knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of the air arm, and that knowledge was rightly said by Squadron Leader Godsave to be " essential." There is nothing illogical about the proceedings. The cars form part of air defence or air control, as the case may be, and so they are rightly raised and controlled in every respect by the Royal Air Force. That force, it has been shown more than once, cannot achieve its objects by aircraft alone. Co-operation by ground troops is almost always necessary. We commented once before on the same point in connec- tion with the Air Force campaign in Aden to eject a recalcitrant Sheikh from the districts for which we are responsible. In that case the ground troops took the form of a rising of tribes friendly to our cause. This Arab levy was not a very well organised force, but it provided just the ground co-operation which was needed to turn the enemy out of forts which the bombs from the air were not able to destroy. If in the air control of Iraq, Transjordan, and Aden some ground troops (preferably cars, but also Arab levies) are a necessary part, so we find that at Home certain ground units are an equally essential part of air defence. Aircraft unassisted couid do little to ensure the safety of London from hostile air attacks. Coast watchers, sound locators, search- lights, and anti-aircraft guns must all co-operate if the " Furies " and " Bulldogs " are to have a fair chance of shooting the raiders down. Pilots who fly at night admit that they depend almost entirely upon the searchlights to give them some idea of where to look for the hostile night-bombers. The A.A. guns may not shoot many of the raiders down, but they too play a very important part in the defence scheme, and certainly help to break the moral of the bomber pilots. Yet, strange to relate, in Great Britain the search- lights and the A.A. guns are not the property of the Air Ministry. The ground units are raised and pro- vided in all ways by the War Office. Their per- sonnel wear khaki, not Air Force blue. It makes no difference at all whether these units come from the regular Army or from the Territorials ; the point is that they are military and not Air Force in composi- tion, though they exist merely to play a very im- portant part in air defence. It is an anomaly which does not exist in Iraq, and it is an anomaly which ought to be abolished in Great Britain. It would be difficult to imagine a better way of furnishing convincing proof of the fact that the compression-ignition aero engine has " arrived ' than the endurance flight carried out by the tvo C.I. Engine American pilots Walter Lees and makes a Frederic Brossy, of the Packard Good Motor Car Company, on a Bellanca Beginning <•• Pacemaker " fitted with the Packard compression-ignition engine. Details of the flight are given elsewhere in this issue of FLIGHT, from which it will be seen that the machine remained in the air (without refuelling, of course) for 84 hr. 33 min. And even then, it was darkness only which made it advisable to land, as the tanks contained enough fuel for another 8^ hours, which would have increased the duration to 93 hours. One or two interesting facts emerge from this very successful trial of the Packard engine. One is that during the early part of the flight the engine was run at a speed corresponding to 122 b.h.p. When it is borne in mind that at the start of the flight the wing loading was 18.1 lb./sq. ft., and the power loading 29.9 lb./h.p., it speaks well for the efficiency of the machine that it only required 122 h.p. to keep it in the air. In this respect an endurance flight is, of course, very different from a distance flight. In the former the cruising speed can be kept down to whatever corresponds to the minimum fuel consumption. In a distance flight, on the other hand, a higher speed has to be chosen in order to cover the greatest distance per unit of fuel. The fact that towards the end of the flight the power required to remain aloft was only 34 b.h.p. also shows the aerodynamic cleanness of the Bellanca. And the advantages of the Diesel type of engine were, of course, very strongly brought out when it came to cruising at very low power. In fact, the compression-ignition engine would show at its very best under these conditions. When the petrol engine is throttled down to one- seventh of its normal power, as the Packard was towards the end of the flight, its specific fuel con- sumption becomes very poor. The C.I. engine maintains its low fuel consumption even when well throttled, and the makers estimate that a petrol engine of the same power would only have been able to keep the machine in the air for 82 hours compared with the possible 93 hours of the Packard. For the commercial aeroplane of the future this inherent feature of the compression- ignition engine is valuable in giving fuel economy at cruising speed, apart from any advantage of immunity from fire which the use of heavy oil may give. The two pilots and the Packard Company are to be congratulated on a fine performance, and one should link with these names that of the late Mr. Woolson, the designer of the engine, who lost his life last year in a flying accident. NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE OF "FLIGHT" In connection with the Royal Air Force Display at Hendon on Saturday, June 27th,next week's issue of FLIGHT will contain a Special Illustrated Supplement dealing with the history of the British Air Arm from its first beginning as the BalloonCorps to the present time. The supplement will contain photographs of all ;the note-worthy aircraft types which have been used, first by the R.F.C. and R.N.A.S., and later by the R.A.F., so that it will be of great historical interest. The price of FLIGHT next week will be Is. 546
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