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Aviation History
1931
1931 - 1190.PDF
FLIGHT, NOVEMBER 6. 1931 Experience had shown that, wherever the human element entered into the control of any means of transportation, the accidents statistics varied in almost direct ratio to the proportion of control exercised by the human element. Any device, therefore, which relieved the crew of respon- sibility or minimised the consequences of error of judg- ment should automatically decrease the percentage of accidents. Visibility and View In this country we were faced with the fact that weshould have to go on flying in periods of bad visibility, and the lecturer was personally concerned at the increasein risk of collision. Cabin machines flying in rain or fog invariably had a much reduced visibility, and windscreenswere liable to internal fogging and external clouding, with a certain amount of oil vapour and possibly withmud thrown on to the windscreen in taking off. He thought that it should be possible for a pilot to get agood view in bad weather through open windows without having his head blown off. He laid great stress on thispoint, because the results of collision were especially serious in aviation. In case of collision, he thought therewas very little chance of escape for passengers, and the risk was increased owing to the prevailing laxity in observ-ing the rules and regulations. In part this was due to the fact that present regulations were obsolete and oftenimpracticable. It was high time international regulations were completely overhauled, preferably by men withpractical knowledge of air navigation and its requirements. The impracticability of certain rules had led to widespreadtoleration of breaches, both at airports and on air routes. Capt. Lamplugh said lit' had one last suggestion, basedupon the fact that no matter what safety device and what improvement in design were produced, the national stan-dard of our airmanship and our position in aviation generally would ultimately be determined by the attitudeof those engaged in it. As a nation we had always prided •ourselves upon our seamanship. It was a legitimate andhereditary right which had existed through the ages. He hoped sincerely that a national tradition of airmanshipwas communicating itself among us in civil aviation. If we could achieve the same standards of craftsmanship andtradition which they had in the mercantile marine, he felt that we should ultimately bring commercial aviation tothe same standard of safety, efficiency and worldwide repute. In concluding his paper Capt. Lamplugh said: — ^J" I am convinced that aviation in itself is not inherently dangerousdespite anything which this paper may have indicated to the contrary, but I do personally f.vjl that th; air, to an even greater extent than thesea, is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect. " By ' unforgiving,' I mean that the result of carelessness, neglect orovor confidence are paid for more quickly and more dearly than in other forms of transport. Again I repeat, if the same keenness and knowledgeand tradition which has already brought us in twenty years from our insignificant beginnings in the air to the present standard is utilised inpreventing unnecessary accidents we can, with confidence, look forward to the time when Great Britain creates the same position for herself inthe air as she has done on the sea." THE DISCUSSION In opening the discussion Mr. Fairey said he wasvery glad to be the first to congratulate Capt. Lamplugh on a very fine paper. He thought it was interesting to notethat the audience was the largest he had ever seen, and it was a tribute to the confidence they had in the lecturer'sability. Mr. Fairey said he did not wish to take up a disproportionate time himself, but one or two points he•did want to raise. He had been somewhat surprised at the lecturer's attitude in the matter of the personal elementfactor. Something like 50 per cent, of accidents, or more, were due to the personal element, and yet the lecturerseemed to take that very calmly and as something that was • not surprising. He had been interested to hear that thewelded steel tube fuselage had proved the safest in a crash, as he had been responsible for introducing that form of con- o <•> Aero Golfing Society THE autumn meeting of the Aero Golfing Society washeld at Sunningdale on October 20. The " Cellon " •Challenge Trophy was won by Maj. S. V. Sippe, witha. return of 95 less 18 = 77. The Bogey Foursomes went to Capt. F. E. N. St. Barbe and Com. H. E. Perrin withfour up. The Captain's Prize for the lowest aggregate in the three Society Competitions for the year was won byCapt. A. G. Lamplugh with a net return of 239. struction into this country. He had listened with interestto the lecturer's remarks about the value of reports by eye- witnesses. He had once, unfortunately, been an eye witnessto a structural failure in the air, and was very close to the machine as it fell. He watched it carefully all the waydown, and also the manner in which it broke up on tht ground. Near him was one whose technical qualifications hiwould be prepared to accept on almost any subject, but when they came to compare their impressions they discovered that they disagreed almost entirely as to the sequence of events. He then called upon Lt. Col.Shelmerdine, Director of Civil Aviation, to open the discussion. COL. SHELMERDINE agreed entirely with the lecturer that although accidentsmight be a depressing subject, it was one which had to be studied. On the question of the personal factor which the lecturer had shown to be soimportant, he would like to know if, in the lecturer's opinion, the present arrangements for medical examination were entirely satisfactory. CaptainLamplugh had referred to the danger which overhead high-tension cables introduced. The Air Ministry was giving this subject very particular atten-tion, and it Was hoped to evolve a system of marking clearly these cables in such a manner that their presence was easily detected by pilots of air-craft. AIR COMMODORE CAVE-BROWNE-CAVE, Director of Technical Development,in reply to Mr. Fairey's remarks about Welded steel tube fuselages, caused some amusement by saying that at the Air Ministry they were not hostileto welded tube construction, but he thought ability to stand up to a crash was not, perhaps, the only or even the best way to judge a fuselage.MR. M. L. BRAMSON expressed surprise that the lecturer had not made it clear in his paper what part power-plant failures had played. He was awarethat it was not usual to introduce controversial subjects, but he thought the custom might be broken on this occasion as the lecture provided such agood opportunity to bring up the subject of investigation of accidents. The reasons given for maintaining secrecy were usually three : Respect for thedead, risk of doing harm to the manufacturer of the machine, and that the investigator should be unhampered by any thought that his findings wouldbe made public. He argued that the first point was by now quite out of date. On the third count, he thought the investigator of accidents was theequivalent of a judge, and was quite sure that like other judges, he would state his conclusions without fear or favour. On the second point, theinvestigator was acting on behalf of the public and it was absurd that a Government representative should bother about whether or not his findingsnught do harm to a private manufacturer. The vast amount of information available from the investigation of a large number of accidents should bemade available to the whole nation. MR. C. G. GREV referred to the importance which the lecturer hadattached to the error of judgment factor. He was not quite clear what was meant by that. If two pilots of equal skill were flying two machines,one of which "fell out of the pilot's hand" at 45 m.p.h., while the other was still under control at 35 m.p.h., and the first machine crashed, whatwas the pilot's error of judgment'.' Was it an error of judgment that he let the machine fall out of his hands, or was it an error of judgment to buya machine which behaved in this way ? MR. C. C. WALKER, of the de Havilland Company, said he would haveliked the figures given to have been related to miles flown rather than being a percentage of total accidents. The question would naturally be askedhow far the aircraft designer could contribute to greater safety. He thought that if a manufacturer produced a very strong machine, pilots would stillbreak it in the air by excessive manoeuvres, such as doing an inverted loop out of a terminal velocity nose dive. The accidents were an operationalrather than a design phenomenon. Reduction in accidents must come from greater care in using aircraft, and from making better use of experience. COL. PECKARD said that in road accidents 80 per cent, of accidents weredue to the personal element. The general public was in need of education, and he thought the various bodies and institutions in aviation ought tostart a campaign for educating the general public. There were something like half-a-million industrial accidents in a year, but they were not " news,"and so little was heard of them. There were thousands of road accidents. They were news of a sort, and the public was told of many of them. Butan aircraft accident was red-hot news, and the public was scared by huge head-lines and drastic accounts. MAJOR MAYO referred to Captain Lamplugh as the real Dictator of BritishCivil Aviation. He pointed out that an analysis of accidents on a per- centage basis was misleading. We wanted the percent ago of errors of judg-ment to be high. When it became high, it would be a proof that flying had became safe, and that we had few accidents. He agreed with Mr. Bram-son that it was folly to maintain secrecy about the cause of accidents. In any case, we were not consistent, because when there was a really seriousaccident, there was a public inquiry, and such an accident was therefore given the fullest publicity. As this happened only in case of very seriousaccidents, the public was given a wrong impression. He thought the lecturer had not stressed sufficiently the importance of visibility. (BothMajor Mayo and the lecturer muddled the audience by using the expression " visibility " When really they meant " view." or " field of view."—ED.).The view was miserably bad on many aircraft, and as the amount of bad- weather flying increased, as it was bound to do, this would lead to manyaccidents. Many accidents due to the bad view had been put down to error of judgment. We were coming to the stage when good view ought to liedemanded and enforced. MR. BRIE, demonstration pilot to the Cierva Autogiro Company, said thaton his recent tour of Great Britain with an Autogiro, he had been impressed by the number of people, knowing little or nothing about flying, who hadfelt confidence in flying in the Autogiro, and had said that it was just t:ie sort of machine they had been waiting for. MR. W. O. MANNING said he would like to ask a number of questions, l"Jtrealised that time was short, and he would therefore refrain. o <•> New Luxor Goggle Prices OWING to changes in the cost of manufacture, the n<*model No. 10 is now sold at 50s., and the De Luxe No. '3, fitted with hand-ground Acetex lenses, is £3 17s. 6d. _T)>elatter model is the one which has been used by the Brit in Schneider Trophy Team for the past four years, and t 'fmanufacturers believe that at this reduced price many m< "e airmen will be able to obtain what is considered the fin< stgoggle in the world. 1114
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