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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 0113.PDF
£J4GHT, FEBRUARY I. 1934 sible to conditions in flight. It was not possible to go upin an aeroplane every time one desired to test a fuel, but it was possible to tcl:e a multi-cylinder engine and put adraught on it and expect to get no worse conditions than when in flight. There were things like distribution, radia-tion effects, etc., in a multi-cylinder engine which it was not possible to parallel in the case of a single-cylinder job. He was fully in agreement with the need for an inter-national method of matching fuels. At the present time things were perfectly hopeless. On the point raised by Mr. Thornycroft, the view washeld that with leaded fuel there was less formation of carbon over a long period than with unleaded fuel. Askin of lead bromate was formed, but it did not seem to mount up very quickly. A great deal of what Mr. Lovesey had said could beexplained, but he would prefer to do it in writing. He believed there was something in keeping the valve hot,because the boiling point of lead bromate was fairly high —about 920 deg. C.—and the engine would have to becooled down very much before there was condensation, and therefore the hotter the valve was when the lead bromatewas flowing past in the form of a gas the better it might be for it. It did not seem to hang on to or condense onthe side. It was known that the gas itself, as such, was liable to attack a hot valve, theoretically, much more thana cooler one, and it seemed a retrograde point of view to take that a valve should be run hot in any case. Normally,the idea should be t:> run a cool valve, because some lead bromate tests that had been made on various steels at agiven temperature—although not as high as he would like, and he intended to carry out some others at the tempera-ture of the valve—indicated that the rate of attack increased very rapidly with the increase in temperature. Asregards Stelliting, there was possibly something in Mr. Lovesey's theory that the scale did not adhere. As regards corrosion, mentioned by Mr. Foord and Mr.Taylor, this problem would have to be studied because no prolonged tests on corrosion had been made in this country,with the present fuels and lubricating oils. Any question of trouble from poisoning had been com-pletely eliminated now. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FLEET AIR ARM A Lecture, abridged, delivered by Wing Com. W. R. D. Acland, D.F.C., A.F.C., before the Royal United Service Institution, on January 24, 1934w ING COM. ACLAND'S lecture was to a largeextent a recapitulation of his very able paper delivered before the Royal Aeronautical Societyon January 22, 1931 (fully reported in FLIGHT for January 30, 1931.—ED.). It was," however, remodelledconsiderably in order that the development of the Fleet Air Arm, from the earliest beginnings, should receive moreattention than actual deck flying, which was the subject of the previous paper.The lecturer traced the beginnings of naval flying from the year 1911, when H.M.S. Hibernia was fitted with alaunching deck, down through the war period, when ships like the Engadine, Manxman and Campania were used, tomore, modern times with properly built aircraft carriers like the Furious, Glorious, Courageous, Hermes, etc.With regard to the organisation, it was in January, 1918, that Rear Admiral Sir Richard Phillimore firstassumed command of that branch of the Service which has ultimately become the Fleet Air Arm, and flew his flagin H.M.S. Furious. This ship then had the funnel amid- ships, although an after flying-on deck had been addedsince she first joined the Fleet. This deck was not, how- ever, a success and of the landings made on it in one periodWing. Com. Acland stated that all except three resulted in crashes, chiefly due to the eddying air currents causedby the funnel and its superstructure. Fore and aft wires were still used for landing-on, with hooks on the under-carriage which were designed to get under the ropes and to hold the aircraft down on the deck after landing.In September, 1918, the Argus was commissioned, and was the first fully clear and flush-decked aircraft carrier.Next came the Eagle (converted from the Almirante • Cochrane, a Chilean battleship which we had taken over)and she was the first island-type carrier with the funnel and bridge on the starboard side of the 84-ft. wide flying•deck. In March, 1918, although the aircraft provided forFleet use, from the carriers Furious and Pegasus, were such as to give our Navy superiority in the air, there was, asyet, little hope of landplanes getting back on to the Furious, and the usual procedure was for them to landin the water, whence they were sometimes salved by destroyers, but more often than not became total losses inthe process. The advent of the Argus, however, solved this problem.In 1919 capital ships ceased to be equipped with air- craft. In 1920 they were re-equipped, but it was not untilafter 1924, when the Vindictive had carried out successful experiments with a catapult and proved its practicability,that this form of launching gear made the use of recon- naissance aircraft general in cruisers and capital ships oncemore. On April 1, 1923, the aircraft used by the Fleet wereorganised in flights of six machines. The status of the Fleet Air Arm was also consolidated and clarified at that-time as the outcome of a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Balfour. The principle of a unified Royal Air Forcewas agreed to, but for all matters of operational control the aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm were definitely to beunder the command of naval officers. The observers were all to be naval officers, as were 70 per cent, of the pilots,who received temporary commissions in the R.A.F. The remaining 30 per cent, of pilots were to be officers of theR.A.F. Senior R.A.F. officers were also to act as advisers to the C. in C. and to be senior officers for airduty in each carrier. During 1926 observers' courses were started at Lee-on-Solent and there naval officers were taught photography, meteorology and air navigation, as well as the many othersubjects necessary for their specialised duties. Pilots were trained, in the first place, much on the same lines asthose in the R.A.F., but during their eleven months' course at Leuchars they learnt seaplane work and decklanding. During 1927 the air course for junior officers was started, and this has proved that officers are able toget a far better idea from the air of handling the Fleet than they are able to do when afloat. The lecturer referred briefly to the developments whichhad taken place in technical improvements since 1928, such as the general use of slots, wheel brakes, and provi-sion for night flying. He thought that night flying and night deck landing, started by Sqd. Ldr. Howe in 1927,would now become a regular part of F.A.A. work. In 1932 Rear Admiral R. G. H. Henderson was appointedRear Admiral Commanding Carriers, and thus came about the separate Fleet s\ii Arm command. The lecturer feltthat it was due to the work of Admiral Henderson in con- junction with Air Vice-Marshal Sir Robert Clark-Hall, theAir Officer Commanding the Coastal Area, that the Fleet Air Arm is now developing in such a satisfactory manner. In 1933 the F.A.A. was organised once more in squad-rons. This permitted the appointment of many more naval officers to the higher ranks in the F.A.A.The standard of flying had improved so much that the percentage of successful deck landings had become equal tothat of landings ashore, while the amount of flying done by the pilots of the F.A.A. had also become equal to thatof pilots on land aerodromes. Speaking of the future, Wing. Com. Acland thought thatit had now been proved that aircraft were as essential to the Fleet as were its big guns ; that aircraft operatingwith the Fleet must be ship-borne and must be landplanes ; and that aircraft carried by capital ships and cruiserswould have to be flown ofi before action as, not only might they be damaged by the gun Mast, but also that thepresence of large quantities of petrol on deck constituted a very real danger. This was likely to be inconvenientto the C. in C, and was therefore a reason why, for Fleet use, aircraft should be confined to carriers. Allud-ing to the vulnerability of carriers, he pointed out that capital ships also had to have their destroyer escortand that a carrier should be treated on the same basis. 113
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