FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0416.PDF
158 FLIGHT. FEBRUARY I8, 1937. FOR DIVERS DUTIES : A versatile new Blackburn aeroplane ordered in quantity for the Fleet Air Arm : the fleet-fighter dive- bomber monoplane with 825/840 h.p. Bristol Mercury engine. The arrangement of the tail unit is perhaps the most striking feature of this noteworthy machine, which is seen here in a not-quite-finished state. Baldwin can no more contrive the abolition of warlike aircraft than of rifles and bayonets. What these well-meaning but ignorant instructors of youth fail to grasp is that so long as war is a possibility, so long is it out of the question to try to deprive the fighting men of any legitimate means of defeating the armed forces of the enemy. It is possible, by inter national agreement, to "forbid them to misuse their weapons by striking at civil populations. There have always been rules of war, and such rules there always must be. . Unthinking people have said that in the last war all rules were broken, but that is not true. We may instance the facts that dum-dum bullets were not used, that water supplies were not infected with bacteria, and that gas bombs were not dropped on cities. All the principal nations have, in fact, signed an agree ment to refrain from gas warfare and chemical warfare, and those to whom a signed word is but a scrap of paper are likely to be restrained from a breach of the rules of war by the fear of reprisals and of antagonising neutral opinion. But the air bomber, used in its proper wa - as a long-range gun, is a perfectly legitimate weapon of war. Air Chief Marshal Sir John Steel, when he com manded the Wessex Bombing Area, once said during some air exercises, '' I have given my pilots military objectives, which the guns would shell if they could reach them." That is the correct doctrine of bombing. As for fighter aircraft, they are defensive weapons pure and simple. If the fighters were abolished, then every civil aeroplane in the hands of unscrupulous belli gerents would become a potential bomber; but converted airliners would fall very easy victims to first-class fighters. Educational authorities as a rule have very hazy ideas of the difference between a bomber and a fighter, and they seem to think that the only function of a bomber is baby-killing. If that view were correct, it might perhaps be possible to abolish the bomber; but to abolish long-range artillery is as impossible as to abolish war. We may see hope for the future in Professor Linde- mann and his science, but none in the ideas of these two hundred educationists. That people with such un- instructed minds should be in charge of the teaching of the young—there is the tragedy which all must deplore. NAUTICAL NEOPHYTE : The first monoplane to be ordered for F.A.A. equipment, the new Blackburn incorporates such modern a«is to pertormance as flaps, D.H. v.p. airscrew and retractable undercarriage. The engine in the prototype is an 825/840 n.p- Bristol Mercury which may be replaced by a sleeve-valve Perseus. Another view appears on page 165.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
