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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0496.PDF
b FLIGHT. FEERUARY 25, 1937, country surrounding the factory. From this point of vantage it is instantly clear that the irregular placing of the buildings over a wide area (the buildings are 200 to 250 metres apart) presents a new problem for aerial attack, lhe factory could not be destroyed in one attack without an overwhelming force of aircralt. Even then the aircrait would get in each other's way. The employment of a smoke screen might nullify an attack completely, for the pilots and bomb-layers could not tell where any building lay beneath it. The proportionate area of roof to ground is so small—the fenced-in area of the factory grounds is 150 English acres—that the odds against a blind hit are enormous. We walk downstairs and pass through a long corridor, on both sides of which draughtsmen are at work. Their drawing boards are mounted almost vertically, and counter-balanced so that the height can be quickly altered. The tees and squares are suspended for easy adjustment. There is no back-bending over these boards. They give great economy of floor space in comparison with the usual British drawing office with its almost horizontal boards. The drawing office runs the full length of one floor cf the mr.in building. I should say at a guess that it employs more draughtsmen than does any British aircraft factory. We pass downstairs to the test department. There a metal wing is being statically loaded for test to destruc tion ; engine mountings are shimmying under vibraticn tests ; innumerable smaller parts are being dealt with, each in its particular way ; a metal fuselage, already buckled under static test, stands on one side of the shop. In the next department, where the strengths of the materials employed are checked, the standard methods common to engineering practice throughout the world are employed. Beautiful examples of light alloy work, all made by machines, form an exhibit in the sheet metal shop. Five years ago many of the specimens exhibited would have been impossible of manufacture; to-day all the examples shown are processed regularly in the Henschel Works, many by special Henschel tools and methods, some of which have been adopted by other German manufacturers. As far as I could see and learn there is less official control in the German aircraft factories than in our own. The companies conform to the rules laid down in the new Ger many for all industry, but they do not appear to be subjected to the officialdom versus management struggle A flight of re connaissance machines, the Henschel Tv<* 122, which form part of the equip ment of the new German Air Force. The engine is a Siemens nine- cylinder air- cooled radial. Rolls - Royce Kestrel engines have also been fitted experiment ally.
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