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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 1178.PDF
444 FLIGHT. MAY 6, 1937. The latest Supermarine flying boat, the Stran raer, is shown on the left. Note the simple bracing. (Below) The first Supermarine, the P.B.i, at Olympia in 1914. It had such " modern " features as circular - section hull, carefully cowled Gnome engine and three-bladed airscrew. short, the tail being carried on out rigger as on pusher landplanes of the period. The Mortimer Singer Prize was won with a 100 h.p. Green engine, but at the Olympia Show in 1914 a similar machine was exhibited with a 200 h.p. Canton-Unne radial water- cooled engine built in England by the Dudbridge Iron Works. Among flying boats shown at Olympia that year was a curious one designed by Messrs. Perry and Beadle and built by S. E. Saunders, of Cowes. This machine had the engine in the hull, with chain transmission to air screws mounted between the planes, and the lower wing, was planked with wood so as to provide lateral stability on the water. The machine was not a success. Mr. Noel Pemberton Billing ex hibited the first Supermarine flying boat, which had a circular-section wooden hull and a single step. It was a single-seater, with a 50 h.p. Gnome rotary engine carried on struts above the hull, in front of the wings. The airscrew was a three-blader to keep down the diameter. The machine as such was a failure, but it formed the beginning of the fame of Super- marines, Mr. Billing's interest being bought up later by Mr. Hubert Scott Paine and Commander James Bird, passing afterwards to the Vickers group. A Race Cancelled Shortly before War broke out, a sea plane race around Great Britain had been planned, and a number of machines had been specially built for the race, which had to be cancelled. Such of these as were of any use for. service were taken over, but few of them made history during the War. The Royal Naval Air Service began quite early to experiment with the dropping of torpedoes from seaplanes, the beginning being made at the Naval Review of July, 1914, when a Short seaplane with 160 h.p. engine dropped a 14-inch torpedo, fitted in a very makeshift manner. Progress in torpedo-dropping was, however, comparatively slow, and it was not until 1916 that the Sopwith •; i * i company designed the "Cuckoo," which was built by Blackburns, that really specialised torpedo aircraft came into being, and that machine was not a seaplane. Of the twin-float seaplanes used during the War one of the most popular was the Short 225, which was a normal tractor biplane with very large overhangs of the top plane. The engine was a 225 h.p. Sunbeam water- cooled. The large span of the upper wing gave Shorts the idea of designing the wings so that they could be folded alongside the fuselage, and in years to come this practice was to become universal for aircraft which had to be stored in a small space, such as on board aircraft carriers. On the flying-boat side the develop ment was in the direction of increased size. The original Sapwith "Bat- boat" was quite small, with a loaded weight of but 3,200 lb. Shortly before the war Lieut. J. C. Porte, R.N., went to America to supervise the building of a flying boat by the Curtiss com pany. On this boat he had hoped to fly across the Atlantic, but the War put a stop to the attempt. Lieut. Porte returned to this country and entered the R.N.A.S. The Curtiss "America" developed into the White and Thompson, and later into the Norman Thompson types or "Small America," as it became known. This was built by SaundeTs, of Cowes. A larger Curtiss boat, with two en gines, became known as the "Large America." When Lieut. Porte was put in charge of the R.N.A.S. Station at Felixstowe, he took the opportunity further to develop the Curtiss designs, and his first large flying boat, which was given the nickname "Porte Baby," was built by May, Harden and May. The types which did most service during the War were, however, the series known as the "F" class, of which two, the F3 and the F5, became famous and did most of the patrolling of the North Sea. These boats were fitted with two engines mounted in the gap between the biplane wings. They were, of course, of all-wood con struction, and the hull shape showed straight-line frames with projecting chines, the extra planing bottom pro vided by these being necessary to get the machines off the water. A later type, the first of which was designed at the Admiralty and was known as the A.D. type, had circular cross-section and a more resilient hull. Afterwards Mr. H. Scott Paine and Mr. Linton Hope improved upon this early beginning of the "circular hull, and these designs became known as the P and N classes. Space does not permit a detailed description of these Wartime flying boats, but a few figures may be of interest in forming a basis for a com parison of the early flying boats with
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