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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 1213.PDF
MAY 6, 1937. FLIGHT. 455 concern, A.T. and T. faded out early, but it had pioneered the London-Paris service and its competitors were left in the running until the Government came to their aid and, in fact, until Imperial Airways was formed in 1924. Prema turely convinced that the '' air age '' had arrived—or would arrive almost imme diately—a number of people put up money for the development of internal air routes, and those who stuck to the joy-flying made quite a good thing out of it. Most interesting of all, perhaps, was the Avro service operated in 1919 between Manchester, Southport and Blackpool; this was the first of the "holiday" services which, many years later, were to help internal unsubsidised air transport on to its feet. The first serious attempt to run a trunk internal service was made by Daimler Airways, an offshoot of the Daimler Hire Company, in 1922 and 1923, using D.H.34S. In one month a total of 134 passengers was carried and the service was only temporarily dis continued after a serious accident directly resulting from difficult weather conditions—conditions such as those which are only now being defeated. At that period there were four companies in action in this country, and three of them were subsidised. Daimler Airways ran, in addition to the Manchester ser vice, one to Amsterdam; the Handley-Page Transport Com pany ran a London-Paris service; Instone Air Lines ran between London and Brussels, with a temporary extension to Cologne; and the British Marine Air Navigation Company were to run to the Channel Islands, Cherbourg and Havre. Meanwhile a British airship, the R.34, had already shown the possibilities of lighter-than-air craft for long-distance work by flying from here to New York and back. Unfor tunately, the loss of the R.38 over the Humber, and the later tragedy with the R.101, at least temporarily killed the airship as far as this country was concerned. Almost as soon as air transport made a start it was realised that Government guidance was necessary, and Flight, even in those days, was consistently stressing the need for some definite policy. In March, 1919, a skeleton Ait Navigation Bill was passed by the House, and a Direc torate of Civil Aviation formed under Sir Frederick Sykes. He was followed by the late Sir Sefton Brancker, who held the position of Director until his death in the ill-fated R.101 in 1930. It was during the office of Lt.-Col. (now Sir Francis) Shelmerdine that the designation of Director- General of Civil Aviation came into being. When Imperial Airways was formed in 1924 as the National Air Transport Company the possibilities and value of Empire air services first appeared. In 1921 the Cairo- Baghdad service had been inaugurated by the R.A.F., when three machines of No. 47 Squadron made the journey, and the mail services were thereafter operated by Nos. 45 and 70 Squadrons. After survey work, carried out in 1925 and 1926, had been completed, a fortnightly Cairo-Basra service was opened early in 1927 by Imperials with the D.H. Hercules class of machine. By the middle of that year the frequency had been increased to a weekly basis, and in March, 1929, the first weekly service was flown through to India. In the meantime the Short Calcutta class had been put into commission for the Mediterranean cross ing. The following year saw the introduction of a flat air mail rate for letters to European destinations and the com pletion of an African route survey, paving the way for the first regular service between London and Tanganyika in 1931, when, also, the India service was experimentally ex tended through to Australia. It was not until December, 1933, that the schedule was One of the pioneer transport pilots, Capt. " Jerry " Shaw, now with the Shell organisation. He flew for Aircraft Transport and Travel in 1919. Capt. "Bill" Lawford was actually the first pilot to fly the regular London-Paris service. extended to Singapore, but only a year later arrangements had been completed, with the help of Qantas Empire Air ways, for the through service to Bris bane. During the previous year the African service had been extended to Cape Town on a weekly basis, and in December and January of 1934 and 1935 both the Calcutta and the Johannesburg schedules had been increased to twice weekly. Perhaps the most important of all declarations was made in December, 1934, when the Government announced that, starting in 1937 and as a matter of principle, all Empire mail would as lar as practicable be sent by air. That statement foreshadowed the introduc tion of the all-air scheme and the use of the Short Empire boats with which, in due course through services will be run, without change of machine, from Southampton or Portsmouth to Sydney and Durban This, however, is recent history and forms no part of a summary. Similarly, the resurrection of the internal air lines since their virtual collapse in the very early years is a matter both too recent and too involved to be detailed in any really satisfactory manner. Two navigational developments have played a large part in making airline operation both safe and reliable—wireless communication in its various uses and forms, and the gyro scopic blind-flying instrument. It would be fair to say that air transport, in any real sense, would not have been possible without such aids. As long ago as 1912 the Marconi Company started experi ments with radio as applied to aircraft, and even in 1919 it was possible to make real use of such equipment. It was in the development of direction-finding as applied to aircraft operation, however, that the real value of radio appeared. Elsewhere, notably in the U.S., the D/F aids have consisted of permanently arranged beam systems, but over here such a method has only recently come into use for the purpose of final approach guidance—and then with characteristically deformable ultra-short waves. Judg ing from American experience it would seem that the European methods are more satisfactory, though a final solution must still be found for the problem of congestion. Blind Flying The application of radio, of course, could only be use fully made with the help of blind-flying instruments. Here, again, experiments were really started in pre-War days, when Major Reid worked on navigational instruments, and the Sperry Company experimented with a form of gyro scopic automatic stability device. As far as this country is concerned the pioneers in this line were Reid and Sigrist. A useful order for their turn indicator, which has remained virtually unaltered since that time, was first placed by the Air Ministry in 1929 and this instrument became the basis of the method of blind flying training developed by the Central Flying School. Nowadays it is customary for transport machines to be fitted with what are known as free gyro instruments, in which the actual displacement of the machine relative to one of the three datum lines is shown, but the simpler and necessarily less sensitive turn indicator is still universally fitted as a second string. From the gyroscopic instrument to the automatic pilot is but a step—if a difficult one—and the modern transport machine carries two-way radio for long and short waves, direction-finding and homing equipment, a beam approach receiver, an automatic pilot and the necessary blind-flying instruments. What will another twenty-five years bring?
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