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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 0318.PDF
no Comme rcial Aviation FLIGHT. FEBRUARY 3, 1938. them unless his lawful occasions compelled. You and I don't go joy-riding in our cars in thick fog, whereas bus drivers have to carry on. About the repairs to what the authorities call " B " shed and what the tenants have come to refer to as " B shed," which remains unroofed. I think I owe the Minis- try an apology for supposing there must be a clause in the contracts between them and the tenants whereby the land- lord undertook to keep the place in reasonable repair. I learn that there is no such foolish clause in agreements pre- pared by our landlords. Why do tenants sign such out- rageous documents? Why did Harold sign on the dotted line when a guest of good, kind Duke William of Nor- mandy? The Ministry not only has a monopoly of hangar accommodation, but also, more by accident than design, I am sure, has arranged an acute housing shortage, so people sign anything to get under cover, even if the cover is but partial and riddled with holes. The gale played postman's knock with the poor old terminal block, which swayed and opened its seams like a barnacle-encrusted three-decker in a storm at sea. I am not exaggerating when I say that quite a nice-sized lump of plaster fell from my office ceiling on to my brow, hence, perhaps, these wild words. I am saying nothing about it in case the authorities charge me for a scalp massage. A. VIATOR. D.L.H. in Indo-China THE Eurasia Aviation Corporation, which is quite stronglyconnected financially with D.L.H., has started the opera- tion of a weekly passenger and mail service between Hankow ana Hanoi, in French Indochina, via Sian, Chengtu and Kunming. Two AnniversariesI T is almost exactly nine years since the first Imperial Air- ways machine flew with passengers and mails to Karachi and five years since a similar service was started between Eng- land and Cape Town. Considerable changes have been made in the interim and in those days the services were of a rather mixed nature, passengers being carried by train between Paris and Brindisi. Nowadays Empire boats fly through to Durban and to Karachi and in the summer these boats should be going through to Australia. The all-mail-by-air scheme, which is already in action on the African service is due to be extended to the Indian service on February 23. To St. Moritz NOT very long ago one of Swissair's D.C.2S was flown fromZurich to the new St. Moritz airport at Samaden, thus opening a new chapter in the operation of the service. Dur- ing last summer the airport, which is at a height of 5,500 feet, was improved and a new hangar constructed to take machines of the D.C.2 size. A number of test take-oifs had been made with different loads before the Douglas was put on this service, which has been previously operated with the smaller D.H. Rapide, pur- chased for such operations. This high-altitude airport will also be used for military training and, for the present, no radio facilities are available and the service is, consequently, con- sidered as one for fine weather conditions only. West African Survey ON Thursday of last week the British Airways survey partyreturned to London after examining aerodrome sites and harbours in Sierra Leone, Gambia and other parts of the West Coast of Africa and Portugal. The party consisted of repre- sentatives from British Airways and from the Air Ministry, and certain selected pilots have already started a course of training in preparation for eventual trans-oceanic flying between West Africa and South America. It would seem that the party has been confirmed in the opinion that, for the moment at any rate, it would be more easy to organise a laiidplane service than one for flying boats. TUeir report will, of course, be laid before the Air Ministry, an*' the Government will then start the necessary negotiations, which will be all the more difficult, since two other companies, D.L.H. and Air France, have already been operating over the route for such a cnnsid«jr;tble time. "Error of Judgment" AN interesting theory has been put forward to explain atleast one recent flying accident in Europe. It concerns the ocular difficulty of distinguishing between sky and snow- covered ground and, in particular, the fact that the retina momentarily retains an image. White-line take-offs provide a special instance, and the possibility of ocular failure suggests that all bad visibility take-offs should be carried out on the instruments alone—which can at least be watched without serious changes of focus. Incidentally, the unofficial explanation of one of the recent "approach" accidents in Europe is that the machine con- cerned, a Ju.52, is inclined to suffer elevator control loss if the throttles are suddenly opened wide when the flaps are in the landing position. Whether or not there is any real truth in this explanation, it must certainly be said that during the glide at normal throttle openings and at any load, the Ju.52 is, with its flaps up or down, one of the pleasantest trans- port aeroplanes in the world from the pilot's point of view. The A.W. EnsignO N January 20, two days after its first test flight, the first of the Armstrong Whitworth Ensigns was flown to Coven- try aerodrome to complete its tests. During this cross-country flight, Flt.-Lt. Turner-Hughes raised the undercarriage for the first time in the air, and it has been reported that the cruising speed was well up to expectations. And In America T^OLLOWING the formation of our own Cadman Committee, J- it is interesting to find that there are at least rumours of the formation of a somewhat similar group of enquiry in the U.S. This commission will probably consist of five indepen- dent persons, each of whom is experienced in some branch of the aviation business. There is a firm move in America for the institution of new air transport legislation and for control by a separate semi- judicial body. An Air France Speed Up A REMARKABLY good time was put up by the Dewoitine338, on which M. Allegre, director-general of Air France, and M. Foa, the commercial manager, flew to Saigon a fort-night ago. The machine covered the 2,320 miles from Damas- cus to Karachi in 12 hrs. 25 min.—an average speed of. 181m.p.h. This is the second of the five D.338S allocated by Air France to the Eastern route, which is now to be run to a schedule of 5i days for the 8,000-mile journey from Marseilles. M. Louis Allegre's visit has been undertaken with the object of familiarising himself with conditions along the whole route to Saigon and Hanoi in pursuance of his policy of gaming first- hand knowledge—a policy which has already taken him seven times across the South Atlantic. Service Training HPHE company's Scandinavian run, which can be quite diffi- -»- cult during the winter months, has been selected as that on which the first batch of Service pilots will fly as super- numeraries with British Airways. It will be remembered that some time ago the Air Ministry decided that selected groups of R.A.F. pilots would be given training with air transport companies. The navigational and radio methods used on this particular service were, incidentally, thoroughly described in an article which appeared in Flight of December 23, 1937. The training scheme as far as British Airways are concerned was due to start at the beginning of this month. Imperial History 'T'HE political and operational history of Imperial Airways -*- was the subject of a lecture delivered by the general manager of the company, Lieut.-Col. H. Burchall, D.S.O., before the Royal United Service Institution on Wednesday of last week. In this lecture he outlined the development of com- mercial aviation since 19T9 and explained very adequately the reasons why Imperial Airways had been forced to do their very best to make ends meet mther than to attempt to put speed before all else. Present-day conditions, however, had demanded certain changes in this policy, and Lieut.-Col. Burchall went on to explain the beginning of the Empire air mail scheme with its present and likely future developments. During the lecture a number of slides were shown to indi- cate the progress in traffic returns and afterwards a film was projected, this telling something of the story of the Short Empire boat. There was no discussion, but one question was asked about the possible utility of the airship. The lecturer replied that such aircraft could only be considered as satisfac- tory for use over very long distances which must be flown non- stop if the best results were to be obtained. At the present moment this type of non-stop service was neither necessary nor useful on the Empire routes. Air Vice-Marshal Sir Philip W. Game was in the chair.
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