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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 0061.PDF
AIRCRAFT ENGINEER FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE W6RLD .• FOUNDED 1909 Editor C. M POULSEN Managing Editor G. GEOFFREY SMITH Chief Photographer JOHN YOXALL Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices: DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.I Telegrams : Truditur, Sedist, London. Telephone : Waterloo 3333 (50 lines). 8-10, CORPORATION ST., COVENTRY. Telegrams: Autocar, Coventry. Telephone; Coventry 5210. GUILDHALL BUILDINGS. NAVIGATION ST., BIRMINGHAM, 2. Telegrams: Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone: Midland 2971. 260. DEANSGATE, MANCHESTER, 3. Telegrams: Iliffe, Manchester. Telephone: Blackfriars 4412. 26B. BENFIELD ST., GLASGOW, C.2. Telegrams: Iliffe, Glasgow Telephone: Central 4857. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Home and Canada: Other Countries: Year, Year, £1 13 fl. £1 16 0. 8 months, 16B. 6d. C months. 18s. Od. 3 months, 8s. 6d. 3 months, 9s. Od. No. 1568. Vol. XXXV. JANUARY 12, 1933. Thursdays, Price 6d. The Outlooks Safety Last—or Fast ? I T.is now many months since Flight first pleaded for the introduction of a little sanity and common sense in the race for speed on the air routes of the world. Competition is a very good thing in any walk of life, but when it is turned in the wrong direction it can do a great deal of harm, and may ultimately ruin the competitors. There was a time when airline operating companies strove for the best safety record. When the Douglas company of America introduced the D.C.2 it dealt a blow to the old ideal of safety first, reliability second, and speed third. Not that we suggest that the D.C.2 was a dangerous aeroplane. It was not. But it set a new fashion/a fashion which designers all over the world have been coping with ever since. And from fast machines we have gone to still faster. The designer is not to blame. He produces what he is asked to produce. The operator is not altogether to blame, because com petition forces him to ask for more speed. The public itself will probably be accused of being responsible be cause if it demands speed the operator must provide it or lose business, to his faster competitors. Whoever is to blame, the net result has been that we have tended to attempt to run before we have learnt to walk. These fast modern aeroplanes are very fine so long as everything goes well. If they start from and alight on property prepared aerodromes they do a good job of work, they give great comfort to the passengers, and they do get one there in next to n& time. But when anything goes wrong and a forced landing has to be made other than on an aerodrome, their high landing and, particularly, approach speeds more often than not cause serious trouble. Forced landings are much less frequent than they used to be, thanks to the marvellous reliability of the modern aero engine. But when they do occur (nowadays gener ally caused directly or indirectly by weather), the result is too frequently disastrous. It is no use just going on and blaming the public for demanding speed. That can only lead to still more acci dents until, finally, the public loses confidence and stops travelling by air. The companies of the world will then be faced with the gigantic task of re-establishing confi dence by flying for months or even years without a single serious mishap. Would it not be better policy, and even better business, to agree to some limitation of speed until we have dis covered how to combine low landing speed with high cruising speed? Bombing and Panic M ARSHAL FOCH once said that you could not defeat a great nation by destroying its capital cities. This doctrine received striking support from the psychological expert, Dr. E. P. Strauss, in the paper which he read before the Royal United Service Institution last week. He did not mince his words in picturing the horrors of aerial bombardment; in fact, he drew a particularly gruesome picture, and urged that if the people had not been frankly warned beforehand by the Government of what they must expect they would tend to panic when they experienced the realities. But if proper psychological defence measures had been taken beforehand, he did not believe that British people would give way to panic any more than Spanish people had done. Dr. Strauss may be presumed to have displayed some psychological insight when he asserted that in the next war the enemy (whom he did not specify) would certainly make it his strategic policy to destroy our civilian morale. But he added that what was psychologically unsound must be_ strategically unsound, and he believed that if our psychological defences were well conceived and pre pared the enemy would find that he had made a mistake. Likewise, he held that it would be equally mistaken for us to retaliate in kind. We should advance our cause more by dropping propaganda leaflets on enemy cities than by dropping bombs. Bombing, he held, stiffened resistance by inculcating resentment against the bombers. Propaganda should have the opposite effect.
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