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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 0062.PDF
28 FLIGHT. JANUARY 12, 1939 UNIFORMITY : Not only has the Egyptian Air Force adopted British aircraft types (including the Westland Ly- sander as seen in the picture) but a similar design of uniform. Officers are seen being inspected by Ali Islam Pasha, in command of Egyptian military aviation. The theory that a short cut to victory can be achieved by attacks on civilian morale has always been doubted, and more than doubted, by Flight, mainly .on historical and strategic grounds. It is very interesting to find a psychological expert arriving at the same conclusion from a totally different starting point. If the firebrands of the world would realise the futility of " frightfulness," they would lose nothing but would spare humanity much suffering and their own reputations many grievous stains. Firebrands, however, are not often good psycho logists, and they are not always good strategists. Multiple Crews W ITH the appearance of the really large commer cial machine, and, in particular, of the big flying-boat, the time has arrived when the various duties involved in flying and navigating must be divided amongst a fairly large crew. No information is yet available about the arrangements in the control cabin of the Short " G "-class boats which are now in process of construction, but in the American Boeing 314 a crew of five are to be under orders from a captain who is not normally at the controls but who merely correlates the work of his staff. This staff consists of the first and second pilots, who fly the machine accord ing to the necessary data furnished by the navigator, while the flight engineer is almost entirely responsible for the power units and the radio operator performs his usual duties. Although such an arrangement is logical and appar ently inevitable it will not necessarily fit in quite so well with aircraft operations as it does in the control of, for instance, a marine craft. Obviously, someone of great experience must be in full charge of .the machine, and this commander should not necessarily be involved in the purely mechanical work of flying and looking after the various control items. The difficulty is that the time factor in an aeroplane is a very important one. Whereas, in the navigation of a ship, there is plenty of time in which the various THE OUTLOOK (CONT formalities can be complied with in all conditions, the work of a blind approach, for instance, particularly necessitates instant decisions and action. There is no reason, of course, why a captain should not take over from his first pilot in circumstances such as these, and in the Boeing the pilots still have the master engine con trols, though the flight engineer looks after the inci dentals. It will be interesting to see, as machine sizes increase, how the problem will eventually be solved, and the ex perience of Pan-American Airways with the 314 will be useful to the designers and future crews of the Imperial Airways " G "-class boats. Finding the Answer T HAT aerodynamic research is very far from having reached a stable condition was brought out at the meeting of the Royal Aeronautical Society last Thursday. Even the two authors of the paper on the use of model data in aeroplane design did not appear altogether to see eye to eye on certain aspects, judging from some of Mr. Ellis' replies to ques tions. This is all to the good. The moment one gets, in any sphere of activity, a sense of complacency and a feeling that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, it is time to beware of danger. So long as people disagree fiercely about anything, there is always hope of further progress. In the main, the controversy—beg pardon, we should have said discussion—appeared to centre round* the question of the most suitable size of tunnel which is within the means of the individual aircraft firm and which yet can give reasonably reliable results. Refer ence was made by one speaker to the '' cooking '' neces sary before model test results can be applied by the designer to his full-scale problems. It is really the old story of the skilled craftsman who, even with inferior tools, can produce a first-class job. As Capt. Sayers pointed out, the wind tunnefler with sufficient experi ence can get results from a five-foot tunnel, or even from a four-foot tunnel, which will tell him as much as the ten-foot tunnel tells another worker. It all depends upon the skill in "cooking." ATLANTIC COMMANDER: Capt. J. C. Kelly Rogers is the first pilot of the modi fied "C" class boats to be ap pointed by Imper ial Airways for work on the Atlan tic mail experi ments this year. He will probably be put in charge of Cabot when this boat makes the inaugural crossing in June. DIARY OF FORTHCOM= ING EVENTS —PAGE 46
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