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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 0127.PDF
JANUARY 19, 1939 FLIGHT. 55 FIRST CLASS? Getting lost in bad weather is only too fruitful a cause of accident. A pilot starts off on a simple flight on a fine day. He knows the route well, and cannot be bothered to do more than take the time of starting. He intends making good his leeway at the end of the flight, so does not trouble about finding the drift. He runs into thick, dirty weather; he does not know his exact position when he entered it, or, if he does, is not practised in recording his twists and turns thereafter. He may be driven up blind and then not know where to come down again. One can also recall only too vividly the losses that have resulted through lack of equipment and ability to land blind in fog, etc., even when position has been known. Why is British air navigation in such a state that so many of these types of accident can happen? How is it possible in an Empire with such a marvellous record of marine navigation, which has produced navigators like Cook, Bligh and Shackleton? Start of the Trouble To understand it we must go back to the last war. In 1915 there was no air navigation to speak of, and it is easy tc understand why: there was scarcely an aircraft compass in existence which was capable of reading a bearing to 20 degrees; nobody understood how to adjust for devia tion caused by the various magnetic influences in the machine; and it was no use learning, they thought, because the deviation would be totally different in the air; further, if anyone knew how to check deviation while in flight, he was certainly not going to be bothered doing it—it was quite enough achievement to get aircraft and motor back- to the aerodrome, without messing about with navigation. In any case, no pilot expected to wander much farther than 50 miles from his base, and his pride demanded that he should know that extent of country sufficiently well never to need a compass. If there was no precise compass navigation there was no object in observing drift to set a correct course, and they did not want to observe it to find out the direction of the wind before landing, because the aerodrome wind-sock would supply that information. If there was the matter of a forced landing and the pilot happened to make it across and down wind, that was just so much more bad luck. And talking to war pilots and reading books about war flying, I wonder how many could read drift at all. The author (wearing a beard grown by force of circumstances) with his Moth seaplane during one of his long-distance solo flights. If a pilot flew out of the zone he knew by heart, the machines were slow enough (compared with modern air craft) to let him watch for and pick up landmarks one by one—roads, rivers and railways. After one glance at a river ahead the pilot could concentrate on looking out for enemy aircraft, whereas frequent glances at a compass would have distracted him. Finally, what was the use of an accurate compass-course when the machine was almost sure to get into a fight and end up an unknown distance away from it? A very fine pilot, who was flying all through the war, told me the other day that he had never used a compass. The best way to get back was to fly in the general direction of home until the pilot recognised some landmark. And so a tradition was founded that navigation was a novelty unworthy of a warrior. To fly, fight, shoot straight, and survive crashes was all that counted in an airman. Naturally, all we younger pilots looked up with awe to the men who had fought in the air under conditions that seem simply terrible to us, in machines that broke up in the air, with motors that frequently failed, and without parachutes; so, when they treated navigation with scarcely veiled contempt, we were inclined to imitate their attitude, and anyone who felt that a little navigation might be a bit of help on a long flight crept off to study it in a locked room with the blinds down. This tradition that flying and fighting are the things while navigation is only a fad persists to-day, and has done immense harm to British navigation. Indirectly, it has caused a tragic loss of life and a serious destruction of air craft. To-day, however, it is at the point of vanishing. It could not survive among airline pilots flying passengers at 200 m.p.h. and no crashes allowed. The time has come when, if a pilot has to make a forced landing and his machine is wrecked because the navigator did not know the position correctly, he is going to be in much the same situation as the captain of a steamer who has lost his ship. And if he has to make a forced landing through no fault of
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