FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1023.PDF
FLIGHT. APRIL 6, 1939 IT MIGHT HAPPEN A Book Inspires Some Thoughts on Bombing by Super-Navigation By FRANCIS CHICHESTER I HAVE just read a book which, if read by everybody, would prevent wild panics about air attack, and would also be more effective than all the A.R.P. propaganda in existence. It would show Englishmen what they are going to be up against in a war against a nation with a powerful air force and a nasty mind. They would realise what must be done for protection to-day and probably for the next century; would jolly well see that it is done, and by that fact do away with any chance of distasteful panics recurring. This book, What Happened to the Corbetts, by Nevil Shute,(7S. 6d., William Heineman) is interesting, convinc ing, realistic and exciting, which is a rare enough combina tion nowadays—in other words, it is well written. The opening scene is Southampton. Corbett is a lawyer there, living a typical suburban life with a wife and three children, including a baby. They are woken up by bomb explosions. About a thousand bombs are dropped on the city that night. They do not know that England is at war; they are not even sure who has dropped the bombs. It is a very rough night, with heavy rain and no visi bility. No aeroplanes are seen at all. "How has it been done?" they ask. Later it is found out that the enemy have some wonder ful sextants. These are shaped like a dumbell, and held in a vertical position. The top knob is an averaging bubble sextant, the grip is a vibration absorber, the bottom knob contains two gyroscopes, electrically driven, which keep the sextant so steady and constantly vertical that positions to within half a mile of accuracy can be obtained with it. As a matter of fact this is the only slip-up on the author's part that I noticed in the book. However steadily vertical such a bubble sextant was held, by gyros or otherwise, it would be subject to horizontal acceleration if the aircraft yawed and the bubble would move in the direction of the yaw under its containing spherical-surfaced lens. This can be demonstrated in a simple way with a bucket of water; no matter how upright it is held, if moved suddenly to one side the water will tend to get left behind, with the result that the water surface level will be tilted consider ably from the horizontal. In the sextant of the book, the error induced by a yaw could easily be enough to put the position 12 miles in error. But that slip does not spoil the book, because a flight of bombers could be and will be navigated by means of sextant observation of the stars to within one mile of accuracy, if not to within half a mile. In the book the bombers navigate by the stars to within about ten miles of Southampton. Knowing their position then to within half a mile, they slip into the clouds, and fly blind until D.R. tells them they are over the city ; then they loose off a row of bombs. They streak off home, staying in the clouds and navigating by D.R. till they consider it safe to emerge into the clear. For years I have been asserting that this blind bombing can be and will be done; it is very interesting to me to see it written about by someone else for the first time. Hundred-pound bombs are spoken of. I suggest that if a bomber carrying 25 bombs of 2501b. each could drop them in a straight line at regular intervals of 50 yards, every creature above ground and every building would be destroyed in a strip 50 yards wide and 1,250 yards long. At that rate, 53 bombers—provided they did not traverse the same ground several times—could utterly destroy a square mile of town and its above-ground population; at any rate, three times that number, say, 150, ought to be enough to obliterate one square mile. The author says that Southampton is about four miles by three, i.e., 12 square miles. At this rate, 1,800 loads of 25 250-lb. bombs each should suffice to destroy Southampton, and possibly in a single night. Interception fails miserably; on the first night the local squadrons are not expecting anything; next night they are up waiting, but it is fine and no one comes. As soon as the weather is dirty the enemy arrives again in clouds. Not only is our defence unable to find them, but also, because we are not trained in blind approaches and land ing, we lose far more aeroplanes and. pilots through aero drome crashes and collisions than the enemy loses. I am sure it would have been cheaper to issue this book in the crisis than five gas masks .per family, and more efficacious; but, of course, it has only just been published. I mean that everybody would at once have been incited to take real A.R.P. measures when they read of sewers being blown up, of sewage contaminating every thing, and the resultant epidemics of typhoid, and worse; of broken gas mains letting gas loose in the few remain ing sewers and blowing up more of them; of no water to drink, no electricity for lighting, no gas for cooking, very little food, no telephones, lack of news, ignorance, rumours; of a cordon round the city to prevent infectious inhabitants from escaping into the country and spreading disease everywhere ; of the hopeless ignorance of whether anything was being done to defend the country against the next attack. The Moral I won't spoil the readers' excitement by revealing how Corbett exercised his ingenuity to survive. This book shows clearly why England, from now on, will always have to keep as strong an air force as the great Navy she has had to keep for the past hundred and fifty years. In 1800 or thereabouts England was, no doubt, in just as much of a funk about being invaded by Napoleon from the sea without warning as she is to-day of being attacked from the air during dinner. In 1800 our big cities and our vital nerve centres were too near the coast for adequate warning of invasion by sea, and our coast was too near enemy harbours stuffed with warships or troops carriers. To-day it is the same problem, but in the air. At the moment the landing of troops by air is not in the enemy programme, but, no doubt, it soon will be. Our only defence is just the same as it was in Napoleon's time—attack, and the ability to destroy the enemy craft at their bases.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
