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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1324.PDF
MAY 4, 1939 FLIGHT. 45i WINTER OPERATIONS : An early morning scene at the Dominion Skyways' Semmeterre base in Canada. Bellanca is being refuelled in the foreground while a Fairchild is still resting in its nose-hangar. TOPICS of the DAY A The Forgotten Men Again F OR a long and weary period of time—in fact, since the start of the C.A.G. scheme—I have been asking that something special should be done about the class of pilot which can only be covered by the words "experienced amateurs." There must be hundreds of "A " licensed pilots, with anything from 200 to 1,000 hours flying to their credit, for whom C.A.G. membership appears to be something of a waste of time, and yet who, at the same time, do not feel that it would be very sensible to sign on for an emergency job of work which would make no use whatever of their flying experience. Some of them have lost heart and attached themselves to balloon units and so forth, but the majority are just carrying on in the hope that the Air Ministry may eventually discover that beneath their very noses they have an ample reserve of pilots who, with very little additional training, could use fully become either ab initio instructors or ferry pilots. Those reasonably competent amateurs who are within the necessary age limits can, of course, join the Volunteer Reserve, or, if they have the money and there are any vacancies, one of the Auxiliary squadrons. But the greater majority of them are between the age of 30 and 40, largely because, in the ordinary way, only those amateurs who have been flying with clubs for more than nine or ten years are likely to have put in a sufficient number of hours to bring them into the suggested category. Something can be done about these people, and it has always been my opinion that the Air Ministry, via the C.A.G. Commissioners, is wasting its time in training new comers before giving the pilots already in existence a chance to do something really useful. In the circumstances it is at least comforting to find, at last, that one of our more important newspapers has taken up the matter. Last week The Times gave a concise explanation of the position where '' veteran pilots '' were concerned, though I thought that the suggestions made were still inadequate. The older pilots might be offered a chance of carrying out instructors' courses—with, pos sibly, an implied promise that they will help their own club when necessary—but what they really require is co-pilot experience with modern military machines. Only the lucky few who have had a chance of flying up in front in machines like D.C.2 and Fourteen—and still fewer who have been up in a dual Blenheim or Harrow—are likely to know very much about the flying of present-day large-sized machines. In these the work is actually far more in the nature of applied engineering than piloting as such. It is as easy to land a big machine as a small one —but not if you have forgotten to pump the undercarriage down. The main difficulty in flying advanced aeroplanes is in memorising quite automatically the routine for take off and approach ; in other words, in remembering to re member the dozen things that have to be checked or done. Agreed there are considerable difficulties in providing such experience, and the only way to do it would be to send certain picked pilots to fly either with squadrons on certain days, or, if this requires the cutting of over-much red tape, to fly as co-pilots on test and delivery trips. A Possible Niche WHILE thinking of this need for gaining experience, it might be said here and now that there is at the present moment the most phenomenal shortage of reason ably experienced " B " licensed pilots. Some charter pilots are putting in far more hoiirs of day and night flying than they should be. I know of cases where pilots have been out on a photographic job for a newspaper from, say, five in the morning, and almost immediately on their return they have had to go up on co-operation work between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. or thereabouts. Provided that these pilots are quite happy to fly ten or. twelve hours a day, all well and good. They are certa:nly making money. But here, perhaps, is a chance for these experienced amateurs to do something useful, and, at the same time, gain very important additional experience. No more than one per cent., if that, of those who may be termed the veterans have done any serious night-flying. Most of them have done a little dual, or been up as a pas senger, but at present the cost of night-flying instruction is much too high for those who are not actually going out for a " B " licence. If there really is this shortage of pilots and the degree of overwork about which one hears, then this is a mag nificent way out of the difficulty. After ten hours of practice take-offs and landings in a twin-engined machine at night, any 300-hour pilot should be quite capable of flying drearily round the sky for a couple of hours, leaving the pukka (Dear me! Where did that ancient adjective
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