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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1826.PDF
juNt. x> Ay^y Atlantic Passengers ACCORDING to an announcement made during last week end by Pan-American Airways, passengers will be carried in the Atlantic Boeing 314s on and after June 28. There will be one two-way passenger trip every week, with another return flight for mails only. For the present, at any rate, the southern route will be used, via the Azores and Lisbon. The Angola Rapides F last week's issue, when describing the developments in Angola, we mentioned that the Portuguese West African railway administration had ordered three De Havilland Rapides. The delivery date was given as next year; actually this should, of course, have been this year, since Rapide pro duction is on a well-established basis and there is no unreasonable delay after orders have been received. Inci dentally, this useful and economical type is still being made in quite large numbers and the rate of production can at any time be expanded. Empire Special W HEREAS Imperial Airways passengers for South Africa and Australia used to travel to Southampton in a special coach on an ordinary Southern Railway train, they now have a special train of their own. The first of these '' Empire Specials '' left the railway plat form of the new Imperial Airways terminal at Victoria on Tuesday of last week, and the passengers, if few in number (the others were joining at Southampton) had a royal send-off from a number of Press representatives. Cdr. Dudley Travers— who has been flying on the African route for a number of years, and who was taking out Clio on this particular service—was persuaded to perform the time-honoured ceremony of shaking hands with the engine-driver for the benefit of the photo graphers. More Trans-Atlantic Preparations LAST week, on June 6, the new Air France Transatlantique Lat^coere boat, Ville de Saint Pierre, flew across from Biscarosse to Foynes to enable Paul Codos and other officials of the company to inspect the available facilities both at the Shannon airport and the new Dublin municipal airport at Collinstown. The boat, which is an improved edition of the old Lieutenant de Vaisseau Paris, was commanded by Capt. H. Guillaumet and carried a crew of seven in addition to three official passengers. The latter were M. Robert Boname, the chief of the company's technical services, M. Codos and Capt. Julien Le Meur. The flight from Biscarosse took about six hours, and after wards, with officials of the Eire Department of Industry and Commerce, the visitors inspected Rynanna airport before leaving for Dublin. The machine took off again on Thursday morning, June 8, with one additional passenger, M. Louis Castex, Assistant Director of Air France Transatlantique. Apparently arrangements had been made for M. Codos to use Collinstown for the experimental transatlantic flight with one of the new semi-stratosphere Farmans In Service Again T AST Friday the first of the fourteen modified A. W. Ensigns J-« was redelivered to Imperial Airways. The next six will be flown over at the rate of one a week and the remaining seven will follow in due course. With additional power from the Tiger IXc engines and the adoption of constant-speed airscrews, the machine has a fully- loaded initial rate of climb of 800 ft./min., and a top speed of 205 m.p.h. The four engines in each Ensign now deliver a maximum of 3,740 h.p. for take-off. Although the majority of the Ensigns will go into service with Tiger engines, Imperial Airways have decided, later on, to instal engines of still higher power in those machines, eight in all, which are to be used on the England-Calcutta service. The conditions on this route differ considerably from those in Europe, and additional power will be extremely useful. Earlier this year, as well as in last week's issue, we men tioned that Imperial Airways had a preference for the Wright Cyclone as being most suitable and readily available higher- powered type for the Empire services. It is now learned that Imperial Airways are definitely placing an order for the num ber of these engines. Altogether forty-eight will be ordered, complete with mountings and airscrews. The delivery of the first four of these is promised for September, and the last will reach England in February of next year. Experimentally, a set may be fitted also to at least one of the Empire boats. \©W 599 Commercial Aviation The Fairlop Scheme TT seems that the first estimate for the cost of the City of •*• London Airport at Fairlop was only about half that which it would actually cost. The Committee have arranged terms with the Air Ministry for the development of the site and have now recommended that a "super-standard" airport should be laid out at a cost of ^1,100,000—a figure ^500,000 higher than was originally contemplated. An Imperial Resignation S O as to be able to concentrate on more general development problems. Major R. H. Mayo has resigned from his pre vious position as general manager (technical) of Imperial Air ways and is now technical adviser to the company. He was formerly their consulting engineer, and was appointed to the management three years ago when the Empire air-mail scheme was being organised. ' Western Airways Extension O N Saturday, June 17, Western Airways will start their three times daily service between Weston, Bristol, Bir mingham and Manchester. Two Percival Q6s will be used and the schedule, consequently, is likely to be speeded up. Incidentally, Mr. J. C. V. K. ("Watty ') Watson, who is well-known to the whole aviation community, has recently been appointed Commercial Manager to the Straight Corpora tion. He learned to fly in 1928 and flew for the Shell organ isation before becoming sales and service manager to Germ Lubricants—a position which he held for five years. In the course of his various travels he has accumulated something like 2,000 hours' flying experience. Testing the Commercial Hercules FOR purposes of investigation during a development test of the new 1.380 h.p. Bristol Hercules IV sleeve-valve engine, the power output (using standard 87-octane fuel and with the mixture control in the weak position) was progressively in creased to more than 14 per cent, above that normally specified as a maximum for these conditions. Apparently no sign of detonation could be detected, either by direct observation of the engine's behaviour or by the sensitive " piezo-electric " type of detonation indicator which was fitted to one of the cylinders. The Hercules IVc, which is a fourteen-cylinder double-row radial, is being fitted to the Short " G "-class boat, three of which are under construction. The first of these, Golden Hind, should be out of the shops by the time this issue appears. Incidentally, it will be taken out without its fin and rudder, since these will not clear the upper cross member of the shop exit when the big machine is taking up a comparatively steep angle down the slipway. Reserve Route Survey AFTER flying overland from Sydney to Port Hedland (Western Australia), via Clonclurry—which was itself a remarkable performance—the Consolidated commercial PBY, in charge of Capt. P. G. Taylor, left for the Cocos Islands at 10.30 a.m. B.S.T. on June 4. Owing to bad weather the crew was unable to find them, and proceeded to Batavia. On June 7, however, the Consolidated successfully reached the islands after a flight of 8| hr. from Batavia, via Christmas Island, where there are wireless facilities. The machine was not put down there, but the island was examined in order that flying-boat base possibilities might be considered. After a survey of the Cocos group the machine will be flown on to Diego Garcia, in the Chagos group, and thence to the Seychelles and Mombasa. Afterwards the machine will fly across land to Kisumu and I-ake Victoria, and then again over land to Lagos and Dakar. From this point the longest non stop flight in the trip is planned. The PBY will be flown to St. Thomas in the West Indies, and so to Miami and San Diego, whence this singularly well-travelled flying-boat originally departed. The distances on the various Indian Ocean stages are: Port Hedland-Cocos, 1,435 miles; Cocos- Diego Garcia, 1,717 miles; Diego .Garcia-Seychelles, 1,192 miles; and Seychelles-Mombasa, 1,110 miles. During last year this Consolidated boat was acting as trans port for members of the American Museum of Natural History, with Dr. Richard Archbold in charge, Russell Rogers as chief pilot, and Lewis Yancey as navigator. Apart from the usual duplicated blind-flying instruments and D/F radio, the boat has its bow turret graduated in degrees for use as a sun com pass. Dr. Archbold, the owner of the machine, is with the new expedition, with Rogers as chief pilot.
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