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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 0141.PDF
JANUARY 18, 1940. 51 Topics of the Day THIS is WEATHER In Wartime the One-time Amateur and Professional Pilot is Learning Something About Real All-weather FlyingB EFORE this war started there was a strong tendency among both amateur and professional pilots to laugh at the way in which the R.A.F. stayed on the ground when (to use a customary exaggeration) there was a small cloud in the sky or a reduction in visibility below about forty miles. Quite apart from the obvious fact that there was no point in taking unnecessary risks with expen- sive military aeroplanes and expensively trained military pilots, the average civil pilot simply did not realise what bad weather could mean to the Service pilot. He does now. A great many amateurs, either in the Service or, for instance, in Air Transport Auxiliary, are learning something of the difference between hedge-hopping in a Hornet Moth and in a Hurricane. At the same time, the professional civil pilots are learning what it is like to set off, and proceed on their way, in large, fast aeroplanes with little or no radio assistance. You feel your responsibilities very keenly when in charge of something really large, which has to be flown down a winding railway line in a narrow, cloud-capped valley. Apart from anything else, the wing-tips appear to be extraordinarily near the hillsides, and there is cer- tainly no room to turn. Without D/F assistance it would be fatal to go up into the cloud—though, knowing that there is ample low ground ahead or behind, one does do so occasionally. :-':^:rr ; r. ? " ' ™ . ' • "'•"..:• -r On Turning Back Speaking for myself, I have never had any pride about turning back or deciding not to make a start—yet all of us are now flying in much worse weather than we ever con- sidered in peace-time. We are still ready to turn back, but our judgment is entirely based on weather forecasts and on the type of machine which is being flown. The largest ones cannot be manoeuvred rapidly enough for safe low-cloud flying, and are, in any case, something of a handful without an assistant to act either as reserve tap- twiddler or navigator. Some offer little or no forward visibility in rain or sleet. Others become brick-like mon- strosities as soon as they collect the smallest layer of ice. The permutations and combinations can be expanded almost indefinitely. But the real crux of the situation is speed. Speed— and the g-increasing effect of sudden turns round hills and factory chimneys. A week or two ago I took a trainer type to its destination through weather which I should certainly not have faced with an advanced first-line machine. Visibility was about 500 yards, but the trainer could be used safely for tree-fighting, and could, in an emergency, be put down without any preliminary organisa- tion in practically any little field. All I had to do was to turn into wind, close the throttle and slip in. With a modern type I should have had to choose between flying at normal cruising speed (with obstructions coming up at more than 200 m.p.h.) or at a lower speed, which would have increased the rolling-in tendency off g-increasing emergency turns. As for forced landings, there were only about half a dozen fields on the entire 120-mile flight in which any sort of safe landing could have been made, and I should prob- ably have lost any one of them while slowing up, turning, changing pitch and getting the undercarriage down. As far as personal damage possibilities are concerned, the scene would not really be as black as all that. There were a Icage number of fields in which a belly-landing could have been made, and the ordinary way, a wheels-up forcer landing, is very much safer than the other kind. I don't know whether, in the piping days of peace, I ever lectured, in superior and priggish manner, on this page about the wickedness of going " blind " during a bad- weather flight. Once blind always blind without radio. The other week I had a brand-new experience in weather matters. We've all read or heard in weather forecasts such a sentence as: " Cloud generally 800 to 1,000ft., but 500ft. in rain and covering hills," and 1 often wondered how quickly the cloud base lost that 300ft. or so when it actu- ally started to rain. It comes down quite quickly. I was grinding gently along (with 400ft. to spare) over some thousand-foot hills when there was a roar of rain on the windscreen, and we were in cloud. By losing height I kept patches of ground in view for about ten seconds before making a careful rate-two turn on to a reciprocal (there were lots more hill and a balloon barrage ahead) and coming out into bright sunshine in four minutes. When I turned and flew alongside the hills towards lower ground and a way round, the cloud base was below their level. Moral: Don't feel entirely safe when there is less than 500ft. between the hills and the clouds, however good the visi- bility may be. There is one disadvantage of high wing loadings (and the technique of flying with such loadings) which is not usually mentioned. Whereas with the one-time conventional aero- plane, "feel" can be used to supplement instrumental in- dications, the modern machine requires an almost hundred per cent, faith in such instruments as the air-speed indi- cator. You cannot feel the approaching stall—in fact, some of them seem very dead during an approach at quite an unnecessarily high velocity. In order to get into a small aerodrome it is absolutely necessary to come in with motor, relying entirely on the A.S.I. ; 95 m.p.h. may bs too fast, and 85 m.p.h. may be too slow. I defy anyone to judge the difference either by feel or sound, though long experience with a particular type can cause the discovery of any wide margin of instrumental error. Urgent Need for Duplication Since I have only just allowed one large aeroplane to drop gently out of my hands ten yards on the wrong side of an aerodrome boundary (no obstructions and no conse- quent damage), I feel rather strongly about it when I ask that all modern machines should have two A.S.I.s and two pitot heads. This one was reading no m.p.h. at the moment of the stall. Admittedly, the machine felt a little soggy, but it was strange to me, and I daren't risk over- shooting. A duplication of such an essential instrument would have prevented the possibility of accident, since even if the two had been reading similarly while cruising, I should have noticed the divergence of opinion some time during the circuit and approach. The A.S.I, is nowadays an absolutely vital instrument, and it is much more important that this should be dupli- cated than that there should be virtual duplication of blind-flying instruments. Maybe some test pilot will read this and set the appropriate wheels in motion. Nobody in the design office is likely to bother about it. INDICATOR. "Haw-Haw" "T ORD HAW-HAW" was very sarcastic in his reference -L< last Sunday to the "plans" [sic] of the Messerschmitt TIO which the Daily Express claimed last week had been "smuggled out of Germany." "Why smuggled," he asked, "when General Vuillemin of the French Air Ministry was shown every detail to the last rivet of this machine in August, 1938, including the armament, and it was flown, too, for his benefit? " He also added that the particulars in any case appeared in Interavia. The silver-voiced "Haw-Haw" went wrong, however, when he scoffed that this was the machine of which constant criticism has appeared in the British Press and by the B.B.C. to the effect that the Messerschmitt was a dan- gerous machine to fly. Actually he conveniently overlooked that those comments referred to the 109 single-engine type, not the no twin-engine Messerschmitt. Incidentally, a picture of both machines appears in the Flight identification charts all over the country, and some further authentic data appears in the present issue of Flight.
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