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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 0858.PDF
MARCH 21, 1940 The two views above show the stern defence of the Whitley,the Nash and Thompson power-driven turret housing four Browning guns. Below a bomb aimer demonstrates theuse of his course-setting sight. Above him is a Vickers K gun in a power-driven turret. the last war they were always green. He did not know what they were for, and believed that nobody knew, but they might be connected in pairs so as to wrap round the wings of an aeroplane. He could not say how far off from his machine they had been—it was hard to estimate such dis- tances in the dark—and he agreed ' that they had never done any harm to anybody. Several pilots said that they had never been fired at from the air, only from the ground, and so could give no idea of the effectiveness or other- wise of shells from '' cannons,'' and could express no opinion on German fighter pilots and their aircraft. It was agreed that bar- rage balloons existed in Germany, but more than one pilot said that he had never seen any. These war flights were discussed in just the same sort of tone in which I have often heard pilots discussing flights they had made in peace time. There was no hint or suggestion of any undue excitement or anything to put the wind up a man. In the mess I met the New Zealand pilot who had brought a Whitley home for 300 miles with about half the fabric stripped off its wings. He rather shied when I asked what might have been a leading question, and seemed disinclined to be drawn on the subject. But he pulled my leg very cheerfully when he heard I belonged to Flight, because someone had made a mistake in a caption under the photograph of his machine, and when I told him that I knew a man who had been concerned in the._ designof_ the.Whitley, he expressed a desire to " Flight " photogravhs meet him; though I protested that the greatest fault in that machine's design was that obvi- ously it had been given too much wing area, seeing that it would fly with half the allotted amount. Badinage apart, the pilots of the station agreed that the Whitley was a nice machine to fly, and very suitable for its job. One pilot, in fact, wished that they would not go on improving it, but would now leave well alone. Memories are short, and so it may be a good thing to tell again the story of that flight home with wings half stripped. That Whitley was on a reconnaissance in very bad weather during the spell of extreme cold which we all vividly remember. The A.A. lire was heavy that night, and one shell burst came so close that the observer was blinded for some minutes. When Archie gets the that, one obvious manoeuvre is to the pilot climbed from 1,500ft. to 19,500, hoping also to find better weather up there. He did not find better weather; in fact, ice accu- mulated so thickly on the aircraft that it became uncontrollable, and the instruments struck work. The Whitley fell through the clouds for some 17,000 feet, but at about 2,500 the pilot managed to pull out and regain some measure of control. But the Whitley was still very unstable, and it seemed time to prepare for emergencies, so the navigator was sent back to get the dinghy read) for launching. The latter, when he had a look around. saw to his horror that the top of the port wing was stripped of fabric, that part of the starboard wing was range so well alter altitude, asso
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