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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0153.PDF
JANUARY I6TH, 1941. 1/0 Flight " yhotoyraph. PRESSURE CABIN RESEARCH. A General Aircraft Monospar has an auxiliary engine in the nose for driving the cabin . supercharger. /•"• "PER ARDUA AD ASTRA Some Design Problems in the Evoluti0t of High-flying Military Air era By W. O. MANNING, F.R.Ae.S. IT is absolutely essential that modern military airrfaftshould be able to operate at great heights. In thjc caseof one aeroplane about to attack another, if the attacker is above the attacked he has the advantage of having anumber of foot-pounds of available energy equal, of course, to the weight of the machine multiplied by the differenceof the heights, which can be used to increase speed and which would enable a slower aircraft to catch a fasterone provided the normal difference in the two speeds is not too great. Again, such an attack has the advantageusually of surprise, especially if the attacker c«fn arrange to dive from the direction of the sun, in which case he isparticularly difficult to see. In the case of the bomber, high flying has many advantages; it diminishes the likeli-hood of an attack from a hostile machine flying at a greater height, diminishes the risk of detection while the bomberis on its way to the target, diminishes the risk of damage from the fire of anti-aircraft guns and, in the Case of nightOperations, the bomber is free from any risk of colliding ' with a barrage balloon or, from being illuminated by thesearchlights of the grojirfa defences. On the one hand, the development of weight-carryingaeroplanes, such as bombers, which can carry a large load to great altitudes, is a difficult technical problem. It isalso difficult to provide accommodation for the crew so that they can live and work while the machine they arein is flying in an atmosphere in which breathing is not possible. Supposethat by some means or other the Ger- mans had succeeded in solving thisproblem and had managed to equip themselves with a type of bomberwhich couldoperate at, say, 45,000ft., it is prohawe that we should find itextremely difficult to protect our- selves. Such things as balloon bar-rages would obviously be useless, as it is beyond hope to expect to get abarrage balloon up to so great a height as this. Searchlights would probablybe equally useless, as the hostile The cabin door of the Monospar is ofspecial design to provide airtightness. " FliQht " photograph. machine, even if illuminated, would be almost too small tosee. Whether we have now any guns which would reach to this height is a matter on which I am ignorant, but thetypes of anti-aircraft guns with which we started the war would not be able to do so, according to information whisk-"*"has been published. Even if a type of gun which could reach this height were produced, the great range wouldmean that the shooting could not be very accurate and the proportion of machines damaged to those fired at wouldprobably be very small. It would seem, therefore, that our defence would almost certainly have to depend on ourfighters and something different from anything we have at present would have to be produced. On the other hand, accurate bombing from such a heightwould be impossible, but from the German point of view this would not be a disadvantage. It wQXna be a merechance if any individual factory were hit, but there would be no possibility of missing a large town such as Londonor Coventry, so that the whole of the operations of the raid could be carried out at the height mentioned. In ourown case, of course, different considerations would apply and, before attacking, our machines would descend to aheight at which accurate bombing could be done. But although they would then be subject to the usual defencemeasures, they would be much safer on their way to and from the target, and risks would certainly be reduced. I
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