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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0228.PDF
78 JANUARY 23RD. 1941. HERE AND THERE (Continued) Airacobra Armament ACCORDING to advice from America,on the Bell Aiiftcobra single-seater fighter (Allison liquid-cooled engine), ofwhich 1,600 are said to have been ordered by America and England, thearmament is to include eight machine guns and a 37-mm. cannon. Tourjours la Politesse ! IN the course of an interview in NewYork, Sir Walter Citrine, Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, made someencouraging observations on the way in which that country's aircaft industry isgetting a hustle on to supply Great Britain with planes and engines. Withthe tactful courtesy of a dipomat he re- ferred to "American radial-engines, thefinest in the world ..." Well, the Yankee radials are, beyondall argument, very, very fine products, but all the same there is quite a nicelittle job called '' Bristol '' ! On Their WayM ORE than 40,000 men have now en-listed in Australia under the Empire Air-training Scheme. The majority ofthese will come direct to Great Britain on completion of training, but a smallproportion will reach us by way of Canada where many Newfoundlanders,as well as Canadians, are now in train- ing These include pilots, observers andradio operator-air gunners. Other train- ing schemes in operation in SouthernRhodesia and the Union of South Africa possess 15 centres for preliminary andadvanced flying training. Canadian Aeronautical Laboratory *T*HE buildings for Canada's new aero-•*• nautical research centre are being built about three miles outside Ottawa.Standing in a property of one hundred acres, the first three buildings were near-ing completion at the end of last year, and the plan provides ultimately foranother three. Large and small wind tunnels and a 600ft. tank with a widthof 25ft. will be included among the equipment. There will also be a verticalspinning tunnel. The engine laboratory will have two test beds, for 500 and1,000 h.p. engines, and the mechanical testing laboratory will be equipped totest full-sized. aircraft components. Other scientific work in addition to aero-nautical will be carried on at the centre, which will have hydraulic, electrical andacoustical sections. Cold Starting OTARTING from cold has always been"•J one of the operating problems of the internal-combustion engine, oneof the main difficulties being the greater effort required to turn theengine over against the increased viscosity of the oil at low tempera-ture. A system designed to counteract this has been developed by Mr. WeldonWorth, of the U.S. Army Air Corps, and is being experimented with in the IntavaLaboratories. This consists in metering a small amount Of petrol into the lubrica-tion system of an engine before it is finally stopped after its last flight forthe day. All the working parts thus become covered with a film of dilutedlow-viscosity oil, so rendering the engine easy to turn over when cold, even afterlong periods of standing. The warmth of subsequent running soon evaporatesoff the petrol and restores the oil to its original state. Qantas CaptainW ITH flying time which has nowpassed the total of 11,321 hours, Capt. R. B. Tapp is one of the Qantasflying-boat pilots who has been flying since 1917, when he gained his wingswith the Royal Flying Corps. After the war he was in India on the North-WestFrontier, and then, in 1927, was test pilot for Westlands. Joining Qantas in 1928,he was on the landplane service from Brisbane to Camooweal. In 1937 he ob-tained flying-boat endorsements to his licence, and since then has been on theSydney-Singapore section of the Empire flying-boat route. Chhf Naval Representative AS reported in Flight of January 9,•*» Admiral Sir Noel Laurence has been transferred to the Ministry of Air-craft Production. His official title is Chief Naval Representative, and he isresponsible for overseeing the develop- ment and production of aircraft andtheir equipment for the Fleet Air Arm. In future we should hear less of thecomplaint that the Admiralty is not getting the types of aircraft it wants.The word '' development'' in the official announcement seems to be thesignificant one. Still They Come! MONEY continues to roll into thenational coffers in large lumps from various sympathetic sources overseas,earmarked for the acquisition of more and more aircraft with which to defeatthe horrible Hun, The Belgian Government recently de-cided to give ^100,000 to the Spitfire Fund, and it is intended, most fittingly,that some of the fighters this handsome gift provides shall be flown by Belgianairmen who arc already fighter pilots in the R.A.F. Yet another contributionto our air strength in the form of a com- plete squadron is to come from theShanghai British War Fund, which has now topped the ^100,000 mark. Thisnew "gift" squadron, the precise character of which is not yet specified, isto be known as the British China Squadron. . • New K.N.I.LM. Service T AST month saw an important event .-•-L' in commercial aviation with the opening of the new K.N.I.L.M. line tothe Moluccas—or "Spice Islands"—and \\ New Guinea. Lockheed 14s fly the first ;.--••:'stage from Batavia to Makassar (capital <• of Celebes) via Sourabaya and Bali, andthe next day a Grumman amphibian coin- j • pletes the trip. , •As oil has lately been found in I New Guinea the new service is of con-'siderable importance, especially as it cuts i down what was formerly about a month's *journey by boat to a two-day air trip. .'•: Incidentally, the "Spice Islands" werethe original settlements of the .Hollanders centuries ago, but when trade shifted toJava and Sumatra they lost much of ;v their interest. - •';-,:: Death of Sylvester Delaney L "nLlCHT learns with regret that on ;>•'_ ,J January 6 Mr. L. T. Delaney re- .,'•'•. ceived the following telegram from the r'Air Ministry: " Deeply regret to inform you that further information receivedstates that your son, F/O. Luke V Sylvester Delaney, previously reported v.missing, is now reported to have lost his i life as a result of enemy action on the6th." It will be remembered that young Delaney was, before the war, a Brook-lands enthusiast, keen on helping his brother, C. T. Delaney, with his LeaFrancis car in the various events for which it was successfully entered. AMERICA'S USE OF MOTOR INDUSTRY "pOR her aircraft production pro-•*- gramme America is to make exten- sive use of her motor car industry.Exactly how it is to be done is a matter to be decided by a survey now takingplace. According to our New York contemporary, Aviation, planning hasgone farthest in the matter of bombers, and it is likely that a four-engined heavybomber will be included. It is thought that its design will probably be based onthe Consolidated B-24, and there are to be 4,000 of these. Some 8,000 twin-engined bombers resembling the Martin B-27 are to be built in addition. It isbelieved that 8,000 fighters will be in- cluded in the programme, but the typeto be adopted is still in doubt. Of these 20,000 aeroplanes Great Britain is,according to Aviation, to receive approximately 12,000, equally dividedbetween bombers and fighters. The intention is that the Americanautomobile industry is to produce parts for these aircraft, and sub-assemblies upto tail and wing portion size. The general idea is that the American auto-mobile industry can make available a 'p.number of general-purpose machine tools **»-• by working three shifts on its remainingtools. It is not thought that production of dies will present a serious difficulty,as the tool and die shops in Detroit, with some 10,000 workers, are at a low levelof activity at the moment. Final assembly cannot be done at theautomobile factories, so that special fac- .' tories are to be built for assembly.These will be paid for by British and American funds. The assembly plantswill have to be managed by experts drawn from the aircraft industry, andour contemporary points out that "the I industry's executive and supervisoryforces are already spread out so thin as to have an adverse effect onjproduction."If the programme is treated as an emer- gency programme, for immediate produc-tion, the methods in use in the aircraft factories will be duplicated. On theother hand, if a long-term policy is decided upon, special tools would have ^to be produced, and it would take longer to get going, although ultimately avery much greater production might be achieved.
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