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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0732.PDF
Eleventh of the Series MARCH 27TH, 1941. FRIEND or FOE? A Famous British Biplane Fighter and Its Italian Counterpart Gloster Gladiator ; single-seater fighter. Staggered single-bay wings of equal span and with rounded tips and cut-outs at the centre-section. Radial engine. Enclosed cockpit,fixed single-leg undercarriage. Eliptical tailplane, large rounded fin and rudder. Fiat Cr 42 ; single-seater fighter. Unstaggered, single-baywings, the upper pair being of greater span than the lower pair. Radial engine. Open cockpit, fixed undercarriage withspats. Eliptical tailplane, inverted " U "-shaped fin and rudder. ISSUED in the spring of 1937, the Gladiator saw activeservice very early in the present war, being used bythe A.A.F. squadron which intercepted the first few raids over the North of Scotland in 1939. Gladia- tors also did yeoman service under extremely difficult conditions in Norway, and, more recently, they and their pilots have provided an unpleasant surprise for the Duce's Fiats in the Near East. They mount four Browning machine-guns: two in troughs alongside the fuselage, syn- chronised, and one under each wing in fairings. The Fiat Cr 42 has only two synchronised Breda machine-guns mounted in troughs on top of the fuselage, which no doubt adds to the infe'riority complex of the unfortunate Wop pilots! Incidentally, some Cr 42s did pay ill-advised and costly visits to this country just after Benito decided to help the Luftwaffe, but there has been no official news, so far as we recall, of this rash experiment having been repeated. The last of the biplane single-seater fighters, the Gladiator is a trim, compact aircraft noted for its manoeuvrability. When approaching head-on, its wings will be seen to be of equal span and to have a moderate dihedral, the outer inter-plane struts to be ver- tical and the centre-section struts to slope out at angles of nearly 45 degrees from the upper part of the rounded fuselage. As the single legs of the undercarriage % (at- tached in front of the leading edge of the lower wirig) make a similar angle wrftv the underpart of the fuselage, the effect is approximately that of an "X," with the engine in the centre. Upper and lower wings are, also, the same in plan, but the centre- section of the former has a fairly deep cutaway at the trailing edge and a shallow one at the leading edge. A side view of the Gladiator shows the pronounced stagger of the wings and a somewhat plump but nicely streamlined fuselage. The enclosed cock- pit is smoothly faired off towards the tail, and the outlet pipes from the exhaust collector-ring curve down from the back of the helmeted cowling, and inside the undercarriage legs, to a point just below the leading edge of the lower wing. The cantilever tailplane is elliptical, and the large fin and rudder, which projects well aft of the cutaway elevators, is symmetrically rounded. The Sea-Gladiator, a slightly modified version used by the Fleet Air Arm, can be distinguished in flight by a bulge under the fuselage, between the undercarriage legs, where a collapsible boat is carried. The front view of the Cr 42 shows several features which at once distinguish it from the British fighter. The upper wings, which have slight dihedral, are of appreciably greater span than the lower, which have no dihedral, and the inter- plane struts form a series of " V " formations—two large ones between the wings and two small ones between the top centre-section and the fuselage. The undercarriage legs, which have spats, are almost vertical, and are braced by struts running back at an angle to the underside of the fuselage. The wings are parallel in plan with evenly rounded tips, and have no stagger. The fuselage is of similar general proportions to that of the Gladiator, but has an open cockpit. The elliptical cantilever tailplane has no cutaway on the elevators, the rudder portion of the in- verted " U "-shaped vertical surfaces being on top of the fuselage tail. Types pared: — (1) Hurricane and Me 109. (2) Spitfire and He 113. (3) Beaufort and Ju 88. (4) Lysander and Hs 126. (5) Hudson and Me no. (6) Anson and Fw 187. (7) Hereford and Do 215. (8) Blenheim and He 111K. (9) Skua and Ju 87B. (10) Swordfish and Ar 95. (11) Sunderland and Do 26. Next week: Bristol Bom- bay and Junkers Ju 86K. previously corn-
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