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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 1227.PDF
MAY 29TH, 1941. Topics of the Day POOLING EXPERIENCE First-hand Experience of Enemy Types is Necessary : Rebuilding the Wrecks : Facing Facts SOME time ago Flight published a leader suggestingthat possibly it might be a good thing if we had apool of test pilots so that each firm would not only have its own pilots' reports but also those of other firms. It is undoubtedly a fact that certain characteristics, not always very desirable, tend to be reborn in each type pro- duced by any particular firm. ,^ " I have another* and muc^fcore difficult idea. Everyj- fir'j and every operatioj^il training unit should have aif if^fft one example of ijre latest type of machine prddjjced by the enemy. Much more easily said than done, of course, but there are quite a few fairly modern,i&ermai types knocking about and being put, as far %(^one car| see, to no particularly good use. And I don't jlean Messer-* u, schmitt One-o-Nines. If one can believe thf pictures one' sees, there is at least one airworthy Junkofi 88 and, I be- lieve, a Messerschmitt no being lookedjift and even being flown somewhere. .,.v ~'<^J^ Handling Characteristics* It is very nice to have these machines about the place, and to tkiifk that certain crack pilots from Farnborough and elsewhere are amusing themselves in them. No doubt the representatives of the different firms are invited .to inspect them, and the technical Press is (or are) invited to describe them in detail as soon as they are off the German secret list. In the meantime, we know as much about air- craft design and construction as the Germans do, and the real interest in captured enemy aeroplanes lies in their handling characteristics and not in the beauty of the Elek- tron castings tot be found in the engine or in the (most expensive and qdite uneconomical, old chap) methods of construction .used in the airframe. The air war would be more nearly won if we could obtain a flying example of every German type as it came into service. That is impossible, but we can learn a lot from any moderately up-to-date types which are captured, and it would be worth while to spend a lot of time and money in making the moderately crashed types fit to fly again. More worth while than to leave them littered about the countryside for the benefit of the organisers of War Weapons Weeks and the like. If most /n the pupils of every O.T.U. could fly the diSerent bomber and fighter types which are at present J#use over this country, or if the instructors at these ^JE'T.U.S could do so, we should certainly be getting some- where. Even the obsolescent types are of very real in- terest, because every firm is inclined to produce types with similar characteristics, and knowledgeable people would at least be able to guess at the flying technique to be developed. The German O.T.U.s are undoubtedly equipped with 109s, nos and the older bomber types, and the pupils will be taught to fly and handle tiresHT machines first. It is reasonable to suppose that they wili bring their training ideas into action when they fly more modern machines, so we shall not be so very far behind. 'Listen to the Pilots In this war we seem to be inclined to listen more to the technical people than to the pilots. Admittedly the latter are a temperamental crowd, ready to develop biases about most things, but these biases are more reliable in some cases than the slide-rules of the clever fellows who stay firmly and sometimes unhappily on the ground. The technical people can produce the most prodigious devices which not only go quickly but wJufSh can stay in t the air for an indefinite period, yet these are quite useless • if the pilots don't like them or are afraid of them. Fur- thermore, there is a sort of inertia still to be found in the business of aircraft production. If an order has been placed it goes through. The result is that there are quite a fair number of useless pieces of aeronautical ironmongery littering the earth here and there. Things which will now never be used for operational work and probably not even for training. v |, Inertia is usually thought of as sfcafJc. ^In fact, it is at fits worst when it is thought of as an irresistible object in I motion rather than an immovable object in situ. One or |two prototypes could decently have been left in situ—mis- ftakes aVe inevitable and we are not the only people to taake them—but the results still tend to be poured on the unsuspecting but not so very innocent pilot. ** Which reminds me that there has been far too much ballyhoo in this war. We take and like a deal of unpalat- ablejrruth, but this is sandwiched between a good measure oi/feep talk and/or pijaw which infuriates the mythical man in the street—in other words, you and me. Let us have the unpalatable truth without the trimmings. Even- tually the M.O.I, will learn that we are not mocked; you can't even fool all the people some of the time, let alone some of the people all the time. ; :>... Talking Sense It's a bad, unpleasant and difficult, war. We shall win it. But only when everybody realises that it is a bad and difficult war, and not while all sorts of people are sitting around doing only what they have to do, and while some are^hot doing anything at all. A specially suave voice fp6m the announcer on the wireless is merely irritating when we know that we have bravely lost part of a city or a couple of countries. As I have said, we shall win this war because we are determined to win it, but there is no point in continually talking, in parliamentary manner, about things which don't matter. Nor is there any point in pretending that the inhabitants of some of our big industrial and other centres find air raids stimulating things. They den't; they're hell, but the people accept them as part of/the price of war. When they hear that the casualties are '' not as high as were originally thought when they were thought to be higher than they are thought at present'' (or words to that effect) they are not irrationally annoyed. We start with a distinct advantage. The official Ger- many does not even admit that anybody much has been killed at all, so the people in Hamburg and Bremen must be quite annoyed when they listen to the radio. When we give figures at all they are as correct as they can reasonably be. ., , Let us try to talk solid sense all the time ^rtld to think of things as they are. We can take it. These words are used all the time, but nobody in the M.O.I, seems to take them so very seriously. " INDICATOR." An Appeal to You ! ALTHOUGH the Red Cross Penny-a-Week Fund has•fl 5,000,000 contributing members who provide it with a regular income of nearly ^18,000 a week, this only representssomething less than o.id. per head of the population—not a very generous public response when one learns that, in Aprillast, this splendid organisation overspent itself by no less than ^50,000 in sending 400,000 parcels of food, clothing and othermuch-needed comforts to our men in German prison camps, the total cost being /,20o,ooo.This is YOUR affair, the Red Cross says (and who can denyit!) so if you want to do something about it, the address of the fund's secretary is 89, Kingsvvay, London, W.C.2.
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