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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 1334.PDF
404 \\A FLIGHT JUNE 12TH, 1941. IN THE OUTBACK (Left) Uninviting flying country near Wyndham on the Alice Springs-Wyndham route. (Below) Pilot Chadwick supervises the embarkation at Mt. Eba of an appendicitis patient in the Bush Church Aid Fox Moth. The operation was successful and in 12 days the patient was again in the air. what 42,000 sq. miles is like, think of fro^n London to Edinburgh with a width of 100 miles.) M f\ Ceduna is a small town, and the surrounding district is t Is only thinly populated. Add to this the fact that Adelaide, the nearest big town, is 350 miles away, and you get some idea of the decree of isolation. But the isolation is more apparent than real, and, as they listen to Big Ben striking the hour and then hear the news, the inhabitants of Ceduna can almost imagine they are in London. Only there aren't !' any craters outside the front door ! .... But in case you should think Ceduna is very isolated, \v,e must go north from there to where a little cluster of three British light aeroplanes are stationed. Alice Springs is the town, in the "outback" of Central Australia—but not "the dead heart," please. Australia has no "dead heart" ; though much of it is poor country, there is only a small proportion which is quite useless. Alice Springs is in a district of pastoral country and is on the telegraph line and the air route between Adelaide and Darwin, so perhaps it i^not so very isolated. Here are two Percival Gull Sixes and an Avro Avian owned and flown by Pilot E. J. Connellan .v The war has depleted his staff—they have left for the wars—but he carries on his work for the Australian Aerial Medical Services with only the assistance of one ground engineer. Ready at any time to fly the D doctor from the Alice Springs hospital wrrerever he maybe required, Connellan also has other responsibilities. He runs a fortnightly passenger, mail and freight service up to Wyndham, passing through the goldfield towns of Tanami and The Granites. This stops at as many as 17 > > intermediate places, including the Hermannsburg Missiojjr Vfj Station, St. Helen's and Birrindudu. The Connellan ser- /*'?'•'" vice is the only source of supply of fresh vegetables, fruit - and meat to these places, and since its institution nearly two years ago, the almost universal disease known by the pic- turesque narnd of " Barcoo rot" has disappeared. (This skin trouble is probably related to scurvy, which is caused by a deficiency of the vitamin C of fresh vegetables.) Another,function which the light aeroplane can perform"*" most efficiently is prospecting, not for gold, but for good pastoral areas This occurs in patches and has to be spied out from the air and mapped, so that pastoral companies can obtain leases for grazing. The same work done either by cai or on horseback would take much longer and would not allow the estimate of its pastoral value to be made so easily. This is another of Connellan's activities. Though a considerable proportion of the country flown over both round Ceduna and between Alice Springs and Wyndham is good forced-landing country, there is plenty M, of it which is not, and a reliable engine is the pilot's best friend. No one has ever found fault with the Gipsy on this score and the airframes also stand up to their work. In the hands of their Australian pilots these British light aircraft do their job. More Consolidation T AST week we announced plans for the large-scale production -»-» of Liberators by the combined efforts of Consolidated, Douglas and Ford. Now comes news of another parallel scheme whereby Boeing, Douglas and Vega will co-operate in turning out the Boeing B17E—the latest version of the Flying 'Fortress—from four factories at Seattle, Bnrbank and Long- heach (California), and at Wichita (Kansas). Concentration on these two long-range four-engined bombers by America's leading manufacturers, who are erecting new plants and considerably increasing the floor-space of, some oi their existing factories, is all part of President Roosevelt's plan for a production rate of 500 per month, and the War Department has, it is reported, just awarded contracts to Consolidated and Boeing totalling $321,878,896 (^80,469,724). U.S. Output Beats Germans A CCORDING to Leland Stowe, Daily Telegraph war corre- •^*- spondent in America, the combined output of aero engines by three firms—Pratt and Whitney, Wright and Allison—now exceeds that of German-controlled engine factories by approxi- mately 300,000 h.p. per month and is still expanding. He also points out that the effect of America's car-producing plants swinging over to aircraft production will be enormous within the next twelve months, and Mr. Frederick Rentschler, chairman of United Aircraft Corporation, is quoted as saying that, given the necessary materials, they can undoubtedly exceed the entire prodoction of Continental Europe. Lindbergh's assumption, says Stowe, that the combined Anglo- American aircraft output could not surpass that of Nazi-con- trolled factories is strikingly;.' belied by present output figures.
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