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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 1653.PDF
JULY 24TH, 1941. FLIGHT NIGHT FIGHTER OPS. where men are, warn the aerodrome defence stations that an enemy aircraft is approaching the aerodrome. The direction and height are also given. Next comes the real stuff.. Without having to enquire as to his whereabouts, Surrey Ten is informed by Mole that he has a "customer" for him. A height and a bearing are given. Mentally the Beaufighter can now be seen tearing through the night sky with Hercules flat out. Here is another secret. Exhaust glow and flames cannot be tolerated on a night fighter, otherwise the quarry might open the shooting first. The exhaust pipes do not glow, and exhaust flames do not show. Enough said. Quite suddenly—almost as a shock—comes another remark from the ground station, which brings that air of completeness again. The voice quite casually says : " Hello, Surrey Ten, Hello, Surrey Ten, keep your eyes open, there is a friendly machine flying very close to you, be careful." Night Chase ' ; - Again one is mentally transported to where powerful machines are chasing a quarry at over 400 feet per second and senses the confidence the air crews have in the ground staff. The quiet, unperturbed "O.K. Mole. Thank you "as a reply speaks of a standard of training and modest gallantry which can only be contemplated with thankfulness and emotion. All over the night sky of Britain—every night, fine or foul—ground stations and night fighters talk in quiet and jocular tones of things which would send ordinary folk dizzy with excitement. Excitement, of course, there is at times, fierce excitement. When, for instance, after a long and arduous chase the enemy is intercepted and finally comes into the gun sights. A press on the joy stick gun trigger lets loose pandemonium from a battery of guns, and a Junkers, Dornier or Heinkel out on the nefarious work of '' grosser Deutschland '' literally blows up in front of the night fighter. At such times night fighter pilots become very human, and a string of quite unprintable and often unintelligible remarks is faithfully reproduced in the ear of his very senior officer controlling the proceedings. But back to our Surrey Ten Beaufighter. Luck is out to-night. The Ju 88 he was chasing seemed to smell something in the offing, and, after waltzing around the sky for a while, he put his nose down and PILOTS' ROOM : Night fighter pilots waiting for orders to take the air. beat it for home, there perhaps to be roughly handled by one of our Douglas Havocs (night fighter-bombers which lurk in the hours of darkness over the Luftwaffe aero- dromes in occupied territories) as he throttles back to land in France. "Trade" slackens. A snoop around shows eight enemy machines on their way home. These are being attended to by other fighter stations, and Surrey Ten comes in to land unseen, heralded only by the squeal of brakes as the Beau- fighter is brought to rest. At the end of a short snooze in an armchair in the Mess the radio is turned on for the early morning news. " Here is the communique issued by the Air Ministry and Ministry of Home Security. Enemy activity over this country during the night was slight. Five bombers were destroyed." For the night in question this figure must represent a very comfortable percentage of casualties. It would be ridiculous even to suggest that big raids will not take-place again, but one thing is certain: All the fun in dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on comparatively undefended civil populations is gone. Every bomb—whether it is dropped to fall where it will or whether it is sighted on a military target—will have to be paid for at full price AIRACOBRA ARMAMENT DELIVERIES of the P-39 Airacobra from the Bellplant at Buffalo have now risen to the point at whichcomplete squadrons of the U.S. Army Pursuit Groups are being equipped with them, records the American monthly, Aero Digest. We may therefore reasonably expect that deliveries of the British version, known as the Caribou, will be made soon. This machine has already been described in Flight for May 22nd, and its Allison shaft-drive engine in the June 19th issue. Our American contemporary, in its June, 1941, issue, gives some later information relative to'the Airacobra. The airscrew is a Curtiss constant-speed electric with a hollow hub, through the 3m. aperture of which fires a 37 mm. shell gun. This gun weighs io61b., and can fire 120 shells per minute, either explosive, armour-piercing or tracer. Other armament consists of two .50 calibre heavy machine guns housed in the nose and synchronised to fire through the airscrew at the rate of 850 per min. About half-way along each wing are two .30 calibre machine guns which can fire at the rate of 1,200 per minute. The amount of ammunition carried by the Airacobra is greater than that carried by any other single-engined fighter now in service. For its .30 calibre guns, it carries a total of 4,000 rounds. This compares with the total of 2,400 carried by the Spitfire for its eight guns (says Aero Digest). For the .50 calibre guns 560 rounds are carried, together with 30 shells for the 37 mm. shell gun. The petrol tanks* which are of the self-sealing variety, are carried in the wing just outboard of the retractable undercarriage and inboard of the two machine guns. Armour protects the pilot and the vital parts of the aero- plane, including the reduction gear immediately behind the airscrew. An arched beam behind the pilot, part of the cockpit cover structure, acts as structural protection in the event ot a nose-over. The oxygen bottle is in the nose behind the reduction gear, the engine oil tank is at the rear of the engine, and the radio transmitter and receiver are housed in the tail of the fuselage. The 12-cyIinder Allison V-1710 engine has a fuel con- sumption of 0.488 lb. per h.p./hr., which gives the Aira- cobra a normal range of 1,098 miles. Cruising consumption is given as 21 gals, per hour.
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