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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 1911.PDF
AUGUST 2IST, 1941. FLIGHT 107 THE ATFERO ACCIDENT Great Britain, Canada, America and Australia Mourn Loss 0/ Valuable Men MYSTERY surrounds the causes of the flying acci-dent which occurred on August 10th, and whichcost the lives of 22 men engaged on the trans- atlantic air ferry service. The aircraft had taken off fromthe usual base, and at the point of departure nothing was known of its fate for twenty-four hours, when a farmerdiscovered the wreckage in hilly country. All the occu- pants had been killed by the impact, the aeroplane evi-dently having flown into the hillside. Eight of the victims were Canadian, seven came from the United States, sixfrom Great Britain, and one was an Australian. Three of the victims were pilots: Capts. E. R. B. White,F. D. Bradbrooke, and G. E. Price, the latter being an Australian. Four British radio operators, H. S. Green,H. D. Rees, G. H. Powell, and A. A. Oliver, lost their lives. Capt. White joined the R.A.F. in 1921 as Boy Mechanicand left the service in December, 1930, with the rank of Sergeant Pilot. He joined Imperial Airways the follow-ing year, and in 1933 he was seconded as pilot to the Iraq Petroleum Company, which at that time were laying a1,200 mile long oil pipe line from Haifa, in Palestine, to Kirkuk, Iraq. He was transferred to the European Divi-sion of Imperial Airways in 1935, and operated the London-Budapest route. It may be remembered that in 1936 Capt. White estab-lished a record by flying the 2,970 miles from London to Brindisi, via Marseilles, and back to London in 18 hours. On the outbreak of the Cino-Japanese war in 1937he piloted pressmen from Alexandria to Penang, one of the longest charter flights on record. In the same yearCapt. White represented Imperial Airways in Berlin at the international conference on ice formation, a subjecton which he was an authority. He was seconded to Atfero in the spring of this year and had flown something likeone million miles. On the first Atlantic flight in 1940 he acted as navigator. Canada shares with Great Britain the loss of Capt.F. D. Bradbrooke, who, although born in Worcestershire, has spent many years in Canada, where he learned to flyin 1928. Several years ago he came to this country to join the staff of The Aeroplane, of which he becameassistant editor. He left that post to become editor of a little journal called The Aero Pilot. On its formationhe joined the Air Transport Auxiliary and ferried aircraft from factories to service units, and finally he joined Atfero.He was a very experienced pilot. Radio Officer H. S. Green served several years at seaand then transferred to Imperial Airways. For a con- siderable period he was stationed on the yacht Imperia,which Imperial Airways kept stationed off Crete. He returned to England last year and afterwards transferredto Atfero. Mr. Green was regarded by British Overseas Airways as one of the best radio operators in aviation To the relatives of these men, and of the others whoperished, Flight offers its sincere sympathy. 'COPTERTROOPS Is this the Next German Surprise ? RECENT performances of the Sikorsky helicopter inthe United States led to enquiries regarding theFocke machine and speculation as to whether Ger- many would exploit its possibilities as a carrier for air-bornetroops or parachutists. But no definite information on this point is at present available. That such a developmentwas, however, visualised is shown by a German patent granted to Professor Dipl.-Ing. Heinrich Focke in 1938.No specific reference is made in the patent to military usage, but it would be too na'ive to conclude, on thataccount, that the proposed machine was intended solely for commercial purposes. It is admitted that the head resistance in forward flightof a machine having the rotors and their driving gears carried on open girder outriggers from a normal centralfuselage is considerable and materially lowers the perform- ance. The object of the invention is to avoid this addi-tional drag. Accordingly, each rotor is mounted on a sepa- rate fuselage and provided with an independent power unitand transmission gear. The twin fuselages are arranged parallel, at a distance slightly in excess of the rotor dia-meter, and joined fore and aft by streamlined or aerofoil members. A retractable, single-wheel undercarriage is pro-vided for each fuselage, but no particulars are given regard- ing what is, presumably, a single tail wheel. As an alternative, the two fuselages may be constructedas flying boat hulls. Such a craft would have good trans- verse stability when on the water. It woujd, of course, be necessary to synchronise thespeed of the independently driven rotors and, within the scope of the patent, any suitable electric, hydraulic ormechanical means may be employed for this purpose.
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