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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 2319.PDF
OCTOBER 2ND, 1941. FLIGHT 225 Correspondence The Editor does not hold himselj responsible for the views expressed by correspondents. The names and addresses of the writers, not necessarily for publication must in all cases accompany letters AFTER THE WAR Critic's Views Were Not Official "VTOUR introductory note to my article under the above head- -*- ing in your issue ot September 18th suggests that it repre- sents the considered opinions of the Air Council. I am not even serving in the Air Ministry, and have no means of knowing what the considered opinion of the Air Council may be. In any event, the views expressed in my article were entirely my own, and the Air Council have no responsibility for them. " AIR VICE-MARSHAL." GERMAN AIR STRENGTH Do Replacements Exceed Losses ? /^ERMANY is producing aircraft faster than she is losing VJ them, and Axis air crews are still being trained, says a correspondent writing over the nom-de-plume "Planes," and that unless we bomb heavily the Axis aircraft factories in Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, and S.E Germany it seems doubtful if their numerical superiority will ever be overhauled even with America's help. "The possibility of killing Austrian, Czech, and other workers forced to feed the Nazi Moloch," he adds, "can, I am sure, be effectively dealt with by Col. Britton in his messages to the ' V ' army." H. B. AIRSCREW BLADE MATERIALS Wood Always Lighter for Comparable Designs MR. GILLMORE puts the case for the dural airscrew bladevery ably indeed in your issue ot September 18th. How- ever, if he were as closely in touch with wooden blade develop- ment as he is with dural, he would perhaps not be quite so sweeping in condemning the former. The fact that by drastic thinning -the metal blade now approaches the weight of some wooden designs must not be taken to mean that no further thinning of this type is possible. Actually, the stress margin on most wood blades is large. Wood blades will always be lighter for comparable designs, and they may not even need larger hubs, as he suggests. Much is being doue to save veneers used per blade, and the importation of cut veneers does not exhaust the possibilities of saving shipping space. Finally, they are favoured by pilots for their smooth running. J. LOCKWOOD TAYLOR. Metal versus Wood MR. GILLMORE, in his interesting article in Flight otSeptember 18th, on materials for airscrew blade produc- tion, might have further disparaged compressed wood had he lefererd to the subject of balance. Generally speaking, compressed wood has been insufficiently homogeneous to permit the balancing of all blades ol a series to one mass moment. As a result of this shortcoming the practice was adopted of balancing blades in sets, in consequence of which interchangeability was largely sacrificed on compressed wood blades—rather a serious mafter in these days when speed of replacement assumes almost the importance of speed of pro- duction itself. • Without in any way wishing to appear as one seeking adver- tisement for the wares o£ his coacern, I think, nevertheless, it is of interest to note that the new " Hydulignum " blades (an all-English invention which Mr. Gillmore overlooked), now in production, are definitely balanced to ONE master and are therefore 100 per cent, interchangeable. It is a noteworthy fact that Hydulignum material should have been overlooked in Mr. Gillmore's article, since so many of the shortcomings contributed to compressed wood which he mentioned become more than highly debatable in the par- ticular case of this material. No doubt others will have some- thing to say about the merits of wooden blades, with the progress of which Mr. Gillmore could nut be expected to be familiar, and we hope that our design department will find an opportunity, when they have time, to make their contribution to this debate. A. A. D. LANG. TO HASTEN PRODUCTION " Capacity Exchanges." for Manufacturers A LTHOUGH some ot your readers may already have been •**•• in contact with the Machine Tool Capacity Clearing Centres of the Production Executive Regional Boards, there may be others who have not learned of the help these clearing centres can be to works managers, production managers and other executives when up against the problem of finding spare capacity or of finding work lor temporarily idle machines. In the London and South-Eastern Region (London, Kent. Sussex and Surrey) we have ten clearing centres. They are in effect capacity exchanges, designed to do for manufacturing capacity what the employment exchanges do for labour. Each is in the charge of a technical officer of the Board. The clearing centres have a comprehensive register of the firms in their district and of their machine-tool facilities. They keep in touch with firms who have spare capacity for which they want work, even where the spare capacity may be avail- able for short periods only. " Spare capacity " fluctuates from day to day, but the aim is to waste none of it that can be used to the national advantage. All this information is kept at the clearing centres in a simple but systematic way so that when a firm asks for assistance it can be put into touch with what it wants with a minimum of formality and delay. Needless to say, the business of fixing prices, deliveries, etc., is left to the two parties who have been introduced. Altogether the clearing centres of the London and South- Eastern Regional Board effected over 2,000 successful intro- ductions between January and July. In about three quarters of these the value of the job was given and they totalled more than £1,000,000 But I must stress that this is entirely out of ratio with the unassessed value; a million doesn't sound a lot when the nation is spending many times that amount every day. The only true monetary value that could be put on these introductions is the total value of the contracts that would have been held up without them. The clearing centres aim at fostering a friendly spirit amongst the firms in their districts. The technical officer in charge of the clearing centre gets on close relations with the factory managers in his district, and the danger of factory managers feeling they are going to run into a fog-bound maze of red tape-bestrewn blind alleys is eliminated. There is then a much better chance of factory managers getting together amongst themselves and seriously co-operating with each other —which is just the object of the whole clearing centre scheme. And there is far less chance of any capacity being overlooked. May I urge all concerned to get into touch with their local clearing centre at once? There is nothing to be lost, since the service is free. Like all exchanges, the more people use them the more efficiently they tun. The greater the number of new users the better service everyone gets, with a widening of the scope of possible benefit to all. The addresses of the clearing centres in the London Region are as follows: — ACTON: Goa, High Street. Acton, VV.3 (Tel. Acorn 5071). CROYDON: Equitable House, George Street, Croydon (Tel. Croydou 5189). EDMONTON: 198. Fore Street. Edmonton (Tel. Tottenham 5481). ELTHAM: 20, Court Road, Eltham, S.E.9 (Tel. Eltham 5588). HARROW: 15, College Road, Har- row (Tel. Harrow 2602). ILFORD: Rooms 15 and 23, Craa- brook House, Cranbrook Road, Ilford, Essex (Tel. llford 0038). WESTMINSTER: Room 429, 4th Floor, Romney House, Mar- sham Street, S.W.i (Tel. Franklin 2211; Ext. 2680 and 2O73). GUILDFORD: 32 High Street, Guildford. ROCHESTER: Moat House. The Esplanade, Rochester (Tel. Strood 7276). SUSSEX : About to be opened. The scheme is rapidly being extended to other regions and provincial enquirers can get details from their respective Re- gional Boards. SIMON MARKS, (Deputy Chairman, London and , South-Eastern Regional Board ) [NOTE.—We understand that clearing centres are now being set up in other parts of the country and that details will b9 available shortly.—ED.]
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