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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 0822.PDF
374 Third of the Series FLIGHT APRIL I6TH, 1942 THE FUTURE OF CIVIL AVIATION Production of Civil Aircraft After thpJtfafTlSesLfynand Manufacture too Slow in the Past : Operators Should Decide Characteristics^ Limited Usefulness of the Converted Bombed New Type of Enghp Required / / By PLANTHAIR BY the end of the war there will be comparatively few civil aircraft in operation. Whatever proportion of the pre-war fleet may be left, anf however many civil aircraft which have been impressed bythe RoyalAj Force may be released, the sum will be quite1 7llsfl"fnTlent to meet the requirements of the situation. As any discussion as to which air lines are to be operated or how they are to be operated depends entirely on the assumption that aircraft of a sort will be available.^ must try to get some clear idea of the sources from wl they might be immediately obtained, producing more by the usual methods i to meet the exigencies of the occasi In ariy planning for the future to overestimate the possibilities rff the but there is one that, in spite of its apparent remoter at present, should not be overlooked. Troop Carriers It has been a matter of considerable surprise to many laymen like myself that the requirements of the Royal Air Force during a world war of the kind in which we are now engaged, should not have included some type of troop- carrying aircraft. One need not be a military tactician to realise how useful it would be to be able to transport a considerable number of troops over long distances by such aircraft, and one can only think that the authorities have considered that the man-hours required to produce them could be more usefully employed. At the same time, one cannot help reflecting that the man-hours absorbed by the construction and equipment of one of the latest four-engined bombers would probably be sufficient for two or three two-engined troop transports built, perhaps, on the lines of the Curtiss Wrigltt 20, which has recently been described in Flight, The decision has evidently gone against such a proposal up to the present, but, if by any chance it were reversed, the problems of the planners of post-war civil aviation would be vastly simplified. The possibility of such a machine being available should, perhaps, not be counted on, but, on the other hand, should not be entirely ruled out. When the design and production of civil aircraft for post war requirements is under consideration, it is to be hoped that those in authority will no longer accept the statement constructors were fond of making that it took two or three years to design and produce a civil aircraft. It is true that in the past certain types have taken longer than bears thinking about, and that no doubt there were hun dreds of very good reasons why years should have elapsed between the date of order and the date of delivery, but I doubt whether the interminable delays were justifiable 1 ven in the condition of expansion of the Royal Air Force which obtained immediately before the war. Delays of this order will certainly not be justifiable after the war because then we shall have a surplus of designers and constructors only too anxious to replace their lost Service work. It is to be hoped that the people who place the order for the new civil aircraft which will be wanted will insist on delivery within twelve months, which should be quite possible if full use is made of the experience which aircraft designers and constructors have had during the war. Given that the requirements of civil aviation after the war will demand a considerable fleet of reasonably large high-speed civil aircraft, we must decide on whose shoulders for their general characteristics should for consideration that the Only persons part of the question are the men who will aircraft. Doubtless, in the case of British fraft, /tfcrjs. will be the British Overseas Airways it would be surprising if by the end of Doration did not know fairly precisely just wantjd and in what numbers they wanted them. 4d here insert a plea that any suggestion that a littee should be>formed, or that discussions between ous parties should be originated in order to arrive q$^ le perfect aircraft, should be strangled at birth. JI.JT rguments which would inevitably arise would take far anger to settle than the design and construction of the aircraft. With all the drive that we could bring to bear on the production of new types in the shortest possible time, there would still be an intervening period during which we would just have to make the best of converted Service aircraft, but we should bear in mind during this period that, if we admit of any unavoidable delay in the produc tion of twfe civil aircraft and thus use converted Service aircraft as more than a stop-gap, we will be doing injury not only to aviation at that moment but placing on it a handicap from which it would take years to recover. We are not yet in a position to know precisely what types of Service aircraft will be available for conversion to civil use during the critical period just after the end of the war when the demands for air transport will probably reach a peak, but a cursory examination of the normal charac teristics of large bomber aircraft shows that they are bound to have a limited sphere of usefulness. Whether they would be economical or not appears to be of no particular consequence, and we need only concern ourselves in a general way with the uses to which they could be put. Post-war Traffic The type of traffic to be handled is important in this_ connection, and I suggest that it will consist largely of mails and freight with a substantial number of priority passengers. There is no doubt that, as was the case after the last war, there will be big demands on all passenger services because, during a war period, a relative standstill is imposed and, when restrictions are removed, large numbers of people wish to travel, particularly between this country and the Dominions and vice versa. I do not think that it will be possible to handle any large proportion of this traffic by air in the immediate post-war period, but this depends to a large extent on whether we would be prepared to provide the services and whether this class of passenger would be content with the conditions under which they would have to travel if con verted Service aircraft were used. The long-range bomber, while not deficient in load- carrying properties, njwgt of its nature be very unecono mical from a passenger-carrying point of view. It is unlikely that machines of the size and power capable of carrying 40 passengers if they had been designed as civil aircraft will, in fact, be able to carry a dozen in compara tively uncomfortable conditions. To use them as purely passenger-carrying aircraft would not be making the best use of the material available, and it would seem that each should at all times have included in its total cargo a substantial proportion of mail or other freight. Judging from the amount of aj/ mail available before the war, the Empire air lines should be kept
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