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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 1143.PDF
MAY 28TH, 1942 Topics of the Day FLIGHT 537 ODDITIES ss Indicator Goes "Yogi" and Jumps from. Applied Metaphysics to Pre-war Airline Operation zet containers) with is of people will t fly merrily aw THIS wax is the oddest thing. Not the war itself, but the way in which so many things are reversed. For instance,. you may have an airfield studded with defence posts, engulfed in barbed wire, and sur rounded, perhaps, by tough individuals with tommy guns, rifles or halberds. Nobody can get in (at least through the main entrance) without encountering fearsome Service Police and without the need for producing identity cards and what not. Yet, if you take an aircraft of any breed, Service or civil, camouflaged hi the correct manner, and fly to an airfield looking just what you are, an enthusiastic and rather scruffy civilian, you can step out of that fS^jchine and wander all over the place, peeping into secret and pseudo-secret aircraft, without interruption. Of course, if you arrive in a Luftwaffe suit, with a Hein- kel 111 and speak no English, a certain degree of surprise will be felt by all concerned, bu£ I am supposing that the clothes and manner are normal. Everyone on the flying field will think that you are a super Air Ministry person, or a test pilot of great renown. Fill Up and Fly Away Having seen all you wish to see, if will usiwrtfy'be possible to take your aircraft to the Bowser and have it filled to the brim (Service Bowser experts j&rely faj^fo fill up every visible orifice from header tankfs to magnificent 100 octane fuel help you to start up and yon another airfield. Unfortunately, sooner orjfater, yi to get a meal or to buy a clean colla much in the soup unless your paper Apropos the filling-up of aircraft machines about the place I -often would be to make a grand tour Qf the Bri nondescript aircraft, filling up without detffrE or question at any and every airfield Of course, your unit or factory, or whatever, would wonder where you'd got to, and the machine's papers would look just a little odd on your return home. None of which must be construed as a criticism of any existing system. It would obviously be impossible to scatter Service Police all over the inside of every airfield ; it would be very impolite and difficult if every person on an airfield were questioned and examined at regular inter vals and the ordinary person, whether Service or civilian, "^usually much too busy to find time to bother about odd persons unless their actions are "suspicious" (whatever that may mean); and it would be totally impossible if every arrival by air had to be questioned and have some form signed by the commanding officer before his machine could be refuelled. Speed is the essence of the matter of getting on with the war, and, I, for one, am all in favour of get ting on with the job with as little red tape as possible, even if, once in a thousand times, somebody or other cares to take advantage of a mildly strange situation. It's just one of those things, but I still think that the whole affair is queer, at least when compared with peacetime conditions. But then it is equally queer for so many of us to find ourselves in sole charge of some magnificent contraption with rows of engines when, three years ago or less, any multi-engined affair was approached and flown with the greatest trepidation, and -our normal means of aerial con veyance was a Puss-Moth or some such. I occasionally sutler 'moments of most intense surprise and shock : so much so that I sometimes wonder whether the whole thing isn't something of a fluke, and whether the bubble of compara tive flying efficiency will not one day crash and burst. The majority of pilots, and certainly those with a twisted and introspective turn of mind, occasionally have fits of looking above and below the wings while flying, and won dering what on earth is keeping the thing up. A sort of battle between Messrs. Newton and Einstein, one presumes. Fortunately, or unfortunately, old Isaac usually wins in the end. Another spot for warped minds is that of sitting down near an airfield and '' doing a Yogi'' until all knowledge of modern inventions and happenings has been partially erased from the thoughts; one then looks sharply up and wonders alarmingly what that loose, noisy thing is, why it is jj^here at all, how it stays there, and who made it. The game is played best at a point near the lee ward fence, where the strange objects are large and near, and not moving too quickly. To the artificially untutored mind aircraft are very odd things indeed. Such exercises may appear to be childish, but if, on occasion, everything appears to be becoming a little too much, they certainly allow one's troubles to be put into their correct perspective. Even the very worst is not so bad. As the Irishman might have said, " What are you worry ing about? Millions of people have died and survived it." If you lika^s'uch things, you can even Yogi yourself into omin^a visitor from another planet altogether. That's interesting, but more than a little detached from s such—useful as a sort of holiday during the delays re inseparably connected with flying! incidentally, is yet another curiosity which has not with the war. If only it were possible to get rid s, flying might become quite a swift means of trans- As it is, one sits interminably, waiting for weather the cowlings to be put in place, and then makes a riojjS^and noisy dash from place to place. The only dif ference, as far as I am concerned, between the days of peace and of war is that the peacetime '' dashing '' was at a humble no m.p.h., while the wartime "dashing" really is dashing. Unless you are an operational pilot with radio and all that, the delays are usually more prolonged, because, whereas at no m.p.h. it was only necessary to see half a mile, it is advisable to arrange a somewhat wider field of yision when miles are being covered at four a minute or more. Private Radio During the year or two before the war, these delays really were being finally removed from "official " civil flying, and the airlines were running very well indeed. They had been through a period, in Europe at least, where the desire to keep to schedule had overruled good sense, and the accident rate had been fairly high. This was partly caused by a too-sudden jump from common sense and look-see to applied science, but the main reason of the series of acci dents was undoubtedly the result of inter-airline competi tion and of a desire to show the world of ordinary people that airlines were both faster than o#j^r means of travel and equally reliable. By the time this war had started, the companies had grown out of the competitive spirit, and the question of whether or not a service should be run was decided in equal measure by the pilots and the operational and weather staff. As far as British civil airline companies were con cerned, the war could not possibly have started at a less opportune moment. But, of course, the ordinary amateur pilot carried out his hit-and-run flights, and he spent 90 per cent, of his time on the ground during " flying " periods. No really popular radio equipment—with R/T ground stations—had been planned or evolved, and the amateur travelled by the old "no see, no fly" methods. Very sensible, in the cir cumstances ; that is definitely the only way to fly unless you are entirely competent and are carrying an equally com petent crew. "INDICATOR.
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