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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 1490.PDF
68 FLIGHT JULY I6TH, 1942 METAL CONSTRUCTION OF TWENTY YEARS ACO in other words, the types of design which surrounded it at the 1920 Olympia Aero Show. The most powerful engine oi that day was the Rolls-Royce Condor of 600 h.p. Few aircraft were fitted with it, the majority being content with the more modest Siddeley Puma of 250 h.p. or the Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII of 360 h.p., and a few having the 450 h.p. Napier Lion. There wen: great hopeH of a boom is civil aviation, and many firms exhibited their attempts at interpreting future demands. The war was over, and the thoughts of all turned naturally to civil flying. In the main the *civil types shown were "civilised" versions of military types, although a few, cabin machines appeared. Among the commercial types were two triplanes. There was not a single monoplane on view! Construction was that usual The manner of turning over the edge of the tailplane cover ing at the tip is shown on the left. On the right is a portion of fixed wing and an aileron. The covering was in the form of panels, with bent-up edges running chordwise. These edges were covered by U-section capping strips, and the free edges of the flat-plate ribs were locked between them by rivets. Between the ribs the covering was fluted at intervals for stiffness. for the time: wooden structure members with steel fit tings and R.A.F. wire bracing. It was in such surroundings that the Short all-metal machine appeared. At first it was known as the Swallow, I>u1 later changes resulted in the Silver Slreak, and it is under the latter name that I propose to place it among aircraft which were ahead of their time. One might have thought that the Silver Streak would have caused something like a sensation. Well, it didn't. The fuselage of tne Silver Streak was a stressed-skin structure with stringers of V-section and formers of L-section, the free edge of the L being rolled, as shown. That was very advanced construction in 1920. That it was clever was generally admitted, but there was much shaking of heads. The wing covering was extremely thin (I forget the exact gauge, but it was certainly thicke'if*' than the strip steel which later came into use for struc ture members), and there was the rather unknown risk of corrosion, known to exist but the true facts of which had not been verified. I well remember discussing the matter with Mr. Oswald Short. Always very level-headed, he admitted that duralumin would corrode, but, he said, " why be so afraid 01 that? Corrosion has been with us ever since we started building structures, only we call it rust and are not afraid of it." And there was a great deal of truth in that. But he found it very difficult to convince the authorities, and during the next few years he wore hollows in the steps of the Air Ministry in his fight to get stressed-skin con struction recognised. Ultimately he succeeded, but a less determined man might well have given up the attempt and rested content with giving the Air Ministry the same old girder type of construction which had served us ever since we began to fly. Oswald Short has never had his due recognition for that pioneer work, nor for much that followed it. But, to return to the Silver Streak, I find that in Flight, of July 22nd, 1920, I wrote: "It goes without saying that the Short all-metal machine is not only the v/ most interesting on this stand, but the feature of the show. f, The Short Silver Streak of 1920. In addition to being of all-metal construction the machine was of very neat outline.
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