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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 1781.PDF
'^RCRAFT ENGINEER FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY LV THE WORLD .• FOUNDED WOQ Editor C. M. POULSEN Managing Editor G. GEOFFREY SMITH, M.B.E. Chief Photographer JOHN YOXALL Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices.- DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.I 8-10. Telegrams : Truditur, Sedist, London. COVENTRY : CORPORATION ST., BIRMINGHAM, 2 : GUILDHALL BUILDINGS, NAVIGATION ST. Telegrams: Autocar, Coventry. Telegrams: Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone.Coventry 52 10. Telephone: Midland 297 1 (5 lines). Telephone: Waterloo 3133 (35 lines). MANCHESTER, 3 : GLASGOW, C.2 : 260, DEANSGATE, 26B, RENFIELDST., Telegrams : lliffe, Manchester. Telegrams : lliffe, Glasgow. Telephone : Blackfriars 4412. Telephone : Central 4857. SUBSCRIPTION RATES No. 1757. Vol. XLII. Home and Abroad : Year, £3 10. 6 months, Registered at the G.P.O. as a Newspaper. August 27th, 1942. The Outlook- £1 10 6. 3 months, 15s. 3d. Thursdays, One Shilling. -4P Anti-stall Devices B Y sending us news of a new stall-warning device recently patented by Mr. Rockefeller, of Vultee Aircraft, an American correspondent of ours revives a subject which was much to the fore some fifteen or twenty years ago. Many designers in those days were preoccupied with the idea of robbing the stall and subse quent spin of most of its terrors. The spin could be avoided, or at least its characteristics tamed, but the stall is, of course, one of the fundamental evolutions, if flying speed is lost, the aircraft must sink, even if there is no violent whipping down of the nose. Many were the devices evolved for the purpose of giving the pilot visible or audible warning of the ..jproach of the stall; some were very simple, others ^dlessly complicated. Mr. Mogens Bramson went arther than others, in that he not only designed a warn ing device (it was a simple vane which maintained one attitude when the aircraft was flying normally and changed to another when the angle of incidence exceeded a certain pre-selected figure), but he coupled this to a pneumatic mechanism which operated the elevators, thus preventing the aircraft from reaching the stall. The device, which became known as the Savage-Bramson anti-stall gear, would probably have come into fairly extensive use had not at about the same time Mr. (now Sir Frederick) Handley Page invented the leading-edge slot, which delayed the stalling of the wing tips and thus prevented the incipient spin from developing into a vicious one. The new American patent is for a device with a iorward-facing horn connected to a diaphragm, the change in airflow altering the pressure on the diaphragm and closing an electrical circuit which gives the stall warning. The Vultee invention does not sound particu larly impressive in itself (no better than the Bramson unstable vane, for example), but the fact that aircraft engineers in America should be occupying themselves with the subject of stall-warning devices is interesting, and leads one to ponder the advisability of reviving the Savage-Bramson anti-stall gear, or some modern de velopment of it. Air Transport in War /ILTHOUGH everybody is now so accustomed to f"\ the marvels of flight that new instances scarcely arouse any particular excitement, the recent meetings of Allied leaders in Egypt and aiterwards in Moscow were so remarkable as almost to demand com memoration by the Poet Laureate. The Prime Minister and the representative of the President of the United States, with their entourage, flew out from England, Field Marshal Smuts arrived by air from South Africa, and General Wavell from India used the same means of travel. General de Gaulle had previously arrived in Egypt by air. Sir Frederick Sykes once called Cairo the "Clapham Junction of the air," and on this occa sion at least it really deserved the name. Then, while the Prime Minister of South Africa returned to his own land, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder left his station in Egypt to fly on with the party to Moscow to meet the Premier of Russia. The United Nations, in the persons of their leaders, were manifestly united in fact on this occasion, and all due to the agency of aircraft. The remarkable nature of this gathering becomes even more striking by a comparison with what happened in the last war'. Then it was thought most desirable that Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, should visit Russia to consult on common plans. He could not go by air; he had to trust to surface transport, and the cruiser H.M.S. Hampshire struck a mine off the north of Scotland, and carried the British War Minister to the
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