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Aviation History
1943
1943 - 1583.PDF
JUNE 17TH, 1943 Topics ot the Day FLIGHT A Matter of Usage Wrong Ideas About Runway Needs : Modern Aircraft Require Clear Spaces Rather than Long Runs : Nerves and the Pilot THE scale of the present-day Service airfield has not,curiously enough, made pilots noticeably slackerin their approach technique. One would imagine that the effect of a trio of thousand-yard runways, for instance, would be that of making pilots almost incapable of dealing with runs of old-fashioned length, measured in hundreds rather than in thousands. Far from it. A little bit of official observing at any landing ground will provide the continuous spectacle ot the most advanced machines "doing short ones" hour after hour—unless, of course, the particular airfield hap- pens to be populated by an O.T.U., A.F.U., or what have you, when the beginners are naturally scared of coming in slowly-, and may not, even, be too hot in their judgment of height and distance with a new type. There seem to be two reasons for this continued and surprising virtuosity. One is that all pilots worth the name have schooled themselves from the very early days to use as little ground as possible, and the habit dies hard ; the other is that the present-day field is so crowded that one either has to land ver^ carefully behind someone else (who is taxying away at a quite unpredictable speed) or else to land short enough to be able to turn off at the first intersection of runways and thus leave the tarmac free for the next arrival. Very much on the quiet, there are hundreds of good aircraft parked in the most extraordinary places—and nearly every one of them has been flown to these places. Fast-landing and heavy machines are put down on the sort of strips which would only have been considered by the light aircraft pilots in the old days. Furthermore, they • are taken out again without incident—unless one can include a certain temporary change of heart-beat as an incident. Needless to say, they are put in and taken out by experienced pilots, but there is nothing particularly clever about the performance once an aircraft is thoroughly understood. Air or Wheel Brakes And it is in this sort of work that the " old-fashioned " aircraft, with a conventional landing gear, scores. As I've said before, aerodynamic drag will always be far more effective than any braking system, and before the tricycle can come finally into its own, whatever its varied advan- tages, someone will have to develop a system of powerful air braking for the aircraft to which it is fitted. It is really extraordinary to see or to feel the deceleration of, say,» a Beaufighter, from landing sp«»ed down to the sort of speed where air resistance is ceasing to take any impor- tant part. With a burst of braking at the end, one can deal with this sort of aircraft in less than three or four hundred yards of smooth and " brakeworthy" surface. Needless to say, these remarks do not apply to heavily loaded transports or bombers, but only to "attack" air- craft. Unfortunately, a good deal more is required for the take-off, though even here the actual length of run required is comparatively small. It has always been a cardinal error amongst lay people to imagine that the thousand-plus runway is really necessary to all modern machines; what it really needs is a mile or so of obstruction-free country. Five hundred yards of real runway (for everything but bombers and transports) ; another five hundred yards of usable surface; and as many hundred yards as can be provided of flat, treeless and houseless terrain. The run is nothing out of the ordinary, but it is absolutely essen- tial that the aircraft should' be held down in order to obtain safety speed as soon as possible. Height is no earthly good to the high-efficiency twin—all it needs is speed, and it can then carry on with one engine. This sort of airfield is, I "feel, the answer lor advanced bases. Provide a minimum of five hundred yards in ;Hi essential directions, but flatten everything within a radius of two miles. Flattening is very much easier than provid- ing " runable " surfaces; dynamite and bulldosers are the ^ only things needed. The wordb "(.any on with one engine" are liable, like certain manufacturers claims in peacetime, to make the ordinary person think that the whole thing is really very simple—rather like losing half one's power when driving a car. In fact of couise, engine failure at any time is a most harassing matter to the pilot. He has to do a very great deal of Ihinking and acting in a very short space of time. He has to hold the initial swing, put on rudder and elevator trim, think out which services, hydraulic and electric, are provided by the dead engine before deciding to feather the airscrew, and think cut possible reasons for the failure. When he arrives at the next suitable airfield he has to work out complicated problems of space and time. Once the undercarriage and flaps are down—and the operation may take quite a while if they have to be pumped down by hand—the outfit will no longer maintain height on one engine, so everything has to be down with the machine in just the right position for an approach—neither too soon nor too late. Nervous Pilotage All of which reminds me of "Witness's" remarks in a recent issue. The most nervous pilot, who may be in a state bordering on collapse before a show of any kind is much too busy thinking to be really frightened when it comes to the point. One is afraid, of course, but the real strain is the result of the concentration of mental and physical effort while one is coping with the possibly un- copable. In the middle ot it all a part of one's brain is saying, more or less unemotionally: "So tin's is it . curious that it should have happened in this way . . . this is the thing I've really been expecting all along. . . ." Ani that is how people die. whether in flying machines or i,i any other way ; there's a sense of peculiar familiarity about the whole thing—just as if one has dreamt it all befoie in the Dunne "Experiment with Time" manner. The speed and accuracy of the thinking involved is rio- thing short of tremendous—but is no more remarkable than the working of a man's or an animal's muscles in any other tight corner. I'm told that a particular gland introduces something resembling a drug into the blood stream to quicken all the reactions and give one the strength of ten for a brief period and to be paid for in weariness later ori. The worst of aircraft is that one is in a state of com- parative tension all the time, and quite small things can cause the drug to be put into use I was far less immediately worried the other week when most of the top engine cowling of a single-engined aircraft came loose than I was when a very small Perspex panel blew in with a mighty report on a similar machine some time before. Noise and a violent change of pressure can play havoc with the nerves, but the real difference between the two events was that I saw the cowling coining away, but did not, for a moment, know what all the racket was about when the panel blew in. I don't agree, that the psycho boys can bo much of a help when it comes to the business of sorting ont test or any other pilots. One can learn to accept dangers and
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