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Aviation History
1943
1943 - 1659.PDF
JUNE 24TH, 1943 FLIGHT 669 CORRESPONDENCE The Editoi does not hold himself responsible for the views expressed by correspondents. The names and addresses of the writers, not necessarily for publication, must in all cases accompany letters. TECHNICAL TRAINING The Fighting Man is Still Important IN the correspondence columns of Flight of May 27th, R. D.Leakey makes some thoughtful comments on the place of engineers in this war. There is certainly no doubt that the technicians are doing an excellent job, but that is a far cry from declaring the human element non-existent. Until all weapons are wireless-controlled, the fighting man is, at the very least, as important as the engineer. The part played by automatic machinery has always been overestimated. Take Mr. Leakey's own example of the torpedo. Has he forgotten the pilot or submarine commander who releases it at the right moment, at the right place ? Strategical skill still plays a large part in the winning or losing of any battle. And in any case there are quite a few highly important jobs where few intricate "tools" are used and the means of success are initiative, courage, and endurance. To say modern wars are -won by engineers is only half the story. Fighting men never forget the builders and designers of their weapons, but neither are they likely to forget the famous remark, "Give us tne tools and WE will finish the job." j. H. BOOST PRESSURE VARIATION Increased Load the Ruling Factor •npHE following is my own, and not in any way an official, -*- answer to this very annoying '' Boost Pressure Variation '' business. I have read the many ideas of your correspondents on this subject, and, since I have had some experience with Merlins on test beds, may be able to help to clear things. If an aircraft were stationary on the ground with the engine running and the pitch of the propeller blades were increased, the only appreciable effects produced on the engine would be to increase the load and the packing effect at the air intake. Now the ancfoid capsule of the boost-control unit is subject only to changes in boost pressure in this case, since the pilot has not touched his manual throttle control. Increasing the load on the engine would automatically decrease the r.p.m., thus decreasing the volumetric require- ment of the engine to a greater extent than the supercharger delivery would be decreased. Consequently, the boost pressure would tend to rise and be immediately corrected by the boost control unit. " Packing " at the air intake would also tend to increase the boost pressure and be similarly corrected by the boost control unit. However, there is naturally a certain amount of friction in the control linkages, servo piston, etc., which tends to slow up the corrective action of the boost-control unit and even to stop it prematurely, thus accounting for the slight rise in boost pressure when the pitch of the propeller is increased slightly. Similarly, the converse applies. H. BICKERTON. / [This correspondence is now closed.—ED.] LONG-RANGE AIR TRANSPORT Why Not Seadromes ? POST-WAR air transport is very much in everyone's mindjust now, judging from letters and articles in the Press. To Great Britain the Empire air routes and the Transatlantic are the all-important ones. All involve very long distances, which is merely another way oi saying that many of the stages to be flown will involve the carrying ot large quantities of fuel, with corresponding reduction in paylcad. The Atlantic is the obvious case, but even on Empire flights large sea crossings may become desirable. For instance, there is the question of a route from the east coast of South Africa to Australia, across the Indian Ocean Surely the use of seadromes, such as the Armstrong and Creed, would be of enormous advantage in reducing the over- sea stages on such routes? With modern radio and other aids to navigation pilots should have no difficulty in finding the seadromes, and the Fleet Air Arm is demonstrating daily-the possibility of taking off from and landing on the heaving deck of a carrier. How much simpler it would be to land on the quite steady and longer platform of a seadrome. I realise that the seadrome would be stationary whereas the carrier is steam- ing into wind, thus virtually reducing take-off and landing speeds, but the greater length of the seadrome should more than make up for this. Perhaps some of your readers can explain why seadromes have not been developed, although their design is'many yearsold - . "ATLANTIS." [The main obstacle in the way of establishing seadromes is an economic rather than a technical one. The seadrome is probably quite feasible, and aircraft pilots could, with modern aids, possibly land on even in poor visibility. But the cost of a seadrome would be likely to run into millions, and the interest on the capital, depreciation, running expenses and so forth could only be obtained from landing fees. Unless the traffic intensity were such as to be operationally dangerous, these fees would probably exceed the saving resulting from the shorter stages.—ED.] CIVILIAN AIR SAFETY There Can be No Sporting Spirit in Total War IS it not time that we Britons stopped handicapping ourselvesin our war against the Axis by still regarding certain actions as " unsporting " ? We were all horrified by the recent shooting down of a B.O.A. airliner, somewhere over the Atlantic, by German war- planes; but isn't that just the sort of thing we must expect? The curiously inconsistent thing about us is that we now accept the bombing and machine-gunning of civilians in the streets of our frontier coast towns by German sneak raiders as being all part of the war, yet when a party of civilians, including women and children (who, incidentally, could hardly have been on official business) lose their lives in the Atlantic at the hands of enemy airmen, we virtually ej«laim in indignation: "I say, you know, that's not playing the game! " Yet where is the difference? Patently there isn't any. Just after the loss of the B.O.A. airliner the story was repeated in at least one London newspaper how there was a sort of tacit understanding that each side should leave its opponent's civil airliners alone, presumably on the score that each of us found Lisbon and Stockholm very useful. Of course, this has been denied with suspicious eagerness every time the suggestion was forced upon the notice of the authorities, but whether true or not it helps to keep alive the absurd idea that some spark of sporting instinct should still glow, however unofficial and however dimly, in this filthy but necessary business of exterminating Fascist vermin from the suffering world. Personally, I see no logical reason why an R.A.F. pilot should not shoot down any machine of the Lufthansa he might encounter, and, in my opinion, he need have not the slightest twinge of conscience if he does; it might be carrying Herr Schickelgruber and his Chief Thugs—just as that B.O.A. air- liner might have been bringing Mr. Churchill back from Algiers! Further than that, such aircraft might be taking home information far more valuable to the other side than even the highest placed individual. And even supposing there did exist an unofficial agreement to ignore each other's civil air- liners, surely we know that the Germans would violate it whenever they thought it might be worth their while. The probability that some such understanding did exist is clearly indicated by the fact that B.O.A. have plied to and fro between this country and Lisbon for so long without pre- vious interference. For it cannot be denied that the Germans, whose aircraft use the same airfield, must always have known exactly when our aircraft were leaving, and nothing could have been easier than for the Lufthansa at Lisbon to tip off the Luftwaffe (its own illegitimate offspring!) every time a B.O.A. aircraft left the airport. All that we can reasonably be surprised about is that this was the first British civil airliner from Lisbon to be so attacked, and that we apparently depended upon the Hun playing the British idea of a gentleman to such a ridiculous degree that we flew the crossing in daylight instead of under the protective cover of night. "REALIST."
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