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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 0642.PDF
334 FLIGHT HERE Barrage Balloon Pioneer MR. LEONARD BROWN. who directed the making of Britain's first barrage balloons for Dunlop, has died at the age of sixty-one, three years after retiring. U.S. Flying Ambulances MORE than 173,000 sick and wounded were evacuated from all operational war theatres by U.S. Army aircraft during 1943. They included Allied as well as U.S. personnel, and only eleven deaths occurred—a commendably low rate of 0.006 per cent. Airscrew Blade Film A COPY of the colour film dealing with the manufacture of Weybridge blades, to which we referred recently, will be loaned, free of charge, to tech nical institutes, manufacturers, and all concerned with the aircraft industry, on application to the Publicity Manager, The Airscrew Co., Ltd., Grosvenor Gar dens House, Westminster, S.VV.i. Alternative showing dates should be stated. Salute the Soldier LOUD-SPEAKERS remind us (via the office window) as we write that this is "Salute the Soldier" week, and while we and our readers are primarily interested in the R.A.F. and F.A.A., we must also be well aware by now of the overwhelming value of " combined opera tions '' when,v it comes to smiting the Hun. In any case, the airborne troops are'equally our concern. Portuguese Venture THE four principal shipping companies in Portugal, have joined with the airways company, Aero Portuguese Limitada, in an association designed to develop Portuguese airlines to the Colonies and Brazil. The project will shortly be submitted to the Government. Dr. F. J. Viera Machada, Minister for the Colonies, has ap pointed a Commission to draw up a scheme for airfields in Sao Thome,. Brazil. THE cruising," nevertheless even if a 30 m.p.h. tail wind was present when the flight was made, 381 m.p.h. cannot be described as dawdling. World's Largest Airscrew? A THREE-BLADED airscrew measur ing soft, in diameter, believed to be the world's biggest, has been built for experimental purposes by Hamilton Standard at their East Hartford plant, U.S. Two vital factors, namely, tip speed and centrifugal loading on the blade roots, limit the practical increase of air screw diameter, and experts in this coun try have expressed the opinion that opti mum power-absorption would be reached by an eight-bladed contra-prop of about 22ft. diameter. Turbine-driven Airscrews STRESSING the fact that too much emphasis has been placed on jet pro pulsion, Mr. G. Geoffrey Smith, manag ing editor of Flight, pointed out in his most recent broadcast talk last Tuesday that a likely future development is the adoption of small-diameter contra-rotat ing airscrews driven by the turbine shaft, and that only the surplus gas from the turbine will be used for direct jet propul sion. Thus, he added, the gas turbine per fected by Group Captain Whittle might challenge the supremacy of the orthodox reciprocating engine rather than its air screw. Australian Air Plan T HE AustnlH&n Government is con- sideridg a post-war air plan to bring any place lin Australia within 24 hours of any othir. The plan\ltouldfprovide for 22 centres linked by trlAkjfcies, each centre to be served by in ifflf" III I'HM i Senator D. cameron, CSfnmonwealth Minister for ^Lircraft Production, announced that arfW the war Australia would build a fleet of passenger trans- GAWO ! Seniores Priores A MOSQUITO flown by James Follett, a de Havilland test pilot, recently covered the 377 miles from Toronto to New York in 55 minutes, mak ing a point-to-point average speed of 41 r m.p.h. This very fine per formance is a concrete reinforcement of the de Havilland claim for the Mosquito as being '' the fastest' aircraft of its day." 411 m.p.h. can scarcely be looked upon as " economical -n SPRING FASHION: The latest R.C.A.F. two-piece flying suit, known as the " Type E," avoids bulkiness by judicious zipping, and can be shed in 15 sec. port aircraft, as she could not risk essen tial air services being controlled by con flicting authorities. The Government's policy was to make Australia as independent as possible, he added. Anything But! TRUSTING—perhaps inadvisedly—to our memory, it was during the 1914-1918 war that the New Zealanders popularised the use of a special term for the non-flying Air Force officer; they called him a Kiwi, which is the national'' bird of , ...•" 1 New Zealand that does not fly. To be brutally frank, the word was generally^i reserved for those who" ' were suspected of being young and fit enough to fly but pre ferred a softer life on the ground, and thus the term acquired an anything but compli mentary significance' in those days. So it seemed passing strange that the New Zealand Official Press Department should, in sending out an account of the flying accomplishments of the R.N.Z. A.F., head it with the phrase, '' Kiwi Air men in Pacific." Evidently the Kiwi is so firmly estab-
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