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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 0927.PDF
MAY 4TH, 1944 FLIGHT 481 FUTURE OF CIVIL AVIATION loading of the tailless will go up to about 50 lb. per sq. ft., whereas for the smaller types to have a thick enough wing to house the necessary equip ment and power plant, the wing loading must be of the order of 30 lb. per sq. ft. This brings out the desirability of going as large as possible to gain all the accumulated advantages of the tailless machine. There are experi enced engineers who are opposed to attempting a con ventional landplane above 250,000 lb., and this is pro bably a sound view. Should it become desirable, however, to go beyond this, the con struction of larger machines . might become feasible in ten years' time, using the tailless design with improved mater ials and constructional tech nique. '' To attain high speed and long range, machines must go to greater heights taking advantage also of the lower drag characteristics discussed, and we may anticipate see ing, during this third five- year period, the 100-ton machine with a cruising speed of 280 m.p.h. at 30,000ft., using buried power plants." Dealing with the future of the flying-boat, Sir Roy men tioned that it was a subject worthy of a paper on its own. Actually, it would seem that the future of the flying-boat is hanging in the balance, and that, if its design is pursued on existing conventional lines, its future will not be very rosy. Passenger flying-boats have been one of the outstanding developments of British civil aviation in the past, but due to their employment in what have proved to be a whole number of unsuitable places, and also to lack of sufficient operational experience, come in for unjustified criticism in no small measure. Some of the outlying air routes of our Commonwealth still have no provision for up-to-date airports. Without proper airfields our long Empire routes will be seriously handicapped, and one cannot visualise airfields of the kind required being built at the smaller bases for many years to come. It would be possible, however, to provide Layout of 4-engined pusher monoplane with an all up weight ot 28,000 lb. facilities for flying-boats at a cost lower than that of modem concrete runways, and for this reason alone it is felt that there will be a fair demand for moderate-sized flying-boats operating at medium altitudes and with ranges of about 1,000 miles. For large, long-range transatlantic airliners, Sir Roy said he could not believe that there is much to be said for the flying-boat in sizes below 250,000- 300,000 lb. However, when we come to aircraft of 300,000- 400,000 lb. all up weight, the problems of undercarriages, wheels, brakes and airfields, will obviously become serious, and that, he submitted, is where the large flying- boat will come into its own, providing the necessary initia tive and vision is put into the design. On the subject of fuels and oils for future civil aviation. Sir Roy considered that we shall have to give careful con sideration to certain of the low volatility blends generally known as safety fuels, and went on to say that British aero-engine development has, in his submission, suffered a handicap through the practice of conducting development work and all type testing of military machines on oil pur chased to a Government specification, viz., D.T.D. log, which necessitated that the engine should, so to speak, be designed to run on a variable and indifferent quality of oil. Furthermore, since all that was required of the oil supplier was to meet the specification at the lowest possible price, there was little inducement or opportunity for the oil companies to undertake research toward the development of high-per formance lubricating oils. This situation is only slightly altered by the modified D.T.D. 472 specification. X £ a < 0 AME R Type Rolls-Royce Merlin Bristol Hercules ... Rolls-Royce Gri0on Xapier Sabre Allison V-1710 Pratt and Whitney R-1830 Wright R-1820 ... Wright R-2600 ... Tratt and Whitney Double Wasp ... Wright R-3350 ... Cooling Liquid Air Liquid Liquid Liquid Air Air Air Air Air Number of Cylinders 12 14 12 24 12 14 » 14 18 IS Cylinder Layout Vee In-Line Two-Bank Radial Vee In-Line Horizontal 11 in Line Vee In-Line Two-Bank Radial Radial Two-Bank Radial Two-Bank Radial Two-Bank Radial Pom Take off 1,600 1,600 1,750 2,200 1,200 1,200 1,200 1,700 2,000 2,200 ers Economical Cruising 800 800 875 1,100 600 600 600 850 1,000 1,100 Dry Weight lb. 1,800 1,900 1,900 2,350 1,350 1,450 1,300 2,000 2,400 2,000 Specific Weight* lb./h.p. 1.12 1.10 1.00 1.07 1.12 1.20 1.08 1.18 1.20 1.18 * Approximately 0.4 Ib./.hp. should be allowed on liquid cooled engines for the cooling system. THE FIRST 5-YEAR POST-WAR PERIOD : Representative types of British and American yngines likely to be available immediately after the war for civil use, with estimated performances.
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