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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 1809.PDF
AUGUST 31ST, 1944 FLIGHT 237 ARTIFICIAL CRAVITY up. As it happened, I couldn't get the flaps down for the landing, and the business of putting the aircraft finally on the runway involved me in a number of experimental ele vator movements while feeling for the ground and the right moment. At each premature check on the elevators the buffeting vibration became apparent. From 85 m.p.h. downwards I was at each movement, in fact, forcing a pre mature stall by increasing the angle of attack, or increas ing the loading, by>the use of the elevator, and obtaining a series of momentary stall disturbances. Without flaps, this aircraft is a very clean one, and the In spite of the added war load, performance has climbed amazingly, largely due to the emergence of more powerful and more efficient engines. One famous -single-seat fighter, at the cost of- a 40 per cent, increase in all-up weight, attains level speed 35 per cent, faster than its 1939 ancestor, while its rate of climb is 80 per cent, better. Power in the engine has doubled. When the war began, the Royal Air Force's heavy bombers could carry a bomb-load of 4,000 to 5,000 lb. Nowadays the iour-engined giants can carry up to 18,000 lb. of bombs on a single mission, and many of them can house the huge 12,000 lb. bombs which have done so much to crush heavily defended enemy submarine pens and similar difficult targets. Effective radius of action has expanded nearly threefold—from 600 miles to r,5oo miles. Twin-engined fighters have displayed astonishing and unex pected versatility. They have been developed for service as night-fighters, as torpedo planes, as photographic reconnaissance aircraft, as fighter-bombers—to mention only a few of numer ous metam&rphoses. They carry exceptionally heavy arma ment, yet achieve very high speeds. Like the single-engined British fighters, the swiftest representatives of this class now easily achieve true level speeds in the 400-450 m.p.h. band, while far higher speeds are well within the range of the new British jet-propelled warplanes which are now in production. New industries and revolutionary changes in design have pro foundly affected warplane equipment. Manufacture of gun- turrets, first developed by British technicians, has spread from a handful of skilled operatives in one or two factories to become disturbances were no doubt intensified by the turbulent nature of the air over a hot runway. In windless condi tions I confess to a. liking for modern ideas in runway length when it comes to making a flap-less and largely brakeless landing! The ever-present possibility of failures of that kind, even with a modern and well -serviced trans port aircraft, makes one wonder about the future of air field and aircraft development. How doth custom stale! Long ago I seem to remember a full column of drama in a Sunday newspaper following a flapless landing in a similar type by a very well-known test pilot. "INDICATOR." the occupation of a specialised and widespread industry employ ing thousands of hands. Airscrews have advanced in size, efficiency and complexity. The two-bladed and three-bladed airscrews of 1939 are now supplemented by four-bladed and five-bladed airscrews, and by contra-rotating six-bladed units. Undercarriages of yesterday are dwarfed by the mighty units required to support the giant bombers on the ground; in the larger systems individual light alloy forgings weighing up to 250 lb. are needed. Experiments are being pressed forward on the British invention of the caterpillar track undercarriage designed to spread the load of the still heavier bombing aircraft of the near future. And so, in every sphere, British engineering genius is keeping - the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm in the van of tech nical progress—from the wonders of radar, brought to technical success and quantity production by British engineers alone, to refinement in design of the smallest nuts and bolts. The Production Record British success in the maintenance and expansion of aircraft production, despite bombing, "black-out," dispersal of plant, and many other difficulties, ranks at least equal with British technical achievement. The British production record is once again superior to the enemy's. In the last year for which figures have been released 27,273 new British aircraft and 60,000 engines were built. This total of new aircraft reveals patt only of the nation's real production achievement. What matters to the fighting Services is the number of aircraft delivered to them in fighting trim. Supplementing the completely new aircraft, no fewer than 18,000 aircraft were repaired and returned in new condition to service during the year. Spares production, essential to keep hard-worked warplanes flying, is equivalent to between 50 and 60 per cent, of the output of complete aircraft. Hence, the true productive effort of the British aircraft industry in the year may be fairly estimated as equivalent to some 60,000 aircraft, or approximaetely 5,000 a month. That effort was the work of nearly two million operatives, employed in factories controlled by more than 15,000 separate companies drawn from every branch of engineering. Some measure of the dispersal needed to ensure invulnerability of production lines in the face of heavy bombing may be gleaned from the fact that one main factory alone is now dispersed into seventy basic units, supported by hundreds of smaller units and sub-contracting plants. Likewise, co-operation between companies has bsen extended on an immense scale under group production schemes for the manufacture of greatly wanted types of aircraft. Major engineering concerns are thus grouped together as "daughter firms" to a "parent firm" which was responsible for designiug and producing the prototype. To-day, the British aircraft industry, while striving with undiminished energy to meet every requirement of the air war, is beginning to think of the needs of air transport in the air age of to-morrow. There, it is as confident of success as in the grim war days. Already, new types of British trans port aircraft are beginning to take shape, some on the drawing "board, same nearing flight, while one or two have already taken the air. Five Years The British Aircraft Industry's Amazing Achievement in Spite of Blitzes and Dispersal SUNDAY next,. September 3rd, will be very different from that memorable Sunday five years ago, when Mr. Chamberlain solemnly announced that Great Britain has declared war on Germany. To-day we are masters in the skies not only technically (that we have . always been) but numerically. For that we have to thank our designers and our workers in the first instance, who gave the Services the engines and aircraft which made this supremacy possible. It is, therefore, fitting that the tre mendous work that has been done in those five years should be reviewed. Such a review has been prepared by the information department of the S.B.A.C. It is as follows: — „ . Invention and development, in particular, haye surpassed expectations. To-day not one of the first-line aircraft models which formed the backbone of the Royal Air Force in 1939 remains in service, though famous names carry on the great tradition in forms vastly more powerful and more deadly than their ancestors. In 1939 the typical British single-seat fighter was a mono plane powered with the exceptionally heavy armament—at that date—of eight rifle-calibre machine-guns. Five years later the first-line fighter is armed with shell-firing cannon guns, 0.5m. machine-guns, while many carry additional rocket-projectors able to fire salvos equivalent in power to a broadside of 6in. naval guns. Moreover, the fighter to-day can carry individual bombs up to r,ooo lb. in weight. How Performance Has Grown
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