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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 0456.PDF
264 FLIGHT MARCH 8TH, 1945 CORRESPONDENCE The Editor does no! hold himself responsible for th: views expressed by correspondents. The names and addresses of the writers- not necessarily for publication, mus: in all cases accompany letters. MONOCOQUES Secondary Function 0/ Stringers WFT1I reference to the article on " Monocoques" byM;iuric<: F. Alvvard in Flight, January 18th, variousarrangeiiH-ots of stringers are described and a plea is pat forward stressing the advantages of tubular sections. Theprimary iauction of stringers as mentioned in the article is to take the bending loads on the fuselage, but quite an importanti.eroiuJary function is that of carrying the internal equipment 1 if the aircraft. In modern bombers and general reconnaissance aircraft such;>s used by Coastal Command this internal equipment reaches formidable proportions. A stringer section of the L or Z typemakes for ease in mounting equipment, whereas the O section advocated would be considerably more difficult, therefore inmilitary aircraft, at any rate', this point is worth considering. Incidentally, the small sketch showing the Flying Fortressstringer section is slightly incorrect. This stringer section should be an extruded one, i.e., a bulb angle, - and not therolled section shown. G. YOUNG. IMPOSSIBILITY OF FUTURE WARS Closer Examination of a Fearful Weapon ASSUMING that your correspondent, T. Hamilton-Adams,in his letter Might, Feb. 8, 1945) on liquid gas shells, in-tended it to be taken seriously, I think this fearful weapon would bear closer examination. Wearing our suit of armour plate, made of the same materialas the shell (for the oxy-hydrogen reaction which drives the shell is equal to a 6,300 m.p.h. hurricane, and the heatgenerated, 3,100 deg. C, would melt practically everything, C.H.U.s or 13.Th.U s are not given), we will approach this mis-sile to discover moie of its deadly secrets. It is to be fired from a cordite charged tube in the sea, measuring, shall we say,50ft. long with a diameter equal to about one square foot in area. Pushing nearly one and a half tons of sea in front of itat quite a respectable muzzle velocity (some cordite charge!) the cap falls away from the central venturi tube and the shellbegins its j,000-mile journey. It might encounter some deflecting winds before reachingthe stratosphere, but, of course, this would not affect the accuracy for which this projectile is noted. The air rushingthrough the tube is hotted up, expanded and vented at two atmospheres pressure in such a manner as to rotate the shellabout its axis. There is very little air to be expanded in the stratosphere, but our shell is not going to be stopped by alittle thing like that. The effluent reaction knows better than te come out of the open front of the venturi tube. The split-second timing device cuts off the'fuel and the shellcommences its descent into the lower atmosphere and more cross winds. Upon landing in the target area of two squaremiles the explosion of less than 73IC. of oxy-hydiogen is sul'lu••it-nt to wreck half New York. This makes war impossible.What is the Government doing ? S. FRANKLIN. IN REPLY TO HORACE " How Little and How Much It Is " HAVING a practical interest in getting things from here tothere, mostly, and sometimes back again, I have a fellow-feeling for Mr. Shackleton and Horace. Surely the answer is packaging, or containing, or lumping-it-all-together-before-you-piit-it-in-your-big-expensive-aircraft. I am sure neither I'.A.A. nor B.O.A. would get their thirtypassengers into an air-liner (beautiful and sleek as distinct lioni air freighter fat and lumpish with legs hanging down) intwo minutes if they all brought their sponge bags and pyjamas, or old-fashioned nightdresses, and bottles and all that alongloose and packed them into little lockers in the aircraft in situ, despite the well-directed efforts of the customs to resist thepresent system. I realise there are difficulties; be your figure never so slab-sided, there is bound to be plumbing and girders and things to prevent your dropping in a nice cubic container 25ft. longby 6ft. 5111. wide by 5ft. gin. high into a convenient hole in freighter 25ft. o]\n long by 6ft. 5f"«in. wide by 5ft. 93^in.deep. You mnv have to break down a bit before you break up. Nature found this out a long time ago (c.j. wartimesausage), but the principle still holds. It may even be helped if you can get a kindly co-operative machine like the Conestogato lift up its tail for the purpose. It's an awful pity about gliders, but of course Mr. Shackletonand Horace are right. Mr. Stevenson got the same idea some time ago and made it work by rail, but then he never proposedto harness one frightfully complicated and expensive Billy (Puffing) to just a single truck, or even two. Also, he had theadvantage that he could start from most anywhere and once he had started he was of . He did not have to assembleBilly and all his attendant little trucks on Salisbury Plain before he yanked the whistle, cleared the cows ofi the line,and said "Let's get cracking." It all goes to show, though, that you can't afford to leaveyour big expensive freighter lying about while you decide whether to put the specie on top of the bales or the bales ontop of the specie and then discover that the eggs are at the bottom anyway, and have to start again from scratch. If youcannot make up your mind about that, you had better stick to a camel. Anyhow, that would solve the egg problem. ' ' B. WEBB WARE. SMALL CIVIL AIRFIELDS What Are the Minimum Requirements ? "\7"OUR articles on the " Ercoupe " are most interesting, but-*- raise a point of vital interest to me, namely, the size of landing field required. It is possible to get any amount of information on largeairfields, but since these will be relatively few in number they can be left to specialists in their design. However, there maybe hundreds or thousands of private or semi-private lauding fields after the war, and on these it seems most desirable butimpossible to get information. It would seem that the requirements are as follows: — (a) The landing field would be used only under conditionsof good visibility, wind velocity, say, not over 30 m.p.h., temperature not less than, say, 35 degrees. Nonight landings. (b) There would be no radio landing equipment 3r met.service except by telephone for a large airport. In bad * weather ground signals would direct aircraft to thenearest properly equipped airport. (c) The maximum size of aircraft using the field would beabout a five-seater, but two- and three-seaters would be the average type(d) Only portion of the runway might be surfaced. Roughly, the idea I have in mind is that of a landing fieldadjoining, say, a garage at the seaside where private aircraft could land, and where they could get refuelled. Now can anyof your readers say: (a) What are the minimum runway , lengths required? (b) What angle is required for the fiightway v*base at each end of a runway? (c). What is the minimum ground equipment required ? I suggest an office with 'phone to met. station, lavatories,refuelling gear, small workshop for minor repairs, small crash tender and first-aid equipment. If your readers can give anyinformation on the above points 1 should be most grateful. CHARLES ALIAGA KELLY (Town Planning Officer). SAFETY FIRST Zero-Zero Landings Are Possible Now * " IN my modest endeavour to push forward the cause of Britishcivil aviation, I am becoming almost a regular contributor to your Correspondence columns. I find once again that I mustcross swords with "Indicator." To suggest to operators that they should aim at nothingbetter than 90 per cent, regularity is pure defeatism. If we are going to set our civil aviation on its feet, nothing less than100 per cent, regularity must be our aim. and although realis- ing that to attain this will be extremely difficult, we shouldexpect to attain at least 99 per cent, regularity. I believe j'our ,- Editorial successfully disposes of "Indicator's" suggestionregarding special weather aircraft, and nothing more need be said on this point.However, if "Indicator" was as familiar with the work of
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