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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 0552.PDF
FLIGHT " Indicator " Discusses the Special Dangers of a Sense of- \V! MARCH 22ND, 1945 False And Suggests that This Sense is the Primary Cause of Flying Accidents : Custom as the Quietus to Caution : Developing New Standards of Qood Flying Behaviour THE longer one is concerned with this flying business,the more obvious does it become that its greatestdanger lies in the sense of false security which con- tinued experience engenders. Very rarely now—except through enemy action—are structural failure or fire experi- enced, and by far the most common cause of accident is one variation or another of an error of judgment. That, and nothing more. Of course, the "errors" can be infinitely varied. The kind of personal and mechanical write-off resulting from a reckless low-flying exhibition cannot be put alongside the occasional transport catastrophe. The latter may, indirectly, be caused by an over-optimistic weather report and, more directly, by the failure either of part of the^ navigation equipment or the capacities of the membep'^f the crew to cope with a difficult situation. But the two are allied and, in the final estimation of cause, the words "error of judgment" must inevitably appear. And such errors are the direct result of something that can only be described as a false sense of security. Some- how or other, in the peacetime future, this sense must be curbed. Pilots, private and professional, must not only be educated to guard themselves against it in their trail- ing days but must be prevented from developing it they gain experience, and disciplinary action must, fo sake of the general public as well as innocent passen| be taken and widely publicised when cases of dangepbus1 or careless flying are brought to the '' court''—whatever this may be. ; Professional and Amateur No doubt the transport concerns will look after iheir own welfare, with or witbeuT the coercion of the insurant©* companies, and we need not fear that lack of discipline wHl be rife amongst pilots for whom a clear record is a - career. But hpw are we going to deal with the gradually increasing number of amateur and semi-amateur pilots? The very words "severe disciplinary action " give the average English person a sharp feeling of intense embarrass- ment, and the idea of a lot of pilots spying and reporting on one another is very much more than repugnant. Other nations may think nothing of writing reports (in triplicate) on their friends' or relations' behaviour in the air (or at any other time), but, however many imploring posters, articles and pamphlets were printed, asking us to be public- spirited in this particular way, nothing would induce us to take any concerted action. In fact, the average pilot, even if he thinks that a particular colleague's performance is criminally poor, will go out of his way, when asked to give evidence, to make the whole* tbkfg appear as the safest exhibition on record. Of course, there will always be the irate layman who will be only too glad to report anything that ha considers to be reckless flying, but his testimony is likely to be of very low value. Nevertheless, both prevention and cure must come, so to speak, from "within." Flying people themselves, and their ruling bodies, must be the witnesses, the prosecutors, and the judges. Somehow, pilots themselves must be made to feel that reckless, stupid, or careless flying is just "not done," and is as anti-social as robbery with violence. For some years now, I believe, the Service has been treating such behaviour with the utmost seriousness, and a pilot who is convicted by a court martial is lucky if he is merely reduced in rank and grounded for an extensive period. The idea, presumably, is not so much one of punishment, as af '' making an example'' and of giving all trainees the idea that idiotic flying is a no better form of behaviour than handing in a succession of known-to-be-rubber cheques. It doesn't really much matter—except to the relatives and friends—how many private pilots succeed in putting what is left of themselves into mortuaries. One feels that it is their own affair if they care to take a chance on such an uncomfortable denouement. But there are the people on the ground to be considered, and a high crash-rate among amateurs will do irreparable harm to the whole flying in- dustry. The layman will certainly not be able to distin- guish satisfactorily between one accident and another, and he can be forgiven if he tends to think that flying as a_. whole is nothing but a rash interference with the laws of gravity. If there must be accidents they must be of the ahnost-unavoidabj#»"ty~pe. Instructional TE^sycholo§ry '' making a way of r Ihishment of%;rim lying people crackers and show results Andin. . m; is probably as poor and as ing accidents as is the vicious (men know no better. Since more intelligent than safe- chologists should be able to been able to dig their toes " will not, of course, be a j ; they will be the instructors, the experienced pilots, and any other sec- ity likely to have some influence on ntWfporaj?f flying people. I insis^*that nearly every avoidable accident is caused by a^efese of false security experienced particularly while flf in present-day aircraft. In these one is surrounded by an apparently solid structure, which is the only reality in a strange aerial world, and there is little or no sense of speed. The aircraft, in fact, sits "still" while a land- scape unrolls itself below and while a needle points mean- inglessly at " 32 " or some other figure on the air-speed indicator. Everything around has the old familiar appear- ance ; if it were not for the peculiarly gluey solidity of the '' outside,'' one feels even that a stroll on to the wing would be quite pleasant—the solidity being merely, so to speak, a peculiarity of conditions outside all flying machines. Stuffed Clouds The impression of standing still is even more marked when flying through cloud. Surrounded by a grey fog, the pilot keeps a lot of instrumental recordings properly lined up, and in a quite unreal way ponders on his likely position in relation to a landscape which is nothing more in his mind than a map. Once again the ridiculous speed figure is a subject only of academic calculations, and is not an actual velocity which, if the cloud happened to be "stuffed " with a piece of high ground, would reduce both him and his oh-so-solid conveyance to brutal and indescrib- able chaos amongst boulders and trees. Time after time we may set off in the sort of weather in which one just shouldn't fly, until one day a lesson is learnt when there isn't room to turn, and when the speed, even with undercarriage and flaps down, is too high for map- reading in visibility of the thousand-yard order. Perhap? a pilot has a particular aerobatic trick—a roll at ground level or a complete aileron turn and recovery from a thousand feet. He is so busy that the earth doesn't look hard and real—it is merely the datum line of the trick. i
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