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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1222.PDF
666 FLIGHT " Indicator " Discusses Topic* of the Day *UNE 21ST, I945 Proper Propaganda Average Person" Sublimely Ignorant of Important Facts Concerning Safety : Information More Useful Than Slogans REMEMBERING mankind's instinctive fear of heightand the racial memory of the unpleasant things thatgravity can do to the unprotected vertebrate mammal, it is an extraordinary thing that we have ever taken, even half-heartedly, to the air. It is, I suppose, just another example of the way in which the courage of the mind can beat down the quaking of mere flesh and blood—and another example of the sort of thing which, despite Belsens, Buchenwalds and Dachaus, gives us hope that we may eventually struggle out of the pit. Though I think we are deceiving ourselves if we imagine that, even if they can afford to do so, a very large propor- tion of ordinary people will take immediately to the jar*** as soon as convenient services are made available, there is, however, one marked difference between the international traveller of 1939 and his counterpart of 1945. He is now ready to accept air transport as part of his daily life and is ready to use it once he is convinced of its safety, economy and comfort. For five years his skies ha ~ santly crowded with various types of flying for five years his news services have spok almost astronomical numbers of aircraft out daily on raids and sorties in different parts of By habit he may have learnt to think that these always stay in the air unless adversely affected b; action, and if h^fiislikes them at all it is some of them have had a nasty way of dropping n and lethal projectiles out of their bellies. The difficulty will be that of .convincing tly*»*average person that air travel has any particular intejseSt for him— in other words, that it is a safe, inexpensive, comfortable, and usefully reliable way of getting about. That, in fact, flying is an ordinary thing and will take its place in the world's transport system as a special supplement to the existing services. Convenience Only Of course, it should not be necessary to publicise air travel, and I am certain that no ordinary propaganda drive, with all the ingenious slogans that can possibly be invented, will have more than the slightest influence on the travelling public. Why should*"^ ? People are not going to pay high fares and, in the opinion of some, risk their necks, simply because they are told that it is a " good " thing to do, that " Britain's Future is in the Air," or something-or-other. Our future is in the air only if the use of aircraft can increase our trade and general prosperity. Travellers don't board ocean liners because we're a mari- time nation and because it's "in our blood" to board liners. They merely want to get somewhere else and we happen to be living on an island. We're a maritime nation because, in order to survive, we had to be. That and nothing more. Results are the best propaganda in the world. After the air transport system has been working for a year or two, i;o the ave a nois mechani of aerody* guided has the faintest inkling of the organisation involved k maintaining a high standard of airworthiness. They cer- tainly don't realise that both the organisation and the high standard have remained almost unmodified during a war the intensity of which might have justified, at least during the black years, an almost unlimited reduction in safety values. Standards of workmanship, inspection, and testing have remained at such a. high level that one fighter or one bomber picked out off a thousand at random, is as safe to fly as any gegyyng^ transport aircraft. e Opinion membeil of the public an aircraft is just potentially unreliable piece of fntained \ii flight by a mysterious collection^* ic iorcgi—understood only by few—and l morrf mysterious and complicated radio of o#e kind or another. Yet every member ujrfic has some general idea of the wSy in signal system of a railway functions in order to * ty, and of the way in which an ocean-going I across the Atlantic. It would not be too that my '' average '' person is, so far as air- 'are concerned, at the same stage of ignorance as the Json who, a century ago, saw no reason why an iron ship should do anything but sink to the bottom, and who suspected that the noise and speed of railway travel would assuredly ruin his lungs, nerves and eyesight in no time at all. There should be no need to suggest, untruthfully, that aircraft are reliable in detail—there are few mechanisms which operate by virtue of the co-relation of so many different items. Simply that, in spite of the endless possi- bilities of minor failure, the standards of maintenance and inspection are high enough to ensure a degree of overall mechanical reliability equal to that of other transport devices. By means of duplication, ffequent inspection and replacement, the initially larger possibilities of failure are successfully counter-balanced. It might even be good prac- tical propaganda, for the A.I.D. to insist on the complete replacement of certain of the more highly-stressed parts after a certain definite number of flying hours—rather after the fashion in which, for instance, colliery winding ropes must, by law, be changed, regardless of their inspected condition. Replacement schedules are, in fact, laid down and are rigidly observed where aircraft are concerned, while the life of a complete aircraft can rarely be expected to exceed that of any of the major items in the structure. But the public does not know about these schedules. A series of factual advertisements giving information of this kind would be more effective than any number of merely enthus- iastic assurances that " the air is the thing." On the rare, but unfortunately well-publicised, occasions when a trans- port aircraft crashes or disappears, the public is so often with few accidents, a good standard of regularity and tea-—"-"left to think that aircraft are, in themselves, unreliable.sonable but economic fares, people will certainly make use of it. All we can hope to do in the meantime is to give the general public the most complete and interesting infor- mation about the whys and wherefores—with no trimmings other than those required to make the subject interesting. One has only to talk casually to an average person who is not directly or indirectly concerned with aviation, to realise that his or her ignorance is profound. And ignor- ance is the sole cause of any fears and doubts that remain. Probably nearly fifty per cent, of the public still think that, if the motor OP motors stop, then the contraption will fell lethally to the ground, and I doubt if one in a hundred Mechanical failures do occasionally occur, but it is not often that such failures do more than contribute to the loss of an aircraft in conditions which are otherwise vitally unfavourable. The need for feathering one of the four__ motors is of small account unless unexpectedly bad weather is met; the failure of the fuel transfer system, for instance, is only serious when, owing to weather conditions, no inter- mediate landing is possible ; and so on. In peacetime transport planning even the most unlikely failure of a duplicated essential will be allowed for in the operational schedules. The public, too, should not be given the idea that all
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