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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1380.PDF
JULY IQTH, 1945 Ft 1GHT To Command in ChinaL IEUT. GEORGE E. STRATE-MEYER, formerly in charge of Eastern Air Command until he handedover to Air Marshal W. A. Coryton early last month, has gone to Chungking totake over command of the U.S.A.A.F. in the China theatre, where air strength isto be increased. Wizard!I N three weeks more than half a millionpeople have seen "Britain's Air- craft" exhibition in Oxford Street, Lon-don, which was visited last week by Air Chief Marshal Sir"Charles Portal, Chiefof Air Staff, who spent most of his time among the engine exhibits. " A wizard show—I must come backand see more of it," the Air Chief Marshal is reported to have said Another War Secret TT was recently disclosed that, in-*- November, 1940, experiments were conducted with aerial mines suspendedfrom parachutes by long pieces of piano wire and dropped at night from obsoleteHarrows in the path of German raiders. Four Harrows, each carrying 180 of themines, were sent up to try out this desperate defensive measure, but onlythree enemy bombers were definitely known to have been destroyed, and thescheme, which had the curious code name of " Mutton," was abandoned. PEELING OFF : Aircraft arriving at the Royal Naval Air Station in Cochin, onthe Malabar coast, a reception unit, are sheathed in erenol. This is a rubber-like solution which is sprayed on and dries into a thin protective skin easy to peeloff on arrival. Czech RequestT HE Czechoslovak Government hasasked the British authorities to hasten the return of members of its airforce serving with the R.A.F., according to a statement made by Dr. Zdenek Fier-linger, their Prime Minister, to the Czechoslovak Socialist Democratic Party.Dr. Fierlinger added, said Prague Radio: "Our Government hopes thatthis request will be granted as soon as possible, in the spirit of our well-triedfriendship with Great Britain." Improved CorsairR EPORTED to be "in the 425 m.p.h.class," the new Corsair fighter- bomber, the F4U-4, was last week an-nounced by the U.S. Navy Department to be in action against the Japs. COMMAND PERFORMANCE : The Queen of Denmark was" among the many thousands of spectators at a recejjt air display given by the R.A.F. at Copen- hagen. With her is Air _Cog^djj^Ri__B. Maycock, air attache in Sweden, who er at Handley Page Ltd. It differs mainly from earlier versionsin beirig powered by an 18-cylinder 2,160 h.p. Pratt and Whitney "DoubleWasp" engine driving a four-bladed c.s. airscrew with a swept area of 13ft. 2in.It is armed by six 0.5m. machine guns and can carry a 2,000 1b. bomb-load.Other improvements include '' push- button" receiving and transmitting sets(long used by the R.A.F.) and a simpli- fied arrangement of controls. It is also claimed that the Corsair'sinverted-gull wings have the (accident- ally discovered ?) advantage of protect-ing it from damage when* " ditched." Their Task is DoneT HE Balkan Air Force is being dis-banded, it has been announced. In an Order of the Day to the squad-rons of eight nationalities that formed the force—British, American, SouthAfrican, Russian, Polish, Greek, Yugo- slav and Italian—Air Marshal Sir GuyGarrod, A.O.C.-in-C. Mediterranean and Middle East, stated:— " You have performed a greatervariety of tasks than any other air force. Besides supporting the regular armedforces of Britain and Yugoslavia, you supported and supplied numerous andwidespread partisan forces operating in the Balkans. Now your task is done andwell done." Dinghy DevelopmentsT HE amount of thought and workwhich has been put into the develop- ment of rubber dinghies for aircraft isnot generally realised, for there is an enormous difference between those avail-able at the start of the war in Europe and the present-day types, of whichthere are six standard patterns. The early type was merely a scaled-down version of a pneumatic buoy originally designed to prevent the sink-ing of the aircraft itself, and its only equipment was food and signallingapparatus transferred from the sinking aircraft at the. crew's discretion. The general improvement in designand equipment has been due to the un- ceasing teamwork of the Royal AircraftEstablishment, M.A.P., the Air/Sea
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