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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1509.PDF
124 FLIGHT AUGUST 2ND, 1945 A RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENT this state of affairs was not in the national interest. We therefore approached the Air Ministry in 1938 and sug- gested that we should examine the possibility of designing and producing an All-British gun of 0.5m. or 30 mm. calibre. Our proposals were agreed to in principle, but we were informed that the gun should be at least 40 mm. bore. We completed our designs to the latter figure, and prototypes were doing well on test within twelve months. Owing to changes in Government policy dictated by opera- tional requirements, oui gun was not put into production for aircraft. Shortly after Dunkirk, however, the Navy became interested, and after submitting the gun to exact- ing tests were so satisfied with it that a contract for a considerable number was placed with us. We received this contract only fifteen months from the date when the gun was first put on the drawing board. By this time others in the armament industry, stimulated by our efforts, were reaching the production stage with designs of guns which duplicated our own, and we therefore retired from this branch of our activities to concentrate on our more imme- diately important business of designing and producing better and better engines. Birth of Rotol "It is sometimes stated that nationalisation avoids the wasteful competition which is considered to be the inevit- able accompaniment of private enterprise. This may have been so in the past, but not in these days of com- mercial enlightenment. Perhaps there is no better example of the desire of modern industry to avoid duplication of effort than is expressed by the formation of the Rotol organisation. Doubtless most of you are aware that the word '' Rotol " is a contraction of the names Rolls and Bristol. In the early 1930s both the Bristol and Rolls- Royce companies were conducting experiments on variable- pitch propellers in accordance with the same basic patents. Though we were then, as we are now, in healthy com- petition with the Bristol company in the development of aircraft engines along quite different lines, we considered that to work in competition along the same lines in pro- pellers was in the interests of no one. We therefore agreed with the Bristol company to pool our technical skill and resources devoted to propellers with their's similarly employed, and on May 13th, 1937, the Rotol Company was born. '' Before passing on to visions of the future, you may be interested to- know something about the cash side of our war achievement. As examples, the Rolls-Royce wage bill for the years 1940 to 1944 was sixty-five million pounds ; our turnover for the years 1940 to 1944 was six times that of the previous five years. Perhaps I may be forgiven for adding the less heartening information that 92 per cent, of the profits earned on this huge turnover were absorbed by direct taxation. "And now what of the future? I cannot to-day tell you about our programme for larger and more powerful reciprocating engines for reasons of secrecy, but I can, I think, safely leave you to imagine that we are not likely to be standing still. For the same reason I cannot give you any detailed information regarding the development we have in hand on the internal combustion turbine and its associate jet propulsion. Let it suffice to say that the first operational British aircraft ta use jet propulsion, namely, the Gloster Meteor, is fitted with Whittle type engines developed and produced by the Rolls-Royce organisation. '' Whilst we are actively and successfully competing in the market for civil and commercial aviation, our main business must continue to be to provide motive power for aircraft to be used by the Fighting Services. In what follows I am giving personal opinions only, and am not disclosing an official policy of which we have foreknow- ledge. It seems probable that the Air Force equipment, as we know it to-day, is obsolescent, and that we are on the verge of developments which show so great a technical advance that re-equipment almost immediately will be inevitable in order to maintain world superiority, par- ticularly in the fighter class. '' There is also another and very far-reaching line of development to which I would like to draw your attention. It is a problem of especial, one might almost say unique,* importance to the British Empire. I refer to the air-borne army. The British Dominions have a right to expect prompt assistance from the Mother County immediately they are threatened. The tempo of modern war does not permit of the use of marine transport over the huge dis- tances we must operate. This war has already shown the versatility of air transport, but I feel we have only just touched the fringe of what can be done. With the develop- ment of specialised transports of a load-carrying capacity many times that of anything now in existence, coupled with the provision of military equipment designed on air- craft lines to reduce weight to a minimum, there seems no reason to believe that it would not in the future be quite feasible to transport whole armies by air in one- twentieth of the time required by sea." PHOTO RECCE IN THE FAR EAST FLYING through monsoon storms, pilots of Ceylon-basedphotographic reconnaissance aircraft of the Indian Ocean Air Force are carrying out sorties over a thousand miles ofocean to Japanese-held territory. In no other theatre of war are photographic reconnaissanceaircraft called on to cross such expanses of water; in no other theatre do they operate with such obscure weather information. Weather is, indeed, the worst obstacle to be overcome, forJong-range forecasting is almost an impossibility for the Indian Ocean. The predominating weather comes from east andsouth. The countries to the east are in the hands of the Japs: to the south there is little but open sea. Time and again,pilots find themselves on the edge or even in the midst of dreaded cumulo nimbus cloud formations which can lift up ortoss down even a heavy aircraft at the rate of 1,500ft. a minute. Typical of the conditions encountered was the experience ofF/O. J. I. Jackson, of North Vancouver, B.C., Canada, who with his navigator, F/O. T. E. Knott, of Enmore, Sydney,N.S.W., Australia, carried out one of these long-range " recces." " We crossed over a thousand miles of sea to reachthe target," said F/O. Knott. "We circled for over an hour, and during that time ran into quite a snowstorm. This, how-ever, didn't affect our flying, and we carried out the mission successfully." Photographing from heights of anything between 5,000 and/""*25,000ft., these aircraft have brought back pictures indicating the presence of Japanese vessels hiding in creeks, and enabledanti-shipping strikes to be mounted with speed. R.A.F. SCHOOL ON THE DOWNS AT the R.A.F. School of Air Transport at Netheravon (Wilt-shire), Air Commodores, Group Captains, Wing Com- manders and more junior officers are studying the lessons ofthe European campaigns with a view to applying them in the battles ahead in the Far East. The concentrated course atthis R.A.F. " University of Air Transport " on the Wiltshire Downs lasts three weeks. Netheravon is an historic " airborne " station. Here, beforeD-Day, aircrews of 38 and 46 Groups of R.A.F. Transport Command and the Glider Pilots and Commandos of the 6thAirborne ' Division were briefed before the great airborne columns took off to secure the -first Allied bridgehead inNormandy. A huge model of the area between Caen and the coast wasprepared. On it every meadow, wood and stream was repro- duced with every landmark down to the smallest building. Head of the instructors and lecturers is an ex-Metropolitanpoliceman who has just been granted a permanent pommission in the R.A.F. He left the police a year before the war; nowhe is Wing Cdr. W. E. Coles, with five decorations for opera- tions in unarmed transport aircraft.
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