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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1668.PDF
AUGUST 23RD, 1945 20T * (Below) How the " tanker'' andhose pipe appear to the occu- pant of the tail-gun turret ofa Lancaster. The nozzle is within a few feet of the cup inthe stern of the " receiver " aircraft. RECEIVER CONTACT LINf PHN\- GRAPNQ. SMCER WEIGHT He now changed his views and decided that all the formating should be done by the '' tanker,'' whose crew might be assumed always to be well trained, whereas no par- ticular skill would be required of the crew of the " receiver" aircraft. This changed the technique of refuelling, and is the basis upon which the modern system rests. Refuelling in the air occurs in three stages: the making of contact between the '' tanker '' and the '' receiver''; the transfer of the fuel; and the break- ing away. Of these three the greatest development has taken place in the making of contact. In May, 1939, we described one system in which a trail- ing line from one aircraft was caught by the wing tip of the other and then The simplicity otmaking contact b etw e en the"tanker" and the "receiver"iswell illustrated in this diagram. In the Lancasterthe two cargo tanks are placedin tandem and feed to the axis ofthe hose drum unit. The threeviews on the left show the fronttank, the space for the secondtank, and the drum unit. slid along to a eaten on a line which bound the two machines together. in the modern method, which is to all intents ami purposes completely reliable, contact is made by fir- ing a sort of line-carrying harpoon from the '' tanker "«into the curve of the trailing line from the "receiver" aircraft. This operation requires far less skill on the part of the "tanker" crew, and none at all from the crew of the ,'' receiver, ' except the ability to fly a steady straight course. The harpoon is not manually aimed but is set at a forward angle, and the "tanker" pilot has quite a wide margin of formational position within which the harpoon will get the contact line through the curve of the trail-
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