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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 0413.PDF
FEBRUARY 28TH, 1946 FLIGHT advantage on the score of greater landing drag, in- creased general safety and lower maintenance costs. One ot the operational faults of the Boston was that there appeared to be no means of bodily communication between the various compartments. Certainly the bomb aimer in the nose was locked in his little cell irrevocably for the duration of any flight, I believe the first and possibly the only A.T.C. cadet to abandon ship by para- chute was riding in that compartment when a Mainten- ance Unit test pilot found that the undercarriage wouldn't come down. Since the cadet couldn't climb out and go anywhere else, and the nose portion would have been more than a little vulnerable in any belly- landing, the pilot (no doubt to the cadet's immense delight) ordered him to step out forthwith. Hydraulic-less With those first Bostons there was no final emergency system for undercarriage-lowering — merely engine pumps and a reserve hand-pump in the cockpit. It the hydraulic fluid had somehow fled away one was left sitting in space and feeling rather foolish with a wholly un- damaged aircraft about to become a partial write-off through no fault of one's own. On one occasion I spent the better part of half an hour orbiting an airfield while I wore out the muscles of my right arm in an effort to obtain some of the services with the hand-pump, which seemed to be working on a succession of air locks. The engine pumps had previously failed to produce any noticeable results and had not even retracted the under- carriage fully. I "got" the undercarriage and most of the flaps in due course, but 1 was then left with the somewhat nasty combination of a tricycle aircraft and no brakes—these being, as usual, worked off the same system. So I did one of the slowest recorded approaches on the longest uphill runway available, touched down heavily tail-hrst and ran the Boston into the rough, using what remained of the rudder control. It transpired that the hydraulic tanks had been nearly empty and that I had been work- ing hard on little more than bubbles and faith. I still wonder what the .passenger in the rear gunner's position thought about it all; we had no inter-comm. Later versions had, if I remember correctly, an emergency compressed-air bottle for the undercarriage system, with separate pipelines. The incident did much to rid me of any sneaking suspicion that a tricycle, flung on to the ground, could be stopped in a shorter distance with the brakes than could a brakeless and conventionally landed aircraft when fully stalled. That landing with the Boston was very much shorter than any other I had made with the type—and would have been shorter still if some slight braking power had been available to resist the final helpless dawdle before the engine cut-outs were used. Yet some pilots are probably still convinced that a half- braked "wheeler" is the best way of dealing with a mild overshoot, and still instinctively try to make con- tact as soon as possible rather than to hold the aircraft off the ground as long as possible while taking full ad- vantage of the tail-down drag. There was one rather curious feature of the Boston's take-off which I have never fully understood. As with nearly all tricycles, it was necessary to pull it off the i" Flight " photograph. Douglas Boston (DB-7) day bomber, originally powered by two Twin Wasps and later by two 1,600 h.p. Wright DoubleRow Cyclones. As a day bomber it carried 1,000 lb. of bombs and had an all-up weight of about 20.000 lb.
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