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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 0665.PDF
APRIL 4TH, 1946 FLIGHT <L.W**l> Earliest of the "heavies " built to the more modern specifica-tion, the Whitley, shown here in Merlin-engined form, carried considerable loads—mainly of paper—in the earlierdays of the Bomber Command offensive rect '' splay '' to suit particular conditions—for once the Whitley had started to bear off to port it was necessary practically to close the starboard throttle if control was to be maintained, and the directional movements there- after were not very tidy. Combinations of rudder and throttle movement can rarely be used on any aircraft with accuracy once a swing has had to be corrected by any really violent throttle manipulation; one's muscular re- flexes seem to be insufficiently accurate. Grass-Conditioned As might have been expected from its so-early develop- ment history, the Whitley was essentially a grass-lover and was never very happy on runways unless these were duti- fully lying into wind. Or so it seemed. But maybe that idea is the result of the facts that grass covers a multitude of mild directional sins in any take-ofl or landing and that my first and last take-offs and landings with the type—in 1940 and 1945—were made off and on to just such a surface. My memories of the old original Tiger-engined Whitley are necessarily faint—the last one probably went into re- tirement before 1941—but, apart from any points of use- Advanced to the point of being the only British bomber type to be produced during the war with a tricycle undercarriage, the Albemarle was eventually given the duties of transport and glider tug fulness, performance and maintenance, this type was un- doubtedly the Whitley per se. That was how it was origin- ally designed, and no later improvement or modification ever really improves an aircraft's handling qualities. The Tiger Whitley was smooth and more handleable. But I remember once taking one on a cross-country journey with the undercarriage down because the operation of the emer- gency gear involved the assistance of a non-available crew. Nobody had told me that, at the very low cruising speed possible, the coarse-pitch revolutions with two-pitch air- screws would be low to the point of being non-existent. I very nearly landed it again after changing pitch and finding no worthwhile figure on the tachometers. For anyone brought up in the Battle era, the undercar- riage, flap and radiator selector levers of the Whitley were pleasantly familiar. This trio sprouted together from the floor on one's right, and, though the undercarriage lever had a catch affair which prevented one from inadvertently raising things on the ground, it was often difficult to know which was which. A visual check had to be made before operating anything, and, as all three were of the kind which jumped into neutral when the operation had been com- pleted, one never knew quite what was going on. The elevator trimmer indicator also had its little trick. The neutral position, marked by a red spot, could actually be seen in two different positions of the trimmer, so one usu- ally wound the wheel fully one way or the other before counting the turns back again and checking again on the red spot. I don't like " unnatural " trimmer indi- cators. Luckily, I never found myself in- volved in any emergency undercarriage performance and there were quite a few occasions when, if there had been any difficulty, I should, flying alone, have been powerless. The emergency gear consisted of two separate handles in the centre-section crawlway, one for. each. leg. The uplocks were first released and then, after the legs had fallen down, each was, in turn, wound the rest of the way down. Quite a business it was. No one who has lived for a reason- able length of time in Merlin Whitleys will ever forget the sing-song sound of them. Never could the revolutions be synchronized for more than a few seconds at a time, and in the end one just left them alone and put up with the irritating note-variation. Before take-offs and landings one religiously "primed" the hydraulic pitch con- trols by the simple method of moving the levers to maximum revolutions and
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