FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1946
1946 - 0859.PDF
MAY 2ND, 1945 443 handling during the take-off, and could certainly'not be allowed its head when landing across wind. But those who had not been over-warned, and consequently talked into a frightened state of mind before going out to fly the thing, rarely found any difficulty. I certainly found none—at least until I actually saw one squeal round in a semi-circle, leaving a cloud of dust and rubber-smoke. Naturally enough, with the torque reaction of two Mer- lins to be considered, it was advisable to open up with sobriety and while leading with the port throttle, but rudder control appeared in good time, and unless an initial deviation had been allowed to develop without proper cor- rection or the abandonment of the take-off, there was no reasonable excuse for expensive trouble. Drift Arrivals Any aircraft will tend to rush away in some direction other than the correct one while landing across wind, but, since control- could be maintained with the Mosquito to the very point of touch-down, there was no real reason for completing any landing with a lot of built-in drift. Immediately after touching down across wind there was, of course, a ten- dency for the Mosquito to kick sharply into wind ; if this tendency was not held firmly with opposite brake a swing might start and, once started in full measure, it certainly could not be stopped. And there was, of course, a wind- strength beyond which the drift could not be counteracted and in which the weathercock tendency was greater in force than the tractive resistance of the appropriate tyre on the land- ing surface. In earlier days the Mosquito's undercarriage was a shade on the weak side laterally, and the most extraordinary distortions have once or twice been seen after a particularly violent exhibition of ground-looping. I remember one occasion when a pilot, who was comparatively new to the type and very new to the airfield, had obeyed the Tee rather than his own judg- ment after a very sudden and unexpected change of wind-direction, and increase in its strength. Things certainly happened. After he had landed on the appointed runway, which was, by this time, go degrees off a 35 m.p.n. wind, the Mosquito hung for a moment while travelling in a straight line with a jet of deep blue smoke from the heavily braked port tyre—and then hurried around in a twinkling pirouette. He taxied all the way back to dispersal, feeling possibly that there was something more than a little odd about the aircraft, but only after descending through the entry hatch and looking at the ground crew's faces, did he realize that both his undercarriage legs had distorted sideways at an angle of something like twenty degrees to the vertical. G—Stalling During their first twenty or so hours on the type quite a few Mosquito pilots went through a short period of minor difficulty with the final approach and landing. Nobody appeared to be troubled in any way during the first few hours, but people occasionally developed a tendency to make rather untidy arrivals during later hours—and par- ticularly when more serious attempts were being made to " do short ones." The fact was that, while behaving with perfect normality if checked quietly and slowly from a reasonably high final approach speed, the Mosquito's land- ing could be G-stalled very easily on its powerful elevatorb if this check was made too rapidly and after the engines had been cut back. Probably the best system was to arrive at a point near the boundary with excess speed, to cut the throttles and to start the hold-off in good time. If a really short arrival was required, it was better, per- haps, to approach with plenty of motor at an initially low speed and to leave this power in action until the aircraft was in the three-point position. My own form of temporary trouble was probably caused by a certain anxiety about overshooting while working from a field with comparatively short runways which were almost invariably out of wind. In trying too hard I was producing, on each arrival, a premature stall. But after a few score of hours with the Mosquito some very surprising things could be done. With the judicious use of power, one could make the most absurdly short landings, and Mosquitoes have been put, experimentally, on to very small grass strips which had been originally laid out for the use of much less advanced types. The only real trouble with such satellite experimentation—especially when the approach and departure lanes were badly ob- structed—lay in the Mosquito's none-too-bright perform- ance when everything was down. The simpler under- carriage leg on the Hornet must have made a very great deal of difference both to the take-off and to the overshoot acceleration characteristics of the type. One of the more pleasant feelings when test-flying the Mosquito lay in the knowledge that one had fuel enough CONFIDENCE TRICK : This photograph of the feathered starboard air-screw of a Mosquito was actually taken at 1, oooft. Unless the speed was allowed to drop too much, the Mosquito's single-engined characteristicswere just about as perfect as possible. to fly pretty well across the Atlantic. There was never any sensation of restriction, or excessive fear of being "stuck" over cloud, and the confidence, of course, was increased by the knowledge that there were two engines and that the outfit would fly very comfortably on one of them. At one stage in the war we used to carry out long-period tests of radar equipment. In these a pair of Mosquitoes climbed up to 8,000ft or so, and hunted for one another above broken cloud for an hour or so before returning through the "undercast." With the range available it did not matter if one was a hundred miles away from the home airfield. We always tried to organize things so that the necessary cannon tests could coincide with these trips, and it was a relief, after using a combination of visual and fluorescent screen evidence during the radar hunt, to return to pleasurable "contact" flying at very low level. As in the case of the Beaufighter, in which the guns were also grouped in the nose, it was often possible, during these cannon tests, to see the shells proceeding on their way towards the pseudo-target. And there was no end of an opaquity of acrid cordite fumes after each burst of fire. Certainly, the control reactions of the Mosquito were such that it would have been a crime to have left it in stolid bomber form, pure and simple, and no one was sur- prised when the first fighter type appeared with a stick control in place of the original half-spectacles. And the cabin was, in my opinion, much more suited to the use of a flat bullet-proof screen than to the vee screen used on
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
