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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 1384.PDF
6o IN THE AIR—XVI FLIGHT Battle, Defiant & Henley Improvement of a Standard "Light Bomber" of Early War Days : Two Maids of All Work ONE of the more curious things about flying—at leastin the eyes of anyone with a due sense of skill short-comings—is that no aircraft, ever, in fact, turns out to be quite as difficult as in one's previous imaginings. It would be an exaggeration to say that "all aircraft are just aircraft," and to leave it at that, but this is very nearly true, and there are hardly any exceptions to the general rule that if you can fly one type with reasonable competence the rest can at least be flown with safety. At the time when I first poured myself into the cockpit of a Fairey Battle I had done only an hour's solo on any- thing of similar size and complication in the single-engined line, and on the morning when I had been told that this fearful war-wagon was to be handed over to me, I ate breakfast in the state of mind of one about to leave the condemned cell. In fact, the thing turned out to be just too easy, in spite of the smallness of the airfield which was being used and of my comparative newness to the business of "drill." I went through the performance of covering this drill about three times before daring to turn into wind, and was unencouraged even by the innocent confidence of the airman detailed to ride as ballast. It was only after the throttle had been opened, the rudder waggled and the take-off actually started that I felt, once again, the partial truth ol the just-another-aircraft theory. " i By " INDICATOR " Undoubtedly, my most lasting impression of the Battle was of the intense heat which could sometimes fill the driving compartment and, in cases where there was an open flare-shoot, of the cloud of dust which, combined with the overheating, produced quaintly Saharan condi- tions. Otherwise this aircraft, even to the complete new- comer, behaved rather like a large tin Swallow. (For the benefit of the new generation, the B.A. Swallow was a lightly loaded two-seater, based on the German Klemm, to be found airborne over this country in pre-war days.) The driver was seated well forward with a view over the leading edges of the;vast riveted expanse of the wings, and the whole affair felt most extraordinarily solid and safe. The flap and undercarriage selector levers sprouted from the floor on one's left and, since the undercarriage lever had a not-too easily-found safety catch, retraction after take-oft could be quite a contortionist performance. Very soon after 1 had put in an hour or so in the Battle and had been passed along to even more "advanced " aircraft, this particular machine was flown, undoubtedly for the first time in the history of the type, by a well-known one armed pilot. When I. complain of the difficulty of finding and moving the undercarriage control, it can be imagined that this astoundingly enthusiastic pilot needed to do a good deal of thinking and planning, unused as he was to "drill" and other new-fangled ideas His method—he had lost his left hand—was to lower the seat as soon as the machine was saiely airborne and, while more or less out of sight of land, to reach for the control1 with his right hand. As soon as "up" had been selected—and in the meantime he had been flying with stick between his knees—he raised the seat again to see what was going on. I gather that V Flight\ Good as it was, the Henley, for various reasons, was neused operationally, and the comparatively few production aircraft were finally given target-towing and similar duties.From the pilot's point of view the Henley behaved very much as an enlarged Hurricane. photogi The Defiant was an interesting and, for its time, quitesuccessful "experiment" in armament—a fighter with a four-gun turret and no fixed armament. the post-take-off evolutions of the Battle gave the C.F.I. something rather worse than heart failure, since the experi- ment was being made at his and the Commandant's risk. One of the mildly disturbing features of the Battle's take-off was the fact that the change of pitch of the two- position airscrew reduced the recorded revolutions of the Merlin on the climb to something which had very much
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