FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1947
1947 - 0068.PDF
6o FLIGHT JANUARY IOTH, 1947 fighter aircraft, 120 by A.A., and 20were netted by balloons. The second week reached a peak,with 1,000 launched. Of these, 350 were destroyed—250 by fighters, 90 byA. A., and 20 by balloons. Now, never did the personal bomber forcesendure such losses as one-third. Fre- quently, on big British raids about 5l#3r cent of the attacking force was lost, but the stupidity of the Germandecision to use mechanical weapons is strikingly revealed by the losses sus-tained. The cumulative totals em- phasize this point. All told 9,300 fly-ing bombs were launched against England, and only 5,900 crossed thecoast. These harbingers of horror killed just over 6,000 people. Of the Ail told 9,300 flying bombs were launched against England, and only 5,900 crossed the coast. total 1,900 were destroyed by fighter aircraft, some 2,000 by A.A., and the balloons accounted for about 300! The rocket story marches parallel with the Vi bomb. The V2 ("another gas main gone off! ") was extremely expensive, complicated and inaccurate. Altogether, 1,063 were fired, with a peak week ending Febru- ary 15th, 1945, in which 212 people were killed. The total deaths were 2,758, which averages about 3 people killed per rocket. Of course, this figure is inaccurate, since many rockets exploded in mid-air, or failed to reach England after being fired from Holland- Ships The story of ship losses, on bothsides, has large gaps in it. One strik- ing table shows the appalling Britishlosses of shipping, reaching 800,000 tons per month in 1942. Then the pic-ture suddenly changes, in 1943. No ex- GAPT. IDE IN U.S.v THE many friends of Captain John JayIde, U.S.N., will be interested to know he is now in America, where hewill stay for some months, going into "inactive duty" in February. During his many years' sojourn inEngland and on the Continent he attended regularly all flying meetingsand other functions connected with aviation. D.H. AIRSCREWS J DE I1AVILLAND PROPELLERS,LTD., Hatfield, announce a business arrangement which greatly enlarges themarketing scope for dc Havilland aircraft airscrews. Restrictions on the sale ofairscrews embodying certain of the patents of the Hamilton Corporation havenow been removed, so they now become available to aircraft manufacturers andusers throughout the world, except that, at any rate for the time being, theiravailability in North America and one or two countries of less importance is limitedto applications intended for British air- craft and British engines. Airscrews of BEHIND THE SCENES planation is given, but clearly thelarge-scale introduction of escort carriers, and the V.L.R. work byCoastal Command, coupled with rocket attack from aircraft (startedby Swordfish in the Atlantic in May, 1943) were governing factors. In 1942, the worst year, 7J milliontons of British shipping was sunk. Of this vast total, more than 6,000,000tons succumbed to U-boat attack. Only 700,000 tons (one-tenth) wasaccounted for by aircraft attack, and the mine shows up as the least effec-tive weapon with 100,000 tons sunk. This last figure is misleading; if themines sown caused shipping to be di- verted or even bottled up in harbour,the effect, in the war effort, was as great as that of a straight sinking. Submarines show a remarkabledegree of unserviceability. In April, 1945, the peak month, the Germanshad about 485 submarines, of which 185 were operational! At their bestperiod, April, 1943, they had about 460 in being, and only 275 of thesewere. operational. The graphs of British warship lossesare not sufficiently explicit. They show that in the war Britain built 5battleships—and had 5 sunk. Thir- teen aircraft carriers were built, and 8sunk. (It is difficult to gauge which carriers are referred to here.) Cruisers—28 built and 28 sunk. Destroyers— 217 built, and 133 sunk. Sloops—31 built, 12 sunk. Frigates—81 buili and 10 sunk. Corvettes—184 built,'30 sunk. Submarines—157 built, 71 sunk. These figures show that the bigships '' had it'' and the little ships, mainly on escort work, survivedbetter. Maddeningly, the causes of the losses are not shown, but outside purely de Havilland design are, of course,available without any restriction what- ever. v B.T.H. SCHOLARSHIPS THE Jubilee of The British Thomson-Houston Co., Ltd., was celebrated in 1946, and to commemorate the occa-sion the directors arranged for a number of financial grants to be awarded overthe next three years to assist B.T.H. em- ployees of at least ten years' service inthe education or training of their sons or daughters of school-leaving age or over.These awards will be made where the circumstances merit such additionalassistance, and it is not intended that they should be confined to engineeringtraining, as the B.T.H. Apprenticeship and Fellowship Schemes meet nearly allsuch requirements. Under the new Education Act, Stateand County Scholarships should be avail- able for all pupils capable of taking ad-vantage of a University or other Col- legiate training, but it is possible thatin the next three years there may be cases where this is not fully available, althoughthe candidate may have been accepted information seems to show that thetorpedo was the prime cause of sink- ings. Except for Hood and Glorious,most of the losses in the major ships were due to torpedo attack. Casualties The peak strengths of the Serviceswere: Navy, 800,000; R.A.F.. 1,100,000; Army, 2,800,000. W.R.N.S. numbered 75,000; W.A.A.F., 180,000; A.T.S., 205,000.The women's total, including nurses, was 469,000. United Kingdom casualties came to227,000 killed, 275,000 wounded and" 26,000 missing. These totals are During the war thirteen aircraft carriers were built and eight were sunk. more than twice those of the Domin-ions, about 10 times those of India, and 20 times those of the Colonies. Breakdown of the casualty figures isas follows: Navy, 50,000 killed, 10,000 wounded and 1,000 missing; R.A.F., -60,000 killed, 20,000 wounded and 10,000 missing. It is surprising tonote that 65,000 civilians were killed • and 85,000 seriously injured. Itseems it was safer to fight! Unfortunately, this Domesday Bookof Downing Street is expensive, but for those who wish to study particularaspects of the war it contains a mine of information. What would be mostinteresting to see would be: (1) the cost of a big raid by four-engined" •bombers; (2) the "life" of fighter and bomber aircraft; and (3) anassessment of mistakes made in the . war—for example, the frantic waste oftime, material and manpower on making gas, gas masks, gas shells. In ' \short, can any one give the answer to the cost of a really efficient war? for admission to a college. The schemeis intended to assist such persons. In addition to university or technicalcollege education, it is intended that help shall be given for other forms oftraining ranging from art to agriculture, AVIATION CENTRE j- Further contributions to the Londonderry. House and Aviation Activities Fund. Airspeed, Ltd 250 oo:The Gloster Aircraft Co., Ltd . :•.. 250 o o Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Co., Ltd. 250 o oCellon, Ltd. 250 o o Christie-Tyler, Ltd 250 o oThe British Parachute Co., Ltd. .. 250 00" Hawker Aircraft, Ltd 250 o o Cunliffe-Owen Aircraft, Ltd i^n o o- The Proprietors of Flight 105 o a"The Proprietors of The Aeroplane 105 o o Scottish Aviation, Ltd 100 o r>. The General Electric Co., Ltd. .. 52 10 o The Hughes-Johnson Stampings, Ltd 52 10 oBritish Landing Gears, Ltd 50 00 Marshalls Flying School, Ltd 50 00George Angus & Co., Ltd 26 50 Airports, Ltd 26 ;oThe En-Tout-Cas Co., Ltd 20 00 Self-Priming Pump & EngineeringCo., Ltd 5 50
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
