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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 0270.PDF
Proposal for the internal arrangement of a passenger/cargo version of the Martin Mars. No civil version of this well-tried boat has yet been built, though it is a standard U.S. Navy type. TRANSPORTS TODAY AND TOMORROW ... at the chines; and faired steps. Improvements in carrying capacity will become more apparent as overall sizes increase because the weight of the landplane undercarriage is governed by the cube law. Further hope of greater pay- loads is offered by the waiving or moderation of "rough water" requirements, regarded by progressive designers as restrictive legacies of military specifications. An incidental benefit which might be derived from the use of gas turbine power plants is the diversion of some of the jet efflux to the steps, and perhaps to other critical points on the hull, to assist take-off. One difficulty which will continue to exercise the flying boat designer is the vulnerability of lateral stabilising floats. Reversion to sponsons, or "sea-wings," will be prohibited on aerodynamic grounds, and in some instances it may be considered expedient to return to the classic twin-hull Savoia-Marchetti formula; but this will re- introduce its own peculiar difficulties. Thus, having mused on the nature and potentialities of large flying boats we may examine the various types now being constructed, or known to have been projected, in Great Britain, France and America. At the time of writing. the Italians, who have been justly noted in the past for the qualities of their marine aircraft, are not known to be contemplating any machines which come within the scope of this survey. The history of commercial flying boats in Great Britain is to so great an extent the history of the products of Short Brothers that its course up to the present can be plotted by a string of aircraft type names—-Calcutta, Scipio Class, "C" Class, "G" Class, Sunder- land Conversion and Sandringham. In nine and a half years of operations the "C" Class boats flew 34,779,242 miles, establishing an unrivalled tra- dition of service. The maintenance of this tradition is now becoming the responsibility of the Solent, the most modern type of flying boat to be deliverf fa, to B.O.A.C. and the type with which our brief technical inquiry may conveniently be opened. Welcome as it will be on the Empire routes, the Solent Contemporary with the Latecoere 631, seen below, the S.E.200 (inset above) now has non-retractable floats.
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