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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 0697.PDF
•'MAY 2OTH, 1948 FLIGHT 541 TRAINER " Flight fit oloyraph. •item a Lancaster flown by Wing Commander Andrew McDowell, D.S.O., A.F.C, D.F.M., a senior Rolls-Royce test pilot, the MeiebT'Wcr~VH-~*•"**" Trainer is seen to be superficially identical with the Mk. IV fighter, except for the length of the nose and canopy. WHEN Bill Waterton opened up the Derwent Vs ofthe Meteor VII Trainer and released the new twin-cell Dunlop brakes it was as though a bunch of ATO rockets had been touched off. He has promised to show us what the world's fastest jet trainer could do and we know him as a man to keep his word. With the rear (instructor's) seat at its topmost setting, it could immediately be appreciated, as the Moreton Valence runway flashed past, that the field of view is considerably better than imagined when a preliminary ground examination of the machine was made some weeks ago. Hedgerows streamed below like so many railway sleepers before the control column eased back and the longv ermilion nose pointed at the blue. The Meteor sat back °n its haunches—if such a gross metaphor can be applied to so slender a form—and the altimeter wound up at nearly 8,000 feet a minute as the lush Gloucestershire countryside receded in the summery haze. To readers who are Meteor pilots Airborne in the Meteor VII: Unparalleled Rate of Climb: A Turkish Tour we offer an apology for attempting to convey some impres-sion of what, to them, is daily routine?:' But even the R.A.F.'s Meteor fighters, which climb faster than anyother Service aircraft in the world, are unable to hold the lighter Trainer on the climb, though in other respects, theperformance is generally similar. In the course of a companionable R/T chat, Watertonhad given notice that he did not intend to use full thrust. Even the Rolls-Royce turbojets, he observed, lived longerwith a little care. But checked as they were, the Derwents took us through three turns of an effortless upward roll andwere urging us higher as we came out of the third. Even now, we had not truly appreciated the astoundingrate of climb and were startled suddenly to notice 19,600ft on the altimeter. From this level,where the fall in temperature was noticeable (we were flying in shirtsleeves), Waterton proposed to dive into compressibility. Until theneedle of the machmeter approached 0.8, the dive was steady, but downat 10,000ft, with 450 knots or so on
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