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Aviation History
1950
1950 - 2136.PDF
FLIGHT, 14 December 1950 551 A wake of spray and steam is left behind as a Saunders-Roe S.R./A.I (2 Metrovick beryls) takes its departure from the waters of the Solent. An Outline History—and a Survey of Modern Possibilities By H. F. KING, M.B.E. THOUGH marine aircraft have been successfully em-ployed for air combat in both world wars, andnumerous floatplane and flying-boat fighters of real merit have been tested in the years of peace, the achieve- ments and potentialities of such aircraft are not widely known. This assertion is borne out by a recent pronounce- ment in an American technical journal that only one water- based machine on record—the pre-war Macchi-Castoldi racer—has proved faster than the new turboprop Convair XP5Y-1 anti-submarine and transport flying boat. Evidently the writer responsible for this contention was not present at the S.B.A.C. Display of 1948, when Geoffrey Tyson, in the Saunders-Roe S.R./A.1 jet-propelled fighter flying-boat, astonished an international audience with one of the most dramatic and significant demonstrations of high-speed aero- batics and inverted flight ever witnessed. The story of water-based fighters, culminating in such remarkable machines as the "A.1" and the projected Con- vair Skate, abounds in surprises and parallels, and a brief study may rectify misapprehensions such as that instanced above. Archetype of all fighter seaplanes—certainly those of British make—was the Sopwith Tabloid "Scout," adapted as a floatplane for the Schneider Trophy Contest at Monaco in April, 1914. In this remarkable little biplane, with its 100 h.p. Mono-Gnome engine, Howard Pixton secured the Trophy for Britain, in face of formidable French competi- tion, by averaging 86.8 m.p.h. Originally, the " Schneider," as the machine came to be known, had a single mai^ float, but in this condition it proved unstable on the water and, as time did not allow complete redesign of the undercarriage, conversion to twin floats was expediently effected by cutting the original float in two along the centre-line and closing-in the resultant halves. It is not inappropriate to remark here that Pixton's splen- did victory passed almost unnoticed in the English daily \ % \ \ Sopwith Tabloid (Mono-Gnome). Sopwith-Blackburn Press, though on the Continent it created a deep impression and was counted a stern threat to the prestige of French aviation. Sopwith twin-float seaplanes bearing the name " Schneider " or " Baby," and generally resembling Pixton's machine, were ordered for fighting and reconnaissance work, and continued in production, in various forms, until the Armistice of 1918. Large numbers of a structurally modified type were manufactured by the Blackburn Company (this variant was often called the Blackburn Baby) and a variable- camber development, built by Fairey, appeared under the name Hamble Baby. At the Admiralty's Marine Experi- mental Establishment on the Isle of Grain a set of high- lift staggered wings was fitted experimentally to yet another development, known as the P.V.I. Various original float- plane designs—exemplified by the Westland N.16 and N.17, powered with a 150 h.p. Bentley rotary and armed with one Vickers and one Lewis gun—materialized late in the 1914- 1918 war. A certain interest attaches to the Westland machines in that the N.16 had the conventional World War I arrangement of two short main floats and a tail float, whereas on the N.17, as on many modern seaplanes, the main floats were lengthened and the tail float eliminated. Surprisingly enough, small flying-boats of high aero- dynamic efficiency are almost as old in British air history as are the floatplanes already referred to; and among them no design is more remarkable, having regard to the date of its inception, Chan the Pemberton-Billing tractor machine, shown at Olympia in 1914. Though itself unsuccessful, it laid down the pattern for later machines of Supermarine make, among which another " Baby " (an exasperatingly re- current appellation in British aircraft nomenclature!) was perhaps the most notable. A photograph herewith shows what a remarkably compact design this was, with its span of only 30£ft and length of 26ft. The Hispano-Suiza engine, d£ a mere 150 h.p., gave a speed of nearly 120 m.p.h. and the\ Westland NH6 (Bentley A.R.I).
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