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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 1392.PDF
FLIGHT, 20 July 1951 79 FIFTY YEARS OF FLYING . . . service from London to Karachi, operating the Mediter- ranean section with Calcutta flying boats. Later in the year the service was extended to Delhi and in 1932 London and Cape Town were linked commercially for the first time. The first experimental air mail service from the U.K. to Australia was flown in April, 1931, the first passenger services following four years later. Meanwhile the Argosies and Calcuttas had given way to the superb four-engined Handley Page H.P. 42 and 45 and Short Scipio airliners, which set completely new standards of passenger comfort, including facilities for providing full- course meals during flight. The 16-passenger Scipio flying- boats replaced Imperial's Calcuttas in the Mediterranean in April, 1931; two months later the first of the new Handley Pages went into service on the London-Paris route. Two classes of the latter, eight aircraft in all, were built: the 24-seat Hannibals for service between Egypt, India and Central Africa, and the 38-seat Heracles class for European routes. With the exception of Hengist, burnt accidentally on the ground in 1936, they remained in use for ten years, during which each flew well over a million miles without ever hurting a passenger, until the last one disappeared during a war-time flight over the Arabian Sea. Towards the end of their lives, they were often accused of having "built-in headwinds" by critics who compared their leisurely 100 m.p.h. cruising speed with that of newer types used by Continental airlines; yet their comfort and safety record were such that they continued to carry a lion's share of all the passengers who flew into and out of Croydon. But by the early nineteen-thirties the monoplane was beginning to re-assert its superiority, and Imperial Airways took delivery of their first monoplane airliners—four- engined A.W. Atalantas—in 1933. Then came one of the most momentous decisions in aviation history, when Imperials decided to buy a new fleet of 28 Short monoplane flying-boats, to be used exclusively on all their Empire services. Foreign operators gleefully anticipated the end of British opposition. Instead, the Empire boats, based on Southampton, gained for British airlines a prestige such as they had never known before. Their achievements in peace and war included operation of the Empire Air Mail scheme, by which letters could be sent by air to any part of the Commonwealth for i£d. per £ oz; the first experimental and, later, regular passenger and mail services across the North Atlantic; the first services to Canada and New Zealand, which completed the Empire air network; the first com- mercial flight-refuelled services; and maintenance of our life-lines to the Empire throughout the war, often in war- zones where no bases existed for landplanes. Side by side with this inter-war development of big-scale commercial aviation there was a corresponding growth of charter and private flying. Sopwiths had tried to start a light-aircraft movement in 1919 by producing the Dove, a civil version of their little Pup fighter, generally regarded as the most delightful aircraft to fly that has ever been built. But they were seven years too early. Both the Air Ministry and the Daily Mail organized light-aircraft contests in the early twenties, with the same object in view, but it was not until de Havillands produced the prototype Moth in 1925 that any real interest in private flying was kindled. There had never been any lack of interest in aviation as a spectacle. On the contrary, it was considered a poor show if fewer than 20,000 people turned up at a week-end flying meeting at Hendon in 1913-14, and events such as the Aerial Derby, King's i^up Races, Schneider Trophy Contests and R.A.F. Displays at Hendon always attracted a large public following. But flying was, in general, considered an expen- sive, rather dangerous game for supermen. The *Moth changed all that Here was an aircraft that could be bought for £595, flown by almost anybody, towed behind a car and kept in a garage. It made possible the flying-dub movement, which spread like migic throughout B itain and the world. Soon the Moth even had its own specially designed engine—the lightweight Gipsy—and demand became so great that factories to assemble and build Moths were set up in Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, Rhodesia and New Zealand, marking the first real expansion of the British aircraft industry into the Empire. The Moth quickly became the most famous aircraft in the world, creating at the same time a new generation of sporting pilots, some of whom achieved incredible feats of long- distance flying on less than 100 h.p. Two intrepid airmen— Neville Stack and B. S. Leete—who flew Moths from Britain to India in 1926 were generally regarded as candidates for the nearest padded cell. But next year R. R. Bentley flew one solo to Cape Town and back, while Lady Bailey first set up a height record of 17,289 ft in a Moth, with Mrs. de Havilland as passenger, and then flew it 18,000 miles solo round Africa. Moths won the King's Cup in 1926, 1927 and 1928; and in the following year the Zenith Cup, the 4,000-mile race round Europe, and the South African and New Zealand Aerial Derbies. In 1930, Amy Johnson gained the acclamation of the world with a solo flight to Australia in 19! days. In April, 1931, C. W. A. Scott covered the same route in 9 days, 4 hours; and three months later Jim Mollison flew the reverse direc- tion in only 8 days 22 hours. Then came the Puss Moth monoplane, which could carry three people at 105 m.p.h. at 20 miles to the gallon, a fuel consumption which, with extra tankage, made possible lightplane flights across even the Atlantic. Bert Hinkler was first, with a flight from New York to London via the South Atlantic. Mollison conquered the North Atlantic solo from east to west, 2,600 miles in The first take-off, at Crcnwell, of the Closter-Whittle £.28/39, Britain's first jet aircraft. Pilot, FjL P. E. G. Sayer; date, May \5th, 1941. An Avro Lancaster (four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines) unloads a clutch of 1,000 Ib bombs on a flying-bomb launching site in Northern France.
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