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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 1414.PDF
FLIGHT, 20 July 1951 Hullo there! A long range picture of the late Chris Staniland taken from the rear gun position of the 1932 Fairey Hertdon. The ground in the photograph is now London Airport at Heathrow. PROFESSIONAL JOYRIDER . . . Blenheim, even at heights of five or six thousand feet, the groundwas noticed, for the first time, to be visibly moving backwards in relation to the aircraft. What a nice aircraft the D.H. Flamingo was ! Had the warnot intervened to stop production it would have become a most popular civil type. It was uncomfortable, however, to fly in aformation of them (as Hertfordshires) without a gun between the lot if an Me 109 had happened to poke its nose through the clouds. The Wellington was a gentleman and seemed prepared to doanything asked of it. In one of the very early models I flew over the Derby race crowds and later, as Flight's war correspondent,did 4^ hours over Dieppe trying to check up on any E-boats leaving harbour. An interesting feature of that flight was that itcoincided with the opening of the V.i campaign and that the height at which we had been briefed to fly was the same as that ofthe flying bombs. In ten-tenths cloud the beastly things passed all round us, looking like buckets of fire shooting through a fog.Incidentally, what our take-off load must have been can only be guessed, but after more than six hours' flying we had to drop six500 lb bombs in order to get down to maximum permissible landing weight. All were dropped "safe"; all exploded. They wereall of the then very secret air-pistol detonator type, designed to explode a few feet above the water's surface. A form of flying which was a never-ending source of wonder-ment to me was that of the Beaufighter strike squadrons of Coastal Command. They would go out on pitch-black rainy nights,searching over the North Sea at 250ft to 500ft and putting their entire trust in the twinkling lights of a radio altimeter. TheBeaufighter was the war correspondent's perfect aircraft; one could stand on the escape hatch behind the pilot and see everything thatwent on without getting in the crew's way. The same might be said of the Short Stirling. It was myprivilege to fly in one and join that great armada of aircraft and gliders that left this country on September 17th, 1944, for thelittle town of Arnhem in Holland. Never did England look so lovely or the cloudscape so glorious as on that Sunday morning.It was the last sight of the old country for many, and it was appro- priate* that the farewell should have been so gentle. For the variety of tasks it had to fulfil the Mosquito wasundoubtedly the most versatile aircraft ever produced: a war- time airliner to Scandinavia, a bomber to Berlin, an intruder,a day bomber, a night fighter. Yet it was as a ^photo-reconnais- san£e machine with the Americans that I remember it best.Flying over the Dutch coast with a pilot who had been in the *dtgje Squadron I asked him if he liked the Mossie. "Sure," hesaid, "it's a real good ship. We don't have many pilots good enough for it." Another six inches in width would have madethe Mosquito comfortable. The limit, for me, in piston-engined aircraft came with a triplast year in a two-seater Sea Hornet from Culdrose in Cornwall to Lee-on-Solent. Now sporting a waistline of plus forty, it wasan exhausting job threading oneself into the tiny rear cockpit. For the first time, I must confess, the harness remained unfastenedfrom sheer inability to reach the ends—but the ride reduced a journey of many hours to a matter of minutes. Frankly, there came a time recently when it appeared as if allthe joy had gone out of flying. Great big geared airscrews driven by enormous piston-engines gave flying a brutal roughness. Butnow, with the coming of the jet, all the poetry, all the exquisite exhilaration of moving through space at will has returned. Aflight in a Meteor 7 is a revelation—one becomes a lord of creation. " The Beaufighter was the war correspondent's perfect aircraft. . .' A rocket attack as seen from behind the pilot's seat. Over the rear gunner's shoulder: A peep at the Airspeed Horsa glider behind a Short Stirling on the way to Arnhem. A taste of war in peace: Returning to base with other Bristol Brigands after attacking bandits in hiding in the Malayan jungle. V i
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