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Aviation History
1952
1952 - 2090.PDF
124 FLIGHT, i August 1952 VINTAGE ENTHUSIASM . . . location, condition, and possible price of derelict aircraft that come within the "Vintage" definition. When a group is working on a project, an appeal for help or the loan of equipment finds a ready response from the committee, who have a pretty compre hensive knowledge of where to find the necessary. This Club is for the enthusiast with a willing pair of hands; it has no time for the "I care not what happeneth to thee, Jack" formula. With the aid of the Kemsley Trust, an Avro Cadet has been acquired for the use of members who are qualified pilots, and it can be hired at a non-profit making rate by those who like a handy biplane. It is also available for those not fortunate enough to have machines of their own, so that they may on occasions take part in the competitions that occur during the organized rallies. These contests are designed to bring out the handling qualities of the aircraft as much as to give the pilot a chance to show his skill, and a trophy is to be awarded annually to the aircraft that has accumulated the most points during the competitive year. Most of the criticisms levelled at the club come from older folk who, after attending a meeting, remark disappointedly, "I was expecting to see some S.E.5S or Farmans. Now when I was in the Royal Flying Corps, etc., etc." We are sorry about that, but we leave such types of machine to the organizations that can afford to keep them in a box all the year round and bring them out on high days and holidays. Our definition of a vintage aircraft is that it shall be one "which went out of production before 1939, or any machine which by reason of its rarity or uniqueness is considered eligible by the Committee, providing that such aircraft shall have a current C. of A." A flying instructor, in a recent letter to the technical Press, complained that after obtaining a P.P.L. the average pilot did not know what to do next, and his interest invariably waned. If he flies typical modern club machines, this loss of enthusiasm is not surprising. By encouraging the flying of older types without the niceties of differential ailerons and weathercock stability (and by flying, we do not mean map reading from A to B, but learning to handle these versatile aircraft well) we feel that something is being done to offer the private pilot an extension of his interests. For our non-flying members, there is a modelling section (vintage models only, of course), while an historical branch has just been formed; and, as has already been said, every help is being offered to them to get in the air themselves. These are modest aims, no doubt; but we do find that when a crowd of vintage enthusiasts get together, the right spirit begins to develop naturally; and that's what we are after. R. E. G. THREE NEW BOOKS "Night Be My Witness," by Walter Clapham. Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 30 Bedford Square, London, W.C.i. Price 12s 6d. T HIS is a war novel, with the inevitable technicolored language and bedroom scenes; but don't let that stop you reading it. Walter Clapham's characters are no better and little worse than many of the young aircrew of Bomber Command, who can hardly be condemned for breaking convention when their whole way of living and dying was unconventional and terrible. The reader will not need to be told that the author was himself an N.C.O. bomb-aimer in Bomber Command. Only personal experience, coupled with a unique sense of observation and descriptive ability could produce such a book, in which no character or scene is ever larger than life. Central characters of the story are three young ack-ack gunners who volunteer for flying duties with the R.A.F. One becomes a pilot; the others fail to get their wings and remuster as bomb- aimers. Two are killed, the third lives to face the disillusionment of trying to fit intc a post-war world that seems hardly worth their sacrifice. This book is worth reading for its semi-documentary description of life at training stations in Florida and Canada, and of the humour and tragedy of wartime bomber operations from North Africa and Britain. "Faith is a Windsock," by Miles Tripp. Price 12s 6d. Peter Davies, Ltd., 38 Bedford Square, London, W.C.i. H ERE is yet another book in the current spate of fiction- founded-on-fact R.A.F. novels; again, too, the characters are Bomber Command crews. This particular story is capably told, and in a not-too-lurid style, thereby gaining in its descriptive effect. The incidents are threaded on a rather thin plot, but the author's character-drawing is so good that the book remains interesting in spite of the lack of suspense. He makes no concessions to the reader not conversant with Service slang and technical terms : the uninitiated will find themselves badly in need of a glossary. "Stuka Pilot," by Hans Ulrich Rudel, with a foreword by Group Capt. Douglas Bader, D.S.O., D.F.C. Euphorion Books, 302 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, S.W.I. Illustrated. Price 12s 6d. A FEW weeks ago, in reviewing the biography of a great British airman, we complained that the subject of the work was "so modest and unassuming that the author was given little first-hand material on which to base his book—a fact that became all too obvious to the reader." Nobody will accuse Luftwaffe pilot Hans Ulrich Rudel of the same virtue—a virtue that can become tedious. He is proud of his athlete's stamina, his record of 2,530 operational flights on the Russian front, meetings with his Fuehrer, and his medals. In fact, he is so proud of his medals that, when he lands in enemy territory, then has to sprint for half an hour in fur boots and coat to escape from "droves of Ivans" and make a hazardous descent of an almost perpendicular cliff, he still remembers to put the medals in his pocket before swimming the freezing, 600 yards- wide Dniester river. Of course, they were rather special medals. Some components of his "one off" Gold Oak-leaves with Swords and Diamonds to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross weighed several pounds, and the Swords and Diamonds were framed in gold. Rudel's record of operational sorties is unequalled by any other pilot in the world, and the fact that most of them were made in Ju 87s, under the noses of Yak-9, Airacobra and Mustang fighters, says much for his flying skill. His description of the low-level attack in which he sank the Russian battleship Marat is most exciting, and those who remember with affection the Hurricane IID "tank-buster" will appreciate notes on the development and operational success of its German counterpart—the Ju 87 with two 37 mm flak cannon under its wings. There is much more of interest, including details of the use of Ju 87s as glider tugs; Rudel's respect for Russian flak (a weapon which brought him down many times), and his contempt for Russian pilots (who didn't); impressions of Russian village life; and of the first shock of being shot at by^Rumanian "allies". STRETCHED AND SWOL LEN : The prototype Lock heed 1049 Super Constella tion has had to undergo not only the familiar stretching process (com pared with its forbears), but also the less-common swelling process. In its latest form it a serving as a flying test-bed for the forthcoming Lockheed VVV-2 high-altitude radar- warning aircraft for the U.S. Navy.
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