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Aviation History
1953
1953 - 0020.PDF
20 FLIGHT, 2 January 1953 THE AERONAUTICAL BOOKSHELF "The Crowded Hours," by Anthony Richardson. Max Parrish and Co., Adprint House, Rathbone Place, London, W.i. Price 15s 6d. MOST readers who sit quietly by the fireside at home (or not-so-quietly in the "8.21 to Town") with this biography will feel pangs of envy that their own lives are less exciting and full of adventure than that of its subject, "Sos" Cohen. But they will also, probably, agree that his experiences are more attractive in retrospect than as highlights in a day-to-day routine. Lionel Cohen was one of n children of a Newcasde ship owner, and his adventures started even before he ran away from a sheltered Victorian home at the age of 15 to join the Marines. Nor did they end when, more than half a century later, he added a D.F.C. to his D.S.O. and M.C. in his seventieth year, after flying 70 operational sorties against the enemy. The intervening years are described in this excellent book as a series of flash-backs, linked by incidents during the 69th sortie, which nearly ended in disaster when flak from an enemy ship set on fire an engine of the Halifax in which W/C. Cohen was flying as air-gunner. Nobody who has read this book will feel surprised that he should be in a gun- turret at such an advanced age. There is not a great deal of other aviation interest in The Crowded Hours, except for one dramatic flight in a free balloon over South Africa at the beginning of the century, and some hazardous reconnaissance missions in B.E.2Cs during World War I. But there is almost everything else—life-and-death encounters with venomous snakes, man-eating lions and Lobengula's Matabele warriors; murders; a sentence of death by firing squad; stories of Cohen's actions in four wars in all three Services; vivid glimpses of life in the Transvaal and East Africa during the pioneer days; and plenty of good, clean humour. It would be difficult to find a more entertaining book. "Aircraft Instrument Design," by W. H. Coulthard, M.Sc, A.M.I.Mech.E., F.R.P.S. Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd., Parker Street, London, W.C.2. Illustrated. Price 40s. T^HE instruments with which this book is concerned are those •*• providing visual indication to aircrew members: special emphasis is given to those used only in aircraft; special test equipment is not included. The author, who is a principal scientific officer in the Instruments Department at R.A.E., Farn- borough, explains lucidly the design and construction of these devices, with the help of extremely good illustrations. Physical principles on which the instruments are based are described also, but some initial knowledge of physics and mathematics is here assumed. The book comprises four parts, respectively devoted to pilots', navigators' and engineers' instruments, and to automatic flight instruments, and in each part a general introduction precedes detailed descriptions of particular equipment. Appendices on the standard atmosphere and remote transmission systems are included together with a useful list of references for further reading. "Newnes' Engineers Reference Book." Fifth edition. Edited by F. J. Camm. George Newnes, Ltd., Southampton Street, London, W.C.2. Illustrated. Price 63s. T^HIS standard work is—if a cliche may be forgiven—one with- -*- out which no design-office or workshop would be complete. Some measure of its vast scope may best be gained by these brief statistics: 2,000 pages; 87 sections;.2,500 illustrations; 1,100 tables; 6,000 cross-referenced index entries. The work entailed in compiling and revising a book of this kind almost defies the imagination. "No Distress Signals," by Winifred Brown. Peter Davies, Ltd., 38, Bedford Square, London, W.C.i. Illustrated. Price 15s. YXf INIFRED BROWN, as older readers will remember, won the "" Race for the King's Cup in 1930 in a Cirrus-engined Avian, and is still the only woman to have won the Cup. This book tells the story of her life in the years that followed, with the emphasis on her war-time experiences. Provided the reader is not sickened by an overdose of Sunday newspaper love-affairs, 200 pages of pub-crawling and a remark able volume of technicoloured language, there is plenty of interest; as Miss Brown spent the war aboard flying-boat servicing tenders at the Saunders-Roe factory in Anglesea, at a wage of about 50s a week ! One meets all sorts of characters, from volunteer trans atlantic ferry pilots to real Admirals and an incredible assortment of deck-hands. One also meets an equally wide and interesting variety of marine aircraft, including Catalinas, Seafox, Sunder- lands, a Shetland, Spitfire floatplane and Coronado; and the chapter describing Miss Brown's part in rough-water tests of air/ sea rescue rubber life-rafts proves that war-time aircrews forced to use such equipment were not the only people deserving medals. "Photogrammetric Mapping from Air Photographs—a Simple Explanation." By the Technical Staff of Hunting Aerosurveys, Ltd. Iliffe and Sons, Ltd., Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, S.E.J. Illustrated. Price js 6d. THIS little 54-page book, on an important but highly specialized aspect of air-survey work, has been prepared in such a manner that, while useful to those engaged in such work, it remains under standable by the reader who merely wishes to enlarge his know ledge of modern air-work techniques in general. Photogrammetry is the technique of making measurements and scale drawings and maps from photographs. It can be applied to any objects, even to fixing the positions of stars in the universe. Terrestrial photogrammetry, making use of photographs taken on the ground, is practical, but has many limitations. Aerial photo grammetry is by far the most widely used application, and it has now become one of the most important instruments at the dis posal of the surveyor. A particularly interesting section of the book deals with stereo plotting, and the frontispiece is a two-colour anaglyph of a river valley, which the reader may view two-dimensionally with the aid of a pair of red-and-green spectacles provided. "Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles and Space Ships," by Jack Coggins and Fletcher Pratt. Sidgwick and Jackson, 44 Museum Street, London, W.C.i. Illustrated. Price 10s 6d. AS an introduction to rocketry in all its varied forms, this book • is in a class by itself. There are a few minor inaccuracies in the text, including statements that the Germans fired all their V.is against London "from huge concrete ramps" and that "even the Japanese called their suicide 'planes Baka, which means 'fool' "— but these are more than outweighed by the wealth of other interesting data and scores of superb drawings, many in full colour. Every type of war rocket is illustrated, from simple Chinese "fireworks" of A.D. 1200 to Allied, German and Jap rockets used in World War II. Most readers will be surprised to learn that "towards the end of 1944, when the landings in the Philippines were going on, the U.S. was using $100,000,000 worth of rockets every day"; and one particularly interesting drawing shows a B.47 using "reversed" rockets as a landing brake. We can learn some thing about the Royal Artillery Mounted Rocket Corps of 1815, how "hedgehog" rockets were fired to destroy German U-boats in 1945, how rockets are probing secrets of high-altitude flight and how one day we may be able to fly to the moon. Diagrams explain the working of every type of rocket and jet engine, and Mr. Coggins' colour drawings of space stations and exploration of the planets are almost photographic in quality. OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED Islands in the Sky, by Arthur C. Clarke. Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 44 Museum Street, London, W.C.i. Price 8s. 6d. Workshop Practice, Vol. 3, by A. E. Peatfield. (Teach Yourself Mechanical Engineering), English Universities Press, Ltd., St. Paul's House, Warwick Square, London, E.C.4. Price 6s. Mathematics for Telecommunications, Vol. I, by D. F. Spooner and W. H. Grinsted. English Universities Press. Price 10s 6d. Autocar Road Tests, 1952, by the Technical Staff of The Autocar (Iliffe and Sons, Ltd., Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, S.E.i. Price 5s).—Thirty of The Autocar's road-test reports, covering British, Continental and American cars of all classes, reprinted in book form; this 1952 edition, well illustrated and produced in photogravure, also contains an article describing how the tests are carried out and the standards on which results are based. The following technical publications have been received from the National Aeronautical Establishment, Montreal Road, Ottawa, Canada: A Simplified Theory of Swept Wing Deformation, by A. H. Hall; The Effect of Surface Active Agents on Petroleum Fuels, by F. G. Kitson; Carbon Formation in Flames of Aromatic Hydrocarbons, by W. Sacks and M. T. I. Ziebell; Flow Structure and Pressure Recovery in a Supersonic Open-jet Wind Tunnel, by J. G. Hall; Thermodynamic Limitations of Ice-Accretion Instru ments, by D. Fraser, C. K. Rush and D. Baxter; and the Council's Quarterly Report. Additionally, we have received, from the Canadian National Research Council's Division of Mechanical Engineering, Aerial Prospecting for Radio-Active Materials, by members of the staff of the Flight Research Section, Arnprior, Ontario, and the Atomic Energy Project, Chalk River, Ontario.
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