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Aviation History
1955
1955 - 1425.PDF
FLIGHT, 23 September 1955 537 SERVICE AVIATION Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm News P.M. Visits R.A.F. ON Tuesday of last week Sir AnthonyEden, continuing his fact-finding tour of the Services, visited a number of R.A.F.establishments. In a Devon of Transport Command heflew from Halton to Wittering to see No. 138 Squadron's Valiants in action. Heattended a briefing for one of the routine Bomber Command exercises and, withW/C. Oakley, the squadron commander, inspected the crew, ground-crew and cock-pit of one of the Valiants. Having taken the controls of the Vulcan at Farnborough,he is now getting to know the V-bombers well. From the control tower he later watched18 Canberras from Nos. 76, 40 and 61 sqns. take off. (No. 61 Sqn. was visiting Witter-ing while No. 100 Sqn. is based there but was not taking part in this phase of theexercise.) The aircraft took off at 45 sec intervals, using various sections of the twoparallel runways available. Finally, before taking off for Coltishall, the Prime Ministerwatched a fly-past of 12 Valiants from Gaydon, some from No. 138 Sqn. andothers from the conversion unit there. At Coltishall he transferred to a helicopterwhich took him to see various defence establishments in East Anglia. He latervisited Ouston in Northumberland. Wittering, incidentally, is equipped withEkco approach radar mounted in a small caravan and with Decca A.C.R.7 in itstransportable version. Bomber Command in AustraliaT WO Valiants have visited Australia inconnection with the Air Force com- memoration week there. They are thesquadron aircraft which have been on a proving flight in the Far East. Air Marshal Sir George Mills, who flewto Australia in one of the Hastings which accompanied the Valiants, said at a Pressconference in Melbourne last week that Australia required bombers with a rangefar greater than that of the Canberras she now possessed.He also is quoted as saying that the new Handley Page Victor would be "evenpunchier" than the Valiants or Vulcans. Battle of Britain Week N September 15th the annual reunionof Battle of Britain pilots was held in the officers' mess at Biggin Hill. Ninety-five of "the few" were present of the 300 who had been invited. They includedLord Dowding, who was A.O.C-in-C. Fighter Command during the battle, andmany of those who became famous as fighter pilots and formation leaders. It ishoped to have a tie for "the few" next year. After a drumhead service at Biggin Hillon Sunday the new stained-glass windows in the station chapel, containing the badgesof the squadrons which were based there during the battle, were unveiled. The annual thanksgiving service washeld in Westminster Abbey on the same day; many relatives of those who lost theirlives in the air fighting were present. Accounts of some of the "at home" dis-plays given at many R.A.F. airfields throughout Britain appear on pages 510-511 of this issue. R.A.F. Rowing COR the first time the R.A.F. held its••- own rowing regatta, attracting 68 entries from 20 different stations in Britain.The regatta was held on the Thames at Wallingford on September 14th. Carding-ton won the Victor Scott-Paine trophy for the station scoring the highest number ofpoints in the finals. Other winners were, senior eights, Cardington; senior fours,Medmenham; junior fours, No. 90 Group; novice fours, Henlow "B"; senior sculls,W. H. Rand, Benson; junior sculls, J. Harding, Norm Weald; novice sculls, P. B.Dack, No. 90 Group; veteran sculls, C. Jordan, Air Ministry; kayak singles, R. C.Blick, North Weald. W.R.A.F. Central Band LAST Tuesday the W.R.A.F. CentralBand began a tour of eleven cities and towns in South Wales, the Midlands andLancashire. The band was formed in 1949 and is composed of 28 airwomenunder the direction of F/L. M. R. Davis. They will return to their base at Uxbridgeon October 1st. Watching the Battle of Britain fly-past from the Air Ministry roof on Wednesday last week were Marshals of the Royal Air Force Lord Trenchard (seated) and Sir William Dickson. Low-level Ejection 'THE completely successful live ejection-*• at runway level made on September 3rd by S/L. Fifield with a Martin BakerMk 3 seat could not be repeated in seats of this mark at present installed in Vam-pire Trainers, V-bombers and other air- craft in service. The demonstration seatwas fitted with a specially modified speeded-up release-timing mechanismwhich is not yet in the seats issued to the Service.The makers state that present Mk 2 and 3 seats with single drogues are good forejection in straight and level flight at 200 ft, and that those fitted with theduplex drogues have been successfully tested at 500 kt and 50 ft. The trajectory of the seat after ejectionis substantially parallel to the aircraft's flight path, and, in order that no heightshall be lost between ejection and full deployment of the parachute canopy, theflight-path must be horizontal or climbing and airspeed sufficiently high to maintainan effectively horizontal trajectory for be- tween three and five seconds. Ejection atlower speeds would require proportionately more height, and ejection in a dive would,of course, call for an even greater height margin. Commonwealth Sqn. Commander FOR the first time No. 24 CommonwealthSqn. is to be commanded by a R.N.Z.A.F. officer. He is S/L. R. B. Bolt,D.F.C., of Auckland. Previous squadron commanders have come from theR.A.A.F. and the South African Air Force. Though originally formed in 1915 as afighter squadron, No. 24 is now in Trans- port Command. It received the designa-tion "Commonwealth" in 1947. Traditionally exhibited on Horse Guards Parade, Whitehall, during Battle of Britain Week were some of the aircraft which took part in the bottle. Seen here is a Junkers Ju88, with an Hell! behind. A Spitfire and Hurricane were also shown.
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