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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 1888.PDF
976 FLIGHT Above /eft, S/L. M. Charlesworth (left) and F/L. K. Utton, pilot and navigator on the flight described; above right, a B(l)8 with pylon bombs and wing-tip tanks, showing the offset cockpit canopy; and lower right, installation by Saunders-Roe, Ltd., for two 20 Ib or 25 Ib practice bombs beneath each pylon. INTERDICTOR TRAINING . . . worth throttled back his port engine to make the actual QGHdescent an asymmetric one and started it from 20,000ft at 250 kt with air brakes out.When this practice had been completed we climbed again—the Canberra getting back to 20,000ft in what seemed to be (withoutinstruments to observe the rate of climb) an astonishingly short time—to do a controlled descent, by spiral turns, after a simulateddouble flame-out. What impressed one about this exercise was its final accuracy and the B(I)8's civilized angle of glide at 170 kt. At the start, we were 15 miles away from the airfield, andsubsequent dialogue between pilot and controller went like this: "Ten miles . . . 19,000ft now . . . Five miles to go ... Seventeen-and-a-half thou . . . 15,000 . . . Continue turning left . . . Thirteen-and-a-half thou . . . You're still in the cone." (Ourrate of descent was now l,400ft/min.) . . . "Levelling on 180 deg . . . You are back overhead again . . . Recommence spiraldescent, left, left . . . Two-eighty, eight-and-a-half thou . . . 340, angels seven."Just below us now, at about 6,000ft, there was eight-eighths cloud; through and beneath it, our descent continued to the samepattern and was only broken off when we were in a good position for landing—an excellent example of accurate co-operation be-tween pilot and controller. Following this, we climbed again above cloud for the last two practices of the morning. One of these was the prescribed manoeuvre—a half loop witha roll off the top—for the LABS bombing procedure. This was accomplished with remarkable smoothness from level flight atapproximately 430 kt. From the prone position, one watched the nose rise steadily above the horizon, then point at the sky; but thetransition from inverted flight to the rolled-out position was so quickly achieved as to be barely perceptible. The navigator, how-ever, in his seat at the table—an unaccustomed position for him during LABS bombing—felt the full force of the g exerted duringthe climb to an inverted position. This practice, of course, was carried out at an artificial altitude;in operations the speed would be lower and the attack made at a height designed to be low enough to escape radar detection andguided missiles. In fact, the manoeuvre forms the sequel to the type of low-level cross-country we had been practising.We finished the morning's session with a single-engined G.C.A., which positioned us admirably—again through good instructionand accurate flying—for a final visual approach to the runway in use, on to which the aircraft wheels rumbled at approximately1310. We had thus been airborne for almost 2\ hours, every minute of which had been used intensively for training. Theamount of work which had been accomplished in this routine sortie indicates the ardour with which the crews of No. 88 Sqn.,whose keenness and morale are of a noticeably high order, main- tain and improve their operational efficiency as a 2nd T.A.F.bombing and ground attack formation in the spearhead of NATO defence of Western Europe. H.W. U.S. ARMY ADOPTS FRENCH MISSILE AFTER exhaustive tests over several years the Nord SS-10 anti-- tank rocket is being ordered in quantity for the U.S. Seventh Army in Germany. An initial batch, said to number well over athousand, is being bought for field service trials. Already in use with the French Army, the SS-10 is understood to have beenordered by Sweden, Switzerland and Norway. A cruciform tailless rocket, spin-stabilized and with vibrating-spoiler trailing-edge flying controls, the missile is remotely con- trolled through twin wires by an operator using a binocular sightand joystick control. It is normally mounted in batteries of six and can be fired from the ground, vehicles, ships or low-speedaircraft, including helicopters. A live round weighs 33 lb, is 33.85in long widi a span of 29.52in, and has a range of about amile within a sixty degree "fan" from the launching site. Speed is subsonic, and the standard missile can penetrate 20in armour. The SS-10 system includes a transport/launcher crate (or, alter-natively, zero-length launching rails on aircraft), a guidance/con- trol unit, and also a synthetic basic trainer and a simulator.
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