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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1391.PDF
FLIGHT International, 8 August 1963 211 A good deal has been learned about the habits of Stint and the seagulls and other temporary feathered residents on Admiralty property. One thing is that they avoid the colours purple or violet. As there are large grass areas on airfields, and grass attracts the birds, could the grass be dyed purple or violet? This, however, would be highly expensive and the process would require repetition. Fortunately the Royal Navy have not yet lost any pilots through bird strikes—the majority (75 per cent) of which, it should be emphasized, occur in normal flight, as against 25 per cent during passengers and crew were killed.) On occasion, it has only been the pilot's skill which has saved him, as when Lt N. M. Tristram landed his Scimitar on HMS Hermes after a vulture had gone through the windscreen (Flight International, November 22, 1962). What worries the Admiralty is that these strikes are increasing, particularly below 1,000ft, i.e., in the airspace where more and more low flying is being done. Other Services, including the RAF and RCAF, report the same trend, although as strikes occur more regularly in the vicinity of airfields near the sea and in fairly remote The RAF suffers, too: cockpit canopy of a Canberra after an unidentified interception . . . and so do civil aircraft: this is the intake of one of the Conways of a TCA DC-8 which met a seagull. The MoA has been collaborating with Rolls-Royce in bird-strike research (see "Conway Mrd-inges- tion Tests," page 899, "Flight International," June 13) the take-off and landing phase—though they lost a Scimitar which had to be abandoned over the Firth of Tay after a starboard engine fire resulted from ingestion of a seagull. (Civil aircraft bird strikes have had fatal consequences, the worst being when a United Air Lines Viscount struck a 151b swan at 10,000ft over Maryland and areas, the Royal Navy is chief sufferer; and Captain E. M. Brown, the Adviser on Aircraft Accidents at the Admiralty, Whitehall, London SW1, will be glad to hear from anyone anywhere in the world who can shed helpful light on this grave problem, which is also engaging the attention of the Ministry of Aviation, H.W. The faster an aircraft, and the lower its normal operational altitude, the greater is its liability to collisions with birds. Buccaneer pilots from Lossiemouth fly low-level training sorties through the Scottish Highlands, as seen here 'Flight International" photograph
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