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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 2035.PDF
FLIGHT International, 21 November 1963 837 eaudun my home for ever, just so long as I did not again take off without firm evidence that a plausible fault had been repaired. We initiated the friendly hotel staff into the mysteries of inter national telephone procedure and talked in due course to Lord Kildare, managing director of C.S.E. Aviation at Oxford. Within hours he had arranged a rescue expedition of two engineers and a BE AS Apache, who fought their way through Customs with a spare carburetter and plugs and reached Chateaudun during Sunday afternoon. In no time at all, they listened to the engine running, watched the thickish black smoke emerging from the exhaust, pulled off the cowlings, dismantled the carburetter intake and found one segment of an intake splitter, or cross-bracing system, detached and free to turbulate in the intake duct. It was this which had caused over-rich running and everything else, and the remaining pieces were removed with a deft tweak of finger and thumb. Carburetter was changed for good measure, the engine run and checked satis factory, the aircraft test-flown and the Apache on its way back to Oxford, via Le Bourget and Gatwick, by 7 p.m. To me, this convincingly proved C.S.E.'s claim to be able to back up their aircraft effectively and quickly. We decided to remain overnight in Chateaudun rather than make a night flight, waited next morning for fog to lift and continued with slowly returning confidence to Bordeaux Merignac. Passenger and I parted company here, primed with a tale to keep audiences spell-bound through many a winter evening. She took a train to Marseilles and I returned to X-ray Golf to fly down to Biarritz, which I reached when the two-day air display, aerobatic competition and everything except the prize-giving had long since finished. During a convivial dinner, however, it was discovered that I had come a greater distance to Biarritz in X-ray Golf than a Swiss pilot who had been given the prize for coming from farthest afield. The question of my having arrived after the dead-line time was not considered an insuperable obstacle and, after a brief conference of top men, I was given a splendid gold medal, which I felt was reward indeed for the rather fraught preceding days. My lateness, they said, was not my fault. As such dinners go, this dinner went with a swing and restored my morale to the point where I consented to give Monsieur and Madame Violet, of the Aero Club des Cheminots, who had both won prizes in the Marcel Doret competition, a lift back to Villacou- blay next morning. Accordingly, pausing only to commiserate with the Piper representatives whose five demonstration aircraft had been brutalized and plundered overnight by local worthies, we took off and covered the 353 n.m. at a block speed of 140kt in typically smooth, pleasant Comanche style. I navigated by radio, but kept a parallel plot with topographical maps all the way, to be ready for immediate diversion should new trouble arise. Needless to say it THE first attempt to fly round the world, in 1922, was described by Wg Cdr Norman Macmillan in an illustrated lecture he gave to the Historical Group of the Royal Aeronautical Society at 4 Hamilton Place, London Wl, on October 28. As Capt Macmillan, the lecturer had been pilot throughout the adventurous journey from Croydon aerodrome to its near-fatal termination in the Bay of Bengal. After describing the origins of the expedition, with Maj W. T. Blake as promoter and leader and Lt-Col L. E. Broome (replaced by Mr G. H. Malins) as photographer, Wg Cdr Macmillan ex plained how the one possible route was defined at that date by the performance of available aircraft, first in range and next in ceiling. The aircraft were all secondhand First World War types converted to suit the needs of the expedition. The route was divided into four sections, two to be flown by D.H.9 day bombers converted from two- to three-seaters, and the other two, over water, by a Fairey ffIC floatplane similarly converted and an F.3 flying-boat. The hardships endured when flying over a tropical route in mid summer in aircraft designed for operation from fixed bases in tem perate climates were modestly understated by Wg Cdr Macmillan. Ihe D.H.9 was 6001b overload. They flew non-stop from Athens to Solium; crossed the Syrian Desert by the original air-mail track, slept out on the bed holes of scorpions and monstrous spiders. In raq the water boiled when flying toward the sun; overnight No 84 *jn, RAF, added 160 sq in of radiator, which cured the trouble but added drag. did not. But M Violet chuckled delightedly when the engine stopped momentarily as it swallowed a chunk of ice from a patch of wet cumulus cloud. He looked distinctly cross when I told him afterwards that I had been worried at that point because of an engine failure a few days before. Leaving M and Mme Violet, I hastened back to Gatwick at a block speed of 129kt, including the ILS approach. While I now view twin-engined aircraft with the strongest favour, I could hardly wish for a better fast, long-range single-engined transport than the Comanche. The particular fault I suffered was cured by simple excision of the splitter on all Aztec engines, but the pro cedure has for some unaccountable reason not been carried across to the identical engine of the Comanche. Looking back, there are some points which bear re-examination. Should I have followed conventional teaching and made a power-on forced landing as soon as trouble developed? In this case, my decision to stay in the air and try to reach an airfield was successful, with the result that the aircraft was undamaged and recovery opera tions straightforward. A forced landing is never a 100 per cent certainty, but it is much easier with power than without and I knowingly took the risk of a power-off landing had the engine not lasted until Chateaudun. This must always be an on-the-spot decision and a very personal one, made under considerable stress. Was I right to make use of the radio and put out a distress call ? I still feel this was right. Though it produced very little of value at first, it did elicit some information in the form of bearings and some warning for Chateaudun. Anything at all is helpful, even though it takes an almost disproportionate amount of time and energy to secure. In view of the general disinterest in VFR traffic, any distress call might as well be a Mayday if any positive reaction in the way of fixes and navigational assistance is required. The degree of emergency can always be reduced. I feel that, on the whole, it is important to say something, if only good-bye. It might ultimately provide the only clue in an accident investigation. Perhaps the factor which most helped me in this instance was that I had sufficiently checked the flight and the aircraft by the time the failure occurred to know almost immediately that the engine was beyond my control and not simply mishandled. The more thorough the pre-flight study and particularly, the more up-to-the-minute and comprehensive the in-flight progress check, the better are the chances of having a great deal of background information already at hand the moment something goes astray. One is never so busy as when things go wrong and any continuous plotting of progress pays off 100 per cent at such a time. Finally, the knowledge that one's aircraft is backed by the kind of spares and recovery service provided by C.S.E. Aviation on this occasion is extremely comforting and encouraging. Theirs was the first aircraft to fly across India in the monsoon. Shade temperatures of 125° and sun temperatures of 175° were en dured. Both flying and surface conditions were appalling. Vast flooded areas enforced detours. Plywood perished, rigging sagged, wing fabric stitching broke and fabric had to be tied down extern ally. Rubber unions in the fuel system perished and choked filters. Rubber bungee shock absorbers perished. The immersed fuel pumps failed simultaneously. There were many forced landings and dangerous take-offs from narrow road and pony-track surfaces. The D.H.9 would not rise from 5,500ft-high Quetta airfield except when flown solo with reduced fuel load. The Puma failed at Agra, clanking at 850 r.p.m. The Maharajah of Bharatpur had had cased Pumas given him by the UK Government after the war; he lent the expedition one and his mechanics installed it in the open. Over night white ants ate the whole interior of the wood propeller, leav ing it a mere paper-thin shell. Blake fell out at Agra with appendicitis. Mac and Malins reached Calcutta. There they found the plywood of one float of the IHC had perished. To go on with it in that state was virtual madness as it could not be properly repaired. They took the risk. That was the first seaplane to rise from the Hugli River. Their subsequent ad ventures on the tidal mudflats and later in the open sea, after their floatplane had turned upside down (because of the defective float), in hammerhead shark and poisonous sea-snake infested waters, and their last-minute, miraculous rescue is a story of courage and stoic endurance. ROUND THE WORLD IN 1922
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