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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 0074.PDF
38 FLIGHT. JANUARY 12, 1939 Although this acceleration does not appear to damage any healthy member of the crew, it is necessary for them to be braced and ready, and for their accommodation to be designed to prevent broken necks. One incidental advantage of the German scheme, however, is that, ships' assistance is permanently available. If you ask any of the Imperial Airwayi' Atlantic pilots they will say that the one thing which they want for anything resembling a regular service is at least one special ship, fitted with full direction-finding equipment and carrying an experi enced crew of radio operators and meteorologists, the position of which is known without doubt. Two such ships would enable the crew of transatlantic machines to calculate their position accurately by D/F bzarings, and they would also provide the pilots with ade quate and up-to-the-minute "weathEr information, sin:e the meteorologists on board would be expected to have the same evidence on which to base their weather charts as that offered to the staff at present stationed at Foynes and Botwood. The use of the ships for possible rescue work can be discounted. No flying-boat of present-day size could live in the open Atlantic. The latest experimental aid consists of air refuelling. The system which will be used for the British crossings this year has one particular advantage which has not so far been sufficiently stressed. With payloads measured in single pounds it is obviously impracticable for an Atlantic machine to carry a member of the crew—the hose expert—whose duties only apply to a short period right at the beginning of the flight. Short of dropping him uncomfortably by para chute to make his way towards the ground as well as he can, there would be no other way out of the difficulty THE crisis in September turned the thoughts of all citizens of London to speculations about bombing and its effects, and so the hall of the Royal United Service Institution was exceptionally full last week to hear Dr. E. B. Strauss read a paper on "The Psychological Effects of Bombing." Viscount Trenchard was in the chair. The distinguished lecturer ventured to make several asser tions. He said that in the next war an enemy's strategic policy would be the destruction of civilian morale, and that no air raider would aim at a military objective; but that if we did not give way to panic the enemy would find that he had made a mistake in bombing us. Likewise, retaliation by us would not pay; it would be psychologically unsound and therefore strategically unsound. However many cities we bombed, we should not wrin the war that way. In fact, bombing a people tended to unite discordant elements into common hatred of the enemy. We should be wiser to bomb with propaganda leaflets, so as to accentuate any discordant tendencies. Dr. Strauss gave a very technical explanation of panic and how it developed, and proceeded to suggest ways of preventing it from taking charge. He was emphatic that the Govern ment ought not to deceive the people by minimising the horrors they would probably have to face. If they had been deceived, they would panic when they found it out. He said that the Government should warn the people frankly that London was untenable and was very* liable to tires; that raids would be Test Pilot's New Venture A NEW partnership has just been formed by Capt. H. S. Broad and Maj. R. H. S. Mealing under the title H. S. Broad and Partners, with offices at 93, Knightsbridge, Lon don, S.W.i (Telephone: Sloane 4882). Maj. Mealing will continue to specialise on aerodrome advisory work, while Capt. Broad will deal with the flying side. He expects to do flying reports on commercial aircraft for overseas companies, and may possibly carry out their acceptance trials for them. Furthermore, Capt. Broad should be in a good position to advise flying clubs on the choice of aircraft and equipment. He has also the British rights in certain foreign patents, which he is placing in this country, and is interested in Sound, proofing, Ltd., on the aircraft and commercial sides. Capt. Broad's fame as a test pilot—at one time with De Havilland's—is well known. Maj. Mealing formerly held an important technical post at the Air Ministry. Although no statement can be made until the official announcement, which is expected during the next few days, where ordinary methods of refuelling were being used. Furthermore, the captain of the Atlantic machine would need to be specially trained in refuelling technique. As it is, the system to be used leaves the onus almost entirely on the pilot and crew of the tanker. So there is now quite a lot in this somewhat air-endurance- marathon method of coping with the load problem. The ideas most of us have about refuelling are those provided by the news reels of a few years ago, when it was the fashion for weary and bearded pilots in half-collapsing crates to stay up for six weeks or so at a time. In that case the business of refuelling appeared as a hair-raising one, with pilots and others hanging out of doors, climbing up ladders, and generally acting the air-circus ace around the two machines concerned. Facing Facts AS a confirmed pessimist I shall be surprised if the k Atlantic services do, in fact, start on June 1 and if the frequency is much more often than once a fortnight during the summer months. And I shall go quietly away and bury myself if one single fare-paying passenger is carried across the Atlantic before 1940—and that will be too soon. The meteorologists admit that they do not yet know all about the Atlantic weather; the radio experts admit that long-range bearings are still erratic; even the most experienced pilots and air navigators still require more experience in sextant work ; and nobody has yet found the way of dealing with Serious ice formation. Let us be optimistically pessimistic. INDICATOR. constant; that delay-action bombs would be dropped to destroy rescue parties, etc. But if the people were ready for all that, and knew that appropriate steps were being taken by the authorities, then they would not panic. The people in Spanish cities did not now give way to panic, and this he attributed not. to a fundamental difference in the nervous make-up of Spanish and British people, but to the fact that the Spaniards had grown used to being bombed. It had been said that for every casualty in a bomb raid there were three cases of nervous breakdown ; but in Spain now there were not nearly so many cases of neurasthenia as that. Dr. Strauss did not think much of the idea of, deep shelters, which, he said, it would be difficult to reach. Moreover, he said that tendencies to claustrophobia were much more common than was generally supposed. He did, however, advocate underground hospitals for treating casualties, which, he said, would do a good deal to allay panic—while the exist ing hospitals in London might well be hit. He urged evacua tion into camps, which should be prepared in peace time and supplied with amenities, so that people could get accustomed to them before it was necessary to use them. He considered it most important that everybody who remained should have a job and should get on with it, as nothing else had such a steadying effect. Japan had not yet beaten China by her tactics of bombing cities, and in spite of the sufferings of Spanish cities the morale in Spain was still high. it is known that Capt. Broad's name is likely to be linked with an official appointment t>f considerable importance to the British civil aviation world. A New Route for K.L.M. ? P ROVIDED that the authorities in Ceylon are prepared to extend Colombo's airport at Ratmalana to give four 1,400-yd. runs, K.L.M. may in due course alter their Far- Eastern route. In this case the machines on one or all of the services will no longer fly over the route across India and over Burma and Siam, but will fly down to Colombo and thence across the sea to Medan, in Sumatra, thereafter rejoining the old route to Singapore and Batavia. To some extent, it seems these plans are connected with others by which the com pany may one day fly across from Mombasa, in East Africa, to Colombo and Batavia. So far the only suggestion of K.L.'M.'s interest in Africa is the rumour that they are con sidering the operation of a service to the Cape, via the West Coast route. PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF BOMBING
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