Aircraft

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P-B slip-wing bomber

At the end of October 1940, while the British and German air forces were nightly striking at each other's cities, Captain Norman Macmillan (a decorated RFC veteran and former head of the National League of Airmen) argued in Flight that Britain's greatest need was for the development of a bomber which was possessed great speed (400 mph), long range (5000 miles) and high bombload (5 tons), for

We may dominate the seas, but that to-day is not enough. We must dominate the land as well, and we do not do so. We shall not be able to dominate the land until we possess bombers which can reach out to the uttermost corners of the earth, from the bases we possess. And we cannot win this war until we are able to straddle the whole of Europe from the air.

That means range and speed.1

One man answered the challenge: Noel Pemberton-Billing, founder of Supermarine and sometime demagogic independent MP. He rejected the contemporary dogma of the self-defending flying fortress, which had proven a failure in daylight operations and so were forced to bomb less accurately at night. The only defence, he believed, was speed, not guns. His design -- the P.B.49, a twin-engine monoplane with a crew of three -- more than met Macmillan's specifications, and had the added virtues of being small and inexpensive.2 In fact, it was around the same size as the later Mosquito, and about as fast; but had more than twice the bombload at its maximum combat range of 8000 miles, itself more than five times the range of the wooden wonder. At shorter ranges, more bombs could be carried -- 10 tons per bomber to Berlin, for example. How was this incredible performance to be achieved? By slip-wing, of course.
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  1. Norman Macmillan, "For the long-range bomber", Flight, 31 October 1940, 381. [↩]
  2. Noel Pemberton-Billing, "That long-range bomber", Flight, 14 November 1940, 413-5. [↩]

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The B-17 is one of the most famous aircraft used in the Second World War. It was known as the Flying Fortress. Or perhaps I should say the Flying FortressTM, for it was actually registered as a trademark by Boeing (well, Wikipedia says so, anyway). The phrase was supposedly coined by a journalist in an article which appeared in the 16 July 1935 issue of the Seattle Times, after he witnessed the rollout of the prototype Model 299. It's an apt enough name, given the number of defensive machine-guns (13 or more on the mid-war B-17G).

But I've noticed that the phrase "flying fortress" actually predates the debut of the Model 299 by several years, at least in British aviation literature. I can't say whether or not the American journalist was aware of it, but to me it looks like "flying fortress" was used widely enough to be considered a generic term for a certain type of aircraft: the self-defending bomber.
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Imperial Airways

A follow-on of sorts to a recent post.

Imperial Airways was Britain's main international airline between 1924 and 1939. It enjoyed semi-official status, as it was subsidised by the British government, and had the contract to deliver air mail throughout the Empire. Another international airline was formed in 1935, British Airways,1 which serviced European routes (and it was apparently subsidised as well, at least for the London-Paris route). Imperial did too, but only it flew the long-distance routes to South Africa, India, Hong Kong, Australia (with help from QANTAS) and points in between. I'm not sure if this was an official monopoly, or just because it was difficult to compete over such long distances without subsidies. I also wonder what would have happened if the Imperial Airship Scheme had gone into operation -- would Imperial have run that too? Anyway, in November 1939, Imperial and British were merged into BOAC, the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
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  1. Not the current BA, though they are related. [↩]

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Note: This map DOES NOT show real air routes, from 1920 or any other year! They are purely imaginary.

While writing the post on old maps, I happened upon the following example, which is labelled 'The world -- principal air routes' and dated to 1920 by the host site, Hipkiss' Scanned Old Maps:

Principal air routes, 1920

The only other information given is that it is from The People's Atlas and produced by the London Geographical Institute.

Now, this is interesting, because it most certainly does NOT show air routes in 1920: there were very, very few, and they certainly didn't criss-cross the world as this map suggests. Many of these routes had not been flown at all, let alone by regularly scheduled services. For example, here's a close-up of the North Atlantic:
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This is odd:

To my readers, then, let me explain again that a pursuit plane should not carry out any pursuing. It should be a machine designed for fighting. It should have the qualities of fast climb, reasonable manœuvrability and gun-power. It should be simple in design and cheap to produce, because it will take the actual brunt of all air fighting. Its top speed means absolutely nothing, for unless it can get into the sky quickly -- and often -- and engage the enemy and prevent him from carrying out his mission, you might as well place it alongside Lindbergh's We in the Smithsonian Institute, or with the model of the original Wright biplane in the South Kensington Museum.1

OK, so the history of American aviation is not really my area, but surely Lindbergh's plane was the Spirit of St. Louis, not the We? It's probably the most famous individual aircraft in history -- though that does not necessarily mean it was the most famous in 1940 -- and its flight across the Atlantic in 1927 was still well within living memory. How could an aviation writer get the name wrong?

The writer in question was probably better known as Arch Whitehouse, and better known in the US, where he lived, than in Britain, the land of his birth. He was a prolific writer of pulp air adventure stories, as well as popular histories and accounts of the Great War in the air and the exploits of various devil-may-care flying fools, who continued to write into the 1970s. This is quite impressive, as he was born in 1895 and was actually a veteran of the Royal Flying Corps -- first as an observer-gunner, then as a pilot. Whitehouse's bio in Hell in Helmets coyly notes that 'Certain semi-official sources'2 credited him with shooting down 16 German aeroplanes. Maybe this shows that his memory wasn't particularly reliable, as at most he may have had 4 kills. More likely, it seems that he was something of a serial exaggerator.

Even so, it's hard to think of a motive for intentionally calling Lindbergh's plane by the wrong name (although he clearly had little time for the Lone Eagle, at least in his role as an instant military aviation expert); it's such a trivial error. Aside from the possibility that my copy is actually from a parallel universe (I did acquire it through inter-library loan, so anything's possible), I can only think that Whitehouse (and his editor) had a momentary lapse of reason and confused the plane Lindbergh made his transatlantic flight in with the book Lindbergh wrote about that flight, which was published in 1927 and was in fact entitled "We". That's the obvious connection between "Lindbergh" and "We", and I suppose we all make mistakes from time to time. But for somebody whose entire career revolved around aviation to make such an elementary mistake about his subject would be like a physicist confusing a neutron with a proton.

It's not particularly important, and I already know to take Arch with a grain of salt anyway. It's just like I said ... odd!

  1. A. G. J. Whitehouse, Hell in Helmets: The Riddle of Modern Air Power (London: Jarrolds, n.d. [1940]), 163-4. Emphasis added. [↩]
  2. Ibid., 9. [↩]

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Some recent airship sightings:

Holden airship

An airship is currently gracing Melbourne skies, thanks to Holden. I've seen it but not with a camera handy, so this picture by Dr Snafu will have to serve. It's nice to see it floating around, but at only 54 metres in length, I'm forced to say: that's not an airship. THIS is an airship! Still, I'd love to fly in it ...

Great War Fiction has the trailer for the upcoming First World War aviation movie, Flyboys. Looks like great fun, with Nieuports and Fokkers slugging it out over the Western Front. And towards the end of the trailer, there's even a Zeppelin! While the producers seem to have done at least some research, it would be wise not too expect too much in the way of historical accuracy. I see they've gone for the usual massive Hollywood explosion with the Zep -- maybe they should have watched the Hindenburg disaster footage a few more times.

The Avia-Corner reports on an upcoming expedition to examine the wreckage, via submersible, of the USS Macon -- last of the US Navy's flying aircraft carriers. It crashed off the Californian coast in 1935. For understandable reasons none of the great airships of the early twentieth century have survived (aside from their unfortunate propensity for catastrophic failure, they take up rather a lot of room), so seabed wrecks are about all we have left, aside from a few fragments here and there.

Finally, Boing Boing notes that today is the 90th anniversary of the tank's combat debut. Or should I say "travelling caterpillar fort" instead? No, I probably shouldn't -- like many somewhat insecure nations, Australia sometimes likes to take credit for inventions it oughtn't to. Yes, Lance de Mole did come up with the basic idea, but so did a few others, even earlier. And he didn't build it -- others did. Which is the (rather tenuous) link with airships here: one of the men who did help make the tank a practical device was Commodore (later Rear-Admiral) Murray Sueter, who was the Royal Navy's first Inspecting Captain of Airships in 1909. He also helped develop torpedo bombers and anti-aircraft defence. His claim to be a co-inventor of the tank rests on his work on armoured cars for the defence of airfields in Flanders, and in persuading Churchill that caterpillar tracks were the way to go, rather than rollers or a giant wheel! After the war, Sueter was a long-serving and outspoken Conservative MP; his Airmen or Noahs: Fair Play for our Airmen; The Great "Neon" Air Myth Exposed (London: Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1928) is a rollicking good read on these and other matters.

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[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.]

He 111 over London, 7 September 1940

He 111 over London, 7 September 1940. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

So, I've looked at J. M. Spaight's predictions in The Sky's the Limit about how the British fighters would fare in the Battle of Britain, and how the German ones would too. All that remains is to examine his thoughts on the German bombers.

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[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.]

Fw 198

Fw 198. Image source: Current Aviation, 26 November 1943, via Model Airplane Kits.

In the course of my research, I get to read many predictions about the future, partiularly the future of warfare. One of the reasons I like doing this is that it helps to restore the uncertainty of what used to be the future, but is now the past. I know (more or less!) the events which lay in the future of the writers whose dusty old books I read. They did not. This is completely obvious, of course, but it can be hard to remember this, and to put myself into the mindset of someone who lacked my knowledge of what was going to happen next. In reading their predictions of future events, I can get back some sense of their open future, which my past has closed off to me.

An example of this is the Battle of Britain: the many representations of the aerial combat between the Luftwaffe and the RAF in the last 66 years have fixed the combatants in our memory. From movies, documentaries, books, games, and even alcoholic beverages, we all1 know of the defending fighters, the valiant Spitfire and trusty Hurricane; and their opponents, the dangerous Me 109 fighter and the not-so-dangerous Me 110. We know that the Spitfire and Me 109 were the best fighters on their respective sides, and indeed were pretty evenly matched; that the Me 110 was outclassed by the Spitfire and Hurricane; that in turn the lesser British fighters (the Defiant, the Blenheim and the Gladiator) were soon placed out of harm's way; and so on.

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  1. For small values of 'all', admittedly ... [↩]

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[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.]

The Sky's the Limit

This is the front cover of a book by J. M. Spaight on British airpower, called The Sky's the Limit. It was published in 1940, a not-insignificant year for the RAF. In fact, this 'New and up-to-date' edition was published in August, right in the middle of the Battle of Britain. (The first edition was published prior to the fall of France, judging from the number of references to the Armée de l'Air, now in the past tense.) It's a familar image -- the young fighter pilots sitting in their Spitfires on a glorious summer's day, standing by for the word from Ops to hurl themselves into the sky to repel the hordes of Nazi invaders. In fact, it's almost iconic. But hang on -- something's not quite right here. Take a closer look at the aeroplane in the background:
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As promised, here's a revamped version of the speed plot I did the other day, this time distinguishing between biplanes (and triplanes), monoplanes and jets (just the one -- the Meteor). It's now a bit harder to read, though -- it's still red for fighters and blue for bombers, but now biplanes are represented by crosses (of the appropriate colour), monoplanes by open triangles, and jets by filled triangles. Also I noticed that my criteria for inclusion in the dataset had changed part-way through, so I've added a few aircraft to make that consistent (mainly torpedo-bombers) -- I'll update the original post shortly.

Maximum speed of British combat aircraft, 1912-1945

This shows very clearly the big jump that came with the move to monoplanes in the mid-1930s. And not just in fighters -- bomber speeds increased by around 100 mph. In fact, the last British biplane fighters, introduced in 1937, could barely keep up with their own bombers. Again, cubic spline fits to the various combinations illustrate this. (Referring to the left-hand endpoint of each fit, they correspond to biplane fighters, biplane bombers, monoplane fighters and monoplane bombers.)

Maximum speed of British combat aircraft, 1912-1945

Looking at the data again, there is another feature worth remarking upon. Based solely on the number of models entering production (ie, and not on the actual numbers of aircraft that were built), the period up to about 1925 is dominated by fighters, while the period from then up to the start of the Second World War is dominated by bombers. For the 1914-8 period, I think this is explained by the constant battle for air superiority over the Western Front, which saw new fighters rushed into service every few months to counter new German types. But I'm somewhat surprised that there were so many fighter types introduced in the early-to-mid 1920s, given that the bomber orthodoxy was supposedly being established at this time (though some of the fighters were for export or were otherwise speculative ventures, not designed to Air Ministry specifications). For the bombers, the reason would probably be the desire for a heavy bomber as a deterrent, but more so the increasing need for specialised aircraft adapted for different roles, as opposed to the "general purpose" aircraft common in the 1920s.