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Show GgUoIk. BesmcAd BlooJzei BASIC FLIGHT INSTRUCTION LESSON NUMBER FOURTEEN Hank But how can they do thai without with-out Retting ail tangled up? Robinson That'8 where training and technique come in. They take off behind the towing airplane in the well-known "V" formation and, to keep them from getting tangled up, every glider pilot must be 80 experienced experi-enced that he knows how to keep his own glider riding steady and "on the beam," as one might say. He must be able to keep a true course and he must be able to prevent his glider from bucking. Ilnnk What do you mean bucking? buck-ing? Robinson Ever fly a kite. Itank Sure, when I was a kid. Hobinaon Remember how when the tail wasn't properly balanced, or when the air became gusty, the thing would do somersaults and finally come down a torn mass if you didn't reel In the string? Hank Sure remember. Robinson Well, If a glider pilot In tow of an airplane doesn't know his tuff, that's precisely what'll happen hap-pen to him. crates we took upl Looking back now I wonder how anybody had the nerve to go up in those things, much less to try battling it out up there. Hank The planes weren't any good? Robinson The best anybody knew how to build, but the trouble was that in those days they didn't know how to build 'em any better. . . . You see, when the armies of the world adopted the plane for military use, they had no idea that it would be used as a fighting arm of the service. The first idea of the plane was that it would be Invaluable for observation. observa-tion. A pilot could take off, recon-noiter recon-noiter over the enemy lines and come back to report enemy positions all the things the commanding officers of-ficers wanted to know but couldn't find out from where they sat. ... To stop pilots from making such valuable valu-able discoveries, the opposing armies arm-ies hit on the idea of camouflage. That made things look like something some-thing else again. You couldn't tell an ammunition dump from a clump ol trees. . . . Then they hit on the idea enemy planes with their machine guns to give the bombing pilot the works. And there, young fellow, you have the very modest beginnings of all this gigantic and deadly business of Flying Fortresses and their protecting pro-tecting fighter and pursuit planes. Hank This bombing business certainly cer-tainly had a modest beginning and now it's big-time stuff. Robinson Well, we and the rest of the world thought it was big-time stuff 'way back. And it was. Inventive In-ventive genius just hadn't caught up with the fighting spirit that fliers showed. There's something about flying that gets into a man's blood, and I thrill like a kid to any exploit of the flying service. And what strides have been made! Especially Especial-ly in the bombers. They don't seem to need the protection of the fighters any more looks like they can take care of themselves in any fight. You see the bombers are such enormously enormous-ly heavy planes, especially when they have a maximum load of fuel and bombs, that It was impossible at first to develop speed and easy maneuverability. To a great extent that has been overcome. The new bombers that are being turned out have amazing speed and rate of climb which make it possible for them to climb to an altitude higher high-er than the fighter plane is able to reach. They have reached altitudes alti-tudes of 30,000 to 40,000 feet, so it is possible for them to approach their target unobserved. Also the new bombsights are a marvel of accuracy ac-curacy it's been claimed that a bomber equipped with the new bombsight can land a bull's eye on a barrel head from 20,000 feet up. Anyway, they are extremely accurate. accu-rate. Hank But just how do they operate. Bill? How many in the crew? And how do they go about the job? Robinson The crew varies, according ac-cording to the size of the bomber, from four to eight men. You know we've developed some extremely efficient ef-ficient bombers of a smaller type than the Flying Fortresses, and of fewer men in the crew. ... As to how they operate the main idea hasn't changed much since 1918. Before a bomber is sent up there has been intensive study of the map, both by the command and by the Normal Sinking Speed Is the rate "y at which a glider will lose altitude In still air. It depends upon the "S. design and the construction of the v. "Zj Equal Up-Currents are rising currents ' J-f warm air giving enough buoyancy to he glider to equalize its normal sinking peed, and thus maintaining its altitude. !f ( , Hank But how do they get off the tow line? Robinson Very simply. When the designated spot for descent is reached, one by one they drop the tow line, which is reeled into the towing plane, and down they come. And when a dozen or so gliders, each carrying ten or more fully armed soldiers, land at the same pot, there's a considerable fighting unit all ready to go to work. Hank Well, has America got up to til this glider business? Robinson And how! Senator Pat McCarran in June of 1941, after what happened in Crete, introduced a bill In the Senate to provide funds for gliders and glider training in the U. S. Army Air Corps, but nobody believed in the idea. . . . Nobody but Lt. Gen. H. H. Arnold, Chief of the Air Corps, who always saw the tremendous tre-mendous possibilities of the glider. He sent a number of officers to the headquarters of the Soaring Society of America, in Elmira, N. Y. . . . They reported back to Lt. Gen. Arnold Ar-nold and the General got tough and determined. He established glider training for the Air Corps with Lewin Barringer as the head, and glider training schools have been set up in South Carolina and in California. . . . Lt Gen. Arnold says, "We must have thousands of gliders capable of carrying at least fifteen men with full equipment: rifles, machine guns, and even light cannon. Hank And from what Tre read tbout General Arnold, Til bet he'll do it. Robinson And I'll split that bet with you. Hank. The General will do it, and with our bombers getting bigger big-ger and bigger, and faster and faster, fast-er, they'll be able to tow so many gliders, each with such a big load, that well, anybody who wants to be cured of the idea that we can be licked can step right up and take his medicine. Hank You betcha! This glider flying fly-ing sounds awfully interesting to me! Robinson And I suppose the next thing I hear, you'll be all set to have a go at that game. Hank Could be! Thanks a lot, BilL See you tomorrow. Robinson Okay, kid. See you tomorrow. to-morrow. (As Hank moves away, Robinson watches him and thinks out loud: What a boy!) bombers' axd bombardiers It is a foggy morning ceiling zero no day for flying. Hank, with the spirit and love of flying in his blood, has shown up at the field anyway. He finds Robinson beside a plane which he has just been looking over. Hank Oh, Bill, T re 6een looking for you. Robinson Got something special on your mind? Hank Yes, u-ant you to tell me all about bombers and bombing. Robinson That's qui'.e an order. I took 'em up over the Western Front back in 1917 and '18, but it's s very different stcry from what's happening happen-ing in air fighting these days. The of using infrared film in the cameras. cam-eras. That did the trick. An infrared film will get right through camouflage camou-flage and record what's under it, the same as an X-ray machine gets a picture of your bones right through the flesh. .. . . When the use of infrared in-frared film made the camouflage no good, something else had to be worked out to stop picture-taking planes. The only thing was to stop the business by shooting down the observation planes. That brought up a new lot of problems. . . . Back in those days, because no airplane engines en-gines capable of great lifting power had been developed, everything had to be sacrificed to lightness, which explains why the first planes were not much more than a lot of piano wires and bamboo frames, with the pilot completely exposed. But when the danger of being shot down in the air came up, very thin armor was provided and the pilots were given every possible protection. At that it wasn't much. . . . That brought out the two-seater Job a pilot had to have a machine gunner along for protection. That was going a long way ahead of any previous idea, but along came the Germans with an automatic machine gun. Hank How come they beat us to that one? Robinson An inventor named Fokker worked out a scheme to synchronize syn-chronize the turn of the propeller with the firing of the gun the shots were fired between the blades. Hank Was he a German? Robinson Fokker? No, he was a Dutchman. He offered the invention to the United States, but at the time we weren't interested In that sort of thing, so he took it to the Germans, who were always looking for deadly contraptions. So they took over Fokker Fok-ker and his patents. That was how air battles started. That's how the aces of World War No. 1 were born. Hank But they did use bombing bombing is different from aerial combat. Robinson Oh yes, there was bombing and some pretty devastating devastat-ing bombing at that. 1 And, as you say, bombing is different from combat. com-bat. But at first they had no means of doing any effective bombing. At first a pilot took off with a load of bombs and dropped them over the side of the cockpit where he thought they'd do the most good or most harm whichever way you want to look at it. . . . Naturally, sometimes they hit and blew a lot of things to kingdom come. Just as often they didn't do anything except explode. That was such a hit-and-miss sort of proposition that pilots, before going go-ing up, studied the map of the terrain ter-rain they were expected to cover, picked the spot where they wanU'd the bombs to land, and as they approached ap-proached that spot, would dive, drop their eggs, and come out of it in a hurry. . . . But a plane is not a secretive thing everybody for miles around knew when a plane was on its way. and that brought out the crew. That means not only learning learn-ing the terrain of the immediate objective ob-jective and its surroundings,- but deciding on the best routes to and from the objective, so that the squadron can be sent along a route where there is least likelihood of detection de-tection and interception.. So far as1 is possible weather conditions ahead are determined, but that is a very sketchy business since weather reports re-ports are military secrets in all belligerent bel-ligerent countries. But scientific weather experts, working thousands of miles away from the spot picked for the bombing, have worked out their system to such a degree that' they can with fair accuracy tell in advance what the weather will be. ... All of this of course is preliminary. prelim-inary. . . . The squadron takes off in formation, and that "V" formation, forma-tion, which is like the flight of wild geese in passage, . is kept until the squadron has neared its objective. . . . When the squadron leader has sighted the target he signals the accompanying ac-companying planes, and instead of the "V" formation, the squadron single-files into a long string. . . . Always keeping the objective in view, and having attended to innumerable innu-merable details which require keen memory, timing and judgment, the squadron leader makes his dive, delivers his load of bombs, and comes out of the dive. His performance perform-ance is followed in turn by each of the accompanying planes. Hank lust how is the maneuver done. Bill? Robinson It is done by maneuvering maneuver-ing the airplane so it falls off one wing into a dive. And not only must the dive be executed at high speed, but the pilot must come out of it at high speed. That's what makes the "blackout." Hank Just what is the blackout, Bill? Robinson The sudden pull-out causes the blood to be drawn downward down-ward away from the brain. That causes a temporary blindness the pilot may be perfectly conscious but for a few seconds unable to see. The younger the flier, the more quickly he comes out of the blackout, which explains ex-plains why bombing is a game for only the very young. In some cases, where the pilot has passed the age when he should attempt dive bombing, bomb-ing, the blackout may be permanent the old heart won't stand such stunts, so it just stops completely. . . . But even for the very young there are plenty of hazards. The pilot determined to do a good job and knowing that the nearer he comes to his objective, the surer he is of making a bit, may go down too low before he releases his load so low that he is unable to come out of it. That's only one way in which fine judgment plays the determining role. It is said that for every four dive bombers brought down by enemy fire, six are lost because of faulty judgment. i |