Show C H wah lff 7 to ayi 7 v L U aa UL BV eia bewab blei rt BASIC FLIGHT instruction LESSON NUMBER F FOURTEEN I 1 hank hanebut But how cars can they do that without setting ng a M tangled ane led up robinson where where training and technique come coma in hi they take oft off behind the towing airplane in the tha well known IV formation and to 41 I 1 keep them from getting tangled up very every guder glider pilot must be so BO experienced that he knows how bow to keep his hl own glider gilder riding steady and on the beam as one might say lie he must be able to keep a true course ind nd he be mastbe must be able to prevent enthIs his slider glider from bucking flank what do da you mean bucking fl robinson ever fly a kite Hanf eSme sure when I 1 was a kid robinson hw how when the tall tail properly balanced or when the air became gusty the thing would do somersaults and finally come down a torn mass if you riel reel in the string Il Hants anure Sure I 1 remember dobinson well veu if a slider glider pilot in tow w of an airplane know his hl tuff stuff that precisely happen to him i hanebut Hank buchow But how do aey get off the th two sow line Robinson Very limply when men the designated spot for descent la is reached one bygone they drop th ha a f tow una which Is reeled into the tha towing plane a and n down they come i arid and when a dozen or so gliders each carrying ten or more fully i armed soldiers land at the same spot pot theres a considerable fighting unit all ready to go to work j 1 flank Hank well Veil has america got up to 0 o i tit all this slider business robinson and howl senator pat i T i mccarran in june of 1041 alter after what happ happened enedin in crete introduced a bill in hi the senate to provide funds for cpr gliders and glider training nj iri in tho the U S army air corps but nobody believed in the idea nobody but lt gen 1111 H II 11 arnold chief of the air corps who always saw the tremendous possibilities of the th glider he ha sent cent a number of officers to the headquarters of the soaring society ot america in elmira N Y they reported mackto back to lt gen arnold and the general effot tough and dete determined mined lie he esta established blushed glider training tor for the air corps with lewen barringer as the head and glider gilder training schools have been set net up in south carolina and in california lt li gen arnold says saya we roust must have thousands of gliders capable of carrying at af least fifteen men frien with full equipments equipment rifles machine guns and even light can cannon fion hankland lank Han kAnd and from what ive fv read about general arnold ill HI bet hell do it robinson A and nd III split that bet with you hank the general will do it and with our bombers bomben getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster be ablo able cotow to tow to co many gliders each with such a big load that th atwell well anybody who wants to be cured of the idea that we can be licked can step right up and take his bis medicine batcha this flailer fly ey ing sounds awfully agull interesting to met mel dobinson Robin ana I 1 suppose the next thing I 1 hear be all set to have a go at that game i flank Hank Could bet be a lot bill sen see you tomorrow robinson okay kid see see you to morrow As ai hank moves away robinson watches him and thinks q out loud what a boyl boy I 1 BONDERS BERS AND it Is a foggy morning coming belling zero no day for flying hank with the tha spirit and love of flying in his blood has shown up at the field anyway he finds robinson beside a plane alts 4 which he has just been looking over hanech ilana Hank oh Ch bill le ive been looking for or ejk f H is got something special I 1 f N ort dour your in mind arid Han kYes yes I 1 leant avant you you to tell me all I 1 about bombers and bombing f Robinson quite quita an order I 1 took em cm up over the western front S back baik in 1917 1017 an and d 10 but wip its a very differ different ant str eury eu ry y from happen las ing tn in air fighting these days daya the crates wo we took UPI looking back now I 1 wonder how anybody had tho the nerve to lo go up in those things much less to try battling it out up there hank tha planes any good robinson the best anybody knew how to build but the trouble was that in those days they know how t to 0 build lem 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 gervice tho the first idea of the plane was wa that it would bo be invaluable for observe uon tion A pilot could take off reconnoiter over the enemy lines and come back to report enemy positions all the things the commanding officers wanted to know but find out from where they sat to top stop pilots pilot from making such valuable discoveries the opposing arm tea fee hit on tho the idea of camouflage that made things look like something else again you tell an ammunition dump from a clump of trees then thoy they hit on the idea normal sinking speed li Is the rater s at which a glider will lose altitude in still air it depends upon the design and the construction of the glider yf pam 0 7 equal up currents aro are rising currents of worm air giving givin enough buoyancy to the gilder glider to equal equalize lize its normal sinking speed and thus maintaining its altitude T t ai af pf W S mv aa N of using infrared film in the cam eras eins that did the trick an infrared film will get right through camouflage and record under it tho the same as an xray X ray machine gets tt a picture ot of your bones right through the flesh when the use of 0 infrared film madoche ma made dothe the camouflage no good something else had to be worked out to stop slop picture talan taking 9 ples planes tho only thing was to stop atop the business by shooting d down 0 wn the observation planes That bro brought aught up a newlon new lot of problems back in those days because no alir airplane plane engines capable ot of great lilting power had been developed everything had to be sacrificed to 6 lightness which explains why the first planes were not much more than a lot of piano wires and bamboo frame 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 much that brought out the two seater joba 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 C germans armans with en an automatic machine gun hank flank how flow come they heat beat us to iha robinson an inventor named fokker worked out a scheme to synchronize chr onize the turn of the propeller with the firing ot of the gun gunthe shots were fired between the blades blank he h a german Robinson Fokker no he was a dutchman he offered the invention to the tha united states but at the time we interested in that sort of thing bohe so he took it jo 0 o the germans who ho were always looking for d deadly ea adly contraptions so they took ook over fokker I 1 ter and life patents that was how air battles started how the aces of bf world war na I 1 were born hank but they did use usa bombing bombing Is different irom from aerial combat robinson oh yes there was bombin gand some pretty devastating bombing at that and as you say bombing Js Is different from combat but at first they had n no 0 means of doin doing gany any effective i bombing at first a pilot took off with a load of bombs bomb sand and dropped them over the tide side of the cockpit where he thought do the most goldor most harm whichever way you want to look at it naturally sometimes they hu and blow blew a lot of things to kint kingdom come just as often they do anything except explode the that i was such a lilt and miss sort of proposition that pilots before going up studied the mop map of the terrain they were expected to cover picked the spot where they wanted the bombs to land and as them the approached pro ached that spot would dive drop their eggs and come out of it in a hurry burry but a plane is not a secretive thing everybody for miles around knew when a plane was wa on its way and that brought out the enemy planes with their machine gung guns to give the bombing pilot the works and there young fellow you have tho the very modest beginnings of all this gigantic and deadly business of flying fortresses and their pro protecting lighter and pursuit planes hank flank this bombing business to binl had a modest beginning and now its aig big time stuff itu robinson well we and the rest of the world thought it was big time stuff way back and it was inventive genius lust just caught up with the fighting spirit that fliers showed theres something about aboud flying that gets into a mans blood and I 1 thrill like a kid to any exploit of the flying service and what strides have been madel especially in the bombers they dont seem scorn to need the protection of the fighters any more mor looks like they can take care of themselves in any fight you see the bombers are such enormously heavy planes especially when they have a maximum oad 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 male make it possible le tor for them to climb to an altitude higher than the lighter fighter plane is able to reach they have reached altitudes of to feet so it Is possible for them to approach their target unobserved also the new bomb bombsights sights are a marvel of ac curacy Its been claimed that a bomber equipped with the new bombsight can land a bulls eye on a barrel had from feet up anyway they are extremely accurate hank burjust but just how do they operate bill how many in the crew and how do they go about the job robinson the tha crew varies according to the size ol of the bomber from tour four to 6 eight men you YOU know weve developed soma extremely efficient bombers of a smaller type than the flying fortresses and of fewer men in the crew As to how they operate the main idea changed much since 1918 before a bomber Is sent up there hax has been intensive study of the map both by the command and by tho the crew that means not only learning the terrain of the immediate objective and its surroundings but deciding on the best routes to and from tho the objective so that tho the squadron a dr cabibo sent along a route where there Is least likelihood of detection and interception so tar as is possible weather conditions ahead ere are determined but that Is a very sketchy business since weather reports are military secrets in all belligerent li countries but scientific weather experts working tou thousands sands of miles away from the spot picked for the bombing have worked out their system to such a degree th that at they can with fair accuracy tell in advance what tho weather will be i AU all of this of coursens cour course seis is preliminary inary the squadron takes oil off in formation and that IV V formation which is like the flight llight of wild geese in passage is kept liepa u until the squadron has neared its objective when the squadron leader has sighted the target he signals the accompanying compa nying planes and instead of the IV forma formation tion the squadron single files into 6 a long string always keeping thi the objective in view and having attended to innumerable details which require keen memory timing and judgment the squadrons squadron leader makes his dive delivers his load of bombs and comes out of the dive ills his performance Is followed in turn by e each afi of tho ithe accompanying planes hank just how is 6 the maneuvers maneuver 1 done hill bill Robins onIt A is done by maneuvering the airplane so it falls oft off one wing into a dive and not only must thedice the dive be executed at high spee speed d but the pilot must c come out of it at high speed what makes the blackout just what is the ilia blackout bill robinson the sudden pull out causes the blood to be drawn downward away from tho the brain that causes a temporary blindness the pilot may be perfectly conscious but for a few seconds unable to see tho the younger the filer the more quickly ho he comes out of the blackout which explains why bombing is a game for only the very young in some cases where tho the pilot has passed the age when he should attempt dive bombing the tha blackout may be permanent the old heart wont stand such stunts so it just stops completely but even for the ver very young there are plenty of hazards the tha pilot determined to do a good job and knowing that tho the nearer he comes to his objective the surer he is i of making a hit may go down too low before lie he releases his loadho low that he is unable to come out of it IL only one way la in which fine judgment plays playa the determining role it is said faid that for every four d dive ive bombers brought down by enemy fire six are lost beca because of 0 faulty i judgment |