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MASTER PILOTS OF THE AIR
Five Airmen Of Imperial Airways
The fifth official British Master Pilot's Certificate has just been issued to Capt. À ̧ B. H. Youeil of Imperial Airways.
The Master-Plot's Certificate was instituted by the Air Minis- iry five years ago, but it was not until early in 1934, that the first award was actually made, the requirements for the Certi- ficate being such that only plots of exceptional air experience, Applicants both by night and day, can hope, to obtain one.
must, for example, hold a current license as issued to pilots flying for hire or reward; also a license as an aircraft navigator: and both these licenses must have been in force for at least five years.
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25
The applicant must also have flown at least 1,000 hours as a pilot of civil aircraft during the five years prior to his applica- ilon; and, in addition, a considerable night-fiving experience is called for, including a minimum of 20 night flights above land and sea, each beginning and ending during the hours of dark- ness, and lasting for at least an hour,
The four previous holders of the Master-Pilot's certificate are all airmen of Imperial Airways-viz. Captain L. A. Walters, Capt. J. Spafford, Capt. F. D. Travers, and Capt. E. S. Alcock.
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CAPTAIN YOUELL'S RECORD
It was at the early age of six- teen that the latest recipient of this much-coveted distinction, Capt. Youell, entered the field of aviation, his first task being the distinctly humble one of mending punctures in the tyres of aero- plane wheels. That, however, did not satisfy him for long, and within a year he was flying one. of the biplanes at the Aying. school where he was employed; while not long afterwards be found himself a war pilot on the Western Front, flying fighting- planes in combat with the enemy. Surviving the perils of active service. Capt. Youell became asso- clated when peace came with an aeroplane joy-riding organisation, touring Europe with this concern, and giving exhibition flights as far north as Sweden.
Then, with the development of regular, air services between Lon- don" and the Continent, Capt. Youell became an air-line pilot, and has been flying big passenger air-liners ever since.
Altogether, since, he first became a' pliat seventeen years ago. Capt. Youell has flown approximately 1,000,000 miles. and has carried" 40,000 passengers.
The distinction of having gala- ed Master-Pilot's Certificate, No. 1 is held by Capt. Walters, who be- gan flying in 1918, and who, prior to joining Imperial Airways just over ten years ago, already had 1,000 hours of flying to his credit. According to the latest figures available, Capt. Walters has now completed 8,398 flying hours, mostly over the European air routes.
"
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Uners in which the Prince of Wales has been a passenger. On one occasion, while giving demon-
HONG KONG DAILY PRESS, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1935.
MOTOR
JOTTINGS
THREE HUNDRED MILES UNIFORMITY OF
AN HOUR?
The 'Blue Bird' Refitted For Daytona Record Attempt
What adventure in the idea that a car is to attempt to attain a speed representing 300 miles in one hour! That is the whole purpose of all the work that has been going on for months past at Thodson and Taylor's and in Campbell's "shed at Brooklands, where that famous machine, the Blue Bird, has been got ready for Daytona. Its object will
it
set up
be
to try to beat the land speed record which 1933, of 272.46 m.p.h, aver one kilometre, that is the average of two. ruas, one in each direction, over the measured distance.
CROSSINGS
General Principles Governing Siting
The general principles which front wheels, and a vast expanse should govern the placing of of body covering the twin rear pedestrian crossings in order to wheels, then tapering down to a
continuation
MOTOR NOTES FROM GREAT BRITAIN
IRAQ'S NEW OILFIELD
bands. On one stretch of road, no fewer than 45 such bends occur in a run of 10 miles.
When King Ghazi of Iraq, by Possibly the most interesting of the turn of a handle, set the first the" feet are the dual-purpose stream of oil from theKirkuk oil-articulated 10-wheeled 16-ton felds flowing westward through goods vehicles, the tractor of the steel pipe-line to the Mediter which has a Leyland 11-litre en- ranean ports of Tripolls and Hal-
gine of 150 b,h,p. Designed for ge- fa, he formally opened an under- peral transport work or pipe- taking which has cost some £10,- carrying, the tractors are "sup- 000,000. For the past two years plied with two trailing attach- the Iraq Petroleum Co. has been ments, one having a flat-steel engaged on the colossal task of
platform "body, „25ft, in length, laying 1,200 miles of pipes, build- and the other a simple, but heavy,
32ft. ing pumping stations and main- tenance bases between the oil helds and the ports and estab fishing communication by means of telegraph line and wireless
of and..
waterless country, often
framework for carrying pipes, which may measure 'much as 40ft, by 21ft. Despite the 'great overall length of the com- "plete vehicle, the turning circle has, by careful design, been kept down to seft.
SOVIET TRIAL
stration fights in Scotland, Capt. little, for it takes time for the The front axle has been entirely ings should normally, be provided Scammell 10-wheeled pipe-carry" land, Italy and the USSR, and
Jones took up 3,116 passengers in
3 days
Another remarkable record as a pilot is that of Capt. F.. Dismore, of Impérial Airways, who has now been flying regularly for twenty- one years, his air experience dat- ing back to before the war. He was also flying constantly during the war; while he has been en- gaged ever since hostilities ceased"
ploting commercial aircraft. Capt. Dismore gained his certi ficate
proficiency of
AS a plot as far back as 1913, and his air career since then is be- lieved to have established a re- cord for continuous flying over a long period of years.
Twenty-one years ago, when Capt. Dismore first began to fly, he was piloting a crude, box-type biplane driven" by a single 50 h.p. engine and carrying a pilot and one passenger. To-day, lustrat- ing 21 years of progress, he flies as Commander of air-liners which are driven by four engines" de- veloping
total of more than
2.000 horse-power and which ac- commodate as many as 43 people ---39 passengers and a crew of four..
Among the other veteran pilots of Imperial Airways a well-known figure is that of Capt. A. S. WI- cockson Joining the RAF at the 'beginning of 1917, Captain Wilcockson completed 580 hours or flying before demobilisation in 1919. For some months after that he acted as pilot on the Capt. Dudley Travers, hölder of official air service which carried Master-Pilot's Certificate No. 2. mails from Folkestone to our learned to fly in 1917, and after- Army of Occupation at Cologne. the wards saw war service in Mace- Then he began flying on donia, Egypt, and South. Russia. pioneer commercial air lines be- After the war he became a pilot, tween London and the Continent, on the Salonika-Constantinople» subsequently jolting Imperial Air- air-mall; subsequently operating ways. Capt. Willockson Has gain- for-a-time his own-Brivate-air-ed-distinction-as-a-test pilot as taxi service, and joining Imperial well as ad air-liner Commander Airways in 1928.
having carried out much of the early test-work with slotted-wing aircraft. The number of hours be has spent in the air now total 8,991,
-- Another of the holders of a Master-Pilot's Certificate, Capt. Spafford, was flying on the Con- tinental air routes until the end of 1931, when he was posted to the Near East Division of Imperial Airways at Cairo.
Capt. Alcock, who succeeded in. obtaining his Master-Pilot's Certi- ficate not long ago, is a younger brother of the late Sir John Al- cock, who made the first non-stop Atlantic aeroplane flight in 1919, Capt. Alcock, after a period of service in the Royal Air Force, joined Imperial Airways in 1929 and is now piloting 4-engined air- liners on the Empire route be- tween Egypt and India
Other Phots:
Another of the pilots of Im- perial Airways who recently Join ed Capt. Youell in the distinction or having flown 1,000,000 miles is Capt. O. P. Jones. Be frst enter ed aviation in 1917, when he un- derwent a course of dying instruc tion at shoreham, Capt Jones then became a Bervice plot, and put in approximately 650 hours fying in many different types of aircraft while with the R.F.C. and RAF Then, resigning from the Service, he started a joy-riding business of his own
Subsequently for some time, he was with MN A. J. (now Bir Alan) Cobham, and then few as a plot on the early. Continental: services, Joining Imperial AirwEYE on its establishment In 1924 Capt. Jones has had the honour, several times of pfloting str
Another veteran of Imperial Airways is Capt. W. Rogers, known to his many friends as "Rodge," After seeing war service with the RAF.. Capt, Rogers became an airway pilot la 1820, "fying the twin-engined
which
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Since Daytona gives roughly ten miles of straight run, it would be imagined that this would be ample. Far from being so, the distance available is actually tog to accelerate if giant machine wheelspin is to be avoided, and incalculate wheelspin might do damage to tyre treads that are almost a smear of rubber on a cord surface, anything thicker being Hlable to be ripped away at once by centrifugal force...
at road only
intersections: I
tail, so that in many ways the secure uniformity throughout the car recalls the machine with country are dealt with in a letter which Begrave first attained 200 circularised to local authorities by
throughout the system. The huge in the Minister of Transport. miles an hour.
for used
directional hitherto
Crossings must be conveniently. The part played by motor stability has been very greatly sited and spaced at intervals of transport in this vast undertaking reduced in size. Its purpose is sufficient but not excessive:fres shown by the fact that nearly 70 lorries of load capacities rang- of the tall quency to
meet the reasonable the same as that feathers of an arrow, and the needs of pedestrians, It is laiding from 10 to 20 tons were ein- whole of the new body has been down. Crossings should not be. Floyed, together with about 480 fitted at St Malcolm's private, provided at isolated intersections lighter vehicles of all kinds, The shed at Brooklands Track,
unless traffic is controlled. Cross- task of "stringing" no less than Owing to the new body the ings may be provided. over minor 128,000 tong of pipes over desolate arrangement of the tank which side roads in replaces the ordinary radiator footpaths carrying heavy pedes strewn with boulders and lava, header tank and the position of trian traffic if the number of was a truly formidable one, even the radiator itself have been al vehicles "entering or leaving the for the modern motor vehicle, and It is interesting to note that tered. The frame, as in all Rall- minor road is substantial. Cross- ton's designs, is of great depth.
ig vehicles were largely used on Each vehicle carried this work. redesigned. The steering column, established elsewhere it will be 1 tons of pipes which were trans- frequently desirable that trafic ported from the dump to the which is nearly horizontal, con trols the ordinary drop arm through a Burman gear, and the should be controlled. At inter- head of the line; Obviously, as the drop arm le connected to the axle sections crossings should usually line grew the length of the four- by one fore-and-aft rod instead be sited as nearly as possible in ney increased. of two as before, while the axle line with the footpaths, and so as itself is located by two radius to make use of any existing re- rods, and its Andre shock absor- fuges; if the refuge is in an m- position it should be bers are mounted in Silentbloc suitable
meved. At complicated intersec- bushes athwartwise and connect- ed to the top of the stub axle. tians and roundabouts crossings should take the pedestrians round The steering wheel is a Bluemel.
The underneath of the car is the outside wherever possible. practically a flat surface, allow These are the more important interesting The twelve-cylinder, "ing the air to escape easily, and of the "general principles which 36,582 c.c., centrifugally super- the air intake for the carburetters have been prepared with careful projects from the top of the body, consideration of the needs both of charged Rolls-Royce aeroplane engine is unaltered, and drives an to avoid sand being fucked into traffic and of pedestrians. It is
the supercharger during the car's of course, essential that unifor- ordinary gear box through a special clutch, the propeller-shaft, run,"
"mity should be obtained through- being connected not to the end At each end of the frame an out the country in this matter, of the driven shaft, but to that sockets for special jacks, because and that each local authority of the layshaft, in order to obtain no ordinary jacks would lift the should not put into operation its easily the gear reduction required. weight of the car, and it may be own pet theories. and to allow a low seating post urgently necessary to change all tion for the driver. In order the wheels between the two runs further to improve the adhesion of the record, the more so be there are now tow big steel disc cause it is difficult to avoid small" wheels at each end of the axle, shells on Daytona, beach, and these shells have even been and on either side a pair of the
known to cut the tyre treads bad- very special. Dunlop tyres which alone make this attempt possible. 17. Outwardly the wheels will be covered by Ace discs.
Further, it takes considerable time in which to arrest five tons of metal once they have attained the requisite speed, for even Ferodo brake shoe linings may suffer if applied at that pace..
The alterations to the car are
The rear axle has been rede- signed, there being now two bevel pinions, one facing aft, one for ward, driven b, the propeller- shaft, each driving a crown wheel. and each crown wheel drives a rear wheel without the interven tion of a differential. The result is that one wheel is farther for ward than the other.
"Behind the driver's seat is a tank for the special Pratts fuel to be used, Behind the fuel tank is an enormous cylindrical De- wandre servo brake mechanism, controlled by the driver through a pedal, and bringing into opera tion sheets of metal on the side of the body which may be raised to increase the head resistance and so add the normal brakes.
Remember that it is practically impossible to-test a car of this type, which means that the driver bas to have the courage to oper right up to full speed after one or perhaps two brief test runs at lower speeds, and then, and then only, will he know whether the car will do its pace and re- Only on certain main stable.
days are the conditions of the beach and winds satisfactory:- only on those days can the re- cord be attempted, and this may entall long and trying periods of waiting.
those
It is not easy for a driver to pay much attention to the in- struments during a run like this but by arrangement with the manufacturers, Smith's, dials the reading of which is very important are larger than any of the others and suitably coloured. the smaller gauges being useful, of course, for purposes of tests.
alr Malcolm Campbell 15 Just. the man to whom the honour of
The sheets of metal which form the air brake rather resemble the ailerons of an aeroplane wing, and are let into the streamlining be- hind the rear wheels, rising when needed on pivots. As soon as being the first driver to attain 300 the car finishes the measured m.ph should fall. During his mile the driver operates a lever succeeded in taking the land speed record time after time, and rather like a hand brake lever, and this raises the flaps which his name occurs in the list more. take the way off the car until the frequently than that of anybody ordinary brakes can be used. else. Right away at the begin- There is another most Interesting, in 1934, Rigolly became Two more of these veterans of ing on the the through world-famous when he made one the air are Capts HH. Perry and which the air reaches the radia of those queer Gobron-Brilliés H. Horsey. The former, after tor has a shutter which is closed with two pistons to each cylinder a large amount of flying in the by the driver as the car enters average 100 miles an hour, early days of civil aviation, Join the measured mile and opened magic figure indeed, from the
machines were the forerunners of the giant 4-engined craft of to-day. Now the number of hours he has spent in the air stand at 7,880."
ed Imperial Airways in 1927, and again by him as it leaves the historical point of view the next
his dying hours now reach aides being that the enclency
gure of 7,137 Capt. Horsey, who is an expert in handling dying boats as well as big multi-engined land-planes, has now spent 6,088
hours in the air.
of the streamline is greatly im- Proved if no air is allowed to pass through the body while the few Beconds of time necessary are in- suncient to" caufe the cooling water for the engine to boil
The whole
has
At the present time approx mately seventy pilots, captains and First-Officers, are in the re---been gular service of Imperial Altways, tota flying on the Euopean, and Em with a wide nose tak pire routes operated by the Com- pans.
When commercial flying began, fust over Afteen-years ago, the first air-Une pilots were retr from the official Communica Squadron which, during
ges of the war, had been with rtant offe London and the Continent of these airmen was his art and, as the number of air-
*
step did not take place unti, in 1927, Bir Henry Begrave achieved the apparently impossible by - averaging 200 miles an hour in a specially bullt Sunbeam on this very beach, to which Campbell is now goingThree hundred miles an hour is a further step. Some ing day, maybey someone may even ace, reach four hundred on land
rening zat
anethe timi dhe
IN THE PERSIAN OILFIELDS
Local conditions sometimes call for special features of construc- tion, and this was so in the case of a fleet of Leyland tankers and pipe-carriers ordered by the Anglo- Persian Oli Co. for service between Abadan on the Persian Gulf and the oilfields inland. It was essential that the vehicles should be large load capacity, but at the same time they must be capable of traversing steep moun- tain roads" abounding in hairpin
The International Diesel En- gine Contest organised by the So- viet Government took place be- tween June and November last year, and altogether 46 Diesel engines in Boviet-made chassis took part. Engines were entered by Great Britain, France, Ger- many, Hungary, Austria, Switzer-
the work of installation was car- ried out at the Amo and Yaraslay factories under supervision by re-.
the engine -makers 'concerned.
Among the Britain entry Thornycroft oil engines put up a very creditable performance un- der the gruelling conditions im- posed, though the final results. have not yet been published,
presentatives of
The Symptoms Two young men were discussing a mutual acquaintance.
Poor old Fred seems to have got it badly," said one."
"What's he been doing now?” asked the other friend.
"Why," was the reply, "ever since he got engaged to the vicar's" daughter he's been wearing his collars the wrong way round, and cow he's having stained glass win- dows put in his new car!”
Trust A Thornycroft With Your TraNSPORT
DEAL DIRECT
THORNYCROFT
SIX-CYLINDERED
COACHES @ OMNIBUSES
MOTOR VEHICLES
Full
DIESEL
OR PETROE
Kanufacturers Gamm
Range of Spares carried in Hong Kong and Shanghak
4 or 6 Wheels
4 or 6 Cylinders
80 Cwt. to 10 Ton Loads
20 to 70 Passengers
JOHN L. THORNTEROIT & CO., LIMITED,
Pioneer Building, Nathan Road, Kowloom.
THE 6615A.
TRUST A THOPNYCROFT WITH YOUR TRANSPORT