In pre-war days, when A. R. P. gas masks and decontamination were unknown, a young doctor in a Scottish country town instructed a class of women for several weeks in first-aid. After a time he resolved to put his teaching to a practical test. As he stood on the platform he suddenly paused, staggered, and fell to the ground.
A wave of horror ran through the class, some gave faint screams, some rose and sank back again; nobody came to the rescue of the prostrate medico, who sat up and soundly rated his pupils for their want of enterprise.
"What use is my teaching," he demanded, "if you cannot tackle a simple fainting fit poke from the front inured air intermingling of old and new.
Here, for instance, was a feathery fragile monoplane, looking like a huge dragonfly, its pilot sitting upright above its thin curved wings; (about 26 years ago it achieved a world record); and overhead a squadron of 8-gun it fire fighters moved to and fro with the precision of a battalion Guards, as their leader radioed his orders.
An echo of a very positive prophet, of 1925, or thereabouts came to mind "We may safely assume that the upper limit of speed for civil or military aeroplanes carrying a reasonable load is somewhere in the region of 225 m.p.h."
But the Spitfires were doing more than that on reduced throttle openings and at levels far below the 15,000 ft. at which they move fastest.
Another relic that must have stirred many memories a redoubtable single-seater fighter in the Great War. was a Sopwith Pup biplane. The wind whistled through its wires, and its meek unobtrusive manœuvres would earn the contempt of many modern light aeroplanes. Yet a man alongside me, who had flown Pups hour after hour on patrol duty in France was enthusiastic on its merits, He called it the perfect flying machine, docile but swift in mancuvres, highly-efficient and perfectly Very little information is given away nowadays by the Air Ministr as to the numbers, types and capabilities of machines of the R.A.F. But by way of giving Parliament a glimpse of what is being done. 600 M.P.'s were entertained at Northolt yesterday to a most impressive display. Some of the warplanes shown are comparatively familiar: for example the Defiant fighter, mentioned above, the Wellesley bomber, which is now revealed to have a range of 2,340 miles with a crew of five and trustworthy. No enemy machine of that time, he said, could fly round and round in the thin air of 15,000 ft. without losing height, as the Pup could do.
The garden party afforded some startling examples of the usefulness of the tricycle undercarriage. Aeroplanes with fuselage level and cocked-up-tails crossed the road in a series of loops, each time simply driving on to the ground to land. Undoubtedly the tricycle undercarriage smooths away the pilots difficulties in landing.
"Pressure'
Fuselage full military load; and the Spitfires, famous for their terrific speed. There was also a brilliant display of dive-bombing: the target was quite close to the spectators and the accuracy of the shooting earned loud and deserved applause.
But there were mystery machines as well—in particular a silver-coloured monoplane which shot across the aerodrome at a speed that seemed to make the Spitfires slow in comparison, and a large twin-engine monoplane with a gun-turret amidships, camouflaged in various colours. No information whatever, not even the Another interesting exhibit anticipated the days of travel in the stratosphere. This was a small twin-engined monoplane with "pressure" fuselage. The cabin is hermetically sealed and inside it supercharged air-conditioning plant will keep the atmosphere fresh and of a comfortable warmth even when the machine is flying at a height of five or si mile:
Altogether the garden party was a fine show, which gave plenty of proof of what the moderns can do, with a wondrous display of swift and complicated manceuvring by the great Wellington—twin-engined geodetic bomber, aerobatics by Lysander high-wing army ce-operation monoplane, not one would think, suited for aero-haties, but it did them all right; and the first public display of the new Defiant two-seater fighter with its power-operated gunturret amidships, a very nasty customer for any bomber to meet name of the makers, was given about these and other novelties. But the M.P.'s came back to London very much impressed by what they had seen. All the machines shown are already in high production
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.