RUSSIA BUYS WAR PLANES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 130, 26 February 1937, Page 15

RUSSIA BUYS WAR PLANES

British Construction Russia has ordered two five-gun “Feroce” fighter aeroplanes from Avions Fairey, the-Belgian subsidiary of the Fairey Aviation Co. The "Feroce” Is a single-seater biplane developed from the “Fantome,” which was built in England for Belgium in 1934, stated Hector Bywater in the London “Daily Telegraph” recently. It has a 925 h.p. engine and carries five guns, one of which is a shell-firing gun mounted integrally with the engine, and firing through the. boss of the propeller. The four machine-guns are mounted in the wings, outside the circle swept by the propeller. The “Feroce” has great speed, its maximum, reached at a height of 13,000 feet, being 270 miles an hour, while the ample wing-area provided by the biplane system makes a landing speed of only 60 miles per hour possible even with such a heavily loaded machine.

Cruising speed is 217 tn.p.h. on two hours’ duration, and the “ceiling” attainable is 36,000 ft. Most of the Powers are now adopting shell-firing guns for aircraft, so that the question of their practicability seems to have been decided in the affirmative.

They are claimed to be necessary because ordinary machine-guns have but short range, and their bullets are of little effect when scattered over the metal structure of modern aeroplanes.