NEW AIR FIGHTER

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 82, 8 April 1931, Page 9

NEW AIR FIGHTER

ONE MAN. SIX GUNS

A FORMIDABLE MACHINE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 26th February. JKoyal Air Force pilots have completed, at the Experimental Establishment at Martlesham Heath, near Ipswich, secret tests of a new typo of single-seater fighting aeroplane which may revolutionise air combat. This new air weapon, the first of its kind in the world, is virtually a flying gun platform, able to move in level flight at a speed of nearly 200 miles an hour and equipped with no fewer than six machine-guns, controlled in unison from the pilot's cockpit, instead of the two guns forming normal equipment of a service single-seater. This "multi-gun" principle enables the pilot to concentrate on his target a literal cone of fire, each gun being so arranged that the bullets converge towards a focal point, a few hundred yards from the machine. Such formidable armament obviously increases to a marked degree the fighting qualities of the single-seater fighter aeroplane which is the weapon of the squadrons forming the backbone of Britain's defence against air attacl/i The now machine is 'a biplane, styled prosaically the S.S. 19, and is the latest war machine produced by the Gloster Aircraft Company, builders of more than three hundred single-seater fighters used in the Eoyal Air Forco during recent years. It is powered with a supercharged radial 480 h.p. Bristol "Jupiter" air-cooled engine, and in official tests at Martlesham, carrying full military load, has sustained a speed of 194 miles an hour, and climbed to a height of 15,000 feet —nearly three miles —in nine minutes. In grooves at each side of the fuselage are fixed two Victors guns equipped with synchronising gear to (ire through tho disc swept by the airscrew. Just outside the airscrew radius four Lewis guns are mounted in the wings, the barrels projecting a fow inches from the front edge of each of the upper and lower wings. The armament of the machine is completed by bomb racks to carry four 201b bombs. WITHSTANDS SEVEEEST TESTS. In fifty hours of intensive tests flying at Martlesham, the S.S. 19 showed notable performance, not only in speed and rate of Climb but in ease of control and handling qualities. Not a single repair was needed to tho structure of the machine, though the flights imposed the most severe stresses. Even in dives at more than 320 miles an | hour the craft remained perfectly steady, showing no sigii of vibration or strain. At ground level the S.S. 19 attained 170 miles an hour. Thence upwards to 10,000 foet the machine flew faster and faster, the super-charger fitted to tho engine coming into action with increase in height. Even .at 20,000 foet the S.S. 19 was able to maintain a speed of no less than 176 miles an hour. With full load on board, the S.S. 19 flies easily to a service "ceiling" of 26,100 feet and, if necessary, can operate at that height while the fuel supply lasts, oxygen breathing, apparatus being included in the standard equipment. Points emphasised by the K.A.l'', pilots in their official reports aro that the machine has given complete satisfaction in ease of control, robustness, and rigidity of construction, dase of maintenance, and good view for the pilot, combined with unusual comfort | in the cockpit. In outline the aircraft, though a biplane, recalls the beautiful symmetry and "cleanness" of design of the Glostor VI. monoplane built in 1929 for the last Schneider Trophy contest. To this shapeliness is duo the high performance attained by the S.S. 19, aided by the use of the Townend ring device, which is a flat, smooth ring of metal placed round the engine at its | greatest diameter that markedly reduces the resistance of the radial type J of aero-engine in which the cylinders radiate from a central crankshaft. j The S.S. 19 is likely to be soen in public for the first time at tho Eoyal Air Force display held each summer at Hcnclon Aerodrome, near London.