Automatic Flying Will Not Replace Human Pilots

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 September 1947, Page 7

Automatic Flying Will Not Replace Human Pilots

(Rec. 10.20 a.m.) x LONDON, Sept. 26

Scientists from the Ministry of Supply’s instrument research division told a press conference that they believed that the use of automatic flying tor commercial purposes would laigely be restricted to the approach and landing phases, because automatics could give higher precision than human pilots. Automatics would not, however, replace the need for a human pilot. Landing was the most difficult phase of radio-controlled flight and the stage of 100 per cent, successful automatic landing had not yet been reached. The Ministry’s leading experimental unit had carried out over 200 approaches with equipment fitted and the plane was still serviceable. The plane had not been landed automatically every time, but brought in down the beam by glide path control. Mr E. T. Jones, the Ministry’s Director of instrument research, said it should be possible within two years to land a plane automatically with complete safety in thick fog. Mr Jones said that about 150 of the experimental plane’s approaches had been made with American automatic control equipment, but the plane was now fitted with a British-made electric pilot and behaved even more magnificently. Mr Jones praised the American Skymaster’s automatically-controlled flight across the Atlantic, but recalled British ■ research and earlier achievements in automatic flight. Mr R. F. A. Wagstaffe, the Ministry’s assistant director of communications development, said that Britain could have undertaken an automatic flight across the Atlantic 10 years ago if the authorities had thought it beneficial to flying to divert the necessary money and technical effort to the construction of the required automatic devices.