FLYING CHANGES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22603, 16 December 1936, Page 19

FLYING CHANGES

AMPHIBIOUS CRAFT TRAINING FOR PILOTS COMPLICATED GRADUATION [from our own correspondent] LONDON, Nov. 28 A year ago Imperial Airways had a dozen flying-boat pilots in its full list of 96 pilots; to-day, with double the strength of pilots, the total of seaplane pilots has risen to about (30. The proportion of officers capable of handling flying-boats will continue to rise during the next six months in readiness for the change from land aeroplanes to flying-boats on the greater part of the Empire air-mail routes. The task of making large numbers of Imperial Airways pilots "amphibious" lias been entrusted to the school of Air Service Training,, Limited, at Humble. The great operating company may count itself fortunate to have been able to turn to a school which already included seaplane training in its syllabus and had its quarters on Southampton Water, where many varieties of tides, currents, winds, and traffic might present themselves to intensify the ordeal of thoso who will fly the mails. The school, on the other hand, might congratulate itself on tl\e quality of the material, some of it originally trained at Hamble, which is being submitted to it for graduation in nautical affairs. Without a high average of intelligence and a readiness in adaption these men, already skilled in flying, could not be made fit in the month allowed to each of them to use ports and harbours alongside those who have spent many years at sea. Marine Graft Practice

In essence that is the task which presented itself a year ago to air service training. The land pilot who never has to park his aeroplane among motor-cars, coaches or lorries is now required to learn how to manage his craft among the dhows, tramps, tankers and liners which he may find at his alighting places on the mail routes. As a land pilot he need have few anxieties about the nature of his landing grounds; in a seaplane his alighting area might behave differently at every descent throughout a week. Before taking off his land aeroplane he need only taxi away to face the wind; in his flying-boat he must first slip his mooring or pick up his anchor, he must taxi around (sometimes across a wind in one direction and a current in another) until his engines are warm, and if the weather is rough he may have to steady his boat with a drogue on every turn. Handling Sailing Boats The intensive training calculated to begin a pilot's understanding of the ways of the sea and to pra(ftise him in the handling of marine craft was to be seen in operation to-day. These pilots had already been given their taste of handling small sailing boats, both in the way of management and navigation at sea, and in the picking lip of moorings and anchorages. They had skimmed about Southampton Water and the Hamble River in fast motor-boats, bringing them alongside jetties, dinghies, and ultimately flyingboats, with sufficient accuracy to make a fender unnecessary*. Two of them had reached the stage of manoeuvring and flying the small Cutty Sark amphibian, a fine testing medium for the over-confident; and two others, out of the nursery stage, were busy with the three-engined Bangoon flying-boat, in which they graduate. Mysteries of Seamanship.

Before they have finished their schooling these pilots will have spent 12 hours each in the Cutty Sark and 20 hours each in the Rangoon, taking tnriiß at the duties of pilot and at the lesser duties of the crew, first in the company of instructors and afterwards alone. They will have tried their hand at taking the boat on its landing carriage up and down the slipway, managing both the boat and the landing crew as the captain of a ship must. In the intervals they will receive instruction ashore in all the mysteries of seamanship from knots and bends to methods of towage and salvage and the use of Admiralty charts. Some of those who have endured these trials are now flying the boats of Imperial Airways. They are the best testimony to the value of the course.