NEW WAR PLANES FOR THE R.A.F.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21668, 11 June 1932, Page 17

NEW WAR PLANES FOR THE R.A.F.

THOROUGHNESS OF TESTS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 28. Re-equipment of Royal Air Force squadrons with new 'types of aeroplanes is a process that goes on continuously and steadily. First, the new machine is designed, built, and tested at one or other of the R.A.F. experimental stations. Alterations are decided, to meet the criticisms of the test pilots. Ways are found to improve performance, perhaps by discovering how weight may be saved or in making the flying controls more efficient. Next, the machine may be ordered in quantifies sufficient for it to be thoroughly tried out in ordinary service use with a selected squadron; defects hitherto unsuspected may be located, and a mass of information gained about the endurance of {he craft and of its engine in routine employment. The - final stage is the placing of an order'for sufficient aircraft to supply all of the squadrons using the particular category of flying machine affected. The number required may be large, especially if the new craft be adopted to replace earlier equipment in the “ general purpose ” squadrons. The most widely-used aeroplane in the Royal Air Force to-day is the Westland “ Wapiti ” general purposes biplane; this machine is the flying equipment of 18 squadrons, and altogether roughly 400 “ Wapitis ” have been placed in service by the Royal Air Force since the type was chosen. Within the next three months four bombing squadrons will receive Fairey “Gordon” single-engined biplanes in substitution for the fampus Fairey 3F.| The '“ Gordon ” is best described as an improved 3F, powered with a “ Panther ” 500 h.p. air-cooled radial instead of a water-cooled engine. One of the squadrons affected is stationed in Amman, Palestine, and another in Isrnailia, Egypt. Re-equipment of the latter unit is unusually interesting, because it is the last British service squadron to fly the worldrenowned Bristol Fighter of the war days; with the arrival of the new machines the last aeroplane of wartime vintage disappears from the first-line equipment of the R.A.F. 200 M.P.H. FIGHTERS FOR THE FLEET. One torpedo bomber squadron will receive the new Vickers “ Vildebeest ” biplane. An army co-operation unit is scheduled to fly the high-performance Hawker “Audax” two-seater —a craft dowered with astonishing speed, rate ot climb and general flying efficiency—in the place of the trusty “Atlas” biplanes which have been standard equipment of army co-opcration squadrons for several years. Notable also is the substitution, for the obsolescent “ Flycatcher ” singleseater marine fighters, of the Hawker “ Nimrod ” single-seater—fastest naval warplane in the world —and the “ Osprey,” a two-seater naval reconnaissance fighter which, like the “Audax,” is' a modified form of the Hawker “ Hart ” day bomber, the machine which has literally swept the board in recent competition for Air Ministry orders. Thus the Royal Air Force maintains the lead in efficiency of flying material that -it has possessed unchallenged for yesiys , past. When the re-equipment scheme is complete a large proportion of the squadrons will be flying aeroplanes that have no equals among any of the world’s air services which fly aeroplanes designed and built outside Great Britain.