DIVING SPEED OF PLANE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19886, 13 March 1939, Page 8

DIVING SPEED OF PLANE

U.S. CLAIM DOUBTED LIMIT OF 550 M.P.H. LONDON, Feb. 27. In testing the terminal velocity stresses, test pilots, who developed Spitfire fighters for the Royal Air Force, reached speeds of 520 and 550 miles an hour. Experts here accept with reserve the American claim (recently published) that a pilot testing a Curtigs fighter dived at 575 miles an hour. They believe that a diving planes speed limit is about 550 miles an hour at which the air wave prevents further acceleration. Mr. H. E. Wimperis, formerly director of scientific research at the Air Ministry, who visited Australia to advise the Federal Government on aeronautical research in 1937-38, recently declared that planes were never likely to exceed a speed of 600 miles an hour. . . A pilot flew a Miles Master training plane 42 miles at 504 miles an hour, aided 'by diving speed. The speed of this machine when flying level in still air is nearly 300 miles an hour. The Miles Master has been ordered in large numbers by the British Air Ministry as an advanced fightertrainer. It is fitted with a Rolls Royce Kestrel engine, which develops a maximum output of 745 horse-power at 11,500 ft., and gives the aircraft a maximum speed of 295 miles an r. ur at 16,500 ft. It is not to be confused with the Miles Magister initial trainer, which is fitted with a 130 horse-power De Havilland Gipsy Major engine, and which cruises at 145 miles an hour at 1000 ft.