AIR SUPREMACY

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXXII, Issue 8872, 15 February 1943, Page 3

AIR SUPREMACY

RACE FOR HEIGHT SUB-STRATOSPHERE WAR DESIGNERS' AMBITION In the early days of this war [ was Standing on an advanced airfield in France and I saw a young man, wearing a. high-necked sweater under his Royal Air Force tunic, racing towards his waiting Hurricane, writes Carl Olsson in "London ('ailing." That young man was "Cobber" Kain. Loss than an hour later he was hack in the mess, and his quarry, his first "kill"—-a. Dornier 17 bomber — was a blazing wreck a few miles away. But Kain had done more than that. With his first kill lie had established a record for aerial combat, lie had pursued the bomber to its "ceiling." And that "ceiling,'' as liis instruments showed when he sent in his final crippling hurst, was rather more than 27,000 feet —five miles up and higher than man had ever fought before. It was a record soon broken. Less than a year later, during the Battle of Britain, fighter combats were taking place at 30,000 feet—inaudible to us groundings who were awed spectators of the drama; invisible except far the faint .scribbling of vapour trails against the pale blue background of of the sky.

Since then, certain combat heights have risen to as much as 35,000 feet —6OOO feet higher than the blowing snow pennant off the peak of Mount Everest, "the roof of the world." Xo man, with every aid flint science can afford, has ever scaled that peril; and lived. But to-day. pilots are fighting, submitting their bodies to

enormous stresses at mountainous heights above it. And it is only a beginning. All the aircraft of the warring nations are "going upstairs." To a fighter, heighl means tactical advantage over an opponent; to a bomber, relative immunity from ground defences. So there is a race between all designers to produce aircraft with high-

er and higher ceilings, and engines which will function at great altitude.

A freak aircraft, a specially-built job. the Caproni 101 his. got the world's height record for Italy by flying to 50.170 feet. Experimental Types Recently the Germans sent an experimental bomber, the Junkers BGp2. over England on a test flight at well over 40.000 feet; a. new type of Mcssei'schmitf fighter lias also been over, but vou can rest assured that. Britain

and America, are not behind in this race to carry the war into the sub-

stratosphere. Whatever the design difficulties in producing an aircraft to operate at sub-stratsphere heights, it all boils down in the end to the question of how much llosh and hlood can stand. The design difficulties are many. In the rarefied air of extreme altitudes, most orthodox wing shapes lose their grip. The low pressure, intense cold, and lack of oxygen render most sys-

tems of engine (-arbitration and lubricaiton completely useless. Most metals

rubber, fabrics the very materials of

which an aeroplane is composed undergo deteriorating physical change. Controls become "soggy." At 30,000 feet a. control column which can flick an aeroplane in instant, response on fingertip pressure feels as if it is being pulled through treacle, and there is a big time lag between pressure and response.

But the effects of extreme altitudes on machines are nothing to what they are on the men who fly them. There is ;i huge variation between men in their ability to preserve mental and physical efficiency at great altitudes. One man can. remain perfectly nor-

mal with the use of oxygen at heights

up lo 30,000 feet. Above that heigh* strange things happen to him. His menial and physical responses go hay wire. And all the oxygen in the world won't make any difference to him. Another above 30,000 feet is afflicted with the excruciating agony which deep-sea divers call "heads "—caused by the release into the bloodstream of nitrogen babbles from the air lie breathes. Others again—and they nvf> in the majority among healthy young men—can, with the help of oxygen, function perfectly normally above .",0,000 feet and up to a much greater height which has not yet' been finally ascertained.