A PACKING RECORD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 6, 21 January 1942, Page 2

A PACKING RECORD

THE AIRMAN'S INFLATABLE DINGHY The new inflatable dinghy for airmen who bale out over the sea reduces the hazards and the discomforts considerably. It was described the other day before the BBC'n Empire microphone. It seems almost a miracle of compression. The dinghy cushion lits on underneath the parachute. The "boys in the backroom" have crowded a rubber dinghy large enough to support a 4001b weight; a carbon dioxide flask for inflating it; a small hand bellows; a water anchor which keeps the Jiead of the dinghy to wind; a special baling bucket that compresses into a quarter of an inch, but springs up like a jack-in-the-box the instant the pressure is released; a set of graduated hole-stoppers which the pilot can plug anything from a pin-prick to a cannon shell; two rubber hand paddles, good for a speed of three knots an hour; and. finally, signal flares, cigarettes, and emergency rations. And all of this, believe it or not, fits into the dingh.v cushion 15in square by 3in thick. Night (Flight) Mare! A young pilot officer who'd been asked whether he wasn't scared on his first solo flight, said the other day in the BBC Radio News Reel, that he hadn't been a bit—and that he'd had a faint feeling or disappointment because he hadn't been as though he'd missed something. But, lie went on, when it came to his first night solo, he didn't feel as though he'd missed anything out. That was cxciting enough—even for him. "1 didn't realise how extraordinarily different it is from day flying," he said; "a different sensation altogether, right from the beginning." Even if flying in clouds, in the daytime, 3'ou feel as it you can ted which way up you are, even if you actually can't, was his experience. But at night apparently you literally don't know whether you are on your head or heels-—except by what the instrument panel tells you. All round you there is nothing but a world-sized blanket of blackness. I't Is odd—even in mid-summer —and eerie. After a while it seems the eyes get slightly accustomed to the dark, and except" mi the inkiest of nights, you can usually discern some sort of contours in the landscape. But even then, everything you see —or think you see—is deceptive. Distances are impossible to judge, and the faint black outlines of hills, or grey streaks of rivers, appear and i disappear like phantoms. "I've never," he remarked, "felt soi utterly alone. The night flyer is as different from the day flyer as the owd and the bat are from the swallow and the seagull."