NEW FIGHTER PLANE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 75, 20 January 1947, Page 3

NEW FIGHTER PLANE

JET-PROPELLED TYPE

A new type of fighter aircraft—a jet-propelled flying boat, which is expected to prove particularly suited to the Pacific theatre—is to make its first flight early in the New Year, says a London writer. It is the Saunders-Roe SR/Al, powered by a twin-engine Metropolitan - Vickers F2/4 jet engine. Before the advent of the jet engine the problem of obtaining fighter performance in a flying boat was difficult. In order to provide sufficient water clearance for the propellers it was necessary to use shaft drives, which introduced mechanical complications. In the new Saunders-Roe machine this difficulty has disappeared and all modern fighter requirements are adequately met.

To preserve the high-speed characteristics of the wings, the power units and armament have been placed side by side giving approximately the same width of hull as that demanded by hydro-dynamic considerations, and the actual form drag of the engine installation has therefore been eliminated.

The pilot in the new fighter is located in a pressure-cabin forward of the high wing, provided with an emergency ejection device. The machine has a single fin and rudder, and the wing floats are retractable in flight. Armament consists of four 20inm. cannon in the nose of the hull.

War experiences in the Pacific zone confirmed the view that the land-based fighter could fulfil its operational role successfully only when the landing-strip and base facilities had been built and the means to defend them established. The new jet fighter flying boat, on the other hand, is independent of fixed bases, needing only a sheltered strip of water to take-off or land. It thus renders unnecessary any great mass of airfield construction equipment, and can therefore be put into action much more rapidly.