FIRES IN AIRCRAFT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20060, 5 October 1939, Page 15

FIRES IN AIRCRAFT

NEW EXTINGUISHER R.A.F. STANDARD DEVICE DUE TO CAR CRASH The British Air Ministry has adopted for the R.A.F. a device designed to prevent or to put out fire in an aeroplane. The Ministry recently authorised an announcement stating" that this contrivance is being fitted as standard in R.A.F. aircraft. It was a motor, not a flying crash which led to the invention and development of the device now officially adopted for aircraft. After a near relative had been involved in a motor car accident accompanied by fire. Captain H. M. Salmond, a retired naval officer, bent his energies to the solution of the problem. He produced a safety switch to work automatically in a car or aeroplane crash. Its mechanism was based on pendulum action working on gravity in the case of overturning, and on inertia in the case of impact. This provided for the cutting of! of the ignition and lighting circuits immediately and automatically, so that there could be no sparking and no exhaust flames. The pendulum action is so regulated that bumps on bad roads or violent braking do not effect it. For aircraft the movement is restricted so that the mechanism only operates in the event-' of a crash or overturn. Aerobatic movements do not affect it.

The invention operates almost instantaneously—

In the event of a crash. If the machine turns over on landing.

In outbreak of fire in the air or on the ground. If the pilot presses a button switch when he secs that a crash is imminent. A new Air Ministry requirement for new type civil aircraft, specifies compulsory equipment of approved types of fire extinguisher. For a fourengined air liner the cost of the minimum equipment (non-automatic) is £l2O 4s. That of the fully automatic equipment, as used in the R.A.F., is £129 19s.