R.A.F. FITNESS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 243, 11 September 1940, Page 8

R.A.F. FITNESS.

AIR CHIEF’S PRIDE.

METAL AND MENTALITY

LONDON, July 11. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, beribboned, waste-no-time chief ot the Fighter Command, is now No. 1 keyman in the Royal Air Force. In the last nine days he has directed his boys—his own is among them—to get a daily (and nightly) bag of twenty Nazi warplanes in air scraps round our coasts (writes Basil Cardcw, Daily Express air reporter). Dowding, 58, spare, exacting, works it out that his fighters help to shoot down 13 enemy aircraft every 24 hours, and wing a further seven. Now lie counts on two main assets for these successes —successes which may alter the whole tempo of the war—and they are known as the two big M’s —metal and mentality. In seeking to reason why our machines stand the pace and outfight the Nazis in almost every battle let us deal with metal first. GERMAN PLANES GET “TIRED.”

The German Air Force use machines with a life of 50 flying hours. That is as long as they are made to last, and the Germans say it is sound economy to send thorn back then to the meltingpot. Actually, the planes have to go back because oi metal latigue. 'through using weaker materials, the Germans find their planes get “tired;’ far sooner than the British. It is quick, though, this melting-pot process. In remarkably short time their planes are stripped of the engines, dismantled and thrown into the melting cauldon to bo shaped again for another day. The weakness is that an air force built on these principles is always halt in the melting-pot, compared with a third of an air force which is usually considered to bo grounded for repairs or reconditioning. And another trouble is that even if an enemy warplane doesn’t meet a British lighter or a wellsighted A.A. gun, it cannot be used for more than half a dozen batteiing trips over Britain. This is the price the Germans pay for mass-produced, stamped-out warplanes, made as il ni a sausage factory. Now how docs the fighter Air Chief Marshal (Sir Hugh) line it up with our own metals? A British warplane is built for a fighting life of approximately 260 hours. Then it is turned over for training purposes for a further ..50 hours. But it also has a three-hour ground inspection after sixty flying hours, a halt-day overhaul at the end of 120 hours, and when it has been in the air for 220 hours the ground staff give it a whole-day once-over, which is a thorough business. This seems to be sounder economy ’.n tho long run. Because a British warplane is a hand-made job, built with the world’s best metals, it can do this long service with 100 per cent, of safety. “FLUTTER LIKE VICTORIAN SWOONER.”

Goering's aircraft are in no way handmade. His planes are good on paper. Even when tne first were made they were good. Four hundred miles an hour for the fighters and more than hOO tor the bombers. Everything right, nothing to fear. 13ut unfortunately for the Nazi pilots, these planes were only the prototypes. They were the first show models. Now they arc in mass production. Performance is nothing like the same, nor safety. The pianos coming from the sausage machines often fall or shake apart when the throttle is opened Others flutter from wing tip to wing tip like the eyelids of a Victorian swooner. Anyway, they give the German pilots a pretty rough time, and combats become a losing hazard. Sir Hugh Dowding, who flies his own plane, ranks this M. for metal high indeed, and it lias a lot to do with the other M.—mentality of his boys who do the fighting. The boys say: ' Tt’s naif the fight to have a good plane. Makes you feel you’ve won before it's begun. BRITISH PILOT COSTS £IO,OOO. Dowding is proud of the way the R.A.F. mentally equip his crews who fly flic planes. A first-class British pilot costs the country about £IO,OOO. That includes his training and pay. Sounds rather high, but the cost of training a first-class pilot is averaged out with three other hoys in the learning stages. Between them they may write-off two trainer aircraft, it may be more. On the same principle it costs £SOOO to produce a good air gunner. radio operator, or navigator. So a bomber, costing £30,000, with two pilots and three other crew, means a capital outlay of £65,000. When the bomber costs onlv £20,000, as many do, the whole is valued at £55.000. Fighters are cheaper. The pilot still costs £IO,OOO, but he is alone in the cockpit, and with the pries of the plane about £7500 the total is £17,500.

Staking all on numbers, the Nazis don’t attempt to train their men so carefully. Cheap machines and quiekly-

versed air crews please, they say. That is why the German air crews captured in the last few weeks average only 20 years of age. Compare them with the*R.A.F. boys who feature in the news. Ninety per cent, of them joined the service long before the war. Bovs I know called from the reserve last September—good boys, too—are still waiting for an action. Painstaking, and a little slow, perhaps, hut as Dowding knows so well—when his planes do go into fight his men have got those two big M’s and half the battle won. With them Britain needs no equality in numbers to be equal to or even superior; to Marshal Goering’s air force.