AIR SUPREMACY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 January 1943, Page 4

AIR SUPREMACY

WAR IN SUB-STRATOSPHERE RACE FOR HEIGHT. CONTEST BETWEEN DESIGNERS. In the early days of this war I 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 Calling.” That young man was “Cobber” Kain. Less than an hour later he was back 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 he had established a record for aerial combat. He had pursued the bomber to its “ceiling.” And that “ceiling,” as his instruments showed when he sent in his final crippling burst, 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 groundlings who were awed spectators of the drama; invisible except for the faint scribblings of vapour tails against the pale blue background of the sky. ABOVE WORLD’S ROOF. Since then, certain combat heights have risen to as much as 35,000 feet—--6000 feet higher than the blowing snow pennant off the peak of Mount Everest, “the roof of the world.” No man, with every aid that science can afford, has ever scaled that peak and lived. But today, 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 fighter, height 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 higher and higher “ceilings,” and engines which, will function at great altitude. A freak aircraft, a specially-built job, the Caproni 161 bis, got the world’s height record for Italy by flying to 56, 176 feet. EXPERIMENTAL TYPES. Recently the Germans sent an experimental bomber, the Junkers 86p2, over this country on a test flight at well over 40 : 000 feet; a new type of Messerschmitt fighter has also been over, but you 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-stratosphere heights, it all boils down in the end to the question of how much flesh and blood can stand. The design difficulties are many. In the rarefied air of extreme altitudes, most orthorox wing shapes lose their ‘grip.’ The low pressure, intense cold, and lack of oxygen render most systems of engine carburation and lubrication completely useless. Most metals, rubber, fabrics—the very materials of which an areoplane 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.. EFFECT ON MEN. But the effects of extreme altitudes on machines are nothing to what they are on the men who fly them. There is a huge variation between men and men in their ability to preserve mental and physical efficiency at great altitudes.

One man can remain perfectly normal with the use of oxygen at heights up to 30,000 feet. Above that height strange things happen to him. His mental and physical responses go haywire. 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 “bends”—caused by the release into the bloodstream of nitrogen bubbles from the air he breathes. Others again—and they are in the majority among healthy young men —can, with the help of oxygen, function perfectly normally above 30,000 feet and up to a much greater height which has not yet been finally ascertained.

SEALED PRESSURE CABINS. One way to compensate for this wide physiological variation is to provide sealed pressure cabins for crews working at great heights. These cabins, fed with oxygen, maintain a normal pressure inside against the rarified atmosphere outside. But such protective devices have big snags. They are very difficult and expensive to make and keep perfect. One bullet through a sealed pressure cabin at, say 40,000 feet would mean instant death for all the crew who relied solely on this protection. The whole cabin would probably explode. The best way is to find the. most suitable men for high flying and to bar the rest from operations except at normal altitudes. Having found those men, then provide them with all the special clothing, breathing apparatus, and other protective gadgets which science can devise. And that is what the Royal Air Force is doing. TESTS FOR REACTIONS.

At several places in the country, special pressure chambers have been built to specifications laid down by the Royal Air Force Medical Service. And all flying personnel who may be required to undertake high-altitude operations are put through tests for their reactions. These chambers can reproduce all conditions found at great heights The men who go through tests in practice take a trip to • the sub-stratosphere without leaving the ground. Under medical supervision, all their reactions—mental and physical—are noted and a record taken. The men whose physique is unsuitable for this work are thus eliminated long before they would be likely to be called upon to risk their own lives and that of their crew.

So, when the designers of the new aircraft have finished their job and the time comes for the Royal Air Force to “go upstairs,” it will know just which and how many men it will have to fly and fight them,