DECEMBER

16,

1937

FLIGHT.

595

KEEPING US ON THE MAP : The dearth of truly modern British commercial aircraft types is met to no unimportant extent
by the introduction of the Percival Q4 and Q6 twin-engined monoplanes, described in this issue. Apart from being attractive
propositions for the private owner the newcomers should be useful for charter and feeder work. This attractive view shows the
prototype Q6 (Gipsy Six lis), with fixed undercarriage, flying near Luton Aerodrome the other day. (Flight photograph)
to the temporary base. Capella took an hour and a hall
to do it, but she arrived safely and under her own power.
A landplane in similar circumstances might have made
a blind landing on the home aerodrome, or it might have
been compelled to go and land elsewhere.
It may, of course, be argued, that if there was a delay of
one and a half hours, it matters little whether that was spent
by the passengers in reaching their destination by an
alternative route or by taxying instead of flying the last few
miles.
One can, however, imagine conditions when it
might matter quite a good deal.
For instance, if friends
or relatives are waiting at one aerodrome to receive arriving
travellers, it is annoying, to say the least, for them to have
to go back to London or, alternatively to rush off to an
aerodrome in a different part of the country. Also, from
the operating company's point of view, it is undesirable
to have one of the machines fogbound at a distant aerodrome, where there may be delays in inspecting and overhauling it for its next trip

French Army Cooperation

HE French Air Minister, M. Cot, in the debate on

the Air Estimates in the Chamber of Deputies, said
that the creation of an air arm for the artillery was
under consideration. If it were formed, the observers
would be officers of the Army.
This suggestion shows the difference between French
practice and our own in a matter of important detail. The
French method is the one used by all the belligerents (including ourselves) during the Great W a r ; the crew of an
army co-operation machine consisted of a pilot and an
observer-gunner. I t was the latter who observed the fall
of the shells and sent wireless corrections to the battery.
Our Royal Air Force has now radically altered that system,
and the crew consists of a pilot-observer and a gunner.
The reason for the British arrangement is that the actual
piloting of an aeroplane engaged on reconnaissance is so
a
utomatic that it makes no demand on the energies of the

pilot. He is able to give his full attention to observing,

whether spotting for the guns or general reconnaissance,
and he sends the wireless messages, makes notes, and, if
necessary, takes photographs. But it is considered quite
essential that his attention must not be distracted by
thoughts of attack from behind. Therefore, the man in
the back seat is a gunner, pure and simple, whose whole
job is to keep a look-out to the rear. Not until the rear
gun opens fire does the pilot need to turn his thoughts from
observation to air combat.

Some Problems

COT is reported to have said that the observers

in the artillery aeroplanes would be officers of the
Army. This would seem on a par with the system
which has prevailed for some years past in our Fleet Air
Arm, whereby all the observers were naval officers. Actually, British experience has gone to show that for Army
work it does not much matter to which Service the pilotobserver belongs provided that he is very thoroughly
trained in his task. The course of training at the School
of Army Co-operation at Old Sarum is very thorough indeed, and the pilots (a few of whom are seconded from
the Army, but most of whom belong to the R.A.F.)
become experts at their task.
The only weak points in the British system are (a) that
the R.A.F. officers who have become specialists at army
co-operation are liable to be transferred to other classes
of squadrons, and (b) that a certain amount of dual
responsibility and divided allegiance are inevitable. The
Army authorities can neither directly reward good work
nor punish bad work done for the Army.
In the French system, as suggested by M. Cot, the difficulty will arise of having two officers from different Services working in the same machine. If the two do not
work in complete harmony, awkward questions of
seniority and authority may provide problems not easy of
solution.