October 1937

Volume 6 Number 7 (67 of 88)

This issue of Popular Flying magazine features NO “Biggles” story. The last “Biggles” story was published in the May 1934 issue

Contents

This issue runs from page 369 to page 424 (56 pages)

Inside Front Cover – An Advert for Rolls-Royce Aero Engines for Speed and Reliability

Page 372 – Contents Page

(The contents page is by an advert for Wills’s Gold Flake)

Page 374 – An Aircraft Carrier – New Style – A photograph of the “Mala”, the lower component of the “Mayo” “Composite” aircraft.

Page 375 – The Editor’s Cockpit – W. E. Johns

(Not subtitled – Johns starts by saying “I am tired” – then expands to cover all the subjects he is tired off. One is that he is “Tired of seeing the names of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor splashed across news sheet. Never in the history of journalism did the newspapers have such a story as this melancholy affair, and they simply cannot bear to let it end. But I, for one, am sick to death of it.”)

Page 378 – The Air Exercise – E. Colston Shepherd

(“ ….. and there are reasons to believe that new methods of detecting and shooting at aircraft above the clouds will make it impossible for the pilots of to-day to treat “Archie” with the contempt which some had for it in the Great War”)

Page 382 – Fit to Fly – There are good reasons why no accident in British civil flying has ever been due to the physical failing of a commercial pilot

– T. Stanhope Sprigg

Pages 384 – Planes and Personalities – A Monthly Causerie of Men and Machines – by “Observer”

Page 386 – More About Naval Eight – No. 8 Squadron, R.N.A.S. – B. C. Bennett

(The author was one of the first members of this squadron on its formation, and went with it into the Somme battle)

Page 389 – Anglo-German Gliding Camp – Dunstable, 1937

Page 390 – Random Recollections of an Old Test Pilot – Reg. W. Kenworthy (Schneider Trophy Pilot, 1923)

(“Few fledglings as they first solo out of their flying grounds, and, indeed, many others, fully realise that the fool-proof aeroplane of to-day was not always so reliable in the early experimental days, nor do they realise the tremendous amount of work and adventure which fell to the lot of the old test pilots whilst doing their little bit towards making flying the easy proposition it is to-day”.)

Page 394 – Flying Wires – Brief News from Far and Near

(Items include the following – “The Air Ministry is considering the camouflaging of fighter aeroplanes”)

Page 395 – A colour full page advert for Lockheed Hydraulic Actuation

Pages 396 and 397 – The Centre Pages – Untitled – Five glossy black and white aviation photographs

Page 398 – War Birds on Parade – How many can you name? - Six glossy black and white photographs of aircraft from the Great War

(“No prize is offered for this memory test, but the Editor will present a book to the reader who sends in the first correct list, the Editor’s decision to be final. Solutions will be published next month, when another parade will be presented. In no circumstances can correspondence be entered into.”)

Page 399 – When is Oxygen Needed? – Andrew R. Boone

(An account of the tests made by Dr. E. H. Padden, United Air Lines’ flight surgeon, who has determined that provision for supplying oxygen to passengers and pilots would be necessary before regular air schedules could be maintained at flying levels marginally higher than three miles about sea level.)

Page 401 – Another German Air Fighter of Note – Leut. Wuesthoff – The Youngest Pour le Merite Ace – John Hook

(“Only 82 German airmen who fought during the Great War were awarded the highest decoration – the Ordre Pour le Merite – the equivalent of our Victoria Cross”. More than forty gave their lives in exchange for the honour, and most of the survivors of the war years have since died. Amongst the latter group is Lieut. Wuesthoff, who crashed to his death one summer day in 1926 but the story of his brief but brilliant career during 1917, when he was but 19 years old, is well worth retelling.”)

Page 404 – Camel Cameo – The man with the magic hands – Grenville G. O. Manton

(“It took a good man to handle a Camel. Flying that vicious little biplane meant that you were either skilled or killed, and if you got away with it in the first twenty hours you considered yourself fortunate.”)

Page 406 – British Aircraft – The D.H. 88 “Comet”

Page 408 – Points of the Compass

(An article about camera guns of an entirely new type that make air defence manoeuvres more realistic and on the same page under the heading ANOTHER FINE ACHIEVEMENT is news of Sir Malcolm Campbell’s new World’s Water Speed Record, initially 126.32 mph and then bettered by 3.175 mph on another run. He already holds the World’s Land Speed Record.)

Page 412 – Model Aeroplanes – Simple Difficulties – Edward Sherbourne

Page 418 – The Aviation Bookshelf

(Three books reviewed by “E.C.” – one is “Murder By Air” by Capt. W. E. Johns)

Page 424 – The Buyers’ Log

Inside Back Cover – An advert for Classic Curly Cut – What is a “Dottle”?

(“The man who smokes classic will not know. For a “Dottle” is that soggy little lump

of unsmoked tobacco in the bottom of a pipe-bowl, which classic never leaves.”)

Click here to see a much larger picture of the cover artwork – the artist is Howard Leigh

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