Flying-boat Pilots

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 26, 1 February 1937, Page 9

Flying-boat Pilots

TRAINING SCHOOL EXHAUSTIVE TESTS A year ago Imperial Airways had a dozen flying-boat pilots in its full list of 96 pilots; to-day, with doublo the strength of pilots, the total of seaplane pilots has risen to about 60, says the aeronautical correspondent of The Times. The proportion of officers capablo of handling flying-boats will continue to rise during the next six months in readiness for the change from land aeroplanes to flying-boats on the greater part of the Empire air-mail routes. The t.ask of making large numbers ’of Imperial Airways pilots “amphibious" has been entrusted to the school of Air Service Training, Limited, at Harablo, near Southampton.

The great operating company may count itself fortunate to have been able to turn to a school which already included seaplane training in its syllabus and had its quarters on Southampton Water, where many varieties of tides, currents, winds, and traffic might present themselves to intensify the ordeal of those who ■will fly the mails. The school, on the other hand, might congratulate itself on the quality of the material, some of it originally trained at Hamble, which is being submitted to it for graduation in nautical affairs. Without a high average of intelligence and a readiness in adaptation these men, already skilled in flying, could not be made fit in the month allowed to each of them to use ports and harbours alongside those who have spent many years at sea. Marine Craft Practice

In essence that is the task which presented itself a year ago to air service training. The land pilot who never has to park his aeroplane among motorcars, coaches, or lorries is now required to learu how to manage his craft among the dhows, tramps, tankers, and liners which he may find at his alighting places on the mail routes. As a land pilot he need have few anxieties about the nature of his landing grounds; in a seaplane his alighting area might behave differently at every descent throughout a week. Before taking off his land aeroplane he need only taxi away to face the wind; in his flyingboat he must first slip his mooring or pick up his anchor, he must taxi around (sometimes across a wind in one direction and a current in another) until Ills engines are warm, and if the weather is rough he may have to steady his boat with a. drogue on every turn. The intensive training calculated to begin a pilot's understanding of the ways of the sea and to practise him in the handling of marine craft was to be seen in operation recently. These pilots had already been given their taste of handling small sailing boats, both an the way of management and navigation at sea and in the picking up of moorings and anchorages. They had skimmed about Southampton Water and the Hamble River in fast motor-boats, bringing them alongside jetties, dinghies, and ultimately flying-boats with sufficient accuracy to make a fender unnecessary. Two of them had reached the stage of manoeuvring and flying the small Cutty Sark ampliibian, a fine testing medium for the over-con-fident; and two others, out of the nursery stage, were busy with the three-engined Rangoon flying-boat, in which they graduate. Mysteries of Seamanship.

Before they have finished their schooling these pilots will have spent twelve hours each in the Cutty Sark and twenty hours each in the Rangoon, taking turns at the duties of pilot and the lesser duties of the crow, first in the company of instructors and afterwards alone. They will have tried their hand at taking the boat on its landing carriage up and down the slipway, managing both the boat and the landing crew as the captain of a ship must. In the intervals they will receive instruction ashore in all the mysteries of seamanship from knots and bends to methods of towage and salvage and the use of Admiralty charts. Some of those who have endured these trials, are now flying the boats of Imperial Airways. They are the best testimony of the value of the course.

Its thoroughness is evident to the onlooker. Its success is now being sc sn in its products. Group Captain R. J. F. Barton, the Commandant, had not bargained for 3uch a duty when he organised the establishment some six years ago; but a school which has already dealt with 488 civilian pupils from 37 different countries had ample resources in experience and equipment to relieve Imperial Airways of the noed to create a seaplane school of its own. The result has doubtless been of mutual and national advantage.