Empire Air Day 1938
I've been clearing out some old boxes, my father's stuff......
Here's the Official Programme for Empire Air Day, 28th May 1938, at RAF Kenley, Whyteleaf, home of No 3 Fighter Sqn and No 17 Fighter Sqn. War was by this time pretty much inevitable, in spite of politicians' wishful thinking, and everyone knew it.
I can smell the oil on the grass, even at this distance...
The "Types you will see today" include:
Hawker Hurricane - RR Merlin, "which has just flown from Edinburgh to London in 48 minutes"
Vickers Wellesley - 2 Bristol Pegasus, bomber
Shorts Empire Flying Boat (presumably a flypast? Did it have wheels as well?)
Handley Page Harrow - 2 Bristol Pegasus, bomber, "biggest one yet introduced"
Armstrong Whitworth Whitley - 2 Armsrong Siddeley Tiger VIII, bomber
Fairey Battle - RR Merlin, medium bomber
Bristol Blenheim - 2 Bristol Mercury VIII, medium bomber
Vickers Wellington - 2 Bristol Pegasus, medium bomber, not clear if this appeared, or whether there's just a picture. What appeared may have been its predecessor, the Wellesley.
Gloster Gladiator - Bristol Mercury, torpedo bomber
Vickers Supermarine Spitfire - RR Merlin, fighter
Westland Lysander - Bristol Mercury, liaison
Armsrong Whitworth Ensign - 4 Armsrong Siddeley Tiger IX, transport
De Havilland Albatross - 4 Gipsy 12, transport (very sleek looking, all-metal skin)
The Programme has articles and pictures about RAF Armoured cars being ambushed by Arabs in Palestine.
There's a piece about "The Problem of Home Defence" which says with some foresight, after describing all the means such as fighters, AAA, balloons etc, "it will still be unlikely, at all events at the outset of hostilities, that all attackers could be prevented from reaching and attacking their objectives".
We seem by now to have lost the art of telling it like it is; this sentence firstly assumes that there will be hostilities, and secondly tells you that defence measures will not prevent attacks succeeding. Imagine a modern politician trying to spin round both those unpalatable facts.
Mind you, the next article tells you how a career in the RAF offers "a healthy, open-air existence and good comradeship......security of tenure for a number of years...few fail to find congenial employment very soon after leaving active service".
It says there are 1,400 vacancies for Short Service Commission Pilots, while avoiding any mention of why there's this sudden need.
There's an article about the routes flown by Imperial Airways, and right at the back there's a small ad by "British Airways" for its Paris flights.
And finally, it mentions that "considerable funds are being expended in an effort to produce within the next 5 years a compression-ignition engine consuming non-volatile oil which shall be more efficient than any foreign rival".
Oh well, back to the clearing out....but what a day it must have been.