History of air law & controlled airspace etc.

[kevmusic]

I've always been an aviation history buff & now that i'm grinding my way through the ground school subjects for the PPL I wonder this: how long have pilots been studying what we have to learn now? BoB pilot Geoffrey Wellum, in his book, First Light, describes how hard he found the ground school subjects. But did he have to know about controlled airspace? Did Imperial Airways Argosy pilots, just out of Croydon, have to worry about Flying Fleas getting in their way?

And Nav - did the navigators of Bomber Command use our circular slide rule and Method A or B for vector calculations as we are taught?

To know I'm ingesting (at least, trying to!) the same information as our heroes of yore will give me a shiver up the spine I'll admit. :)

Kev.

[jabberwok]

The origin of this particular ingenious device appears to be centered on a US military scientist. Philip Dalton, a Cornell University graduate and US Naval Reserve pilot, developed a series of slide-rule flight computers in the 1930s, including the ever-popular E-6B somewhere around 1932 (originally called the Dalton Dead Reckoning Computer). However, aviation historian Kevin Darling notes that British navigation tools all carried the prefix "6B" to their part numbers, thereby causing some confusion as to the origins of the Dalton "E-6B". Regardless of the part number confusion, the Dalton Dead Reckoning Computer, or "E-6B", has survived to this day in slightly modified form through the hands of a large number of civilian manufacturers such as Jeppesen and ASA. ASA even makes a 6 foot tall classroom demonstration model available,
http://www.aerotraining.com/html_gif/1469.jpg
http://oldbeacon.com/beacon/e6b.htm
The RAF "box" variety is a nice model to get hold of. The slide rule was on top and you opened the box to access the wind drift dial. Instead of a metal plate the speed arcs were printed on a canvas belt which was would up and down using two rollers. I've not seen one for a while now and can only find the following (poor) photograph.
http://www.airmuseum.ca/af0326v3.jpg

[kevmusic]

Thanks for the research, JW.