The Royal Air Force Far East Flight formed at Felixstowe in May, 1927, to carry out long cruises in the East with four flying boats of the Southampton type. Some of the principal objects of the cruises were:—

1. (a) To give Service personnel experience in carrying out long cruises with a Flight operating independently of surface vessels and shore bases, and to exercise their initiative and resource under widely varying conditions.

2. (b) To gain technical and operational experience for the development of flying boats.

3. (c) To collect information on seaplane bases, harbours and local conditions affecting aircraft throughout the routes flown; and

4. (d) To show the flag and foster the spirit of mutual co–operation between the Mother Country and the parts of the British Empire visited.

The personnel of the Flight consisted of a Flying Party of four boats’ crews of two officers and two airmen each, and a Base Party of three officers and 23 airmen.

As the treatment of the different subjects must be brief and general this paper can only deal with the complex subject of aircraft fatigue in very broad terms, attempting to trace the development of the subject over the past ten years or so, to present some of the problems and the methods being adopted to solve them and to emphasise the very wide extent to which fatigue affects aircraft design today.

The fatigue of metals was recognised as a separate form of failure as long ago as 1854 and is now the subject of a very extensive literature. Mechanical engineers have long been familiar with fatigue as a criterion of design and are apt to be critical and even amused at the aeronautical engineer's recently found interest.

The development of the gas turbine is so rapid and the thermo-dynamic ingenuity which is being lavished upon it at the present time is so imaginative and varied that the words “ in its forms ” which appear in the title to this paper can mean as much or as little as you please. Partly because I want to limit the scope of this paper to developments which might be expected to be in service within the next five years, and partly because I am frankly not sufficiently acquainted with the characteristics of many of its more advanced forms, I am going to confine myself to a discussion of the effects upon the speed and economy of commercial aviation of the two simplest and immediate variants of the gas turbine— the simple jet-producing turbine and the simple propeller-driving turbine.

Experience with the installation of guns in aircraft in recent years suggests that there has been little co-operation between gun designers and aircraft designers. This becomes more apparent as gun calibres increase and if satisfactory fighting aircraft are to be produced in the future, closer co-operation between gun designers and aircraft designers will be necessary. In consequence, a brief review of the progress of gun design in recent years, with special reference to its effect on installation, may be of interest.

From 1918 to 1938 the standard guns used in the Royal Air Force were the Lewis gun and Vickers Maxim gun, both Army guns modified for air cooling. The installation of these guns had reached a standard form by 1918 which was adhered to for the best part of 20 years.

The development of manned supersonic aircraft in this country suffered a setback at the end of the 1939-45 War, when it was decided that the use of manned aircraft would be too dangerous; however, more realistic views soon prevailed and, as a result, the ordering of such manned aircraft was considered in 1947 by the Ministry of Supply and in our submissions to M.o.S. in 1949, we described the aircraft as having as its primary function “Research Flying at Transonic and Supersonic speeds up to M =1·5.”

The background which led up to this submission is of interest, as it shows a logical line of development within the Company.

When I was asked to give this lecture on Civil Flight Testing, I considered in what way any of my experience might be of general help to the Industry.

The tests which A. and A.E.E. make on civil aircraft are at the moment of three kinds: —

1. (a) Tests to prove compliance with Air Registration Board requirements for a Certificate of Airworthiness.

2. (b) Development tests for firms in order to suggest modifications to the aircraft occasioned by the results of tests made under (a).

3. (c) Tests made for the Ministry of Supply because some of the aircraft are for Ministry of Supply contracts.

The influence exerted by the technical development of a vehicle on the design of the surface on which it travels is of considerable historical and social importance. Technical progress in the design of the road vehicle has never been matched by a similar development of the road, and in the past 50 years the discrepancy between the performance of the vehicle as dictated by road conditions, and the performance of which it is capable has been even more marked. The policy, forced upon society by national and international conditions, of compelling the vehicle to conform to the present standards of road design is highly restrictive and uneconomic, and such devices as pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and speed limits, are all evidences of failure to solve the problems of the simultaneous development of vehicle and road.

It is only within recent years that the helicopter has emerged from the experimental aircraft category to a position in which it can be considered as an effective operational and commercial means of aerial transport. The development of the helicopter to its present stage is due to extensive work in many countries, particularly in America, and it is unfortunate, but unavoidable, that Britain was unable to take a larger share in this work.