Creature Comforts...

[Lufbery]

All,

I was visiting the Mid Atlantic Air Museum this past weekend (where I'm a member) and looking at our restoration of a P-61 Black Widow. One of the things I noticed was a heating vent in the radar operator's compartment. This got me thinking about pilot comfort during flights in WWI.

It's a pretty well-known fact that pilots got very cold while flying and that they tended to bundle up in leather flying suits; even in the summer. The Germans apparently used oxygen and heated flight suits that worked like electric blankets. They also had parachutes. Can somebody tell me to when and to what extent the Germans used that equipment? Did it make a difference in the pilots' effectiveness?

How about the Allied forces? Did they do anything to ameliorate their pilots' discomfort? I'd think that the very hot exhaust on either side of the Spad's cockpit would help warm things a little, but I doubt there was much of an effect. I've also read that pilots used to warm their hands on the exposed radiator plumbing in the cockpit of Sopwith Dolphins.

Anyone know about any others? How about cupholders; for coffee, of course?

Regards,

The RFC introduced insulated, one-piece flying suits (the Sidcot, named for inventor Sidney Cotton) in 1917. Sidcot suits were much prized by German aircrew. The RFC/RAF also used electrically heated suits in 1918.

Heating vents would of course have been pointless in open cockpits; I've come across no references to active heating. In terms of passive heating, some warmth was apparently felt courtesy of engine temperature. There doesn't seem to have been much of this, though, because the only references to it that I've seen concern its absence in pusher aircraft.

RFC pilots were allowed to use cushions of their choice on the seats of their a/c, and I seem to recall reading about other minor amenities sometimes being used (mirrors, for example, for the little good they did). Those offices were really too cramped, though, for much else in the way of pilot comfort.

Ergonomically, probably the only positive actions taken were to make switches, valves, etc. big enough to be manipulated by hands encased in thick gloves. I'm impressed at the number of WWI a/c I've seen that use old-style electric light switches to turn the magnetoes on and off.

[Gregvan]

"The D.H.2 was a very cold little machine, as the pilot had to sit in a small nacelle with the engine a long way back, and so of course he got no warmth from it at all." :-[

James T B McCudden, "Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps"