by Phil Delnon
Penrose was familiar with the Wapiti as a landplane, but as a seaplane it was completely new. Westland crated the thing up and sent it off to Argentina without any tests. Penrose was rather more fortunate: he was given a little less than two hours' seaplane practice near Southampton.
Setting up for the demonstration flights was a cliche of South American lethargy. Penrose put on his aerobatics, but noted that the Argentinians already had the French Dewoitine and Breguet monoplanes. It did not need the attentions of the traditional beautiful female spy to tell him that his chances of selling the Wapiti were small indeed.
A more urgent problem soon showed: the plane started to lose power in flight. After one forced landing and two more airborne scares, Penrose was standing up in the cockpit to clean the screen when he noticed that the fuel vent pipe faced backwards: it was sucking air out of the fuel tank and creating negative pressure. Penrose turned it round: end of problem.
Visiting Uruguay gave more disappointment: again the French had got in first. But Penrose seized the chance to fly some more ex-WWI fighters then in the Uruguayan Air Force.
Now Penrose saw about fitting the Wapiti with its floats and turning it into a seaplane. Again he noticed superior competition, this time in the form of a single-float biplane, an American Corsair.
Penrose's next brush with death was suitably exotic. The Wapiti needed two hand-cranks to start the motor; so when a mechanic dropped one of them into the river there was nothing else but to strip off and dive for it. At once the interpreter came rushing out in a boat, rather agitated: there were piranhas in the water. Penrose wrote off the crank and had a local mechanic make a rough but adequate copy from the other one.
More demonstrations followed. Penrose even gate-crashed an official display and looped the seaplane Wapiti over the heads of the assorted dignitaries: it was no use. Other companies had better aircraft, and the Westland team -all three of them- returned to Yeovil.
Westland were having problems. Besides the lack of Wapiti sales, the Navy had turned down their torpedo-bomber variant: and now Paget had a crash which was to end his career. Penrose found himself suddenly recalled from holiday to fly more aircraft for a struggling company.
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