The Woracle

The idea of a small "personal jet" is far from new. Perhaps the first was the French SIPA S.200 Minijet, which flew in 1952 and was designed for training and other general aviation uses. It was - is, as two are still flying - powered by one of the first small jet engines, the 350lb-thrust Turbomeca Palas.

But Cirrus's the-jet reminds me the Miles M.100 Student, which flew in 1957 and was offered to the Royal Air Force as a trainer, losing to the Jet Provost. It was powered by another of Turbomeca's small turbojets, the 900lb-thrust Marbore.

Thanks to Ron Dupas of 1000aircraftphotos.com for permission to use this picture.

Miles Student (Walter Van Tilborg Collection via 1000aircraftphotos.com)

Two P-51 Mustangs have been lost, one pilot killed and one injured in a crash at the AirVenture show in Oshkosh. For a dramatic, but sad, photograph of the aircraft colliding while landing go here.

Reporting on the crash, aero-news.net says the pilots appeared to be attempting a formation landing after performing a simulated air race. The report includes video of the accident.

To an aviation enthusiast like me, there is nothing more enjoyable than the sight and sound of warbirds flying, particularly the beautiful Merlin-engined Mustang, but I am concerned that air show crashes like these deplete a scare resource.

The Mustang is not yet an endangered species, but many warbirds are among the last of their kind flying, and one day may exist only in museums, stuffed and mounted like extinct birds.

Loss of life is cause enough for sadness. In our demands for excitement and entertainment, air show pilots and spectators alike need to respect the scarcity of these aircraft.

By the time the Boeing P-8 Poseidon becomes operational in 2012, 50 years will have passed since its predecessor the Lockheed P-3 Orion entered service; 30 years since the US Navy began looking for a replacement; and almost 20 years since P-3 production ended.

One of the true classics, the P-3 has proved hard to replace.

It entered service with the Royal Air Force in May 1951 and stayed in service so long the joke was its 1970s replacement, the Multi Role Combat Aircraft, or MRCA, actually stood for More Refurbished Canberras Again. The MRCA became the Tornado, but the English Electric Canberra soldiered on and was finally retired in July 2006.

Now the final three reconnaissance Canberra PR9s that were operated by 39 Sqn are up for sale. Check the classified ads at the back of this week's Flight, or visit the seller at www.midairsa.com. My colleague Craig Hoyle, Flight's defence guru, jokes they will probably be bought by someone who will lease them back to the UK MoD...

For sale: one careful owner (MoD photo)

In recognition of six decades of boring holes in the blue sky.

Jet set (F-86F Sabres over Korea in 1954 - USAF photo)

Heavy metal (USAF air display at Nellis AFB in 1959)

I have trolled through the Defense Visual Information Center website to find some pictures of USAF fighters through the years. I will leave their identification to you...

The Central Intelligence Agency has published a history of Oxcart, the super-secret programme that resulted in Lockheed's Mach 3-plus A-12, YF-12A and SR-71 Blackbird.

The monograph, by CIA chief historian David Robarge, provides insight to the competition between Lockheed's A-12 and Convair's Kingfish - a remarkable-looking aircraft powered by the same Pratt & Whitney J58 engines, which promised lower radar cross-section but was judged to be higher risk.

Thanks to the website secretprojects.co.uk you can see some amazing artwork of the Kingfish by the great Jozef Gatial.

One final word, for now, on battlefield airlift. The Defense Science Board report contains this August 1967 photograph of a US Air Force de Havilland Canada C-7A Caribou disintegrating after flying into the line of fire of a US Army 155mm Howitzer while trying to land at a US special forces camp in Vietnam.

The DSB uses the picture to illustrate that the battlefield enclave into which JHL or AJACS will operate will be a dangerous place. It also serves to illustrate the problems of communication between the services that still exist today. The Army is furious at the Air Force's politicing over the Joint Cargo Aircraft, and while it got the aircraft it wanted the Army could lose control of the programme to the Air Force. JHL vs AJACS is certain to spark a similar "roles and missions" struggle.

[Credit note - the DSB report credits the photograph to "Bettman/Corbis". The picture can be found on the C-7A Carbou Association website, which says the picture, called "Friendly fire", is by Hiromichi Mine and appears in Requiem, a book by photographers who died in Vietnam.]

On the subject of compound autogyros, Flight International alumnus Stewart Penney points me to this great video of the Fairey Rotodyne - Groen's inspiration for the Heliplane gyrodyne. The Rotodyne's rotor was tipjet-driven for take-off and landing and autorotated in the cruise, propulsion being provided by a pair of Napier Eland turboprops. The Rotodyne set a speed record of 190.9mph in 1959, but was cancelled in 1962 for reasons more political than technical.

Canada's Globe and Mail is reporting that the largest collection of Avro Arrow memorabilia will be auctioned in Toronto on December 9. It is bound to stoke interest in an event Canadians and aviation historians will never forget - the 1959 cancellation of a supersonic fighter that many believe was the most advanced of its day.

Cancellation of the Arrow by prime minister John Diefenbaker, and the shamefully hurried destruction of the flying prototypes and aircraft in production, is described as the end of Canada's aerospace industry. While that is not true - today Canada ranks fifth in the world in aerospace sales - it did change the industry's nature for ever. Defence accounts for only a fraction of the industry's output and its primes - Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney Canada, CAE, Bell Helicopter Canada - are best known for their civil programmes.

I won't get into the debate over the Arrow's merits - you can do that at the many websites devoted to the project - but this elegant fighter was clearly an enormous achievement for the small Canadian industry. I view the Arrow the way I do Britain's TSR.2 strike aircraft - as a watershed for an industry. The government of the day's decision to cancel TSR.2 and keep Concorde was the beginning of the end for an independent UK aerospace industry.

Would TSR.2 have cost as much as Concorde did? Would it have been any more successful? Questions that can't be answered and that are, in any case, irrelevant. The cancellation of the TSR.2, like that of the Arrow, put industry on a different course. It will be up to aviation historians of the future to determine whether it was the right course.

Me? I just wish they had kept the Arrow and TSR.2 alive - the aviation world would be a much more interesting place. You see a documentary on the Arrow at CBC's website. Or watch this 9min youtube tribute by sythewave:

To celebrate 100 years of Flight International, we want to discover the "100 Greatest" in aviation; by determining the top twenty civil aircraft, military aircraft, engine, people & moments. Here the best engine is put forward!

To kick things off on the "100 greatest engines", I have nominated the Rolls-Royce Nene. Something of an off-the-wall choice, I know. But as well as powering some key British and American aircraft, the Nene gave several countries their first taste of jet power - notoriously the Soviet Union, where Nenes provided by the British government were reverse-engineered to produce the MiG-15's engine.

R-R's Nene - worthy of the '100 greatest'? (from Flight's cutaway archive)

So far, the popular vote is going to General Electric's J79, the afterburning turbojet produced by the thousands to power Lockheed F-104s and McDonnell Douglas F-4s, as well as the B-58 Hustler and A-5 Vigilante. Other countries have had equally pivotal fighter powerplants, notably Britain's Rolls-Royce Avon, France's Snecma Atar and Russia's Tumanksy R-11. Think they belong on the "100 greatest"? Then get busy nominating!

Do you agree with this choice?Why not nominate your own favourite of the following categores in our "100 Greatest" area: Greatest Civil Aircraft? Greatest Military Aircraft? The Greatest Engine? The Greatest Person? The Greatest Moment?

Frank Piasecki, who flew the USA's second successful helicopter, died on February 11. Born in 1919, Piasecki might not have been quite as well known as the guy who got there first - Igor Sikorsky - but the helicopters his company designed certainly are, particularly the CH-47 Chinook. Lately Piasecki Aircraft has been getting attention for its X-49A SpeedHawk - the latest incarnation of a compound-helicopter dream Piasecki pursued for five decades.

"He was one of the original inventors of the helicopter and a pioneer in establishing the helicopter industry," his son, John Piasecki, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "He was the last of that generation that really created an entirely new industry."

Piasecki's PV-2 first flew in April 1943, with Frank at the controls, but it was with the tandem-rotor HRP and HUP that the Philadelphia-based company made its fortune. Renamed Vertol Aircraft, the firm was acquired by Boeing in 1960 and continues to build the Chinook. Piasecki Aircraft was then formed to develop compound helicopters, the company's 16H-1A Pathfinder II reaching an impressive 225mph in 1966.

The compound dream was not realised, but with the flight of Piasecki's X-49A in June 2007, the concept and the company returned to prominence. With backing from the US Army and Boeing, Piasecki plans to push the SpeedHawk - a modified Sikorsky SH-60 - beyond 200mph. Thankfully. Frank lived to see his dream rekindled.

Piasecki's pioneering PV-2......tandem-rotor HRP.....and compound Pathfinder II

My colleague John Croft was invited to Wilmington, Delaware last year to watch the X-49A fly and help Piasecki celebrate its founder's 88th birthday. He took this picture of Frank with the Pathfinder II, flanked by two of his five sons (there are also two daughters):

Helicopter pioneer Frank Piasecki is remembered by his family in the attached obituary. The family requests any contributions be made to the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center's “Frank Piasecki Memorial Fund”, 1220 American Boulevard ,West Chester, PA 19380; or the “Piasecki Fund for Math and Science Education”, St. Malachy School, 1419 N. 11th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122. Both worthy causes.

The US Air Force is retiring its Lockheed F-117s, 27 years after the stealth fighter first flew in secret and two decades after it was revealed to the public. I remember being at the formal roll-out - of the last F-117. Must have been 1990. At the Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. I was amazed the thing could fly. "Give me fly-by-wire," Ben Rich said, "and I can make a brick fly." I believed him.

Being based in the UK, I had watched the months leading up to the F-117's public "reveal" with detached interest. I still find it hard to get excited about stealth, but I can't deny the F-117 is an impressive engineering achievement. And its roles in the opening attacks of Operations Just Cause, Desert Storm, Allied Force and Iraqi Freedom are testament to its unique capability.

"Nope, no Bill Sweetman in here" (USAF photo)

Any fellow alumni of Hawker Siddeley Aviation in Kingston out there? I have a call for help from the man who owns the only private Sea Harrier. After an emergency vertical landing late last year, owner Art Nalls (nallsaviation.com) is having some difficulties repairing the nose. He needs some help with rebuilding the radome ring and wants to know more about the alloy used for the nose skin as it is resisting being worked back into shape.

Art's Shar is an ex-Royal Navy FA2, but is actually the second Sea Harrier built - XV439. I was working at Hawkers in Kingston when the first Sea Harrier FRS1 was assembled - I even worked in the sheet metal shop for a while. Produced a lovely aluminium fruit bowl using the English Wheel. But I think Art needs more than my rusty skills.

Nose job needed (photo from 800nas.org.uk)