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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 0627.PDF
MAY 6TH, 1948 FLIGHT 499 Casual Commentary . . and Nothing but the Truth • Over-optimistic Dates and Weights ^Propaganda as a Two-edged Sword : Lack of Technical Liaison I WONDER when people will become finally tired ofpropaganda—so tired that the propagandists them-selves, with all associated apologists and euphemists, find .that their millions of words are falling at last on stone- deaf ears. The cracks can already be seen appearing here and there in the vast bovine patience of the ordinary people, who are no longer believing everything they are told. Indeed, the more intelligent among us have already JTlearnt, by long and painful experience, how to know the difference between the honest statements of fact and the all-too-fafniliar garblings of some entrepreneur in policy. And we in the aviation industry are not by any means above reproach—if I may use one of the vtry euphemisms about which I had just g started to complain. I am not talking of those prototype first flights which are ROBERT completed '' without incident,'' or even about the faults, sometimes perpetuated "on the pro- duction line, which are not mentioned. Those are mere peccadilloes, since one cannot always devise an honest story in four sentences to cover adequately the hundred and one things which almost inevitably do go wrong on any first flight, and even the best of aircraft may suffer from troubles which are curable only in degree. But I am complaining, for instance, about the over-optimism which has been with the industry since its earliest years and about the deathly hushes which serve as the only later admission of this over-optimism. Why must we suffer, generation after generation, from these unrealistic first flight or production dates, and from these equally unrealistic structure-weight figures ? Or from these meaningless promises of performance to come ? On the face of it one might almost be justified in saying that a technician who is incapable of judging such things with reasonable accuracy is likely to be equally incapable of making an aircraft at all. But we all know that it is rarely as simple as that. In- curably optimistic the technician may sometimes be, but he is not the only one concerned in the matter; the sales team, for its own obscure purposes, will wish,to paint a rosier picture, and, maybe, the non-technical P.R.O. will feel that it is his duty to knock off a few unassuming digits in order to produce a nice round figure. Meanwhile, the backroom boys in the project offices and weight control •departments will cynically disclaim responsibility for the issued figures—in spite of the fact that they may have been initially at fault themselves, since they were first in the long series of individuals, at progressively higher levels, who have been talked into optimism on the surely-you-can- do-better-than-that system. Indeed, in the extreme case, the entire myth might have been built up on the rash promise of a not-very-well-informed director to whom his minions might have been afraid to speak the unpalatable truth. Not Alone Whatever the multiplicity of reasons, the aircraft in- dustry has almost consistently made an ass of itself about these two important estimates—and sometimes about straight performance figures as well. Not that we are alone at fault; the American industry makes the same pheno- menal errors and, in one or two recent cases, must have put in immense efforts to save the remains of their bacon with an ambitiously hurried redesign. Luckily, the human memory is short; the months roll by and the differences of some thousands of pounds avoirdupois remain unnoticed except by the nerve-shattered design team for whom every day and every ounce lost may seem to be blazoned in figures across the world's headlines. CARLING Nowadays, of course, the industry is even less entirely its own master than it ever was in such matters. One or other of the Ministries, after using the taxpayers' money to pay the piper, may feel inclined to call the tune. And the tune can be designed to suit any political purpose—such as causing the listening general public to believe that their ministerial masters are clever, far-seeing and in every way admirable. Hence, quite often, the unrealistic development and production dates given, the technically impossible, and even fantastic futures promised, and, latter, the grudging and most carefully worded admissions of error. The whole thing is usually too complicated for the pointing of a finger of blame in any particular direction— —human beings, by their very nature, being human—but, to the knowledgeable onlooker, it can all be very meaningless and even dangerous. Meaningless—be- cause promises cannot affect performance; and dangerous— because broken promises cause loss of faith. Meanwhile, something which the technicians know to be a considerable achievement may be produced, yet the over-optimistic general public can no longer be impressed. Even in the knock-about world of plain, hard .business, over-optimism and over-selling does no real good in the long run. Operators don't buy aircraft on paper promises and flashy sales literature, though well-grounded confidence and useful information can produce the good impression which may eventually turn the scales. In general, it pays to tell nearly the whole truth and certainly nothing but the truth. Even if this truth is sometimes painful, it is that much less damaging than the gossip which will, in any case, be circulated—and very much less so than the loss of confidence felt by the customer after the tardy but inevitable discovery of this truth. Optimism and Truth Oh, I know that the fly sales boys will assure you that the bigger the whopper the greater the initial interest, and that memories are short. Surely they are—but not as short as all that, and I for one remember nearly everv one of the whoppers and the people who were responsible for them. I know, too, that even the more sober man of business will say that "we've got to give these optimistic forecasts so long as other manufacturers are doing the same thing ..." In particular, he may be thinking of the Americans—but they are learning, too, and, by and large, the U.S. manufacturers' forecasts have not been as un- realistic as we have often pretended. The figures and facts for both the DC-2 and the Constellation were laughed to scorn by some of our technicians, but they turned out to be pretty near the mark. More recently the Martin 2-0-2, for instance, shows signs of coming out with more or less its originally promised performance despite redesign on a drastic scale after experience with the first aircraft, and a considerable increase in empty weight. And even if there is still some ballyhoo across the Atlantic, that is no excuse for anybody; it gets one nowhere and is indeed a two-edged sword. Nevertheless, it will be no fun for this country's aircraft industry to be holier-than-thou in such matters if the truth we tell is extremely depressing to the world customers. Even if it won't help in the slightest to tell fibs about in- ferior products, it would be very much nicer if the truth could also be good hearing. It seems to me that, with one or two outstanding exceptions, we are in pretty low water so far as the civil aircraft of our immediate future are con- cerned, and we shall need to be both clever and careful if we are not to be left flat in the world markets. [Continued at foot of page 502.)
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