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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 1863.PDF
NOVEMBER 4TH, 1948 FLIGHT 555 (Top) Mr. Davenport and Mrs. W. G. Perring. (Centre) The guests take refreshments with the history of locomotion as a background. (Top) Sir Arthur Gouge with his daughter Margaret. (Centre) Gordon England and Mrs. England chatting with Dr. Thurston. (bottom) Sir Alan and Lady Cobham. tive to the younger generation to see some of the quaint contraptions with which early French and American experi- menters struggled to master the air. A relatively little-known piece of British aviation his- tory was recalled by the film of the Cedric Lee circular- wing monoplane, shown and commented upon by Mr. G. Tilghman Richards, who designed it. It was flown on many occasions (and once crashed) by that amazing charac- ter of the early days, Gordon Bell. As Mr. Tilghman Richards said during his commentary on the film, that machine was the genuine and original "flying saucer." It did not stall or spin, and could fly extremely slowly, although this ability could not be fully utilized in landing, owing to the very large angle at which maximum lift coefficient was attained. Group Captain Liptrot put present-day helicopter flying into its proper perspective by showing films of most of the early attempts. He paid a well-deserved tribute to the late de la Cierva for his pioneer work in the rotating-wing field, and traced the evolution of the helicopter from the earliest days .up to the first successful Sikorsky of recent times. The films attested to the fact that control has been the great difficulty. Many of the early helicopters, though not all, would lift; the trouble started when they left the ground and had to be managed. But gradually the length of hops increased, the first really practical heli- copter being the twin-rotor Focke-Achgelis. Control prob-. lems can now be said to have been reasonably well solved, (Top) Mr. J. Fearn and his daughter Kathleen. (Centre) Mr. and Mrs. John Lankester Parker. (Bottom) Mr. and Mrs. F. F. Crocombe partake of a cup of coffee. the task now before helicopter designers being mainly one of achieving stability and reducing production costs. The Conversazione itself was a great success. A great number of the technicians from the aviation world were there with their wives, and during the latter part of the evening, until midnight, there was dancing for the younger folk, in which many of the not-so-young took part. Alto- gether the evening demonstrated that the august Royal Aeronautical Society enjoys an occasional break in its struggle with modern aircraft problems. R.Ae.S. DISCUSSES PRODUCTION SOME Developments in Aircraft Production" was thesubject of last Thursday's R.Ae.S. paper, read by Mr. H. Smith (works manager, Handley Page, Ltd.) in the absence,through illness, of Mr. D. C. Robinson, works superintendent. The subject is, of course, a complex one with only vaguelydefined limits, and the author probably did right to confine himself to a general outline which would be appreciated bythose not intimately concerned with the manufacture of air- craft. Understandably, his viewpoint was that of one respon-sible for a particular manufacturing policy, and he therefore devoted a considerable proportion of the paper to an explana-tion of the system favoured by Handley Page, Ltd., whereby accurately tooled details make final assembly of the airframea process which can be carried out " on the floor " rather than in elaborate fixtures. This method is one which, having provednotably successful in the Hampden and Halifax, has been extended in somewhat modified form to the Hastings andHermes.
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