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Aviation History
1949
1949 - 0045.PDF
and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER Editorial Director G. GEOFFREY SMITH. M.B.E Editor CM. POULSEN Assistant Editor - MAURICE A. SMITH, D.F.C. WING CDR. R.A.F.V.X.) An Editor- - IOHN YOXALL FIPST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD .• FOUNDED WO9 Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices: Telegrams : Flightpres, Sedist, London. DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.1 Telephone : Waterloo 3333 (6 ina.) COVENTRY: iB-IO, CORPORATION ST. Telegrams: Autocar, Coventry. Telephone: Coventry 5210. BIRMINGHAM, 2: KING EDWARD HOUSE, NEW STREET Telegrams : Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone: Midland 7191 (7 lines). MANCHESTER. 3 : 260, DEANSGATE. Telegrams : Iliffe, Manchester Telephone: Blackfriars 4412(3 lines) Deansgate 3595 (2 lines) GLASGOW, C.2: 26 B, RENFiELD ST Telegrams Iliffe Glasgow Telephone Centra 4857 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Home: Twelve months, £3 Is. Od. Six months, £ I 10s. 6d. IY AIR : To any country in Europe (except Poland). Twelve months, £5 Is. UJ. Six months, £2 Overseas: Twelve months, £2 Us >. 10s. 6d. To Canada and U.S.A ix months, $16 No. 2090. Vol. LV January 13th, 1949 'IFe Outlook Thursdays, One Shilling Who Can Tell ?O UR good friend, Mr. John K. Northrop, is to be congratulated not only on the excellence of his air- craft, but on his memory. In a contribution to Aviation Week he recalls a series of forecasts by promi- nent British technicians published in " a British aviation magazine" in 1938, observing that it was almost unanimously believed that large flying boats would be the universal long-range air transport vehicles, that the speed of military aircraft could never exceed 600 m.p.h., and that 200-250 m.p.h. was the all-time economic limit for passenger transports. " The individual," he pursues his ruthless recollections '' who seemed to have the best insight into the future on most matters thought it would be at least ten years before pressurized cabin transports would be practical, yet such airplanes were in regular airline service in the United States within two years." Finally, he rubs salt into the wounds with : '' Wood w:as recommended by one designer as the most suitable material for military airplanes; another thought 3,000 h.p. to be the all-time maximum power that could be expected from aeronautical engines ..." Certain of the predictions quoted are to be found in Flight of April 28th and May 5th, 1938, though diligent examination of those issues fails to bear out the remainder of Mr. Northrop's assertions. But good friend that he is, we may be sure that Jack Northrop is not setting out to ridicule or humiliate our designers. Far from it. He has nothing more in mind than directing the attention of his readers to the need for caution in taking any such predictions—his own included—too seriously. The reasons why forecasts by responsible authorities should prove almost humorously fallacious in as short a period as ten years are readily evident if one glances back. Britain's development of the aircraft gas turbine alone occasioned a metamorphosis in design. B I While thanking Mr. Northrop for his salutary reminder, we would put a friendly New Year question to him. Did he himself foresee that, parallel with a 500-m.p.h. eight-jet flying wing, his company would now be developing, in answer to public demand, a civil transport machine with three piston engines, a fixed undercarriage, and a cruising speed of 165 m.p.h. ? Nationalized Air TransportC ONSCIOUS objectivity marked the paper read by Mr. J. W. S. Brancker before the Institute of Transport on January 3rd. He did not attempt to say whether or not the nationalization of British air transport is A Good Thing. What he did do was to draw attention to certain features of it which are often blamed for financial and other shortcomings, but;; which, in his view, would have occurred equally under private enterprise. The presentation was, in fact, one of the fairest we have had, and was shorn completely of any of the irrelevant acrimony which has so often marred discussions of this thorny problem. Mr. Brancker wasted no time on '' might-have-beens '' ; the nearest he came to that was a very moderate state- ment that if civil aviation had not initially been inex- tricably bound up with the idea of war and defence, and if it had been able to show profits immediately it started many years ago, it might have been strong enough to have reached the flourishing state of the Mercantile Marine in the times of Elizabeth, and might then have retained its strategic importance without in any way losing its independence. Tracing the history of British civil aviation from the days of the four separate companies through their amal- gamation into Imperial Airways, and finally the creation of B.O.A.C. from Imperial and British Airways, Mr. Brancker blamed indecision in the immediate post-war years for much that has happened. First we had the
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