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Aviation History
1949
1949 - 1570.PDF
334 FLIGHT, 15 September 1949 A SHOW TO REMEMBER S.B.A.C.'s Superb Flying Display and Static Exhibition.: The Inaugural Banquet FARNBOROUGH, 1949, has come and gone. That ithas beeji the greatest show of its kind, in every con-notation of the word great, there can be no doubt whatever. During the "trade" days over 300 official guests from forty-odd foreign and British Commonwealth countries attended, and there was an unspecified number of '' unofficial'' foreign visitors ; every member of the British aviation and associated industries who could tear himself from his desk, laboratory or bench was there ; and on the Saturday and Sunday the general public were admitted in hot but happy hordes, to the tune of something like 260,000 for the two days. Weather was perfect for the pur- pose, if a little trying on eyes peering into a blazing sky; organization, both in the staging of the flying display and in the control of the crowds, lelt little room for criticism; and the most untoward incident of the whoie week was a small grass-fire. Despite the strain that had un- doubtedly been imposed on pilots by four days of precisely timed—and in many cases, very high-speed—demonstration, the standard of flying on the public days was in every way as magnifi- cent as that seen earlier by professional eyes. The display programme corresponded almost exactly to that of the trade days, and in addition, only at the week-end was seen the reassuring spectacle of three four-engined trans- ports—Viscount, Hermes IV and Apollo—flying strongly on one power-unit apiece. A two-seat Meteor 7 '' stood- in " for the new Mk 8 for the last two days, but its per- formance was every bit as impressive, and the '' speed twins"—Wade and Lithgow—demonstrated the Hawker P.1052 and Supermarine 510 with aerobatics and 600-plus "flash-pasts" even more dramatically than during the week. The "Five-Ten," incidentally, was earlier reported by Lithgow to have equalled, in one of its shallow dives, the world's speed record of 670 m.p.h. Few guests would hesitate in agreeing that the first S.B.A.C. Flying Display banquet, held at the Dor- chester Hotel, London, on Tuesday, September 6th —the eve of the opening of the Exhibition itself— was a resounding success, worthy indeed of the great show IN the leading article on the previous• page, and on these two pages, we give a general summing-up of theS.B.A.C. Display, together with, here, a report on the inaugural banquet ;in our special 12-page photogravure section (pp. 343-354) we present adetailed account of the individual flying demonstrations ; and on pp. 355-358 some highlights of the Static Show are described it heralded. More than 800 guests, a large proportion of whom were delegates from foreign governments, Services, airlines and aircraft industries, and among whom were representatives of the Western Union, met and dined in an atmosphere of marked cordiality. The dinner was one of welcome to these foreign guests, and it took the place of the opening luncheons of previous years. Sir Roy Dobson, C.B.E., J.P., F.R.Ae.S., managing director of A. V. Roe, took the chair as this year's president of the S:B.A.C. He will be succeeded in 1950 by Mr. W. T. Gill, the present vice-president. Proposing the toast of "The Guests,'' Sir Roy was engagingly candid as to the purpose of the Exhibition : they did not hold it for fun, he said, or merely to show off aircraft—they wanted to sell their visitors something. He was proud to be able to say that, since the last Show, exports of British aircraft had increased, particularly to the hard-currency countries; in the first six months of 1949 exports had been considerably more than those for the whole of 1946, and they felt con- fident of reaching the substantial target of £33 million which the President of the Board of Trade has set up. Reviewing the Show, Sir Roy said that, without appear-ing boastful, he could claim that nowhere in the world would they find aircraft of more advanced conception anddesign and backed by such an unsurpassed development programme. Going on to welcome the guests, the president referred in particular to what he called " the unusually large repre-^ sentation of those experts and hard-headed judges of com- mercial aircraft—the American airline companies"; he hoped that their presence was significant. » Turning to the future shape of co-operation within the British Commonwealth, the speaker said that it was perhaps a straw in the wind that within the past few months the S.B.A.C. had created membership categories designed to bring in Empire manufacturers, while some of his hearers would probably have noticed the increasing financial and technical interest taken in Dominion aircraft industries by the Society's members. Here the industry was on the threshold of great and exciting developments. A general view of the great crowd which attended the show 01 Saturday. l-'hiiht" photograph
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