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Aviation History
1950
1950 - 2133.PDF
550 BOSCOMBE DOWN Industry and A. & A.E.E. Get Togi FLIGHT, 14 December 1950 NNUAL" Her Airfield At the Boscombe top table are seen (left to right) : Sir Roy Dobson, Mr. D. B. Clarke, A. V-M. j. N. Boothwan, Mr. J. Hanson, Mr. W. T. Gill, A.Cdre. A. W. B. McDonald, and Mr. J. Freeman. AN event to which members of the aircraft industry lookforward each year is that known colloquially as "theL Contractors' Dinner," at Boscombe Down. At these enjoyable and valuable meetings the flying and technical staffof the Aeroplane' and Armament Experimental Establishment entertain the chiefs of the aircraft firms, and an ideal opportunityis provided for discussion of the successes and problems of the year. At this year's (so far as records show) 22nd annual event,Air Commodore A. W. B. McDonald, C.B., A.F.C., presided, and, in proposing the guests, requested that all who were ableto do so should provide information about the early functions, and name both aircraft and men depicted in a remarkable setof old photographic prints held by the Establishment. The material is to be sorted and edited to form a permanentrecord. A special welcome was accorded to A.V-M. J. N. Boothman, C.B., D.F.C., A.F.C., who first went to Boscombeat a pilot in 1921, later returned as Commandant, and now came back again as C.S.A. Reviewing progress with expansion and rebuilding at Bos-combe, A. Cdre. McDonald said that, having started the year with two-thirds of a runway and no taxi-tracks, there werenow two fine runways (3,400yd and 2,600yd long by 100yd wide), taxi-tracks and some fine new buildings. These improve-ments, he thought, must have some effect on efficiency. The long-term plan included a new officers' mess. Boscombe could now offer special facilities to contractors forfirst flights. These had cost a lot and, said the Air Commodore, he would be pleased to see them used to the best advantage.It was also good for the morale of the Establishment to see how new aircraft were shaping, particularly when one read that theRussians had superior jobs and Boscombe was still testing Vampires and Meteors. An important step had been taken during the year to bringabout closer co-operation and to share final clearance-testing of aircraft with the manufacturers themselves. This was alogical step which would cut out duplication of effort and improve efficiency. It would be put into effect early in thehew year and would lead to a valuable exchange of ideas on flight-testing and instrumentation. Finally, A. Cdre. McDonald referred to the Test Pilots'Convention, held at Boscombe for the first time this year. It had been most valuable and would be repeated. There wasa great need to-day for the speeding-up of all testing processes, but this must not lead to a lowering of standards. A.V-M. Boothman, Controller of Supplies (Air), replying forthe guests, recalled A. and A.E.E. pioneers and his own earlier days with the Establishment, to which he was posted nineteenyears ago almost to the day. Mr. J. Freeman, M.B.E., Parliamentary Secretary to theMinistry of Supply, assembling his facts—and his anecdotes— in a characteristically masterly manner, thought it remarkablethat aircraft manufacture still had as its leaders the creators of the industry. The year ahead was likely to be a verydifferent one from that to which he had referred on a similar occasion last year. It would be a very busy one for the industry, and there was no longer the same money-shortage for aircraft. Referring to machines now in service, Mr. Freeman saidthat there were some in the world which were better than those we had, but at what point must a halt be called on improvementand the start of production be ordered? He believed that the timing would still prove to have been right in this country, andour new aircraft were likely to be better than all others. We dare not skimp the time spent in perfecting our products, buta month saved now would been an extra month on the time of peak production. Boscombe, Mr. Freeman believed, was alreadythe finest establishment of its type in the world; it was necessary to maintain the conditions to keep it so. Mr. W. T. Gill, President of the S.B.A.C, said that theindustry now had a sight of the problems which were to be put to it. What was wanted was the right product at the righttime, and at the right price. The industry rejoiced to see the facilities gradually accumulating at Boscombe. Before the dinner came to an end, there was a call, as usual,for a few words from Sir Frederick Handley Page. OTHER PLANETS " The Conquest of Space." Paintings by Chesley Bonesteli;Text by Willy Ley. Sidgwick & Jackson, .44, Museum Street, London, W.C.I. Price18s. ''PHIS book does not provide the answer to what the SundayJ- newspapers call "The Flying Saucer Mystery," for it is concerned^ with what we on earth have been able to learn ofother planets, and not with whether another world is "watch- ing" us. Indeed, the most cursory glance through its pagesmakes it quite obvious that a race of "little men" inhabiting any other planet in our solar system would need either asbestosskin or refrigerated arteries, depending on where they lived. Here, for example, is Mr. Ley's description of Jupiter: "Itsatmosphere and its ' surface' may still undergo violent changes, with chemical explosions of hydrogen, caused possibly by sodiumor other chemical reactions which are not in our low-pressure chemistry . . . amid cliffs of permanent ice rising from a sea oftemporarily liquid ammonia." Mr. BonestelFs impression in colour of the result would make a fitting backcloth for Dante'sInferno. ' Not all the paintings are as frightening; those of ringedSaturn, for instance, are as beautiful as they are awe-inspiring. Their detail is such that one can almost imagine that Mr.Bonesteli must have travelled by private space-rocket to Mimas or Titan to draw them. Nor are they fantasy, for everythingin this book is based on fact, as far as we know it at present, corroborated by some of the greatest astronomers in America. In his introduction, Ley tells how Bonesteli learned to workout and draw exactly what we believe Mars to look like from Deimos, its farthest moon, at a visual angle of 30 degrees andat a precise phase of rotation: from that moment, one no longer doubts the autboritativeness of the paintings. The text main-tains the same high standard, ami, in fact, there could be no better introduction to cosmology or the new science of inter-planetary flight than this book. J. W. R. T.
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