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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 0673.PDF
13 April 1951 417 o«^ BUS/NESS TRANSPORT: At Croydon last week GjC. Douglas Bader, D.S.O., D.F.C., took over his new " Shell " Gemini 3Afrom Mr. Ron Paine, director of Wolverhampton Aviation, Ltd., whose company assembled the aircraft and fitted the two D.H. Gipsy Major IOs. A tour of East and West African airfields is to be one of the first jobs for Bader and his new Miles charge. He previously flew 120.000 miles in Shell's Proctor. company's present board of directors consists of R. A. Carder (chairman and managing director), L. Sinclair (managing director), H. D. Demoulins, W. E. Jenkins, N. F. Myers, H. W. Page, J. L. N. Pollock, R. H. Porters, and A. Waterston. Death of W. G. A. Perring AS we go to press we learn with deep regret of the suddendeath of Mr. W. G. A. Perring, C.B., F.R.Ae.S., Director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Famborough, since 1946. Mr. Perring, who was 52, was educated at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. After training as a naval architect and a period of post-graduate work at the National Physical Laboratory, he joined the R.A.E. in 1925. He was appointed Superintendent of Scientific Research in 1940 and became Deputy Director in the following year. In 1945 he was appointed Chief Superintendent (Aircraft). He played an important part in the planning of the National Aeronautical Establishment, Bedford (now under con- struction), and was a vice-president of the R.Ae.S. Retirement of Fuel Expert SOME three years before the first Whittle-conceived gas turbinetook the air, Sir Frank (then S/L) Whittle approached Shell with a request for co-operation in solving the fuel and combustion problems in his experimental unit. The organization put at his disposal a small team of scientists. At their head was Mr. I. Lubbock, whose eventual design of the Shell combustion chamber and burner played—as acknowledged by Sir Frank himself—an important part in the success of the experiments. Now, Mr. Lubbock, M.A.Cantab., M.I.Mech.E., M.I.H.V.E., F.Inst.P., F.Inst.F., has retired from the Shell Petroleum Co., Ltd., after nearly 28 years' service. He was head of the internal-combustion turbine section of the sales technical advisory department from 1945 onwards. He took a First Class Honours Degree in Mechanical Science at Cambridge, and served in the Royal Artillery in the First World War. He joined Shell in 1923, and was in charge of the fuel-oil technical department from 1926 to 1945. Mr. Lubbock's work on air- craft gas turbines, although out- standing, represents only one of the fields in which he initiated fuel research. For instance, his experience was put at the disposal of the committee set up by the Government to investigate the German V-weapon threat. He was in a position to assure the War Cabinet that the rumoured Mr. I. Lubbock potentialities of the V-2 were eminently feasible, for a team of Shell technicians under his leadership had already evolved an experimental rocket, using liquid oxygen and gasoline (later alcohol) as a propellant. Mr. Lubbock's testimony had a profound effect on the counter-measures adopted. A gain, just before the end of the war, he began to build up a technical organization for the close study of the industrial and marine gas turbine. As a result, the gas turbine soon to be fitted to the Shell tanker Auris (first merchant ship to be so powered) incorporates combustion chambers to his design. Mr. Lubbcck will not be idle in his retirement; he remains an honorary consultant to the Royal Naval Scientific Service and a member of three committees of the Aeronautical Research Council. Royal Aero Club A.G.M. TN a report, last week, of the chairman's speech at the Royal A Aero Club annual general meeting (on March 28), the words were attributed in error to Lord Brabazon, who is president of the Club. The speech was, in fact, delivered by Mr. Whitney Straight, and Lord Brabazon spoke and presented a trophy and medals after the meeting. Cranfield Appointment 'THE governors of the College of Aeronautics announce the -•• appointment, effective from September 1st, of Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard, K.C.B., C.B.E., M.A., as principal of the College in succession to Mr. E. F. Relf, C.B.E., A.R.C.S., F.R.Ae.S., F.R.S. Sir Victor Goddard's long and distinguished Service career ended on his retirement, this year, from the post of Air Member for Technical Services. Previously—from 1946-48—he had served on the British Joint Services Mission in Washington. Early in the war he commanded the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and, in 1943, took charge of administration at Air Com- mand, South East Asia. He entered the Royal Navy in 1910, was attached to the R.N.A.S. in the First World War, and trans- Air Marsha, Sir Victor Goddard ^ » *f p^ principal of the College of Aero- nautics on its inception in 1946. Previously, he had been director of the aerodynamics division at the N.P.L. since 1925 and has served for many years on the Aeronautical Research Council. CF-100 Crash THE Hawker Siddeley Group suffered its second serious losswithin a week on April 6th, when a prototype Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck all-weather fighter crashed near London, K? \ Ontario. The pilot, F'L. Bruce • v^~v— Warren, D.F.C., and Mr. Robert Ostrander, test-observer, lost their lives. Eruce Warren, who was 28, was granted two years' leave of absence from the R.C.A.F. in August, 1950, to assist in Canuck flight-testing. At that time he was a member of the R.C.A.F. winter experimental establish- ment at Edmonton, having com- pleted No. 8 Course at the Em- pire Test Pilots' School, Farn- borough. He had previously served in England during the war, when he served as a flight commander with No. 66 Squad- ron. Warren and his twin brother, also in the R.C.A.F. and then serving in the same unit, received the D.F.C. simul- taneously. He had flown over 2,200 hours on 28 types. The R.C.A.F. announces that the prototype which crashed was to have flown the Atlantic later this month in the hands of an R.C.A.F. crew, Consequently, plans for the crossing—which would probably have been the fastest ever made—have had to be abandoned. Two other prototypes of the CF-IQO exist. F!L. Bruce Warren
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