FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1952
1952 - 0391.PDF
AIRCRAFT ENGINEER First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded 1909 No. 2247 Vol. LXI. FRIDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 1952 EDITOR MAURICE A. SMITH, D.F.C. ASSISTANT EDITOR H. F. KING, M.B.E. TECHNICAL EDITOR C. B. BAILEY-WATSON, B.A. ART EDITOR JOHN YOXALL Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices: DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.1. Telegrams, Flightpres, Sedist, London. Telephone, Waterloo 3333 (60 lines) Branch Offices: COVENTRY 8-10, Corporation Street. Telegrams, Autocar, Coventry. Telephone, Coventry 5210. BIRMINGHAM, 2 King Edward House, New Street. Telegrams, Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone, Midlana 7191 (7 lines). MANCHESTER, 3 260, Deansgate. Telegrams, lliffe, Manchester. Telephone, Blackfriars 4412 (3 lines). Deansgate 3S95 (2 lines). GLASGOW, C.2. 26b, Renfield Street. Telegrams, lliffe, Glasgow. Telephone, Central 1265 (2 fines). SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Overseas: Twelve months £3 3s. Od. U.S.A. and Canada, $10.00 BY AIR: To Canada and U.S.A., six months, $16. IN THIS ISSUE : King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II - 172 Flight in the Comet - - 174 About the Intertropical Front 178 Semi-submersible Seaplane 181 A Simple Approach - - 182 Nocturnal Vampire - - 183 Farnborough on Film - 188 Devons for the R.N.Z.A.F. 189 Radio and Traffic Control 190 B.O.A.C. Earns the Nation's Gratitude I AST week there took place an airline flight which was not only of profound personal significance to every loyal citizen throughout the British Commonwealth, but •* which will also live in the history of the Nation. We refer, of course, to the journey of the B.O.A.C. Argonaut Atalanta which brought Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II so speedily and safely back to this country when the sudden death of her father the King called for her immediate accession to the throne. The journey itself—a model of precision flying and a striking example of a first-class airline at work—constituted a magnificent demonstration of the efficiency of B.O.A.C.'s ground organization as well as of the unsurpassed skill of its flying crews. The aircraft was at Mombasa when the King died, yet within a few hours it had flown to Entebbe and was airborne for London with the Queen and her consort on board. The service, which involved immense responsibility for the Corporation, was laid on in an hour or two in all its complex aspects of flight-planning, refuelling arrangements, airport clearance, weather forecasting and crew changes—matters which called for vital decisions to be made instantaneously and cabled to many different stations in a matter of minutes. Similar praise must be accorded to B.O.A.C.'s associates. East African Airways Corporation, one of whose DC-3S carried Her Majesty on the initial part of the journey, the 500 miles from Nanyuki to Entebbe. What better proof could there be of sound basic organization than that it rose to an emergency without hitch or confusion ? The scheduled E.T.A. of the Royal Party at London Airport was 4.30 p.m.; Atalanta's cabin door was opened almost to the second, the 4,127 miles from Entebbe having been flown without the slightest incident in 19 hours and 43 minutes. In spite of the weight of grief and responsibility so suddenly placed upon her, the Queen made a point of personally expressing her appreciation to the crews; and her gracious thanks for this fine demonstration of airmanship are echoed by all her subjects. Safety CAN be Cheap B ECAUSE there has grown up what amounts almost to a tradition in the aviation world, that cost must always take second place to efficiency—or rather more correctly, effectiveness—it is all too rarely that one comes across something which is cheap. Unfortunately, the word "cheap" nowadays carries a common-usage connota tion of shoddiness which the plain meaning of the word in no way justifies. We mention this because we are able to describe in this issue (page 182) an astonish ingly cheap radar approach aid which, far from being shoddy or skimped, is well designed, well made, robust and effective. It is cheap because it is simple: it is simple because it is designed to do one straightforward job and to do it well. G.C.A. and I.L.S. are still the dernier cris in approach aids, but nature respects neither persons nor great corporations, and the murk which can cloak London Airport can also cloak lesser airfields. The pilot of an Auster or Gemini, Viking or Comet, is equally in need of aid. But G.C.A. and I.L.S. cost scores of thousands of pounds, and only the great airports and the larger Service airfields can afford them. What then is the position of the charter pilot or the private pilot who is caught out by bad weather ? He is simply advised to seek an alternative landing place and if, by so doing he is occasioned severe inconvenience, then it is just hard luck—it might have been worse. Now, however, at a cost of a few thousand pounds—scarcely a twentieth of the cost of G.C.A.—any airfield will be able to have a "talk-down" approach aid whereby any air craft equipped with V.H.F. can be brought down to a height of 250ft within half a mile of the boundary. Neither G.C.A. nor I.L.S. can do much more. This is not to suggest that the new system is a rival of the more elaborate and established approach aids; it is not. It has its limitations, and can offer neither the flexibility nor the refinement of G.C.A. or I.L.S. But it can, and does, offer a low-cost, reliable and eminently practical means whereby an aircraft can be directed to a safe position for making a visual landing. As such it must be recognized for what it is: a great step toward making flying safer for all those who are debarred from the major facilities. *
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
