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Aviation History
1954
1954 - 0167.PDF
FLIGHT, 15 January 1954 81 CIVIL AVIATION . . . AUSTRALIA'S PRIVATE AIRCRAFT Not Enough of Them, says Mr. R. G. Casey FOR many years, Mr. R. G. Casey, Australian Minister for External Affairs, has been an active private pilot and owner, while Mrs. Casey is well-known in Australia as head of the Australian Women Pilots' Guild and an enthusiastic pilot. Until recently, their own machine was a Fairchild Argus, but they have now been supplied with a Miles Messenger by the firm of W. S. Shackleton, Ltd., of London. In an article dated January 1st, and written after a visit to the U.S.A. and Canada, Mr. Casey has called attention to the scope for an increase in the number of light aircraft used in his country. Although intended primarily for the Australian public, the article is certainly of interest to Flight readers in this country also, and we give below the main points from it. As we note briefly at the end, the position in Britain is even more disappointing. As regards licensed private pilots [Mr. Casey states] there are 180,000 in America, 4,100 in Canada and 1,500 in Australia. Allowing for the differences in population, for every private pilot in Australia, there are nearly two in Canada and over six in America. As to the number of aircraft privately owned by in dividuals, there are 55,000 in America, 1,050 in Canada, and 325 in Australia. In other words, allowing for the differences in popu lation, there are nearly twice as many in Canada and nearly ten times as many in America. So, in any real meaning of the term, Australia is far and away the least airminded of these three countries. The figures show that the most airminded country a. the world is the United States. They have 82,000 civil aircr-.it registered, of which, as I have said, 55,000 are private individually owned non-commercial aircraft. Twenty per cent of the total hours flown by all aircraft in America is done by these privately owned non-commercial aircraft. There is in the United States another category of aircraft— those owned by a wide range of business companies, apart from commercial airlines and other commercially used aircraft (such THE U.S. Chamber of Commerce auditorium in Washington * was the venue for the seventeenth Wright Brothers Lecture, delivered by Mr. Glenn L. Martin before the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences on December 17th. Of the Wrights, Mr. Martin said: "It was their indomitable faith in truth that guided them through all their investigations, and that ultimately—perhaps inevitably—brought them to success at Kitty Hawk fifty years ago." The quality of honesty in daily dealings, he said, was an infallible guide to a man's capabilities in the engineering and scientific fields. Structures and machines were unforgiving of the cheater and inevitably indicted those who toyed with the facts. Honest men had built the great aircraft industry and would guide it to sound growth in the future. "In a free, independent society," Mr. Martin went on, "there can be no grand guiding hand controlling the destiny of an industry or a people. We in die aircraft industry have guided our own progress through our faith and loyalty to one another. The modern aeroplane constitutes an integration of the thoughts and lifetime work of more individuals than any other industry on earth. This integration was accomplished not by fiat but by understanding co-operation between its many and diverse elements." Turning to criticisms that modern aircraft were too costly, Mr. Martin pointed out that the condition was not new; even in the later days of the First World War there were such cries, and they continued intermittently over the years. The aircraft was a vehicle, he pointed out. whose cost increased direct'v wi*h its usefulness; and today's military aircraft were not greatly out of line "costwise" with their predecessors of thirty years ago if usefulness and capability were considered. In the course of his reminiscences Mr. Martin paid tribute to Dr. F. W. Lanchester. He said, "Prandtl's work did not become available in America until after World War I and our authority in the early days was Frederick W. Lanchester, one of the great geniuses of aviation. His classx textbook Aeronautics appeared in 1907 and presented his concept of 'circulation' and the existence of vortices at the tip of wings. I must admit that all of us found Lanchester very hard going, since he used very little mathematics in his work and relied largely on page after page of laborious discussion, as crop dusting, air photography, etc.). There are nearly 10,000 aircraft used by business companies for saving the time of their executives and representatives, and for first-hand, on-the-spot supervision. This "business flying" accounted for 3,124,000 flying hours in America in 1952—or 38.2 per cent of all flying in the United States. They did 2,000,000 hours in the first six months of 1953. The accident rate was one fatality per 200 million miles flown. This fleet of 10,000 aircraft, owned by 8,000 companies, is worth $200,000,000 and costs $75,000,000 a year to operate. Presumably they don't do this for fun, but because it's a time and money saver and a business stimulator. In addition, privately owned aircraft did 1,630,000 hours—and crop dusting and spraying accounted for 707,000 hours—and industrial flying (air photography, etc.) 317,000 hours—as well as instructional flying 1,500,000 hours. Mr. Casey concludes: "Compared with the above, flying by other than commercial airlines is on such a small scale in Australia as not to be worth mentioning. There must be some very clear reason why the Americans find flying such good value—and we don't. Again, I venture to ask—why?" Flight can add a pertinent footnote to the Minister's views by quoting M.T.C.A. and A.R.B. figures for corresponding activity in this country: private pilots' licences 6,043; student pilots' licences 2,410; privately owned aircraft, approximately 260 with current Cs. of A. Therefore, allowing for population differences, for every two private pilots in the U.K., there are three in Australia, five in Canada and 20 in the U.S.A. The proportionate number of private aircraft is even more striking: for every one in the U.K., there are nearly eight in Australia, 15 in Canada and over 70 in the U.S.A. A significant ratio is the number of private pilots per private aircraft; in this country there are some 20 pilots per aircraft, in Australia five; in Canada four; and in the United States three. "Succeeding papers by Prandtl and Lanchester between 1907 and 1919 developed the theory of the finite wing, the thing we were all interested in, and explained scientifically what we all had known from experience—that the best lift-drag characteristics are obtained from a high-aspect-ratio wing. The Lanchester- Prandtl theory, as some call it, provided the first rational basis for the aerodynamic design of wings and also gave loading infor mation needed for structural design. It also clarified the aero- ; dynamics of biplanes and explained the existence of interference i between the two wings, which we had begun to suspect and which i led, eventually, to the monoplane. One of the important results of this theory was the fact that it broke wing design down into two separate parts; the effect of airfoil section and the separate : effect of wing geometry." r Mr. Martin remarked that on the fiftieth anniversary of powered i flight in America a speed of 1,327 m.p.h. and an altitude of 83,235ft had been achieved in man-carrying aircraft. "We have [ lifted a payload of 100,000 lb," he went on, "and we have carried i a load of 10,000 lb for a distance of more than 10,000 miles. We ! have flown around the world non-stop, we have carried 308 people : in an airplane, and we have flown a distance of 11,236 miles non-stop without refuelling. Only a few days ago we witnessed , the inauguration of a scheduled non-stop trans-continental air i service in less than eight hours. Today we have a combat airplane ( in quantity production that flies regularly and smootiily at super- t sonic speed in level flight. The list of such miracles is endless." i The lecturer concluded by making the prediction which we : quoted in a recent issue: "I have no hesitancy in predicting for " the second half-century of flight in America interstellar space ships with speeds of 25,000 m.p.h.; giant 200-passenger jet air- ; liners crossing the continents and the oceans in literally zero : time in the westerly direction; nuclear-energy-powered aircraft, first as bombers capable of multiple non-stop circumnavigation r of the globe, secondly as passenger airl:ners; helicopters carrying ; all airline traffic over distances of 150 miles or less; flying- [ boats with speed matching that of the equivalent landp'ane but witii greater capacity for cargo, passengers or weapons; fully automatic airline flight operations through electronic guidance and control equipment; and reductions in the cost of air travel well below that of any other form of transportation." GLENN MARTIN ON AVIATION THEN AND NOW
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