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Aviation History
1954
1954 - 0602.PDF
278 FLIGHT, 5 March 195 Contractors Dine at Boscombe Down THE Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment were once again the hosts to the Aircraft Contractors at an excellent dinner at Boscombe Down last Friday. The invita tions stipulated "Dinner 7.30 for 8 p.m.," and it was a well- deserved compliment to the hosts that the majority of guests who filled the Mess to capacity had parked their cars, and been received by the Air Commodore Commanding, by 7.45 p.m. A. CDRE. A. H. WHEELER, O.B.E., proposed "The Guests," mention ing subsequent speakers by name and also welcoming especially the Controller of Aircraft and the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Supply. Then, in reviewing some of the year's highlights, he spoke of S/L. "Dick" Whittington's Canberra flight to Australia. S/L. Whittington has now joined the parent firm, and of this event the air commodore said: "This migration to industry has become extremely prevalent, and although we view with some concern the loss of experienced test pilots from the Service, we take pride in the fact that the industry seems to value the experience and ability our pilots bring them, not to mention the E.T.P.S. training, which thus becomes available—so cheaply!" The next event mentioned by the speaker was the opening of the local branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society, at which Sir Frederick Handley Page made the opening address. Of the A. and A.E.E.'s entry in the R.Ae.C. competition for the design of a racing light aeroplane, A. Cdre. Wheeler said : "We felt that with our experience of seeing other design teams' efforts and of reading design-studies, we should have a fair chance of achieving reasonable results in the competition. I think the interesting tiling about the brochure we put in was the introduction: about half of it went to giving the reasons for adopting the various features we had, and the other half went to giving the reasons for not adopting features which we thought our competitors might have selected. This idea was not, of course, copied from the aircraft industry. However, as a result of the brochure and its introduction we won the competition." The final highlight of the year to be mentioned by the air commodore, and for which he gave the Treasury credit, was the near-completion of the new large hangar wherein is installed a weighbridge capable of weighing the largest aircraft likely to visit Boscombe for some years to come. He thought it would be quite interesting for all to know in future what some aircraft really weighed and where their e.g. really was. The radiant-type heating of the hangar was also of interest. A. Cdre. Wheeler went on to say that the year had been free from queries and insinuations as to whether the Establishment's job was really necessary; but in case there were still some doubts he would recall some lines from Mallory's Morte d'Arthur. The passage concerned Sir Galahad's fight with a giant, and it said "Then did Sir Galahad look well to his harness that nothing failed him on the morrow." The interest was that Sir Galahad did the checking himself. A man of his influence could easily have sent it down to the maker, who would not have been very far away in those days. Perhaps he knew that if he did so he would only have got into a welter of argument about the relative advantages of different shapes of battle-axe—delta, crescent and so on. MANY notable guests attended the dinner of the Aerodrome Owners' Association at the Hyde Park Hotel, Knights-bridge, on Thursday of last week. Reference is made in our leading article to some of the matters raised in the course of seven speeches. MR. PETER MASEFIELD, M.A., the first speaker, said that the heli copter would become a very important part of Britain's internal transport, but it would be ten years before helicopter services were seriously intro duced. Meanwhile, those who were on the operating side hoped that members of the Association would continue their studies of rotorstation problems and that they would manage to place the stations in the centres of cities—otherwise they would be of no use. Mr. Masefield added that if they could be put on the top of buildings it would make approach and landing easier and take the noise from the level of streets. ALDERMAN CHARLES M. NEWTON, M.B.E. (Sywell), chairman of the Association, spoke of the shortage of new light aircraft in the country. He advocated importing 200 American private aircraft to give a fillip not only to sporting and private flying but also to charter flying. This would also help the Aerodrome Owners by bringing in £42,000 a year in landing fees. Such a course would not harm British manufacturers, because they were not interested in the production of light aircraft. G/C. C. A. B. WILCOCK, O.B.E., A.F.C., A.F.R.Ae.S., M.P. (Derby, Wolverhampton and Elstree), had a variety of points to make. Referring to the Reserve schools closure, he said it would be idle to suggest that the schools did not help towards the cost of maintaining and operating the fields, but it was not too high a price to pay; and it was a wrong policy to break up the schools, thereby dispersing the flying personnel, maintenance staffs and placing in jeopardy the continuance of these well-sited airfields. It would be imprudent for the Air Ministry to lose interest in the future of the small airfields. To be fair, that had not so far happened—small contracts had been placed by the Air Ministry and the-e was also the cadet scheme to help. The group captain urged the Air Ministry and the M.T.C.A. to go out of their way to help municipalities and other aerodrome owners. Such action would certainly receive support in ParUament from the many members who were concerned at the possible fate of civil aerodromes within their constituencies. Every town would in the near future require its local airfield to handle its freight, quite apart from its passenger traffic, and to house and maintain helicopters operating within the town itself. We were going to see an extension of private And there might have been at least one manufacturer to point out that Sir Galahad was bound to win because the giant's heavy and cumber some armament would be no match for the light, quick equipment with which the knight was doubtless provided. "We in the Services like to do a lot of handling and testing ourselves," concluded A. Cdre. Wheeler, "and we all value the tradition of working together to the same end which has been built up during the years." MR. W. E. W. PETTER, C.B.E., replying for the guests, said that he had always admired the realism and open-mindedness of Boscombe, and of Martlesham before it. It was a pity that more notice was not taken of the findings of the A. and A.E.E. As a result, he thought the R.A.F. was in process of finding out the hard way. Mr. Petter said that in Europe there were 150 million people outside the Iron Curtain, and there must be great skill amongst them. Their require ments were not necessarily the same as ours. This country had a great opportunity to let our industry play a part in equipping NATO and European countries. The generously given American equipment was not necessarily the best answer. MR. A. R. W. LOW, C.B.E., D.S.O., M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply, proposed "The Aircraft Industry." He intro duced his long and informative speech by saying that the toast was no mere formality. It was his Ministry's closest and most constant concern. More money from the Defence Estimates was now going to aircraft, and it was generally recognized that the M.o.S. and industry were doing much more than they could say they were doing. Little was known to the public until four years after it had been done. Referring to Mr. Shenstone's much-discus-sd statement at Southamp ton, Mr. Low said that the remarks were generalizations from the particular. The M.o.S. had found them wholly non-proven. Next, the Parliamentary Secretary said that aircraft flying fastest and highest were no good to the Services if they could not fight there. Today we were trying to produce inhabited missiles rather than aircraft. The complete equipment was what mattered when talking of times of delivery. Today aircraft were complicated to design and produce, in order that they should be simple to operate. One could not compromise about quality of Service aircraft. If they were inadequate for their job, then to have twice as many of them was no comfort. Military require ments must be based on the enemy's capacity, not on our own desires. The reply for the aircraft industry was given by Sir Roy Dobson. He said that a lot of time and expense and trouble for the test pilot could be saved by doing much of the test work on the ground. Export sales totalled £65 million and were still rising, and we had hardly begun to sell turbine airliners. Sir Roy also said that the present bombers and fighters were "O.K.," but the next fighters in America were ahead of us—the F-lOOs were on the production line and we had not a counterpart. It was not the lack of skill or inventiveness; it was policy and the fact that money was not forthcoming. We wanted materials, presses, titanium. It was now a case of what we could afford not to do. In the front line we must be at readiness even more than Uncle Sam—who, by comparison, would have time to take a breath; ind, said Sir Roy, we needed readiness in depth. ownership, whether by the individual or the commercial concern. There were over 82 towns and boroughs in this country with a population of over 100,000, and any which did not have the services of an aero drome would be regarded as backward and out of date. G/C. Wilcock concluded with an appeal to the Air Ministry to help the small-aerodrome owner bridge the next few difficult years by giving maintenance work and training; to the M.T.C.A., to lend equipment and to encourage efforts in the field of charter flying and freight carry ing; and, finally, to the aircraft manufacturers to support the clubs using the small aerodromes by supporting the works flying scheme and by producing new small aircraft, even at a loss. AIR MARSHAL SIR HUGH WALMSLEY, K.C.B., K.C.I.E., C.B.E., M.C., D.F.C. (Air Service Training, Hamble), said that this country was not airminded. Without aviation during the war we should have been invaded, but memories were short. It was his experience that prep school-boys were keen and airminded, but their enthusiasm wore off under the influence of parents and schoolmasters. Broadly speaking, the country stood or fell on the question of air power. During the last emergency the average intake of 300 pilots per year had been bumped up to 2,000 with the help of the clubs. Today we were short of opera tional pilots but there was a glut of fair-weather non-operational pilots. There was a demand for the highest quality, but we were not getting them, for military or civil flying. We were also short of skilled men. ALDERMAN COL. R. MOULD-GRAHAM, O.B.E., M.C., T.D., D.L. (Newcastle-on-Tyne), talked of progress and traffic at small airports While the large fields handled 3,600,000 passengers in 1953, a 24 per cent increase, small municipal fields handled 19,000 in 1953 as against 15,000 in 1952, and his own town dealt with 5,000 air passengers in 1952 and 15,000 in 1953. He looked forward with confidence. A.V-M. THE EARL OF BANDON, C.B., C.V.O., D.S.O., in an entertain ing speech, said that while there might be shortages of pilots in the Air Force the skill and training of those we did have in service was as good as it had ever been. MR. S. KENNETH DAVIES, C.B.E., chairman of the Royal Aero Club, said that light aircraft flying had not changed so much. Private owners were not in a position to give much financial help, but they would be keen to come and support any airfield in which one could land a light aircraft; this, he felt sure, would lead to bigger things eventually. He recalled his first view of Filton, a tiny airfield in 1920, and compared it with the enormous establishment of today. This sort of development should provide encouragement. VARIED VIEWS AT AERODROME OWNERS' DINNER
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