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Aviation History
1955
1955 - 0751.PDF
3 June 1955 749 CRANES enter into both these pictures—on the right an American road- able giant weighing 48 tons and seen lifting the 30-odd tons of a Navy Privateer; below, a dock- yard crane at Avonmouth hoisting a Bristol Syca- more, Canada - bound, aboard the freighter "Gloucester City." The helicopter had been flown from Filton and landed on the quay. Air-India Constellation Inquiry C ABOTAGE was responsible for the loss of Air-India Constella-^ tion VT-DEP on April 11th, according to an Indonesian Government report published on May 26th. The report said thatan inspection of the wreckage revealed evidence of an explosion in the starboard wheel-well "of a timed infernal machine, partsof which were still trapped in the wreckage." Britain's representa- tive at the inquiry has expressed his agreement with its findings,and the Hong Kong police investigation into the affair has been intensified. The Constellation, it will be recalled, fell into the SouthChina Sea, within Indonesian waters, while on a flight from Hong Kong to Djakarta, carrying Chinese Communist delegatesto the Afro-Asian conference at Bandung. All of the 11 passengers and five of the crew of eight lost their lives. Dollar Aid for Pakistan programme of aid for Pakistan International Airlines-*- announced recently by the American Foreign Operations Administration is the first U.S. Government technical-assistanceproject to use aviation as a means of stimulating the industrial and economic growth of an undeveloped region. Assistance toP.I.A. will take the form of a 24-man team of specialists from Pan American Airways who, for the next three years, will servethe Pakistani airline in the following departments: operations, pilot training, dispatch, communications, maintenance, traffic andsales, passenger service, treasury and accounting, and services of supply. The project is expected to cost $2.9m (just over £lm), ofwhich America will pay $2.5m, the Pakistan airline making up the balance. In addition, the Foreign Operations Administrationis contributing almost $lm towards the cost of providing Pakistan with new airport and air-route facilities.Commenting on the project, Mr. M. A. Ispahani, chairman of P.I.A., has expressed certainty that, with American assistance,the Corporation "will soon grow into a major carrier which will be a source of strength to Pakistan and the free world." Theeffects of the American aid programme will be felt in commercial as well as technical aspects of the airline's operations; in par-ticular, it is expected that modern methods of market research, route analysis and sales promotion will have a strong influence onP.I.A.'s future development. VORTEX GENERATORS on the tail of this Armstrong-Whitworth-built Hawker Sea Hawk have been fitted "to test the longitudinal stability at high Mach numbers," as part of an attempt to raise the speed - of this F.A.A. tighter / ground-attack aircraft. Maj-Gen. Sir John CapperW E regret to record the death, on May 25th, of Maj-Gen. SirJohn Capper. He was 93 years of age. From 1903 to 1910 he was Commandant of the Army Balloon School (previously com-manded by the famous Col. J. L. B. Templer, who had made experiments with military balloons at Woolwich in the 1870s) andfrom 1906 to 1909 superintendent of the Balloon Factory at Farn- borough, which was ultimately to become the Royal Aircraft Estab-lishment. In 1907, working with S. F. Cody, he superintended con- struction of the first British military airship, Nulli Secundus, and,accompanied by Cody, he was its pilot when, in October of that year, it made a flight over London. This was both the firstflight over the capital by a military airship and the longest air- ship flight to that date, having lasted three-and-a-half hours. In 1904, as a colonel, Capper had gone to North Carolina topersuade the Wright brothers to continue their experiments in this country; but the scheme fell through because of lack offinancial support from the Government. In subsequent years, Gen. Capper took a leading part in manyof the early experiments with airships and aeroplanes, both as a pilot and technician. He flew the Dunne D.I at Blair Atholl in1907 and was in the balloon Pegasus when the first successful ground-to-air radio transmissions were received in 1908. Hisappointment at the Balloon School ended in October 1910 and he became Commandant of the School of Military Engineering.At the end of World War I, he was Director-General of the Tank Corps and was its Colonel Commandant from 1923-34. It is of interest to quote -some observations of Col. Capper's,reported in Flight of July 17th, 1909. In a lecture, he expressed the view that the immediate future of aeroplanes was, "for the timebeing at least, confined to the role of sport. For the purposes of war reliability was essential; they would have to be capable ofgoing up in all weathers for spells of some hours, would have to be automatically stable and not dependent on the skill of thepilot, would have to carry two men, and be capable of landing safely on open ground. That stage of development had not beenreached yet. Inventors should aim rather at increasing auto- matic stability than at increasing speed."
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