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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 0277.PDF
,9 March 1956 275 of £A250,000 and a factory constructed on a site approximatelyeight miles from Sydney. Directors are Mr. D. K. Nicholas, Mr. B. E. Nicholas, Mr. R. A. G. Hardy, Mr. H. Richards andG. M. Wolfe. * * * Mr. Charles William Hotchen has been appointed to the newpost of works manager (production) at the Cheltenham factory of Smiths Aircraft Instruments, Ltd., He served his apprenticeshipat the Royal Ordnance Factory, Woolwich, from 1929 to 1934. He then went to Negretti and Zambra, Ltd., and was assistant tech-nical manager when he left in 1948 to join the Plessey Co., Ltd., as chief engineer of their components division. In 1950 he joinedthe aviation division of Smiths as assistant works manager. The commercial, buying, drawing and design departments ofHead Wrightson Aluminium, Ltd., are now situated at the offices of the Head Wrightson Stockton Forge Division, Norton Road,Stockton-on-Tees. The works will remain for the present at Thornaby-on-Tees. To meet requests for a publication setting out in general termsthe main facts concerning the application of molybdenum disulphide as a lubricant, Rocol, Ltd., have produced a bookleton the subject. This publication, Molybdenised Lubricants, can be obtained on request from Rocol, Ltd., Ibex House, Minories,London, E.C.3. DESIGN SERVICE AS aircraft become more complicated, the large airframecompanies call increasingly on subsidiary firms to take oversome of the design load. This holds good not only for the various ancillary systems which are required, but also for thebasic airframe design work. There are a number of companies, approved by the A.R.B., which undertake work of this kind, andone of them is the aircraft division of E. G. Irwin and Partners, Ltd., with offices at Bracknell, Berks. The London office of thecompany has worked in a number of fields, from electronics to automobile design, and has even undertaken such tasks as thedesign of the mounting of the "moon-shooting" gun which was installed on top of the Shot Tower at the South Bank Festivalsite in London. A complete anti-aircraft gun was also designed, soon after the war, for the M.o.S. The company originated in the early 1940s in A. C. Wickman'sLondon design offices, and the present aircraft division was started at Bracknell by E. G. Irwin and Partners in August 1954. Thenthere were five draughtsmen; and this group will have been expanded to 60 by the time the company takes over new offices,which will be completed at Bracknell at the end of this year. The technical manager of the aircraft division is Mr. W. H.Burdon and the chief draughtsman and chief stressman are respectively Mr. D. J. Farmer and Mr. J. Cutler. Work of this kind is very specialized and the success of theventure depends to a great extent on the certainty of producing results efficiently and economically within a time stated by theclient. E. G. Irwin and Partners have achieved this objective, and they have worked or are working for a number of companies,both large and small. The greatest volume of work is at present being handled for Avro and Handley Page — varioussecret installations for V-bombers for the former company and several sections of the Herald for the latter. These include theflap structure, the internal tail structure, various of the hatches and cut-outs in the fuselage and part of the Leonides Major enginenacelles. In addition the company is "productionizing" the whole of the fuselage aft of the pressure bulkhead. They also carriedout studies for the design of the cabin floor, which is, of course, part of the primary airframe structure. Work of a very different kind is that undertaken for aircraft operators. Here the requirement is not so much for complete drawings and specifications as for simplified directions for struc- tural work that is to be carried out in the companies' own work- One of E. G. Irwin's London design offices. shops without complete production facilities. This calls for specialtechnique and experience. Designs have been prepared for seating layouts, specially strengthened floors and such items as the long-range fuel tanks to be installed in a Viking for a ferry flight across the South Atlantic. Here the tanks had to be made in theclient's own workshops and discarded after the flight. The solution provided was in the form of two wooden tanks with aluminiumlinings which were installed in the passenger cabin and connected with the aircraft's main fuel system. Another client was providedwith skids for a helicopter for operations in snow, and also with special snow-shoes for the wheels, for landing on soft snow.For these helicopters windscreen de-icing gear, and a nosewheel- locking device, were also designed. One of the more interesting ventures was the design, for B.K.S.,Ltd., of undercarriage doors for Dakotas. The installation is light and simple to produce; and it gives the aircraft an increase in cruis-ing speed of some 6 m.p.h. Taken as a possible reduction in direct operating cost, this increase in speed can lead to savings of severalthousand pounds in a year. The aircraft division of E. G. Irwin and Partners is working atfull pressure on many projects of this type, and staff and premises are being steadily expanded. The company provides a littlepublicized but valuable contribution to the country's aircraft con- struction and operating industry. THE DEFENCE DEBATE (Concluded from page 272) "The real difficulty—I am trying to get all the advice I can, not onlyin this country but from other countries—is to determine when a really good job has been done and, equally, when a less satisfactory job hasbeen performed. If we can decide between good and poor development, it is not really difficult to decide how to give greater incentives for theone and to apply penalties for the other. By and large, the fact is that the profits of the aircraft industry are made, not from development, butfrom production. The real incentive to organize work on development is the obtaining of a production order. "For the last five years or so the aircraft industry has had enormousorders for aircraft. Ever since the Korean war orders have been pouring into the aircraft industry because of the needs of rearmament. Firmshave known very well that if they did not get an order for one type of aircraft, plenty of other orders would come along. That situation ischanging. The demand for military aircraft is falling. In fact the production of military aircraft will decline quite substantially in numberover the next few years, as I have on more than one occasion told the House. "In those circumstances, it is becoming far more important for amanufacturer to get a production order. In future, firms will be facing the position that if their development fails and they do not get theproduction order, there will be nothing else coming along for them in the way of military orders. That is the most important of all incentivesthat can be given to the industry." The Vulcan and Victor would be improved, said Mr. Maudling, bygreater engine power or greater power to beat the enemy defences. After them would come the ballistic missile and "at least one other bomber." Of helicopters the Minister said that in view of the fact that theSecretary of State for War had decided that he could take the Saunders- Roe Skeeter, Government support and expenditure on the FaireyUltra-Light helicopter would be cancelled. He added : "The Navy will obtain its future requirements from the Westland company, which isdeveloping the S-58. The Royal Air Force will have the Bristol twin- rotor helicopter. At the same time the Fairey company will go aheadwith the Rotodyne. This involves cancelling the Fairey Ultra-Light helicopter, the Naval application of the Bristol, and cancelling theHunting Percival helicopter." The present fighter position was that the Hunter and Javelin were tobe followed by the P.I, and when the P.I came into service we should have made up by a large amount the gap between our fighter performanceand the Americans' fighter performance—the gap that was opened between 1945 and 1950. The P.I, in speed, armament and everythingelse, would stand comparison with contemporary American fighters. In that way we should have done much to close the gap between us. Inguided missiles we had cancelled a certain number of projects and were economizing on some others.
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