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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 0343.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 ^ an]d AIRCRAFT E'NGINEER No 2462 Vol 69 FRIDAY 30 MARCH 1956 Editor MAURICE A. SMITH D.F.C. and BAR Associate Editor H. F. KING M.B.E Technical Editor W. T. GUNSTON Production Editor ROY CASEY Iliffe and Sons Ltd Dorset House Stamford Street London, S.E.I Telephone • Waterloo 3333 (60 lines) BRANCH OFFICES Coventry 8-10 Corporation Street Telephone • Coventry 5210 Birmingham 2 King Edward House, New Street Telephone • Midland 7191 (7 lines) Manchester 3 260 Deansgate Telephone • Blackfriars 4412 (3 lines)Deansgate 3595 (2 lines) Glasgow C.2 26B Renfield Street Telephone • Central 1265 (2 lines) Toronto 2, Ontario 74 College Street Telephone • Walnut 4-5631 New York 6, N.Y. Ill Broadway Telephone • Digby 9-1197 SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Overseas • Twelve Months, £4 10s. V.S.A. and Canada, $14.00 in this issue 345 Handling the Prone-Pilot Meteor 350 Producing the First SeaMaster 353 Proving the Britannia 355 Saunders-Roe Skeeter 360 V-force in Being 362 Roy Chadwick 365 Modest Experimenter 368 The Contractors' Dinner 372 Tu-104 Comes to London -.. . Looking to Laurels (and Lockheed)I F we know our Americans, they will soon be seeking to take the shine off Peter Twiss's new record of 1,132 m.p.h., and we may "look to Lockheed for leadership" in putting an F-104 over the speed-course within a few weeks. We should be foolish to delude ourselves that this razor-winged fighter, with its 15,000-lb-thrust General Electric J79 turbojet plus reheat, is anything short of an exceptional achievement, and all signs point to it as the F.D.2's most potent rival. In the continuing absence of any official information, however, some doubt remains concerning its ability to carry sufficient fuel for the scorching periods of acceleration, and the measured speed runs, with full reheat. (The demonstrated ability of the F.D.2 in this respect—nine minutes with reheat and fifteen minutes without—is a matter for particular congratulation of the Fairey design team.) Conjectural, too, are the F-104's stability at speeds substantially in excess of Mach 1.7 and its precision of control, though pilots speak of it as something of a dream-ship. Should the laurels eventually pass to this most "hush-hush" fighter of all time, it may well be possible for the makers (and the U.S. Air Force, for which it has been built) to claim it as a standard production fighting machine, carrying its normal built-in armament of the so-called "Gatling gun", or multi-barrelled Project Vulcan, of prodigious rate of fire. Unfortunately (we use the word in a purely sporting sense, recognizing that the new American fighters are master weapons in the Allied arsenal) the F-104 is not the only rival of Fairey's delta. In the Crusader, for example, Chance Vought and the U.S. Navy have a machine of uncommon merit and very great speed, and one which, being built to naval requirements, should satisfy the fuel demands of a record attempt. Then there is McDonnell's F-101 Voodoo, a monster fighter which should likewise be able to stow sufficient wide-cut "gas" in its 67-foot fuselage to slake the record thirst of two reheated Pratt and Whitney J57s. But apart from these technical considerations there remains the pilot's personal responsibility of holding height within the hundred-metre vertical tolerance. Of this ordeal we will only remark that, even should America prove to have built a faster aeroplane than ourselves, better pilots than Peter Twiss just do not come —west or east of the Atlantic. Matching Men^to MachinesT HOUGHTS of pilot-quality remind us that the visit to a Valiant squadron (of which we shall have much more to say next week) was productive of news of the men rather than the aircraft. War-trained skippers will note the current requirements with respect: 1,750 hours as first pilot (which means over 2,000 hours total); "above average" flying ability; green jet instru- ment rating; "highly recommended" by parent unit. Should a selected pilot not have served with a Canberra squadron, then he must undergo the Binbrook course and be posted to one; and when he finally gets on to Valiants he will remain with his appointed squadron, regardless of promotion, for five years. One hundred per cent is the target in his examinations; so he will be well equipped to conduct his million-pound aeroplane (the most costly ever to enter R.A.F. service) in safety, and "pilot error" is unlikely ever to be laid to his charge. Though such rigorous training and uncompromising selection has long been the order of the day in the U.S.A.F. Strategic Air Command, it is something quite new to the R.A.F., and the feelings of the commanding officer at Gaydon, the Valiant O.C.U., can well be understood. The Valiant, he remarked, is "a fair-sized flying power house": we could not afford to have such a large propor- tion of the nation's resources damaged through the ignorance of the crew (for qualifications of the same standard are laid down for other Valiant flying personnel). Thus is the R.A.F. meeting a new challenge.
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