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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 0859.PDF
FIRST A E R^O NAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 ^^ and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2476 Voi 70 FRIDAY 6 JULY 1956 Editor MAURICE A. SMITH b.F.c. and BAR Associate Editor H. F. KING M.B.E. Technical Editoi 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 -v 8-10 Corporation Street Telephone • Coventry 5210 /" Birmingham 2 1 King Edward House, New Street Telephone • Midland 7191 (7 lines) Manchester 3 ...._..'-... 260 Deansgate - -•'••' ' Telephone • Black friars 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. US.A. and Canada, $14.00 in this issue 2 News of the Week 4 Revealed at Tushino 5 World Gliding at St. Yan 6 Italy's Biggest Post-war Display 9 Commercial Aircraft U-2 ...A NEW race of supermen appears to have risen around us. Like Abominable Snowmen these creatures have their being in the abstraction of newspaper reports and their origin and identity remain obscure. By nature they leave no tracks, but by hypothesis they have a great breadth of shoulder, for they are con- tinually bearing up under the responsibility for acts of unauthorized disclosure, defection, betrayal and treachery. They seem to have a single Cyclopean eye, and their skin is of such thickness that they feel nothing beyond concern and alarm. They are called Top Security Chiefs, and they appear to be autonomous, since one hears nothing of Intermediate or Bottom Chiefs. (Just as nowadays nothing seems to be Confidential or Secret; if a matter is not common knowledge, then it is automatically accorded the Fleet Street grading of Top Secret.) Judging from the international farrago involving the United States Air Force's Lockheed U-2, these secure and lofty beings are not indigenous to our islands. Regardless of the fact that any uncommon, unorthodox aircraft must inevitably excite comment and become news, somebody somewhere is evidently determined to maintain "security." The presence in the United Kingdom of one or more aircraft answering to the description of the U-2 was strongly implied in Flight of June 1 last, and since that date evidence has been accruing which inclines us yet more strongly to that belief. Indeed, we find ourselves so goaded by events, rumours and reports that we now propose to flaunt the T.S.C.s in an even naughtier and more deliberate fashion. This we shall do by presenting a cold collation of known facts and near-certainties. . . . can be a Top Security Chief The U-2 is a large high-altitude research and observation aircraft propelled by a Pratt and Whitney two-spool turbojet (in the first instance, at least, a J57). It has a straight, or slightly swept, wing of uncommonly high aspect-ratio and is incapable of supersonic speeds. Level-flight Mach number may be as low as 0.75. Possibly having originated as a Lockheed private venture, to provide information and experi- ence for systems applicable to the F-104 supersonic fighter, the U-2 has since been supplied on a small scale to the U.S.A.F. and a few examples are to be made available to the N.A.C.A. for high-altitude research flying in Nevada. Ceiling is far in excess of 50,000ft, and it is rumoured locally that the undercarriage is left behind on take-off. A Suffolk reader reports having observed in the Lakenheath district two aircraft answering to the description of the U-2 (one with a serial number on the tail and one without); and several of his neighbours have written corroborative accounts. Thus, as we suggested in our earlier editorial, the U-2 is no by-product of Suffolk punch. Its existence, indeed, has been officially admitted (by the N.A.C.A.), and its duties have been enunciated as the study of jet streams, turbulence and gusts, and the examination of the air for cosmic particles, ozone and radio-active content. But although numerous members of the Suffolk yeomanry and of the local spotting brigade will recite a detailed description of the machine at the drop of a recognition book, and although (we have little doubt) some rural sportsman is even now crouching behind a hedge ready to draw a shutter on the exotic migrant bird, official photographs and technical particulars are rigorously banned by the U.S. Air Force. We can only sit back and imagine the wildfire passage of the U-2 across the headlines and down the columns: — "I am able to reveal (writes a correspondent) that top security chiefs are alarmed by the disclosure of top secret features of a nameless high-level plane operating from a top secret military air base somewhere in Suffolk. Behind locked doors in the Pentagon ..." But let us not spoil the game, for there is nothing like a hearty guffaw or a good whodunit to deflate pomposity and relieve solemnity.
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