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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 1507.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2492 Vol 70 FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 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 1, Ontario 67 Yonge Street Telephone • Empire 6-0873 New York 6, N.Y. Ill Broadway Telephone • Digby 9-1197 SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Overseas • Twelve Months, £4 10s. U.S.A. and Canada, $14.00 in this issue 666 Handling the E.P.9 669 Mr. Canary's Snipe 670 Swedish Dragons 672 Test Teams 674 Good-bye to the Lane 676 Piper Calls 1957 Tune 677 Orion 683 The Importance of Time 687 Aspects of the Agricola Case for the DefenceI ECTURING recently to the Royal Aeronautical Society (as reported on pages 683-685) A. Cdre. Rodwell Banks delivered himself of some very ^ forthright opinions on the flying equipment of the Royal Air Force and on current methods of providing it. His strictures provoked an immediate reaction from Mr. Nigel Birch, Secretary of State for Air, who in a speech next day (see page 664) seized in particular on certain comparisons which the air commodore had drawn between the R.A.F. and the air forces of other countries, among which he had mentioned Sweden. Though deploring the Minister's denigratory use of the phrase "employee of an aircraft company" in referring to a director of one of the industry's greatest firms (and a man of the highest technological and administrative capabilities) we feel that, by and large, the case for the defence is the stronger. Two years ago the prosecution would have been on firmer ground. As Flight said in June 1954, "... in the intercepter class it must be recognized that only a most gratifying influx of Canadair-built Sabres has raised our own nation to something like parity with Sweden." Since that time the R.A.F. has been largely re-equipped with the Hawker Hunter, a type which is also being purchased (to the tune of 140 aircraft) by the Swedes themselves. As Mr. Maudling, Minister of Supply, said in a speech last Saturday, "The best test of the efficiency of an industry is what it can sell in competitive export markets, and by this test the aircraft industry shows up very well indeed." Undoubtedly A. Cdre. Banks had in mind Sweden's excellent Saab Lansen attack aircraft and—subject of a pictorial feature in this issue—Draken fighter. Terminological Inexactitudes S a race, engineers and technologists are certainly no less articulate than their fellows, and many have the great gift of being able to convey, in speech or writing, exactly what is in their mind. Even the latter, however, are unavoid- ably handicapped by the limitations of the aeronautical vocabulary. One of the classic examples of unnecessary difficulty of this kind is the distinc- tion which has frequently been drawn between "airscrew" and "propeller." Although the earlier science of marine propulsion provided no basis for so doing, it was for long the custom of governments, air forces and, at times, the majority of people connected with aviation, to restrict the use of the term "propeller" to a device mounted behind an engine to push the aircraft along—like a ship's screw. There was an almost certainly apocryphal story of an Air Ministry telegram to America, which, urgently demanding 12 airscrews, lost an "s" in transmission and produced 36 eager young pilots, navigators and gunners. Whether or not such risks of confusion are real, tractor propellers are still widely referred to as airscrews. We ourselves have subscribed to this practice for nearly half a century, but in this issue we depart from it, partly because the word is never used in America (where Flight has a large circulation), but principally because there is no real reason for the existence of two separate words to describe the same object. One can cite many other examples of difficulties in the use of words, difficulties which could be cleared up overnight if there were an international authority competent to set a standard. If one picks up a glossary of aeronautical terms one is bidden to use the term "angle of incidence" only to describe the angle between a pivoted aerodynamic surface and the longitudinal axis of the aircraft or vehicle. Yet many aerodynamicists use the term to denote the angle of the incident airflow on a fixed surface, although this is supposed to be more correctly termed "angle of attack." Going further along the same path, we appreciate the use of "variable incidence" to describe the inlet vanes of a gas-turbine compressor but fail to see the difference between this type of arrangement and that employed in a propeller (or airscrew, if one is a diehard), in which the term "variable pitch" is universal. Rationalization in aeronautics is frequently proposed as one of the panaceas to cure present ills. Where better to start, then, than in the vocabulary which we must use to convey our ideas? :r -:. • : .-.•••;:. B
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