FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0063.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 ^^ and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2504 Vol71 FRIDAY 1 8 JANUARY 1 957 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.1 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 Thomas Skinner and Co., Ltd. 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 66 Freightliner 69 Bristol 192 72 Hawker Siddeley Happy Returns 74 The Production Conference 77 Helicopter Airline 80 West Coast Stop-Over 83 The Rocket-boost Skeeter 89 Aeronautics and the Engineer Rotors and TurbinesW E must hope that we shall not be arraigned on charges of smugness, complacency or un-American activities if we observe that New World orders for British turbine airliners are now accepted on both sides of the Atlantic as a matter of hard business. Cool millions are being staked on the Viscount, Vanguard, Comet and Britannia by some of the world's biggest and shrewdest operators. But whereas even years ago the student of form might reasonably have forecast these fixed-wing successes, he could hardly have tipped our helicopters as equally good bets, for the late 1950s, on the Americans' home ground. As we have implied, the fixed-wing operators in the States are not in business for the benefit of their health (their record of ulcers is known to be an impressive one); still less are the rotary-wing pioneers sticking their necks out—as they indeed are—just to inhale the air above the great cities. They are in a tough game, and they have an especially tough problem at this stage in finding the right equipment for their needs. Hear a chief among them, Mr. Robert L. Cummings, Jr., president of New York Airways, whose activities we describe, first-hand, in this issue: "Just as Capital went abroad to buy the Viscount," says Mr. Cummings, "present indications are that we may well be doing similarly in order to find appropriate equipment to render the best possible service to the public." The Fairey Rotodyne, in Mr. Cummings' opinion, gives very real promise of being able to perform the required operations, though he explained to a Flight representative a few days ago that the time for this "big ship" is "not necessarily yet," and that the market for it is "in the longer hauls." What would really make him happy at this time would be a 20/25-seater; and in declaring that "Bristol seem to shape up nearest to our plans" he has in mind a developed version of the Bristol Type 192 (pages 69-71) with Napier Gazelle gas turbines. Made for Each Other The bright promise of the coming generations of transport helicopter, so dear to Mr. Cummings' heart and so necessary to his airline's economy, must, of course, be largely attributed to the light weight and abundant output of their powerplants. It is the brilliant performance of these units—principally the Gazelle and Eland— that will bring reality to Britain's rising hopes in the world helicopter market. We are not suggesting by this that the labours of Mr. Perm and his Napier colleagues will allow the airframe designers to take time off, for the most prodigious engine can never transform a bad, or even mediocre, helicopter into a world-beater. The rotary-wing aircraft, especially the medium and large passenger and freight carrier, has reached a critical phase of its development, and the airframe designers must tax their ingenuity to the limit if they are to match the qualities of the new turbines with their structures and aerodynamics. Soon the fixed-wing, short-take- off-and-landing aircraft—the "STOL"—will be making its own strong challenge, and only bold, deft engineering will enable rotary wings to survive the fate of the windmill. That British designers are alert to this is, happily, apparent. An unsolicited testimonial to the promise of the Rotodyne and Bristol 192 has been given by Mr. Cummings; it remains to add that work is well ahead on the twin- Eland Westland Westminster, which may ultimately prove a potent rival of the similarly powered Rotodyne, and that design thinking at Bristol is represented by the 160 m.p.h. twin-Gazelle Type 194 (page 69). Should it be argued that the future of transport helicopters will not be solely dependent on airframe and powerplant performance, and that the problem of navigation, for example, is as pressing as any other, then we would hasten to agree —and to remark that a strongly fancied item of equipment among American helicopter operators, military as well as civil, is the Decca Navigator, made at New Maiden, in the county of Surrey, England.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
