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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0128.PDF
f 130 FLIGHT SPOTLIGHT ON THE INDUSTRY . . . export product. . . . Countries such as India, Finland and Switzer-land cannot afford anything else, and will be able to defend them- selves, whereas they could not do anything at all if they weretrying to use the latest American or British machines. As far as the Air Force is concerned the interest in the two-seater trainerversion of the Gnat is important. . . ." Mr. Petter gave two examples of how time might have beensaved in development. One example, was the bombing up of the Canberra. Mr. Petter said, "They [the M.o.S.] designed and hadmade bombing trolleys. . . . These were not altogether satis- factory and a new approach had to be made to the problem whenthe Canberra went into service. I think if the firm had been given the duty of bombing up they would have had somethingsatisfactory by the time the Canberra entered service. Some of the equipment was late in coming forward—the bombing equip-ment, the radar—and I had considerable doubts about it in the design stages. I think what was ultimately done was to throwout much of the elaborate black boxes and put back war-time equipment and improve it. It could have been done earlier, andto that extent the Canberra would have reached the Service in a more useful condition." An occasional touch of humour lightened the necessarily pon-derous proceedings, as when one member of the Committee remarked that it would be "very uncomfortable to have Valiantsrunning out of one's ears." SIR FREDERICK HANDLEY PAGE madehis own contribution when asked if he was not bothered by a great number of modifications. "Everybody is," said SirFrederick, and went on, "I was once walking in the streets of Milan with Caproni. ... He was a big aircraft manufacturer, alittle tiny man about so high. He was walking along beside me and I mentioned the word modifications. He looked up at me insurprise and said, 'You have modifications too in your country?' " _ LORD HIVES' evidence was characteristic. He recalled the occa-sion when Rolls-Royce said to the M.o.S. "We want an engine to replace the Dart." Lord Hives continued: "The Ministry cameback and said, 'We have got an engine to replace the Dart; we have got an Eland,' and we said, 'That is just too bad: it is nota Rolls-Royce engine. We say, in our interests, to look after our business, we have got to make one of those engines, whether youpay for it or not.' Then we came up against the point and we Above, the Folland Gnat "As far as the Air force is concerned, the interest in the two- seater trainer version is important" (Mr. W. E. W. Petter). said, 'You will have to pay a charge on that. They said, Weare not going to pay anything,' and we said, 'Yes, you are, that is our terms of business.' A compromise was arrived at becauseB.E.A., which is a national airline, you see,^has specified this engine. I think we are going fifty-fifty on it." MR L J. DUNNETT (M.O.S.) remarked that Mr. Petter s state-ment about the Gnat was perfectly accurate as far as it went, but that it may have created a somewhat false impression. It wasperfectly true, he said, that in 1951 the V.C.A.S. said he would like to see the M.o.S. order and pay for 24 aircraft. "This," hesaid, "was not the Air Ministry saying: 'We want 24 aircraft and we will pay for them.' This was the Air Ministry saying to theMinistry of Supply: 'Will you as pan of your research activities please order 24 aeroplanes, evaluate them and see if they arenice. When you have done that we the Air Ministry will see if we will order any.'" He went on: "It went to the D.R.P.C. onthat basis, and I want to say frankly our procedure for dealing with D.R.P.C. business has been evolving and I think it is nowbetter than it was, in that I attend D.R.P.C. meetings in order to give them some idea of what the money position is. In thedays when the D.R.P.C. used to look at it purely from the technical point of view all they said on this was: 'We see noreason why the M.o.S., if it has got the money, should not order 24 of these aircraft.' When it came to the M.o.S. the wholething had to be considered from the financial point of view, and, in fact, on October 16, 1951, we had a letter from Rolls-Royce.Now Mr. Petter at this stage had been designing his aeroplane round an expendable engine which Rolls-Royce had been talkingabout. ... In October 1951 Lord Hives wrote to the Controller of Aircraft and said Rolls-Royce would not go ahead with thisexpendable engine. He said: 'The position about this engine is becoming complicated and mixed up with the Petter fighterproject. We are becoming involved in two entirely different engines. This was never the intention and I desire to clarifythe position immediately. It is necessary to go back to the origin of this engine as an expendable unit.' . . . He explainedthat Rolls-Royce was thinking of it as an expendable engine for guided weapons and it was now turning into something whichwas not an expendable engine. He went on: 'At this point in time we were wrong in not being firm that our investigationshad been confined to an expendable engine. We have been carrying out obligations on fighters with various marks of Avon.We just have not the capacity or manpower to dabble with another engine. I admit we have encouraged the Air Staff andMr. Petter to believe we could do such an engine. We cannot. . . .' "When the engine disappeared the whole project had to belooked at again. It changed the attitude of the Air Staff, the M.o.S. had no money, nor were we asked to spend millions ondeveloping an engine specially for Mr. Petter's fighter. Mr. Petter said he would make do by putting into his fighter anengine which had been developed for quite other purposes and which did not really have the power to give the aircraft theperformance which interested the Air Staff. So although Mr. Petter still believed in his project, it had become very muchless attractive to the Air Staff than it would have been with the Rolls-Royce engine. It came back into the picture two yearslater when the Bristol company had ideas of a light-weight engine, now the Orpheus." The English Electric P.I, referred to in the report as the F.23. It is hoped that the Cen- tral Fighter Establish- ment will have some of these machines for tactical trials before they are released to the Service.
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