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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0163.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 190y and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2507 Vol 71 FRIDAY 8 FEBRUARY 1957 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 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. US.A. and Canada, $14.00 In this isst$\e 168 Farewell to the Flying-Boat 171 Design for Production 174 Short's Transport Project 175 Supersonic Air Transport 178 Commonwealth Courier 180 Exit from the Sea Venom 182 Twin Pioneer Ski-Lift 183 By-pass Assessment 187 Tail-End TV Vulcan LessonsO N this page of our issue of January 4 we commented on the preliminary state- ments concerning the result of the R.A.F. Court of Inquiry on the Vulcan accident at London Airport last October. We said then that we were left with the unhappy conclusion that the accident had not in fact been explained at all. The following week we were prompted to draw from that earlier statement some simple mathematical conclusions, which lent support to our belief. As officially promised, the report on the second investigation, by Dr. A. G. Touch, was published on January 24, and summarized in Flight last week. This week we report the inquest on the four men who lost their lives. From statements made on these two occasions we are again forced to the conclusion that the exact details are not to be found in present explanations. We cannot easily, for example, reconcile the statements by both the pilots, the G.C.A. controller and his tracker, to the effect that there was no sudden descent before the first impact with the ground, with Dr. Touch's conclusion that such a descent did in fact occur. The question arises whether someone should not have told the crew about the poor visibility on the approach, which was worse than that on the airfield. Some- one should be qualified to give such information to a captain and have both the power and the means to do so quickly. This is a problem which must be solved urgently if cases of a comparable kind are to be avoided. The Vulcan's altimeter error, we feel, had only a secondary influence in this case; and the error additional to the Vulcan's normal position-error for the approach configuration was probably caused by ground effect. Finally, we must take cognizance of the statement in Dr. Touch's report that something in the controller-tracker-pilot-G.C.A. "servo loop" failed. The only constructive answer to this is to adopt equipment which reduces the number of people involved in this loop and reduces thereby the inherent time delays and number of possibilities of human error. Such equipment has long been available in the form of G.C.A. in which the controller directly monitors both azimuth and elevation displays. We must, however, look even further forward to an aid which will offer the pilot at least a semi-pictorial director instrument giving complete approach guidance, the only function of the ground personnel then being to monitor the approach and intervene if the aircraft goes badly astray. Autopilot coupling, with which the Vulcan is very probably intended to be fitted, can also go a long way toward achieving accuracy without undue mental stress. At present, there is nothing in production which will positively enable a pilot, if he cannot see the ground, to correct any kind of mistake in the final and critical phases of an instrument approach. There must be someone on the ground to tell him plainly to avoid such poor visibility conditions, either by waiting for a weather clearance or by diverting forthwith. Supersonic Old Ladies OW then, young man," an old lady passenger is once supposed to have said to an airline captain, "no going faster than sound—I want to talk." She was not, of course, to know that she represented the hypothetical old lady who has become the ultimate design-case in the development of commercial aeroplanes, and that when the time comes for her really to fly faster than sound she will be able to do so in perfect safety and comfort. When will the time come? Projection of the curve of air transport speeds over the past thirty years suggests that we may expect commercial supersonics by 1970. But, as we show on pages 175-177, the technical difficulties to be overcome appear to be of such gravity that the British Industry may capture the market only by a co-ordination of effort backed by the full resources of the nation. The Government- sponsored "exploratory" supersonic coalition, announced two weeks ago, is imaginative and welcome, and we wish its deliberations success. As a postscript, we record our surprise that this team lacks representation by the A.R.B., and by the only two British firms with truly supersonic experience— Fairey and English Electric.
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