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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0291.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2511 Vol 71 FRIDAY 8 MARCH 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 of Canada, Ltd. 67 Yonge Street Telephone • Empire 6-0873 New York 6, N.Y. Thomas Skinner and Co. (Publishers), Ltd. Ill Broadway Telephone • Digby 9-1197 SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Overseas ' Twelve Months, £4 10s. UJS^i. and Canada. $14.00 in this issue 296 de Havilland Engines 1957 300 Jet Provosts at School 303 A Bright Sword Sheathed 311 Airline in the Sun 315 More Power to the Comet 316 The Medium-range Transport Quo Vadis?B UILDING aeroplanes has, in the past, been only slightly more erratic a business than longer-established industries, like shipbuilding. Such upheavals as there were could usually be ascribed to fluctuating demand, which naturally mirrored the joint factors of national economy and international tension. Aircraft manufacturers may have had to do an excessive amount of hiring and firing; but they have always known what next year's product would be. Now there is less certainty. Excepting certain fortunate companies which have found a good line that the whole world wants (like the Viscount) there are very few airframe builders who can confidently see ahead further than eighteen months. Commercial transports represent the only field in which there is a measure of long-term stability. Britain has been most successful in selling various kinds of airliners—even inside the U.S.A. Having left the field of the long-range, high- subsonic jet to America, we are out for as high a proportion of the remaining business—with smaller and less costly aeroplanes—as we can get. We have emphasized in recent issues the big business which the medium and short/medium transport fields offer. And such designs as the A.W.650 and Twin Pioneer may yet prove to be world-beaters capable of generating a great volume of business. In the field of aero engines we lead the world, and it is largely for this reason that we have been so successful in selling our airliners. It is a curious, and lamentable, fact that development of some of our most advanced and technically successful engines cannot be supported with public funds. In the sphere of private, club and executive aircraft it must be acknowledged that we have not done more than a fraction of the business which might have come our way. Apart from the specialist fields of agriculture and "aerial work", in which the efforts of Capt. Percival and Austers are outstanding, we have nothing to match the latest products from America, or even France. It is increasingly apparent that the world's industrial business is becoming concentrated in ever- larger units, each of which represents a market for small executive jets of the type already projected in the U.S.A. Britain is in a peculiarly advantageous position for making and marketing such aeroplanes. As for private and club machines— is lack of home demand perpetually to be used as an excuse for inactivity? New Systems Fighters and bombers are on the way out—so we are told, and it is no more than the truth. If the P.I and the V-bombers are, in fact, to be our last manned weapons-systems, a number of famous British firms will have to break into quite new markets. Already the Hawker Siddeley Group are widening the scope of their activity as fast as they can. Missiles, nuclear engineering, electronics—all are now the concern of men who a year ago were developing aeroplanes. There remains the helicopter industry. Ten years ago its future was assured; it was a healthy infant, looking confidently to the time when its products would be ready to place on the market. Today the way can be seen clearly, and with even greater confidence, to capable and comfortable helicopters driven by turbines. Yet quite new devices have appeared which could make rotary wings yet another dead-end. Jet hit; tilting propellers; ducted fans; complex gas systems involving a plurality of rotors, turbines, shrouded propellers, ducting, valves and cascade deflectors—who knows what may be the optimum system for a given job? Over the whole picture is cast the shadow of the new Defence Minister, Mr. Duncan Sandys, who is today regarded by much of the aircraft industry as "the man with the axe". Such a weapon, if it exists, has as yet performed few public executions; but the Minister has proclaimed his firm intention of streamlining our entire procurement of defence material, and it will be surprising if someone does not suffer in the process. Whatever happens, our aircraft industry must be enabled to remain, as it is today, one of our greatest assets. It employs over 250,000 work- people, sells over £100,000,000 of exports a year and develops new techniques that ultimately benefit most other industries. Only one thing could utterly destroy it: the emigration of its future brain-power.
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