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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0172.PDF
182 FLIGHT, 7 February 1958 AERONAUTICAL BOOKSHELF Flying Tolas from Blackwood. William Black wood and Sons, Ltd., 45 GeorgeStreet, Edinburgh 2, and 1 Bateman's Buildings, London W.I. Price 15s. IN general, aviation literature is not an example of well-writtenEnglish. Much of the work which finds its way to the book- stalls is dull; it attracts only those who want to know about thesubject of a particular book, and only occasionally do we find what our tenets consider a "good book." How pleasant, then,to have these stories from Blackwoods Magazine, which is one of those which looks for good, well-told stories and publishes themfor these qualities. That many of its articles are about flying is incidental, but this collection of the best of them over the last50 years make a book which is more likely to be found on almost anyone's fireside shelf than to enjoy the dubious distinction of alimited circulation amongst aviators. There are 16 stories, varying from an exultant description of apilot's first dive through Mach 1 to a tale of the real pioneers at Brooklands who, having got their craft to leave the ground, thenhad to experiment to find out what effect, if at all, their controls, if any, might have. But it is not the gist of the stories whichattract; it is their good, clear English. One who has never taken- off in a flying-boat will be able to experience that exhilaration byreading E. C. Palmer's description: "Water thudded against the hull like blows from a cushioned hammer, and the ports werebathed and rebathed with flying spray. The hammering increased in frequency, and merged into a steady drumming underfoot, thenabruptly ceased." That is typical of the way each separate story in this collection makes some aspect of flying come alive. Whata wonderful change. A. C. B. Aerodynamics. Butterworths Scientific Publications, 4 and 5 Bell Yard, LondonW.C.?.. Illustrated. Price 7s 6d. THIS publishing house has, in recent years, produced a numberof outstanding and exceedingly erudite works in many fields of interest to aeronautical engineers. The majority of these worksare large and expensive, but Aerodynamics is a series of papers revised and reprinted from Research, the latter being Butterworth'sown monthly journal of scientific subjects. The authors are T. Nonweiler, J. L. Stollery, A. W. Babister, J. Black and W. J. Rainbird. Between them they present aneminently readable survey—descriptive, rather than mathematic- ally rigorous, in treatment—of the entire subject, excellently illus-trated with line drawings and assiited by bibliographies of further reading. The majority of aerodynamics text-books are necessarily"out of date"—in so far as current research is concerned—and are in any case difficult to read except as adjuncts to an organizedcourse of instruction. In contrast, this little booklet, which is appreciably smaller than a copy of Flight, can give the casualreader a really excellent outline of the entire vast subject without presupposing much prior knowledge. W. T. G. The Source* of Invention, by John Jewkes, David Sawers and Richard Stillerman.Macmillan and Co., Ltd,, St, Martin's Street, London W.C.I Pricv 315 ii. individual inventor is (it seems from this serious discussionby three authors) in danger of disappearing, as a result of the growing art of taxation so skilfully and thoughtlessly practised bygovernments. The genius who makes a discovery, and a little money from it, is likely to have to pay crippling taxes; and so thesources of invention seem to be moving from the individual to the teams supported by outside interests. Wisely, the authors makeno hard predictions about when the race of inventors will die, or even say categorically that it will die. Equally wisely, they pointout that predictions about inventions themselves (and presumably inventors, too) have often been inaccurate. In 1906 The Timesasserted that "all attempts at artificial aviation . . . are not only dangerous to human life but foredoomed to failure from theengineering point of view." The book provides a well-documented background to inventions and inventors and the relative chancesof survival of the amateurs and the professionals. A. C. B. The Geography of Air Transport, by Kenneth R. Sealy M.Sc (Econ), Ph.D.Hutchinson University Library, 178-202 Great Portland Street, London W.1. Price 10s 6d. THIS is a straightforward textbook for systematic study by thestudent of air transport. A deep and detailed discussion of how, why, where and when goods and passengers take to the air, itcovers the growth and organization of air transport on a world- wide basis. Because of the availability of suitable material, andthe status of the industry in Britain and the U.S.A., a good pro- portion of the book is concerned with British and American prac-tice. This is sensible, for many of the newer airlines have learned much from the hard experience of both these countries. Those critics who say that airlines are over-expensive nationalluxuries will, if they trouble to look for it, find here a wealth of detailed information to convince them that airlines must, by theirvery nature, face operating and maintenance charges on a far higher scale than any other method of transport. J. W. B. ERNST HEINKEL A WEEK after his 70th birthday, Dr. Ernst Heinkel, one of•**• Germany's greatest aircraft designers and constructors, died in a Stuttgart hospital on January 30. News of his death camealmost simultaneously with reports of closer identification of his business with that of Willy Messerschmiti(the two were already co-operating as members of the Union-Flugzeugbau Suedgroup, which is building Fouga Magisters under licence). Ernst Heinkel—a tinker's son—builtbis first aircraft while still a student at Stuttgart Technical College in 1910, andwas severely injured in an accident whilst attempting to fly it a year later. Threeyears afterwards he was appointed tech- nical director of the Hansa und Branden-burgische Flugzeugwerke, and during World War I he designed some 30 typesof aircraft. After the war he founded his owncompany and began the design and construction of a long and successful line of aeroplanes. Among his more notable productsduring the inter-war years was die He 112U fighter in which Ernst Udet achieved 394.6 m.pJi. in June 1938; and a variant which,flown by Dieterle, took the world air speed record at 463.9 m.p.h. in April of the following year. (A few weeks later this recordpassed to a Messerscbmitt Me 109R, which achieved 469 m.p.h.) At this period Heinkel was exploring the possibilities of acceler-ated take-off for fighters, with catapults and rockets, and in August 1939—according to an interview which he gave in 1951—he flewa jet aircraft, the He 178, without the knowledge of the Reichluft- fahrtministerium. (Trie Gloster-Whittk E.28/39 first flew in May1941.) Best-known of his bombers were the He 111 and He 177, bothstandard types in World War II. Also noteworthy were the He 280 twin-jet and He 162 single-jet fighters and the He 219 twin-enginednight fighter. After the war Ernst Heinkel was fined by a denazification court,but on a subsequent appeal was cleared of the accusation of being a "Nazi follower." In 1950 he re-entered industry as a manufac-turer of lightweight road vehicles. ANOTHER PIONEER PASSES ONE of Britain's pioneer pilots, Lord Egerton of Tatton, hasdied in Kenya at the age of 83. As the Hon. Maurice Egerton, and one of the select band of the original Eastchurchpilots, he took his aviator's certificate in 1910, and in that year was awarded an Aero Club prize of £50 for a circular flight of onemile in his British-built Wright biplane; soon afterwards he was rivalling J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon (now Lord Brabazon of Tara)in flights of ten miles or more. After the First World War, in which he served in the RJ*I.V JL,he turned from flying to such other adventurous pursuits as big- game hunting and was subsequently engaged on large-scale agri-cultural development in East Africa. WHEELED OTTERS IN ANTARCTIC TWO de Havilland Canada Otters of the U.S. Navy made thefirst wheeled landing on the Antarctic Continent on February 1, alighting on a rough 1,100 yd strip which had been bulldozedfrom marble and granite at Marble Point. The first aircraft, piloted by Cdr. W. J. Coley and carrying Sir Edmund Hillary,Admiral G. Dufek and Captain P. Maher, U.S. Navy Commander in the Antarctic, made an uneventful landing, but the second air-craft broke its tail-wheel and swung across the strip, damaging the surface. It took off later with an improvised tail-skid. MarblePoint is a possible site for an international all-weather airport, which it is estimated would cost £100m and take six years toconstruct.
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