FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0185.PDF
14 February 1958 195 France and the United States—agreed more readily to government salesthan we did, and unless we followed suit the business was unlikely to go our way. I felt that I just had to concede the point. That the saleultimately didn't come off was due to quite other causes. I am asking you to appreciate the point that there are governments in other countrieswhich, with limited facilities for procuring military equipment, prefer to deal with governments, and much business would be lost if we do notrecognize that." The Minister's next point was on the subject of security restric- tions and the question of whether they could not be lifted more quickly in order to assist export sales. He remarked: — "I myself couldn't be more sympathetic to the thought. The Ministryof Supply is a department of scientists. Now, scientists don't really believe in secrets, and who is to say them nay? After all, the latestscientific developments—radar, nuclear power—have all proceeded roughly in parallel in different countries, despite all kinds of securityrestrictions. The scientists don't really believe in secrets, but the military do. The military hang on to them far too long."You have therefore to try and contrive some balance of influence, and one of the lesser reasons why I believe in an independent Ministryof Supply is that the scientist can press his case better from an indepen- dent civil department than he could from within a military department.I would only ask you to accept that we do in fact do our best." In the major part of his speech the Minister had been replyingto points raised by members of the electronics industry, including the chairman of R.C.E.E.A., Mr. F. S. Mockford (who is com-mercial manager of Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co., Ltd.). He continued: — "Lastly, Mr. Mockford has posed a most difficult question. He notesthat in the past the main contractors have been the airframe manu- facturers and the electronic manufacturers have been sub-contractors.But electronics,' as he rightly says, become more and more important. Aircraft and missiles are now nothing more than a complicated systemof electronics with a carcase to keep them all together. Should not therefore the roles be reversed? Should not the electronic manufacturersbecome the main contractor and the airframe manufacturers become the sub-contractor? ... I would certainly be glad to know whatMr. Mockford's sister company [the aircraft division of English Electric] thinks about this revolutionary idea. For my part I can only seek refugein what has struck me as being an admirable precedent: the co-operation which took place between the Bristol Aeroplane Company and Ferrantion their surface-to-air guided missile. Long may such co-operation continue." H-Bombs over England COME degree of clarification of the Government's attitude to^ the carrying of thermo-nuclear weapons by aircraft flying over British soil has been given by Mr. Butler, speaking for the PrimeMinister in the House of Commons. He said last week that the carrying of such bombs by the R.A.F.and United States aircraft was necessary from time to time as a deterrent. Such flights were, however, infrequent and real bombswere used only on special operational exercises and training flights which involved moving aircraft from one airfield to another withtheir weapons. On these flights the bombs were never armed and inadvertent arming of them was impossible. In the event of acrash the radiation risk would be small and localized and could be dealt with "in due course" by specialized military teams. West German Defence Policy WEST GERMANY is to base her forward defence on guidedmissiles, according to a pronouncement by Herr Franz-Josef Strauss, the Defence Minister. Herr Strauss told a B.U.P. correspondent in an interview thatWest Germany would require, in addition, "a multi-purpose air- craft" to intercept bombers that broke through the missile line.With only minor modifications and changes of equipment it would have to perform three roles—those of a high-altitude reconnais-sance machine, a tactical fighter-bomber, and an all-weather fighter. The Minister gave no indication as to what type of guidedweapon the West Germans have in mind. He stated categorically, however, that they will not build their own fighters, except underlicence. The Heinkel-Messerschmitt group will not be asked to design and build such aircraft: this he said, would necessitate vastgovernment investment and could not produce results before 1968. Jetstar Performance ACTUAL figures obtained during testing of the LockheedCL-329 Jetstar prototype (two Bristol Orpheus turbojets imported as Wright TJ-37s) has been given by C. L. ("Kelly")Johnson, vice-president of engineering and research for Lock- heed's California Division. Operating at Edwards A.F.B., theaircraft has successfully demonstrated single-engine take-off and climb procedures up to 20,000ft, notwithstanding the height of2,200ft above sea level of the part of Edwards concerned. During more than 100 hr of company testing the Jetstar is reported tohave demonstrated a range of 1,725 miles with "ample fuel reserves" without using the optional pylon tankage; speed foroptimum economy has been found to be about 500 m.p.h., but 600 m.p.h. has been exceeded and a cruising altitude of 45,000fthas been obtained within 30 minutes of a full-load take-off. CANADIAN CUSTOMER: Seen at Bristol alongside the first of the six Britannia 314s ordered by Canadian Pacific Airlines is the company's president, Mr. Grant McConachie. With him is Mr. Peter Masefield, Bristol Aircraft chairman. Built by Shorts at Belfast, this Britannia is now being given final pre-delivery checks at Filton. During his visit Mr. McConachie mentioned the possibility that C.P.A.L. might, if his application to operate Canadian domestic routes in competition with T.C.A. was granted, revive its order for Comets. Wind Tunnel Testing of Helicopters RESEARCH techniques used to determine some of the aero-dynamic properties of helicopters were described in a lecture to the Helicopter Association of Great Britain presented in Lon-don last week by Mr. M. S. Hooper, F.R.Ae.S., of Fairey Aviation. His paper was entitled Wind Tunnel Testing of Helicopter Models. The author dealt first with the technical basis of scale-modeltesting and then went on to survey, in some detail, the extent of the work already done in this field. This had been on a sur-prisingly large scale. In 1923, wind-tunnel experiments had been made at the National Physical Laboratory on propellers at zerotorque, with application to helicopters descending and, in 1926, the first use of hinged model rotor blades was recorded. This wason a 2.2ft-diameter rotor in a 7ft tunnel at R.A.E. Other experi- ments were made in subsequent years, including some with full-scale autogiro rotors and large-scale helicopter rotors. Generally, the results obtained showed that theory and wind tunnel practicewere in satisfactory agreement on all essential points. Mr. Hooper then described at some length the work that hadrecently been carried out in his own company's wind tunnel with one-sixth and one-fifteenth scale models of the Rotodyne. Thelarger model had been used for basic test and development, including propeller slipstream tests, while the smaller one, usedin conjunction with a 6ft-diameter rotor, had yielded much infor- mation on interference effects. The rotor and model fuselage werequite separate from each other, to ease the construction prob- lems, but were so mounted in the tunnel that they were in appro-priate aerodynamic connection. Wind-tunnel testing had proved valuable as a means of measur-ing those aerodynamic quantities which formed a basis for per- formance and stability calculations and which had a bearing oncontrol problems over a given range of e.g. movement. Some of the more complicated test programmes were both difficult andexpensive. Compound helicopter designs would probably need as much testing as high-performance fixed-wing aircraft, and muchwork would be needed to investigate such special features as rotor blades with jet flaps or boundary-layer control, and autostabiliza-tion problems. AVION D'AFFAIRES: A promising jet-propelled executive aircraft is the Marcel Dassault Mediterranee, seen here in model form. Eight or nine passengers will be carried for 1,550 miles.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
