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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0573.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 ^^ and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2571 Vol73 FRIDAY 2 MAY 1958 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH D.F.C. AND BAR 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 Telegrams • Flightpyes Seclist London BRANCH OFFICES Coventry 8-10 Corporation Street Telephone • Coventry 5210 > ';: Birmingham King Edward House, New Street, 2 Telephone • Midland 7191 (7 lines) Manchester 260 Deansgate, 2 Telephone • Blackfriars 4412 3 lines) Deansgate 3595 (.2 lines) Glasgow 26B Renfield Street, C.2 Telephone • Central 1265 2 lines) New York, N.Y. Thomas Skinner and Co. (Publishers), Ltd. HI Broadway, 6 Telephone • Digby 9-1197 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION Home £4 15s 0d, overseas £5 Os Od. Canada and U.S.A. $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges author- ised at New York. N.Y. In this issue 592 Defense £95 The Griffith Airliner Explained 597 Electrical Systems in the Air 693 Cuckoo in the Nest 601 Crop Control 693 Aircraft versus Submarine 608 Dart Herald Research for TomorrowI T will be five years this August since the Rolls-Royce Flying Bedstead first went screeching into the air. Here, surely, was the most grotesque object ever sustained above the earth; and for a year it remained (Heaven knows how) a secret—until the S.B.A.C. Dinner on the eve. of the 1954 Farnborough Display. Following S.B.A.C. tradition, the guest of honour was the Minister of Supply then in office—Mr. Duncan Sandys; and with admirable dramatic sense he saved his portentous news for the end of his speech. Having alluded to America's VTO tail-sitters (exotic birds whose season may not yet have ended) he attained the climactic moment. "We in Britain," he proclaimed, "are concentrating rather upon techniques designed to enable aircraft to take off vertically from a normal horizontal position. . . In conjunction with the Ministry of Supply, Rolls-Royce have constructed a test vehicle embodying this principle, and a few weeks ago [he had in mind the first free hovering] this strange contraption lifted itself into the air. . . It proceeded to circle around under complete control . . ." Mr. Sandys concluded, "It may well be that this new and exciting experiment will lead to a resolution in aeronautical development every bit as important as that which has resulted from the introduction of the jet engine." Continuing trials have led Rolls-Royce and the Government to reaffirm their faith in the latent possibilities of jet lift. The RB.108 turbojet has been developed as a special "lift engine" and has been installed in the Short SCI VTOL research aircraft. As we write, preparations are in hand for preliminary hovering trials. But whereas Rolls-Royce have hitherto been advocating the system principally in its application to a highly supersonic transport aeroplane (the Griffith "dart" project, subject of a detailed review in this and last week's issue of Flight), Mr. David Keith-Lucas, designer of the SC.l, has himself emphasized that VTOL as an accomplished fact is with us now. It would be tragic, he declares, if we in Great Britain came to associate it solely with the far-off dream of a supersonic airliner— wherein VTOL is simply a means to an end. The danger he foresees is that we might couple the system with the enormous development costs of the distant supersonic project and thereby fail to apply it to present needs. — and the Day After This warning can be related to an example, cited by Sir Arnold Hall, of the evils of abandoning research too early because the outcome may be obscure—indeed, may be proved by experts to be impossible. The example (instanced by Mr. E. C. Bowyer, director of the S.B.A.C., in his recent admirable address to the Institute of Petroleum) was this: Basic research on transonic and supersonic flight was started early in the 1940s and was continued in spite of high-level expert opinion that transonic and supersonic speeds must remain out of reach because piston engines could not possibly be developed to give enough power for weight. Few at that time foresaw the gas turbine aero-engine. A second example is that in the early days of research on long-range missiles some "experts" knew full well that these were likely to be most inaccurate, and therefore completely unsatisfactory. Few had thought of the nuclear warhead. As Mr. Bowyer has remarked, research cannot be turned on and off like a tap. We in this country have no choice other than to stay in the van of advanced engineering. We have to import fuels and raw materials; and we can only pay for these things if we export products which other people cannot make or make so well. This means research, research and again research. Hiatus can spell disaster; but we do not believe that the Minister of Supply is blind to this, for he has set up a committee to study the state of the industry following transition from mainly military to mainly civil work, and he hopes to report its findings "in the spring." Thus, we have until June 21 to await the helpful and encouraging Government statement of which a worried industry is so earnestly in need.
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