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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0709.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 1^^ and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2575 Vol 73 FRIDAY 30 M A Y 1 95 8 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 • FHghtpres Sedist 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 (5 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. Ill Broadway, 6 Telephone • Digby 9-1197 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION Home 14 15s Od, overseas £5 0s Od. Canada and U.S.A. $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges author- ised at New York. N.Y. in this issue 730 Breguet 940 and 941 731 A3J 733 Combustion and Propulsion, part 2 735 Aeronautical Bookshelf 736 German Naval Air Arm Equipment 738 "Bison" 739 F-104 744 Jet Tugs for the Royal Navy 747 And Home by Train America's Triple CrownT O the American nation, and especially to the not inconsiderable portion of it represented by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, the British aircraft indus- try dips its colours (still strongly flying, though beleaguered). For the first time since international records began to be "homologated" by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale in 1905, and subject, of course, to confirmation by that body, the products of a single manufacturer—Lockheed—today stand para- mount on the pinnacles of distance, altitude and speed. Each of these achievements has a technical significance transcending the glamour of mere prestige. The distance record—distance en ligne droite sans escale as the F.A.I. Bulletin has it—is especially remarkable in having been established as long ago as October 1946. Thus, for over eleven years a Naval patrol aircraft of standard type and powered with piston engines has defied the successive challenges of pure-jet, turboprop and by-pass powerplants. Only the Napier Nomad—a super- charged, compounded, heavy-oil, two-stroke, interred at Acton in 1954—might conceivably have regained the laurels for a British brow. Such, however, was the course of technical development that the garland graces even to this day the venerable neck of The Turtle, a Lockheed Neptune P2V, engined with "up-and- down" Turbo-Compounds by the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. And if, with its eight-jet Boeing B-52G, the U.S. Air Force can at last manage to outrange the Navy's old shellback, it has yet to stick its own substantial neck out and prove it. In The Turtle's endearing and enduring record we behold for the last time the classic formula (high aspect-ratio and extreme fuel economy) for the attainment of ultimate range. Yet what fabulous metamorphoses are seen in the circumstances of the other absolute records—those for altitude and speed—lately gained by Lockheed F-104A Starfighters. Time was when altitude, like range, was to be won only with abundance of wing area and maintenance of power at height, first by supercharging and latterly by rocket boosting. Yet here is the Starfighter, with no wing worth mentioning and with no augmentation for its General Electric J79 turbojet other than ram and reheat, ascending to 91,249ft in Service trim. No Loitering It must not be supposed, of course, that the Starfighter was capable of tactical manoeuvres at that 17-mile level, nor indeed within some thousands of feet of it; and that it could not have been loitering thus loftily is clear from the disclosure that it was airborne for a mere twenty-seven minutes. Yet its almost ballistic ascent to a height over 11,000ft in excess of that but recently achieved by the rocket-powered Trident is a feat to command the acclamation of the world. As for the Starfighter's new speed mark of 1,404 m.p.h., this is rather less of a surprise, for it had long been known that Lockheed was urgently desirous of establishing such proof that the F-104 is "the world's fastest jet." Earlier imple- mentation may have been debarred by security, and possibly by deficiencies of control; for that piloting of an extremely precise order is necessary at speeds in excess of 1,000 m.p.h., if F.A.I, demands are to be met, was evident as long ago as March 1956, when Fairey's F.D.2 achieved its historic 1,132 m.p.h. (That record, it is not inappropriate to recall, stood for over eighteen months.) Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the two new records is that the Starfighter's maximum level speed was actually equalled on the climb to the record height. Thus confronted and confounded by science fiction that has become recorded fact, we must remember that in the annals of the F.A.I, it is still the men and not the machines to whom world records are ascribed. So, provided that the Russians do not meanwhile get busy with one of their Fishbeds or Fishpots, we shall soon be seeing the names of Major Howard C. Johnson and Capt. Walter Wayne Irwin set down on the first page of the F.A.I. Bulletin, respectively against altitude and vitesse sur base. They will find themselves in company with Commander Thomas D. Da vies and his merry men, whose Turtle has remained so truculent over the years in face of fleeting wonders.
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