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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0730.PDF
746 FLIGHT, 30 May 1958 (T) Straight and Level DID you notice the rugged stock-man (gaucho?) on British Mes-sier's front cover advertisement of Flight's Flying Aids special issue of May 16? I am comforted by the thought that though he has never heard of pitch- stabilized Dopplers or glide-path and azimuth guidance, he is indirectly a customer, without whom we would starve to death. We can't eat flying aids. • Who says British club pilots have a tough time these days? You boys don't know how lucky you are. Take Poland, for instance. According to recent reports, government authorities there are begin- ning to look askance at the "turbulent" development of sporting flying. They feel that "reactionaries" might dominate the clubs. The answer? "Our task, there- fore is to create in the aero clubs a real basis for political work by the setting up of Party groups." Things aren't really too bad over there, however. The Polish Aero Club has announced that "certain approved pilots will as from now be allowed to fly on cross-country trips within the country." And the future is even rosier: "If the planned air races and rallies abroad show promise, there may even come a time when Polish sports fliers will be allowed to fly abroad." • Conversation between airline pilot and safety expert, on the subject of rear- ward-facing seats:— Airline Pilot: "To say that it would be commercially difficult for airlines to fit rearward-facing seats is like saying, 'Let the airlines have more champagne and less de-icing fluid.'" Safety Expert: "I always thought your airline's champagne was de-icing fluid." I admired the safety expert's wit, but I deplored the context. It can never be stated too strongly that the issue of the rearward-facing seat is being shirked, and better technical judgment is being overruled by commercial interests. I know it's all very difficult, and so easy to get emotional about. But couldn't we even try rearward-facing seats experimentally for a while? If one airline converted one of its aircraft, and said nothing, I'll wager that no passenger would ever complain, and that most would not even notice. • Comment from a friend in the elec- tronics business: "You know, there's nothing that can lock-on quite so well as the human eye." This made me won- der what the relationship might be be- tween the movement of one's eyes when trying to see something at night and a radar scanner (of an a.-w. fighter, for example) operating in the search mode. This sort of topic has been the subject of research by the U.S.A.F., R.A.F., Royal Navy and several civilian scienti- fic agencies. • Last week I pointed out that many of the most important aeronautical "firsts" are insufficiently well known, and I am now rash enough to suggest what I believe are the correct dates. (1) The first flight by a man-carrying, heavier-than-air machine cannot defi- nitely be ascribed to any single pioneer or group. I feel, however, that by far the strongest claim is that made by the Wright Brothers, for December 17,1903 (it was, incidentally, Orville who actu- ally flew first). Mojaiski is insufficiently documented, and Maxim and Langley cannot really claim sustained, stable "free flight." Having said that, I ask you to make what you will of the above memorial stone, which a puzzled Flight colleague photographed a few days ago at Hanover Airport. Translated, the inscription reads: "JATHO—The World's First Powered Flight, August 18, 1903." (2) The first flight by a man-carrying aeroplane powered by jet reaction took place on September 30, 1929, near Frankf urt-am-Main. Fritz von Opel, the German car manufacturer, made a con- trolled flight of some 2,000 yd in a glider fitted with a series of solid-propellant rocket motors. The speed reached was some 85 m.p.h. (this is an eye-witness estimate) and the aircraft was wrecked upon landing. (Perhaps someone would like to take up the cudgels on behalf of the He 176 in July 1939.) (3) The first flight by a turbine-driven aeroplane took place on August 24,1939, when Capt. Erich Warsitz flew the Heinkel He 178. This aircraft was powered by an He S-3B turbojet of 1,100 lb thrust, and seems to have ended its days in the Berlin Air Museum (I would like to have confirmation of this). The date I have given, incidentally, was when the 178 first flew (a mere "hop"). The first real flight took place on August 27. (4) The first man ever to fly faster than sound was MajorCharles E."Chuck" Yeager, United States Air Force. Flying the first Bell X-l, he was dropped from a B-29 mother ship on October 14,1947, and accelerated to a true Mach number of 1.06. Later, the same aircraft reached its design limit speed of some 967 m.p.h. It now rests honourably in the Smith- sonian Institution. (5) The first to fly a helicopter was . . . well, let me quote Charles Gibbs- Smith (A History of Flying, page 239): "There are two contestants for first off the ground,' Paul Cornu and Jacques Breguet. Priority just goes to the Breguets because Cornu, although first off the ground, did not, it seems, rise vertically." Jacques Breguet and his brother Louis (the great aircraft builder), assisted by Charles Richet, achieved hovering flight on September 29, 1907. Well there they are: five dates of fundamental importance to aviation. And the curious thing is that only two of them—those for Warsitz and Yeager —can be quoted with absolute assur- ance; the others can all be contested. In fact I hope some of my readers do chal- lenge some of them, because it is only thus that new facts are unearthed. • Do you recall how exclusive were the "Mach-busters" and similar clubs for people who had flown faster than Mach 1? Today there are several thou- sand Mach-busters—all but a few hun- dred of them in the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. —and Convair have now launched an M=2 club for all people who have flown at twice the speed of sound in a Convair-built aeroplane. There are two wings of this organization: the San Diego branch is headed by Dick John- son, chief of engineering flight test on the F-106 series, and the Fort Worth wing is led by B. A. Erickson, manager of flying on the B-58. It seems to me it won't be long before there are a lot of mayors' wives in Cali- fornia and Texas who will have flown faster than any pilot in the Old World. • The other Monday I came into my office in a cheerful frame of mind, to find a chatty little news-agency picture- caption on my desk. According to Dr. Gerald P. Kuiper of the Yerkes Observa- tory of the University of Chicago, it said, the Sun will have become so large in three to four billion years' time that its total radiation will be 100 times stronger than it is now. The Earth's oceans will boil and fill the atmosphere with steam. All life as we know it will be destroyed. This phase should last; about a billion years and then the Sun will shrink to a size much smaller than it is now. As the Earth's temperature drops, the whole planet will become a big ball of snow and ice. Can the Minister make a statement? ROGER BACON.
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