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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0741.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 ^^ and AIRCRAFT ENGINES • No 2576 Vol 73 FRIDAY 6 JUNE 1958 / Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH D.F.C. AN'BAR Editor H. F. KING M.B.E. Technical Editor /. W. T. GUNSTON / Production Edito- ROY CASEY „._ , jns Ltd.Iliffe and Dorset _ 4jrd Street Jon, S.E.1 elephone • Waterloo 3333 Telegrams • Flightpres 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 (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. Ill Broadway, 6 Telephone • Digby 9-1197 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION Home £4 15s Od, overseas £5 0s Od. Canada and U.S.A. $15.00. Second Class Mai! privileges author- ised at New York, N.Y. in this issue 760 The Aircraft Industry Debate 761 Rotodyne Flight Development 763 Defense (Part 4) 764 Hucknall en Fete 766 Transatlantic Turbofans 767 The Future of Air Freighting 769 Scimitar F.I 770 Gatwick 776 Foretaste of the Caravan 778 S-62 779 Combustion and Propulsion (Part 3) B Collision NOTHING cuts more deeply into the hearts of airmen, and the consciencesof safety authorities, than the word collision. When two aircraft collide inmid-air the result, except by mere chance, is disaster. The possibility of collision? between military machines is accepted as one of the normal risks of Service flying: collisions involving commercial aircraft must never happen. But in America, within the space of one month, two airliners have been struck out of the sky by military jets at a terrible cost in civilian lives and with an unquestionably serious effect upon the minds of would-be air passengers.. Confirmed reports of near-misses are so numerous (971 in the U.S.A. last year) as to send a shudder through the whole system of the air transport business. The concern of the public is equalled by the anger of the airlines, which is now at white heat. Already huge sums have been allocated to the improvement of America's traffic control system— more radar, more A.T.C. automation, better ground aids. A special Airways Modernization Board is answerable directly to President Eisenhower. Three new 40-mile-wide transcontinental airways have been created. Can more be done? The only solution, which applies just as much in Europe as it does in America, is joint control of all civil and military traffic. As long ago as October 1956 the U.K. Guild of Air Traffic Control Officers made this declaration: "There must be joint centres of military and civil control, to destroy once and for all the gulf at present between them, which is strewn with prejudice and mistrust engendered by ignorance of each other's task." It requires but a moment's thought to appreciate the massive problems which daunt the achievement of 100 per cent joint civil and military control. But it must come to pass; and all hopes for the future (notwithstanding the present events in France) rest on the fact that, in the Western European and North American democratic systems, it is civil law which must prevail. British air space is a national trust, for the defence of which R.A.F. Fighter Command is maintained by national funds. Subject to the imperative needs of that Command, and those of other home-based Commands, to practise and improve in their prescribed roles, the Service must use that air space on the civilians' terms. A New Security?S INCE 1945 the industrial and political undercurrents of aviation have, in most countries, settled into fairly well-defined channels. In the U.S.A. it is now accepted practice for a newspaperman—or anybody else—to publish anything that, in his estimation, is of news value; and the onus is placed on the source of information to withhold it if there are reasons why it should not become public property. The deliberate "leak," by a manufacturer or a Service chief with an axe to grind, is an everyday occurrence. In this country, where reticence and unwillingness to be ungentlemanly are supposed to be powerful factors, we have placed the onus on every single citizen to observe the laws of security; and, although secret information on aircraft and missiles is by no means difficult to obtain, nothing of calamitous consequence has been published in the past decade. Now, it seems, the pressures brought about by contractions, regroupings, retrenchments and every other type of upheaval may be tempting us over to the "Stateside" security school. In recent days there have arrived in these offices—as in most domiciles of these islands—lengthy newspaper reports of a variable-geometry flying machine which has been under development by Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft); another referring to progress made with Blue Streak, our 2,200-mile ballistic missile; a quote from Hansard discussing some- thing called Operational Requirement 339; and a newspaper story which describes a proposal by Hawker Aircraft for an Orpheus-powered VTOL fighter. These items were not, of course, deliberate "leaks." Nevertheless, the nation must be vigilant lest, as competition is brought to a keener edge, the protective powers of "security" diminish to the degree of futility.
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