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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 0033.PDF
No. 26O6 VOLUME 75 FRIDAY 2 JANUARY 1959 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH D.F.c Editor H. F. KING M.B.E. Technical Editor W. T. GUN STON ' Production Editor • . RQV CASEY IN THIS ISSUE From All Quarters 2 Straight and Level 6 Service Aviation 7 Air Commerce 8 Club and Gliding News 12 Now we are Fifty 13 The Years have Flown 21 Target Aircraft 47 The Industry 48 Correspondence 49 Iliffe & Sans Ltd., Dorset House, stai.i-ford Street, London, S.E.I; telephone Waterloo 3333. Telegrams FlightpresSedist London. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s, Overseas £5, Canadaand U.S.A. $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at New York, N.Y. Branch Offices Coventry:8-10 Corporation Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham: KingEdward House, New Street, 2; telephone Midland 7191. Manchester: 260 Deans-Kate, 3; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow: 26B KenneldStreet, C.2; telephone Central 1265. New York, N.Y.: Thomas Skinner & Co.(Publishers) Ltd., Ill Broadway, 6; telephone Digby 9-1197 © Iliffe & Sons Ltd., 1959. Permissionto reproduce illustrations and letterpress can be granted only under written agree-ment. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. and Aircraft Engineer : FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD: FOUNDED 190* How Far Have We Come? THE two or three of us remaining on Flight who knew our founder-editorStanley Spooner are wondering what the old gentleman would think if he were with us now, on our journal's fiftieth birthday. About flying, that is, and about Flight. He was never a technical man, but he knew where the paper was going when he wrote in his first leader, "The flying world is about to grow up; we are preparing to grow up with it . . ." How, then, has his "flying world" progressed? Beyond question, the state of the technical art (we have reservations concerning its applications) transcends anything that the savants of Mr. Spooner's time could have imagined. Our first "news par." recorded that "Wilbur Wright . . . made forty-five circuits . . . equivalent to 99 kiloms ... In addition he flew 400 metres to and from his starting rail, thereby bringing the distance to 99.8 kiloms, which constitutes the world's record . . ." Today the records for speed, height and non-refuelled distance are 1,404 m.p.h., 91,249ft, and 11,235 miles—perform- ances by more or less standard machines. Research aircraft have exceeded 1,500 m.p.h. and 120,000ft, and within months we should be able to mark up 3,600 m.p.h. and 100 miles. Alongside hypersonic manned weapon systems we see missiles in bewildering profusion. On the one hand are the ICBMs, weighing over a hundred tons; already these have demonstrated their ability to place their awesome loads on targets more than 6,300 miles distant. The IRBMs throw a megaton warhead over 1,700 miles; and then follow a host of weapons down to portable anti-tank missiles that a soldier can tuck under his arm. A New Realm Outcropping from the ballistic-missile field are the space probes. "A new realm of flight" was the title under which we recorded the news of the launching of the world's first man-made satellite some 15 months ago; and nowhere has there been more astounding progress than in astronautics. In this issue we report the orbiting of a satellite the size of an airliner fuselage, capable of receiving and re-transmitting radio messages from Earth. A rocket has reached as far as one-third the distance to the Moon, and a squirrel-monkey's cage has survived re-entry from 300 miles. In 1909 there was little thought of air commerce; only since the '20s have the airways begun to girdle the world. But, so used have the airlines become to an effervescent rate of growth that last year's increase—expected to be between five and ten per cent—created dismay. The most remarkable growth is seen over the North Atlantic where sharply reduced fares and rates have swelled passenger and freight traffic by a quarter and a fifth respectively. Today more passengers prefer to fly the Atlantic than to travel by sea. We have witnessed the arrival of the jet age—a revolution which promises to attract unprecedented numbers of new travellers into the air—and if slower types are permitted to offer lower fares, traffic volume could be further multiplied. Many people have worked hard and courageously for what we have recorded above, and greater good will yet come of their efforts. Not the least contribution will be that of the British aircraft industry. As for Flight, if our old chief could have read the message that we are honoured to print overleaf his eyes would have twinkled as they had never twinkled before.
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