FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1959
1959 - 0262.PDF
No. 26O9 VOLUME 75 FRIDAY 23 JANUARY 1959 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH D.F.C ' Editor H.F.KING M.B.E. Technical Editor W. T. QUNSTON .. Production Editor R O Y C A S E Y IN THIS ISSUE Gamma 12O Britain's Navaid Proposal 121 Comet 4: a Pilot's Aeroplane 123 The Hawker Siddeley Year Something to _ Show Off 126 127 An Airline Called Wheeler 128 The A.R.A. Reach Mach 4 130 Flashing Fighter 131 Agricultural ; Implements 137 Miff* & Sons Ltd., Dorset House, Stam- ford Street, 1 ondon. S.E.I; telephone Waterloo 3333; telegrams Flightpres Sedist London. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s, Overseas £5, Canada and 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: King Edward House, New Street, 2: telephone Midland 7191. Manchester: 260 Deans- gate, 3; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow: 26B Renfield Street, C.2; telephone Central 1265. New York, N.Y.: Thomas Skinner & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., Ill Broadway, 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Iliffe & Sons Ltd., 195!). Permission to reproduce illustrations and letterpress can be granted only under written agree- ment. Brief extracts or comments may b made with due acknowledgement. and Aircraft Engineer ,, FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD: FOUNDED 1909 Co-operating to Co-operate FOR a Service which in recent years is supposed to have been run-down, let-down and talked-down, the Royal Air Force wears a noticeably buoyant air. The reasons seem ingenuously simple: the jobs now being put in hand are more clearly chalked out than at any time since the war, and (nearer the point) the special tools required are being designed and made. Political and inter-Service controversy will yet create uncomfortable, perhaps unnecessary, commotion— especially so as there are people of influence and conviction who believe that the R.A.F. has simply lost interest in Coastal Command and who are bent on depth-charging to the surface the entire "Coastal" issue. We must hope that the Army's demands and aspirations in respect of missiles, airlift and close support will be sufficiently satisfied to avert any major upheaval on those accounts. The critical order for the long-range strategic trooper/freighter is still unplaced, and undecided even as between the turboprop and turbojet; but once it is announced— following the recently awarded contract for the AW.660 to meet the shorter- range case—outstanding army/air business will doubtless relate to close support and general co-operation in the field. It is perfectly reasonable to assume, of course, that in the TSR.2, with its twin super-Olympus, supersonic speed and super-accurate navaids, the Air Force and Army will jointly have call on a tactical assault weapon unmatched in potency and flexibility. It is right also to suppose that the Bristol-powered Hawker VTO attack-fighter, to NATO requirements, may make its own appeal to the R.A.F. But both are sophisticated attack systems (the TSR.2, of course, rather more so than the Hawker), and it may well be emphasized in the coming years that for second-class "colonial" warfare we shall have need of slower machines, as now under development in France, to work closely with the Army. A Versatile STOL Two distinct formulae are being worked out for extended air/ground co-opera- tion. There is a single-turboprop two-seater designed primarily for pinpoint attacks on tactical targets, and a class of larger three-seater twins, also with turbo- props, responding to all the traditional demands of "general purpose" and "army co-operation." With the Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer, of course, the R.A.F. has a head start in this latter class, though not, up to the present, with turbine power. In urgently exploiting the qualities of their own small turboprops, the French are at the same time contriving their new army co-operation aircraft to meet in essence a probable civil requirement for a light transport, and valuable orders can be expected in both categories. In effect, France is reviving the pre-war type colonial. Britain, too, has small turboprops. Likewise she has "colonial" interests, and an army to support in regions and circumstances inappropriate to TSR.2. Anyone who flew with the Aden Protectorate Support Flight a few years ago will second the proposition. Now, having secured the TSR.2 (which will help us to build a supersonic airliner) and the AW.660 (which buttresses weightily the sales potential of the Argosy); and having in firm prospect a new strategic transport (which will be a challenging civil freighter also), we shall need only a versatile STOL machine to round out a truly rational, truly national programme.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
