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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 1166.PDF
v -.' • No. 2622 VOLUME 78 FRIDAY 14 APRIL 1]9 6 9 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. 8MITH D.F.C Editor H. F. KING M.B.E. Technical Editor W. T. QUN8TON Production Editor ROY CASEY IN THIS ISSUE Giving and Receiving 564 U.S. Missile Tour 565 Aero Engine Development 568 Air Transport and its Future 569 Financing the Jets 571 The Aircraft Industry a National Asset 572 Cameras in Evidence 576 Lightweight Inertial- navigation System 591 I lilt e & Sons Ltd., Dorset House, Stam-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 Corpora-tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham: King Edward House, NewStreet, 2; telephone Midland 7191. Man- chester: 260 Deansgate, 3; telephoneBlackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow: 26B Renfleld 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., 1959. Permissionto reproduce illustrations and letterpress can be granted only under written agree-ment. Brief extracts or comments may be uiude with due acknowledgement. AIRCRAFT, SPACECRAFT, MISSILES Official Organ ol the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded 1909 The Fateful Days WHEN the Duke of Edinburgh congratulated us on our Golden Jubilee healluded to the remarkable growth of aviation and added, "I am convinced that Flight will have things just as remarkable to report in the next fifty years." We braced ourselves for the job of chronicling all the ventures and vicissitudes of times to come. It was not so much the extent of progress that caused us some concern, for that we recognized as limitless. It was the sheer relentless pace and the immensity of decisions that must make it all possible. How headlong the pace and how grave the decisions, events and utterances of even one week have shown. Our own industry has received the double impact of a formal recommendation that work should begin forthwith on two types of supersonic airliner, and of portentous declarations bearing on its future, made by some of its leaders at Southampton (pages 572-575). Official details have been released of a truly revolutionary aerial vehicle (page 562), and the R.A.F. has fired its first IRBM. America's contribution has been a controllable Earth satellite and an air show to outdo them all (except perhaps the approaching Paris Salon); and Russia has weighed in with more world records with her mighty Mi-6. Never, to us in Britain, has the press of events seemed so demanding; nor have our past and our future appeared to us so challenging. Daily we see more clearly that our place in aviation will be our place in the world. Worries and vexations will continue to beset us. But if heed is paid to the wisdom spoken at Southampton last week, and recorded in this issue, we shall not go under. Vive la France FRENCH aircraft constructors were once inclined to produce startling andingenious prototypes of which little more was subsequently heard; but two years or so ago the situation changed radically. An export drive was launched. The world began to take an interest in the unique and excellent aeroplanes France had to offer; production lines began to hum; next-generation prototypes emerged. Then came the country's series of economic crises, and it seemed that govern- ment orders would be cut drastically and the industry virtually extinguished. Yet —and as we showed by a summary of French orders in Flight for February 27— the situation was by no means as bad as it appeared. Now further reassurance is forthcoming from a 2,000-mile tour of France which a staff member has just made in our Gemini in order to study the situation at first hand and gather advance news of what may be displayed at Le Bourget in June. The tremendous concerted effort to produce and sell the Caravelle is reported on p. 586 and the first picture of the Dassault Mirage IV Mach 2 twin-jet attack- bomber appears overleaf. The new Sud 3200 and Alouette III helicopters were illustrated last week. First flights of the 3200, Super Broussard, Communaute and Mirage IV are imminent, and the astonishing Coleoptere will soon attempt translation. The Breguet 940, at a gross weight of 14,300 lb, has already reached 50ft, from rest, in zero wind, in 216 yd. A dozen civil and military types are in quantity production. Three French aircraft have flown at around Mach 2. Turbo- meca are establishing a commanding production lead with small gas turbines. Such are some of the highlights of the current revival. The industry may have been "rationalized," but there is plenty of intelligently directed effort and sound commercial sense; and French genius remains undimmed.
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