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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 1562.PDF
No. 2628 VOLUME 75 FRIDAY B JUNK 1980 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH D.F.C. Editor H. F. KING M.B.E. Technical Editor w. T;. GU NSTON Production Editor ROY CASEY I N THIS ISSUE Aerodynamics at Teddington 764 America's Defence Debates 765 Shoreham's Big Day 766 Falcon Echo 769 An American in Fantasyland The Far East Air Force 770 772 The Indian Air Force 773 Thunderbirds at Manorbier 776 A Window in Moscow 78O Aeroflot, May 1959 782 Iliffe & Sons Ltd., Dorset House, Stam-ford Street, London, S.E.I; telephone Waterloo 3333. Telegrams FlightpresSedist London. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s, Overseas £f>. Canadaand U.S.A. $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at New York. >S.Y. Branch Offices Coventry: 8-10 Corpora-tion Street; telephone Coventry 2,"i21(t. Birmingham: King Edward House, JSewStreet, 2; telephone Midland 71)11. Man- chester : 260 Deansgate, 3; telephoneElackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 359,".. 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 <fc 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. AIRCRAFT, SPACECRAFT, MISSILES - t Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded 1909 A Tale of Two Cities THE London-Paris race sponsored by the Daily Mail is surely the most stirringevent of its kind since that great Frenchman Jules Verne sent that great Englishman Phileas Fogg strutting and scheming round the world in you know what. (And it took a great American, the late Mike Todd, to think up the balloon sequence. Verne never did.) The Daily Mail race is exciting in more than the sensory definition, for it promises to stimulate inter-city travel both in precept and practice, just as the MacRobertson Race of 1934 stimulated air transport in the global sense. Never since that memorable contest has there been quite such a quickening of beat in aviation circles, such a healthy rash of schemes and notions, or such an animated buzzing at the bar. The game's afoot, and the midsummer days will be seeing some matchless deeds attempted, dared and done. The question of how to win is one of reconciling technical feasibility with practical possibility. The Fairey Rotodyne is one of the first means of locomotion to suggest itself, for it was conceived for just such a task; and we shall be surprised if Fairey do not manage to take the existing prototype across the Channel at something rather better than 200 m.p.h. Utilizing a relay of road vehicles, helicopters and subsonic jet aircraft the elapsed time could evidently be got down to a shade over the hour. This figure might be substantially reduced by at least two entirely workable, if difficult to arrange (and perhaps rather less comfortable), schemes. But until we hear these schemes proposed in the coming weeks as we probably shall—we shall exercise the age-old editorial prerogative of saying nothing A Case for Cribbing A NEW abbreviation that will increasingly be creeping into the airline voca-bulary is i.f.c. In this case, fortunately, the initials sound sweeter than the tongue-twisting "inter-firm-comparison." This technique for method-improve- ment and cost-cutting is, of course, as old as industry itself: usually reliable sources have reported that our Lower Pleistocene ancestors employed it in improving the design of flint knives. What is new is the idea of developing a system for obtaining, processing and circulating data on an industrial basis. Underlying this development is the realization that everybody stands to gain from a widespread dissemination of experience. The main requirement here is a recording system that will produce compara- tive data. In the airline business the interchange of technical information is such that a recognizable language has evolved. But in the financial field no uniform system of airline accounting has yet been adopted. Hardly a single operator can be aware of the frustrations faced when trying to compare accounts. Yet this situation will continue as long as each company insists upon retaining its own form of presentation. The International Civil Aviation Organization has already suggested a standard layout for the three main accounts—the operating account, the profit- and-loss account and the balance sheet. It would set the industry a fine example if those who are at this moment drawing up the annual reports for B.E.A. and B.O.A.C. were to think seriously about reshaping the corporations' accounts into a form that others would be glad to imitate.
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