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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 2338.PDF
No. 2636 VOLUME 76 FMtlDAY 18 SEPTEjM.BER 1 9 5|9 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. 8MITH D.F.C. Editor M . F. KING M.B.E. Technical Editor W. T. GU N8TON Production Editor ROY CA8EY IN THIS ISSUE From All Quarters 24O Air Commerce 242 Farnborough Week 244 Round the Stands 251 Straight and Level 269 Missiles and Space-flight 27O Flight-Planning: Made Easy 273 All Done by Wires 275 Royal Air Force Germany 277 For Training: and Touring: 279 Correspondence 281 Service Aviation 282 Iliffa & Sent 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 Eenfleld Street, C.2;telephone Central 1265. New York, N.Y.: ^Thomas Skinner & Co.(Publishers) Ltd., Ill Broadway, 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Iliffe A 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 Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded 1909 The Glamour and the Gold WHEN the traditional grouse has been dealt with at the annual S.B.A.C.Dinner (800 head or so this year), and when the cigars are nicely aglow, then silence is prayed for the President. He is heeded well, for he speaks of matters of high importance; and out of consideration for his guests—from well over a hundred nations this year—he speaks in plain terms. Generally he alludes to some particular topic of national significance. Thus, last week Sir Aubrey Burke was much concerned with airline fares and aircraft production. He said: "We are all in favour of lower airline fares because we know the surest way of getting them is by employing up-to-date methods and modern equipment. All we ask is that in this buyers' market the manufacturer is allowed to make a modest profit; otherwise he cannot afford to continue his development and prob- ably cannot even stay in business. Manufacturers cannot survive on a diet of too much glamour and too little gold." There is no particular glamour in the words themselves; but they should be printed in letters of gold because they express a very special wisdom—the wisdom of a man who answers for his industry as he answers for his own company. The highest technical expression of that company's wisdom will be seen some two years hence in the Airco D.H.121; and the measure of advance, even over the Comet, is that this aeroplane will carry twice the payload, 130 m.p.h. faster, using about 35 per cent less fuel—and with the same maximum weight and approxi- mately the same range. It is being powered with turbojets (of a very special Rolls-Royce by-pass kind) to enable it to earn not so much the glamour as the gold. This it will accomplish, as Sir Aubrey intimated, by permitting lower fares. . . . and Caviare and Elbow-Room The wisdom of Sir Aubrey, as we remarked, is of a special sort, won from hard technical and commercial experience. But there are other kinds of sagacity that deserve attention (and in this particular instance, command it). That which we have in mind is the wisdom of Lord Brabazon of Tara, who, as guest of honour, spoke following Sir Aubrey at the S.B.A.C. Dinner. On the same twin topics of glamour and gold the incomparable "Brab" holds decided views, which he propounded at the dinner in Brabazonian character. "Cut out the caviare and smoked salmon, and give me elbow-room to blow my nose," he demanded; and there could have been few dissentients from this opinion among the company of diners. But it was not questions of alimentation and hygiene that were really exercising Lord Brabazon. He denned his sort of aeroplane in unequivocal negatives: "What I don't want is a machine which needs over 2,000 yards of runway; I don't want a machine that lands at 160 knots; I don't want a machine that costs over a million pounds; and I don't want one that requires acres and acres of spacious buildings and workshops to maintain it." There were present at the dinner certain men of honesty and talent who evidently considered that this specification in reverse could hardly be met (or at least they deemed Lord Brabazon to be speaking in his more quixotic vein). But there were others who believed that the sort of aircraft he envisaged will come. Certainly there is far more in all this than the dogmatic and sterile turbojet v. turboprop controversy—one which has been rendered so by the by-pass turbojet. And just as the by-pass engine is a compromise, so may compromise prevail in respect of airframes. That same compromise might well be one significant means of reconciling the glamour and the gold.
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