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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0025.PDF
IFLIGHT, 1 January 1960 Correspondence The Editor of "Flight" is not necessarily in agreement with the viewsexpressed by correspondents in these columns. Names and addresses of writers, not for publication in detail, must in all cases accompany letters. Before the Wrights WITH reference to a letter by Charles H. Gibbs-Smith inFlight for October 16, 1959, entitled " 'Before the Wrights' Once Again," I am in possession of one of the aeroplanes thatRichard Pearse built, and it has led me to seek out the history of Pearse and to find that he made some early short flights. A lotof evidence has been gathered from eye-witnesses of the actual flight, and many others who lived in the vicinity.I am investigating the whole story for the New Zealand division of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Information is still coming in,but we are not yet ready to put down on paper the full facts of the case. It does look, however, as if we will be able to pin the firstflights down to early 1903. I may say that I have the two engines mentioned in Mr. Gibbs-Smith's letter. They are very unusualengines, and home built. Richard Pearse did not take out patents until sometime after-wards. The patent on controls is No. 21476 of July 19, 1906, covering Australia and New Zealand. Throughout the investiga-tions, odd reporters on various papers have been putting down any scraps of information they can get, and it is obviously thesethat Mr. Gibbs-Smith has got hold of. Some of them are some- what distorted.A little later, when our investigations are more complete, we will be pleased to let you have the whole story. Auckland, NZ G. B. BOLT, FRAes, Chief Engineer, Tasman Empire Airways Ltd.fOn hearing of the above letter, Mr. Gibbs-Smith comments that he is delighted to learn that Mr. Bolt is investigating the matter so carefully,and eagerly awaits the promised full account. He adds, "I do hope, how- ever, that he will be extremely cautious about the thorny subject of eye-witnesses, who, even with the best intentions, can be so very unreliable after the passage of 50 years."—Ed.] Integration or Disintegration? THE story of Civil Servants on holiday who could pick appleswith incredible speed but could not sort them, because it involved making decisions, is so well known that one wonderswhether the declared policy of the new Minister of Aviation, requiring integration in the aircraft industry, is his own idea orwhether he was advised to it by those who saw a means thereby of reducing the number of decisions they might have to make inthe future. In the good old days of tree enterprise (and the devil take thehindmost) a shipbuilder who was most likely to build a good battleship or a good engine to go in it was given the job, and thefirms who were not considered capable could starve for all their Lordships cared. In fact, in those hard and reasonably efficientdays their Lordships probably relished the thought of an in- efficient firm's starvation as an encouragement to the others. Itwas the way they had, half a century ago. of forcing industrial integration if integration should be thought desirable. The Government, having recently integrated ministries andbits of ministries under one Minister of Aviation, may have a smug feeling of having set a good example. The Minister con-cerned, therefore, may feei that he can reasonably demand the same sort of disturbance from an industry which is largelyemployed by him and which, by its very diversity, is difficult to deal with. There are firms which are brilliant at designs but lackability in production; firms who are brilliant all round, but haye no money—only an overdraft to prove they are great; firms inorganizations so big that their overheads are astronomic, thus making small enterprises uneconomic; firms in organizations sotenuous that one never knows if they are one group of friends or two opposing enemy camps. There are many other permutationsand combinations of ability, stability, sterility, amity and enmity. Thus the problem of awarding contracts is a difficult one, and youcan understand a Ministerial longing for a situation where it will no longer be necessary to choose between half a dozen firms, andwhere the selection need only be made between two. Why use those complicated six-sided dice when any penny will do? With decisions made so easy it would, of course, be possible toreduce the size of the Ministry itself. But this may not be in the Ministerial mind. If human beings were just like the ordinary ingredients of apudding—without temperament, without initiative, without any- thing that makes for genius—then the more you throw themtogether the bigger and more homogeneous the mixture; and maybe the better the mixture. It is just a misfortune, perhaps,that human beings of creative genius have all the attributes of those uranium particles which go to make an atomic bomb. If you 25 collect enough of them together you reach a critical size at whicha chain reaction takes place; there is a noise of disintegration and some of the best particles are blown clean across the Atlantic.And another thing—there is nothing like a few little firms in existence for acting like a dose of salts on the big ones. TheMinistry need not fear them, because they don't act that way on Ministers. All the little firms do for a Minister, strangely, is hisown work for him! They are his best inspectors; better than any advisers he may choose for himself and far more reliable than anyideas he may have of his own without taking advice. The little firms struggle along in a very unauriferous jungle, they do littlejobs which big firms can't do, they tidy up the ends of big contracts, they are a constant threat to any lazy firm, however big;they have bright ideas and develop them energetically at their own expense; above all, they are the training ground for young scien-tists and junior executives—and, sometimes, even for successful chairmen. The nearly civilized world we live in is made up of combina-tions of striving interests. Big interests exert themselves to make it difficult for smaller ones to invade their field of operation. Smallinterests get on with little jobs with half an eye on bigger jobs. There is a steady graduation of personnel through the variouscombinations, up, down and sideways, which is very beneficial to the whole industry. If there are, in fact, too many diverse interests a leaf can betaken out of their Lordships' simple code of fifty years ago and the situation will right itself very quickly. This policy will involve the Minister in making a few contro-versial decisions in the next year or two. That is what Ministers are paid for, and the present Minister did not appear to be inhibitedin such activity in his last job. London W.I EVOLVE Boeing 707 Take-offs T^HE attempt by your contributor John Stroud (Flight,-*- December 4, pages 676-677) to whitewash the Boeing 707's airfield performance left me with the feeling that he must be a verybrave man to have flown in an aeroplane operated to such marginal safety standards. A few comments on the two charts provided would not beamiss. Firstly, the 707-120(138) in which he flew seems to have suffered an immense reduction in capacity payload from thebrochure 43,000 lb to 30,400 lb. Secondly, the planned fuel remaining on half the stages flown was only sufficient for twoovershoots (December 4, page 665). Thirdly, taking each stage in turn: — London - Frankfurt.—As the maximum take-off weight is limited bythe landing weight it would not be practical to carry the maximum payload without reducing the fuel load, and hence the safety margin,by about 2,000 lb, or wasting fuel by burning-off the excess. Frankfurt - Rome.—The same applies here; either the fuel must becut by some 5,000 lb or wasted by burning off in order to use the maximum payload. Rome - Cairo.—What does the column "Runway length required"mean? I presume either (a) actual distance to lift off or (b) accelerate/ stop distance. Whichever is meant, a margin of 350ft is too close formy liking, and one must remember that this was on a pretty cold day for Rome. As 207,000 lb is the maximum allowed t.o.w. at Romeobviously only one thing can suffer when the temperature goes up— payload, if safety is to be maintained. Cairo - Karachi.—Only 730ft of runway remaining on a cold day forCairo, and even then only 400 lb more payload could have been carried. Karachi - Calcutta.—Runway length available 7,530ft. Runwaylength required, not available, for t.o.w. of 213,000 lb at 30 deg C. Referring to the second table (i.e., Honolulu - San Francisco), t.o.w.210,360 lb at 29 deg C—runway length required 7,745ft, therefore the take-off at Karachi could hardly have been less. The maximum per-missible t.o.w. of 218,000 lb is obvious bosh, and the take-off in question must have included some of the overshoot area. Calcutta - Bangkok.—A 25ft margin here from which, according tothe table, another 19,000 lb can be uplifted, and 22 deg C is a cold day for Calcutta. Bangkok - Singapore.—Operation appears safe in this instance. Singapore - Darwin.—A very marginal take-off, as only another100 1b could be uplifted. Darwin - Brisbane.—A rather marginal take-off, but conditions wereextreme; on slightly cooler days safe operation is possible with maximum payload. Brisbane - Sydney.—All right for this short stage on a cool day, butsurely the maximum permissible t.o.w. ought to be restricted by landing weight as at London and Frankfurt. Sydney - Nadi.—Another marginal take-off, because on a cool dayonly 300 1b more payload could have been carried. Nadi - Honolulu.—If the temperature gradient along the runway hadvaried by 1 deg C the aircraft would have been a write-off, if 10,500ft is the actual lift off distance, and this with only about half maximumpayload. Honolulu - San Francisco.—Operation appears to be safe. San Francisco - New York.—Full payload could only be carried at the temperature stated, 8 deg C or lower. New York - London.—Full payload could not be carried even on the cold day in question. [Continued overleaf
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