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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0253.PDF
FLIGHT, 19 February 1960 253 S t rai ghl and vel THE song below is the second thatthis column has had the pleasure—ladies and gentlemen—of intro- ducing. (The earlier one was a waltz dedicated to Colonel Cody.) The AIR BALLOON. A NEW SONG, L Mr.St.CROix'sAfcenfionatS^lifbury,, Aoouti 10, 178s. 4 " BY iAitti let them travel, a* many as j>ir*fe • L " And by fea, ttwfe ^ho lite tfci* hard fere, *' In tny Airy Ballot;!, whik 1 ftt at «jy e*Ie, " Aftd gUie ai my will through the Air. *• Round this globe. at the furtfeeft. h all they can go, " IfUiey travc* nigbt, mor«ii»g andooou, " Such cxcurftons as th«fe arc but mere bagatelles, " Compard.wkh a trip to the M^OR. *e Haw picsfatrt in Charirtt Aerial to gaj, " Ana vi lit my fri«i*cU in the iUrx;(( TafccabrcftkfaawuhMerc'ry, & 4tsa, if! picafc, rf 11 With Jupiter, Sal urn, or Mars, , 4t But (botiid I fatigued and weartfome prove, *: WbJic from planet v* J>'afwt Tm dodging, " WhTi Venas I'm welcome to tarry aU night; " Where, CHJ earth, un you Bad focb a lodging7"; ThnscHaantcfi ST.CROIX « heTOoun(.edh«Car, And fat Kim undaunted witfaiii it j Majrftic he n»fe, Hke a g.td in the air^ And fjtere'd through the citmtl. in a minute I But this one is really something extra-special. It is, in fact, of great rarity, if not unique—unknown even to the RoyalAeronautical Society, repository of the world-famous Hodgson-Cuthbert Col-lection of aeronautical ephemera. So we can take it that this is the first timeit has been printed since 1786. In that year of grace it must have been littleknown, having been published in Salis- bury; and even the assiduous Mr. Cuth-bert, who began his aeronautical collec- tion in 1820, failed to secure a copy. But what really delights me is that itis a new-found contribution not merely to the literature of ballooning, but tothat of space travel. The imagery of that last verse but one reminds me that ashade more romance in our present out- look spacewards might become us. • "Sometimes I think that the onlything we have in common with the Americans is the language," a top Britishurline man told a colleague the other lay," and even that is hardly common, This is the mood in which at leastsome delegates from both sides will go o Barbados next week to take a freshook at the 14-year-old UK/US civil iviation treaty—thelo-called BermudaAgreement. AH sorts of conflicts have insen over this thing in recent years;urcraft range and air traffic have developed to a degree that couldn't havebeen foreseen by the original drafters (among whom, incidentally, were PeterMasefield and Sir William Hildred). I suppose there will be the usualhorse-trading, so wearisome to those who yearn for less politics and morefree trade in air transport. "OK, we gave BO AC San Francisco - Tokyo," Youcan imagine a US delegate saying, "Now you give Northwest Hong Kong." Or,from a UK delegate: "If we give Pan- Am New York - Jamaica, can BWIAhave Jamaica - Chicago?" And so on. Restrictions always lead to counter-restrictions. So why not let's try and see whether liberality leads to counter-liberality, if that's the right expression? Let's strike a gentle, exploratory blowfor more freedom of the air at Barbados. It's time that our thinking advancedfrom the present protectionist attitude of "less for some" to a more progressivepolicy of "more for all." And what the British and the Americans do in airtransport others tend to follow. I hope, incidentally, that when theBarbados meeting is over the decisions made will not be kept secret. If this hap-pens, and we are fobbed off with a state- ment about "a full and frank exchangeof views," I shall chain myself to the railings in Berkeley Square or write aletter to The Times, or both. • We've often been told that this is theage of the specialist, be he goofle-switch panel hinge-pin designer, crossword-puzzle square-shader, or historian specializing in the first half-hour of theIndustrial Revolution. Well, it ain't necessarily so. Take Hilliard W. Paige, for example.He belongs to General Electric's Missile and Space Vehicle Department and wasrecently named "Engineer of the Year" for the Philadelphia area. He has takena leading part in the development of the GEC operational nosecone and of an RFunderwater-sound system for locating mines and submarines; preliminary de-sign of a submarine thermal reactor for nuclear propulsion; development andproduction of the J47 and J73 turbojets; perfecting techniques and equipmentfor determining the allowable heat- transfer rate of a nuclear reactor fuelelement; development of a sonic aerial torpedo; design of a computer for cal-culating the orbit of a satellite and for computing specific points on the orbitwhere thrust may be applied to circu- larize the orbit; and—wait for it, men—the design of on automatic pinspotter for use in bowling lanes. Nosecones, turbojets, nuclear re-actors, torpedoes, satellite orbits and bowling alleys—what makes you thinkthe rest of us lead narrow lives? • If Flight asks two companies pro-ducing similar equipment to comment on their work, the chances are that oneof them will sit down with us and talk. The other will send an old sales bro-chure. From this one can draw two dis- tinct conclusions. Either the informative company isputting on an act to impress you with its knowhow, while the other really knowsits stuff but isn't letting on. Or the first company really does knowthe answers and is confident enough to talk about them, while the other com-pany just doesn't know the answers. If you can grasp this reasoning, take yourpick of the interpretations. If you can't, forget it, because it's really myproblem, not yours. • I give Sud Aviation as many marksfor their advertising as I do for their air- liner. Their latest—a full page in LesAiles — shows two crew-cut French youngsters poring over a magazine,one wearing an expression of alarm and dismay, the other of utter disgust.The crew-cuts bristle with indignation. Inscription: "Oh! Us ont copieCaravelle . . ." ROGER BACON Scene: Eagle's offices at Blackbushe. The hole was made one dark night by an elderly Austin that took sudden leave of the A30, jumped a ditch, and finished up right inside the office of Eagle's aircraft sales manager Michael Cullen. P.S.—No one was hurt.
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