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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0366.PDF
366 FLIGHT, 18 March I960 Straight and Level ANEW product is announced byThinx Electronics Ltd—who,you may recall, make the British Air Trumpet, the Hypocrisy Expunger ("Hippo"), the Meeting Simulator, the Reading Simulator, etc. The new equipment is called SRS, Secrecy Revealer System. Sir Harold Digit-Smith, brilliant chainsmoking boss of Thinx, outlined the purpose of SRS to me over lunch last week at the Air Power Club. "Frankly, old boy," he said, cram- ming his menu into the miniaturized reading simulator he always carries about with him, "I think a lot of people are a bit chokker with the secrecy neurosis that afflicts British aviation. Even when our 'Hippo' has expunged hypocrisy from a matter of public interest, we are still confronted by a conspiracy of silence on essential facts." * * * He lit two cigarettes. "This is where SRS comes in. The available informa- tion, after optional processing by Hippo —yes, it's useful to have Hippo, old boy, the 1960 model—the available informa- tion is coded and put on to magnetic tape. Then SRS is programmed. This is quite simple, merely involving pre- selection of sub-routines held in a six- million-binary-digit cryogenic store. A whole range is available, each clearly placarded—well, anyway, take a look for yourself." He handed me the SRS brochure, explaining as he lit two more cigarettes that it was a "technical specification" rather than a brochure—brochure was a "stink word." The list of "sub-routines" was fas- cinating. Examples : Price obtained by BOAC for used Constellation, Strato- cruiser and Argonaut aircraft... Minis- try levies on Viscount sales . . . UK in- dependent airline traffic and financial statistics . . . Financing arrangements for Olympic Airways' Comet 4Bs . . . Details of BOAC and BEA pool agree- ments with foreign operators . . . Un- published Ministry accident reports ... British aircraft prices and delivery dates, and so on. f I was most impressed, and I asked Sir Harold about price and delivery date. "Well," he said, tearing open a new packet of twenty, "it's not our policy to publish that information, old boy—you know that, surely—but I can tell you that price and delivery are, let's say, highly competitive. But don't quote me, there's a good chap. It's all a bit delicate at the moment—not that we've anything to hide, of course." • Now that the Government has agreed to aid the financing of new civil aircraft, it's obviously a case of PAY NOW, FLY LATER. • Probably, by the time you read this, IATA will have agreed on a discount- fare level for propeller airliners on the North Atlantic. So, after three years of wearisome and often quite immoral argument, the jet v. propeller fare differential, unless something unexpec- ted happens, is to be applied in the way it always should have been applied, as a propeller-discount. Looking back through these pages I find that it was in May 1957 that the adoption of the fare differential was first urged. I have never retreated from the view that a differential would check the high capital and depreciation costs of speed competition, direct the atten- tion of airlines and aircraft designers to the cheapest rather than the fastest, develop the mass travel market, fill the aircraft factories without subsidy, etc, etc, bore, bore. * * * No one has ever disagreed with all this—they just shrug, like people do when nuclear disarmament is discussed, and say "We agree, but . . ." And they say, sometimes, that a turbofan is the cheapest form of long-range propulsion. I have sometimes wondered whether I should no longer beweep my outcast state, or trouble deaf airlines with my bootless cries. Then suddenly, I read What is this GI'doing hanging around on this underground platform? Did he lose the last train back to base? Is he waiting for the girl he dated at the Palais? Or is he the last and linger- ing ghost of Rainbow Corner? No •— he's just giving scale to a section of an 850ft subterranean cause- way at Vandenberg Air Force Base—part of a scheme to shelter missiles and opera- tions and so forth from nuclear attack the following on the leading editorial page of The Observer: — ". . . In the longer run the need is todesign new aircraft specifically for low- cost operation. For technical reasons theywould probably have to be relatively slow, and any development of them would needan IATA agreement to charge less for slower travel. . . . This would encouragethe manufacturers to design new and really economical aeroplanes." What with the Daily Express giving front-page splash headline treatment to a London - Paris Vanguard flight, and now The Observer giving leading editorial attention to the theory of the fare differential . . . ". . . my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate." Heaven's gate? Let's not oversell this thing. • If an engineer makes a mistake, the consequences are apt to be disastrous, particularly in aviation. If a business- man errs, he may lose a contract or something. But, generally speaking, his mistakes don't kill people. The engineer's mistakes, he knows full well, are likely to be sensationally revealed in a mass of wreckage. He can rarely get away with a boob. But the businessman often can. His mistakes may reduce his firm's profits—but if it's still a profit, why worry? He can always blame this, that or the other economic circumstance. But the engineer can't: his mistake is described publicly in unimpeachable technical detail, and he carries the can for it, usually losing his job or his reputation. Progress always involves some degree of risk. But the businessman will take many, many more risks than the engineer. As a result he is more prone than the engineer to complacency— something rarely found in engineering. • When I printed the picture of Marty Wilde (March 4) I must confess I sus- pected that the copy of Flight in which he was immersed was a casual acquisi- tion at a Manchester Airport bookstall. But I find that his interest is far from casual, for when in the BBC's "Desert Island Discs" recently Roy Plomley asked him which book he would choose for companionship in his solitude, he replied without any indecision Jane's All the World's Aircraft. • Since restrictions on $ imports were eased nine months ago, 45 American light aircraft have appeared on the British register—an average of five a month. Nice business. • "I have absolutely nothing against that aeroplane, except prejudice." ROGER BACON >•
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