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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0465.PDF
FLIGHT, 8 April 1960 465 Straight and vel ACOLLEAGUE was recently givena movement order from theUSAF which ended with: — "TDN. (MDC 1328) 5703400 0801303P458 S664300 (T6-207) 0212,0390,0790 (4190504). Items 1,2, 5 (a), 6,7,12 and 16,reverse side apply. Authority: Item 18, reverse side and USAFE message MTPP130228, 1 Mar 60." He was later instructed to report "to the United States under Air Movement Designators MHZ-WRI-2PT-0356-AF and MHZ-WRI-2PT-0357-AF" with the customer identification code of "44 080 458.0 664300" according to message "SAFOI-3D 74526." His morale cannot have been im- proved by the fact that his British pass- port is identified only by the number 202699. But then we are a small country. • The complex of large and small air-fields around Paris is called Paris Airpon and the two main passenger terminalsare, of course, Orly and Le Bourget. But there are 12 "secondary" airfields—namely, Chavenay, Chelles, Coulom- miers, Guyancourt, Issy-les-Moli-neaux, Lognes, Mitry-Mory, Persan- Beaumont, Pontoise, Saint-Cyr, andToussus le Noble. Now these 12 airfields handled some27,420 aircraft, helicopter and glider movements during January 1960 alone.Toussus is about 15 miles from Orly and it has Buc, Saint-Cyr and Villa-coublay close by. Yet in summer it runs two concentric circuits onto two parallelrunways, one p.s.p. and the other grass, which are used by a continuous streamof aircraft, some radio-equipped but most not. The whole complex of trafficseems to rely quite effectively on "see and be seen." Imagine the brouhaha if the Paris Air-port authorities suddenly turned round and said that they could no longer inte-grate the Toussus and Saint-Cyr traffic with the airline movements from Orly,and then proceeded to "do a Croydon" [or a Blackbushe, or a Hendon, etc] onFrench aviation. • A recent issue of our Australiancontemporary Aircraft contained a somewhat sour comment on the mannerin which British Ministers and manu- facturers interpret the word "substan-tial." Noting that the adjective had been applied to the British order for Malkaraanti-tank missiles, it suggested that we are a country "where the aircraft indus-try is accustomed to regard an order for anything above 20 as being substantial." There is a germ of truth in this; andI have no doubt that by 1980 aeroplanes and missiles will be so desperately com-plicated and expensive that an order for a spare tyre will be "substantial." Nevertheless, the argument as pre-sented is a bit odd. Nobody would expect a country to say exactly how many missiles it is buying, but thingslike Malkara come by the thousand when they are bought in inventoryquantity. The thing that ought to worry the Australians is that for geographicalreasons they cannot expect to be prime suppliers of war material to anyone.Their industry has done remarkably well —particularly the Government aircraftfactories, who are exporting both Malkara and the excellent Jindiviktarget. It would indeed be a strange world if it was the usual custom forexporters to scorn the size of the pur- chases made by their customers, particu-larly when there is no justification for their doing so. • It is not every day that I read aBurmese newspaper, but a reader sends me a cutting: — "Commodore T. Clift, the new chair-man of UBA, said he had been com- pelled to take over the Board because ofits continued inefficiency, indiscipline and poor public relations. There was atime when some of the more expensive planes were almost sold because thepersonnel handling them were incom- petent and huge losses were incurred. "The time had come for UBA tocompete with foreign airlines. It had sufficient resources and CommodoreClift said he saw no reason why foreigners and nationals alike should beso frightened to use UBA. The Board's reputation had been so low that eveninsurance companies had raised their rates from the usual 2 per cent to asmuch as 8 to 10 per cent. He warned shirkers that they could resign now,while the resigning was good." And so the agonising self-appraisalwent on. Since that report (dated last year) the airline concerned has, Ibelieve, greatly improved itself. And the reason is probably that the short-comings were honestly and publicly acknowledged—like BOAC's. As my reader remarked: "Though Only air travel offers the thrilling adven- ture of constantly changing scenery, the exotic enchantment of glamorous views seen in comfort as your silent jetliner eats up the air-miles. Here is the glamorous view which faced a Flight colleague for some 28 hours as his noisy pistonliner nibbled slowly at the air-miles during a transatlantic trip recently. Left, Col Clair A. Peterson; right, Mr David M. Jackson; above, Thor No 60 for the RAF Straight and Level will never be asfunny as real life, when you think twice about it UBA is at least trying toorganize itself, like BOAC, which is more than you can say for some otherairlines." • Whenever my eyes alight upon thatsketch of the M-wing Mach 1-2 airliner project (page 461) I come over all pecu-liar, as Stanley Holloway would say. No matter how unimpeachable thetechnical integrity of its sponsors may be, no matter how convincing the aero-dynamic theory behind it, the practical end-product looks—in more senses thanone—cranky. Perhaps there is some- thing to be said for public relationsdepartments being responsible for draw- ings of supersonic airliners, which Igather is the case with some of those smooth-looking Mach 3 jobs the Ameri-cans are urging on a dismayed Govern- ment and even more dismayed airlines. But just imagine trying to sell thatM-wing thing to airlines. Steady: one of its sponsors is B. S. Shenstone ofBEA, one of the most respected airline engineers in the business. Perhaps theold "what looks right is right" doctrine doesn't apply any more, and some freshaerodynamic aesthetic values will have to be accepted. • People always say that the size ofthe USA makes executive aircraft so attractive a means of transport. Well,get this. The average distance covered per flight by American business aircraftis 200 miles—equivalent to the distance between Biggin Hill and Plymouth. • A man from the Ministry phoned Flight the other day, in search of refer- ences to certain articles we had pub- lished. "It's for the Minister," he confided, "there's a bit of a flap on." Subject of the flap? Manpowered flight. ROGER BACON
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