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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0539.PDF
FLIGHT, 15 April 1960 539 Straight and Level you remember the old statistic that more people are kicked to death by donkeys in America than are killed in airline accidents? Well, American donkeys have not yet reached the peak of their savagery. At a recent press conference an aide of Gen J. D. Caldara, the USAF safety expert, chipped in with the remark that twice as many people are now kicked to death by donkeys in America as are killed by the airlines. Not just mare people, twice as many people. By my reckoning, therefore, no fewerthan 514 Americans were kicked to death by donkeys during 1959. How manyothers, I wonder, have met the man who keeps the donkey-kick fatality statistics? Dressing-gown diplomacy: from left to right, Duncan Sandys, Minister of Aviation; William Woods, chairman of one of the London Airport residents' associations; John Connell, founder of the Noise Abatement Society. See story below • Sixty London Airport residents, protesting against the decision to allow night jet flights, roused the Minister, Duncan Sandys, from his bed at 7 a.m. (or perhaps they really intended it to be 7.07). They probably hoped he would be absolutely livid—as livid as they are when jets crackle thunderously over their chimney pots in the small hours. But they were disappointed. "Good morning everybody," he said pleasantly as he appeared on his door- step clad in silk dressing gown, pyjamas and slippers. He waved-off a trio of hopeful-looking policemen, chatted for 20 minutes or so (politely declining the offer of one demonstrator to play a record of a jet taking off) and concluded with a cheery wave: "Goodbye, andthank you for coming." The noise protesters quietly dis-persed, having made their point but not quite sure whether they had won it. One noise sufferer has suggested thatLord Douglas, chairman of BEA, should be the next to be roused. ThenSir Gerard d'Erlanger of BOAC—and why not all the UK managers of thedozen foreign airlines who operate, or intend to operate, night jet services outof London? It looks as though a new era of dressing-gown diplomacy hasbeen ushered in. • The attention of Cunard's pub- licity manager has been drawn to a misquotation of his chairman, Sir John Brocklebank, in this column on April 1. I reported Sir John as follows: — "We have always maintained that if any-one carried a single person across the Atlantic it ought to be us, not BOAC." What Sir John actually said, the publicity manager assures me, was: — "We have always maintained that if any-one carried a single person across the Atlantic it ought to be us, unless it wereBOAC." My italics, and my apologies. • Agency message from New York: "Audiences will be sprayed with tulip perfume in a musical show to be staged by KLM The Royal Dutch Airlines in the 74 countries it serves to introduce its new DC-8 pure jet service. . . . Corinne Rottschafter, of Amsterdam, the reigning 'Miss World,' will be the star of the show during a tour of the United States and Canada which has opened here. It includes dramatic, comedy, and singing performances, and films." They'll be taking people for aeroplane rides next. • A few weeks ago Boeing put out a story about a nuclear engine they had invented. In principle it works like this: the reactor is mounted in a ship (surface or submerged) and fed with water under ram pressure, and the resulting water and steam provide a propulsive jet. Such a unit is virtually a hydraulic ramjet, but L. J. McMurtrey, who thought it up, says you can also insert a rotating assembly of compressor and turbine to turn it into a water turbojet. Submarine speeds of 100 m.p.h. are said now to be possible, and the whole idea has been taken to an advanced stage and made the subject of a patent application. Two things stem from this. The first is that Boeing, the world's biggest pro- ducer of aeroplanes (in terms of weight or cost), are diversifying harder than ever. The second is that this is the first end-product to come out of the "think tanks" of the company's Advanced Design section at Wichita. I publisheda picture of one of these cells on January 1; they consist of four walls,each about 6ft long, enclosing a desk, chair, scribbling pad and sharpenedpencil. I have often wondered what sort of things would come out of thesethought-inducers; now I know that a man-powered spacecraft is just a matterof time. • A colleague was talking the otherweekend to a distinguished British test pilot. They got on to the subject of theairmanship of airline pilots, and I quote the test pilot's remarks as worth dis-agreeing with: — "When I was demobbed from theRAF I came into the industry with the feeling that the airline pilot was muchsuperior to the Service pilot. This belief was first shaken somewhat whenI saw emerging from a foreign airliner at London, his four rings gleamingsplendidly, a pilot I had to transfer from my squadron to Army gliders. Myexperience since has convinced me that, generally speaking, the Service pilot isa better airman." I suppose one retort to this is thatmost airline pilots are ex-Service any- way. And I have always been tremend-ously impressed—no flannel—with the meticulous airmanship of British civilaircrew. But there it is: you have my word for it that the test pilot concernedis greatly respected by all the piloting fraternity. It is his considered opinionthat Service pilots are better than air- line pilots. • The fascination of small-arms isworld-wide, but in America the cult of the hand-gun and rifle is a religion,especially among Servicemen. Thus, at one of the big gunnery meets the victorwins the title of "Top Gun." Vulcan, the astounding six-barrelled aircraftcannon, which fires between 4,000 and 6,000 rounds of 20mm ammunition aminute, has been called "six-shooter of the jet age." And the B-52 was describedon its first appearance as "the long rifle of the air age." It was of a B-52 operation that a Timereporter wrote recently: "Pilot Bulli finished his part of the check list, madesure that bis 401b of printed manuals were in place, stowed his .357-calSmith & Wesson Magnum near his seat. Finally, he put a sign in the windshield.It read 'COCKED'." The B-52's warload, I find, was aMagnum too—a "multi-megaton bomb . . . equal in force to ten Atlas ICBMs,or to the sum of all the bombs dropped on Europe by all the Allied planes inWorld War II." This B-52 is one long rifle that hadbetter not go off at half-cock. ROGER BACON
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