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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0551.PDF
NO 2667 VOLUME 77 FRIDAY 22 APRIL 1960 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H . F. KING MBE Technical Editor W. T. GUNSTON Production Editor ROY CASEY IN THIS ISSUE From All Quarters 552 Cranfield's Flight- Test Symposium 554 Missiles and Space-flight 555 Flight System Survey 557 Mirage 558 Tyne 563 Sea Legs Over Britain 568 Straight and Level 569 Correspondence 57O Sport and Business 571 RAF on the Rock 572 Air Transport as a "System" 573 The Industry 574 Air Commerce 575 Service Aviation 580 Hill* & Son* Ltd, Dorset House, Stam-ford Street, London SE1; telephone Waterloo 3333. Telegrams FllghtpregSedist London. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5. Canadaand USA $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at New York, NY. Branch Office* Coventry: 8-10 Corpora-tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham: King Edward House, NewStreet, 2; telephone Midland 7191. Man- chester: 260 Deansgate, 3; telephoneBlackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow: 26B Rcnfleld Street, C2;telephone Central 1265. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner <fe Co(Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Iliffe & Sons Ltd, 1960. Permissionto reproduce illustrations and letterpress can be granted only under written agree-ment. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. AIRCRAFT, SPACECRAFT, MISSILES Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded 1909 Convictions and Courage IT has become evident that the planning of future weapons is no task for the I chicken-hearted. The wrong choice can imperil national safety for years, to say nothing of wasting a fair proportion of the budget. Critical decisions should be made by very clever people indeed; but unfortunately, nobody is clever enough. It is beyond the power of any human being to predict how the military picture will change over the coming 12 months, let alone the next five years. It follows that, when the lead-time is of the order of ten years, whoever has to order or reject can only take an immense gamble. At one time the Avro 730 seemed the logical successor to the V-bombers; but it was cancelled "having regard to the ... likely progress of ballistic rockets. . . ." At one time the Arrow seemed the logical successor to the CF-100; but it was cancelled because "by the middle 1960s the missile seems likely to be the major threat." Once the B-70 seemed the logical successor to the B-52; but it was "reoriented to a prototype aircraft program" after the 1961 vote for it had been cut. At one time Blue Streak appeared the best delivery vehicle for our deterrent; but we are now taking an agonizing second look "in view of the immense technological changes taking place." No nation has a monopoly in making mistakes. Some view the broad spectrum of American weapons with envy; but such results are gained only by a brute-force attack from all points of the compass. That technological strength is no guarantee of success is understood by the RCAF, who chose the Bomarc in place of the Arrow. Now this missile's repeated failure has clouded its own future. We in Britain would do well to remember all this. The temptation to discard our own efforts in favour of a brochure from abroad can be dangerously tantalizing. Primer for PlannersT HE most misunderstood and misapplied expression in the morass of aero- nautical terminology is "weapon system." Its impact on a lay audience is always a potent one, and can be vastly increased by the addition of "concept," which has a mystic symbolism of its own; and one has heard senior air marshals— without having the remotest notion of what they are talking about—discoursing upon and around the weapon system theme to an utterly subdued assembly. Nevertheless, as a contributor, J. E. D. Williams, remarks on page 573, the doctrine has opened the way to advanced technological solutions to operational problems. "One no longer decides," he says, "to build a faster bomber; design an aircraft in isolation from the rest of 'the system'; fasten on whatever seem to be the most suitable engines, armament, navigation and communications equipment independently designed by other people for unspecified vehicles; fill any remaining space with bombs; and finally hand over the result to military operators for any odd job they see fit. Nowadays airframes, engines, navigation (sometimes called guidance) and weapons are designed as components of a weapon system." The interest of these observations, however, is not merely intrinsic. It is to be found more in their context; for our contributor's main concern is not armaments but air transport. To contemplate a design for air transport as a system in itself, he shrewdly observes, is meaningless, because a system must have a designed function. Even so, the aircraft and their environment (airports, air traffic control, ground operations, etc) do form a system, and in his contribution this week Mr Williams pleads for new thinking in this connection. Next week he will consider the require- ment for a navigation/ATC/communications system in some detail. Having digested these two contributions, we believe, our transport planners will have one distinct advantage over the air marshals we mentioned earlier. At least they will know what they are talking about.
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