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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 1325.PDF
FLIGHT, 12 August 1960 231 Straight and Level LAST Friday Lt J. B. Barnes, USN,took off from Capodichino,Naples, in his F8U Crusader. As soon as he was airborne he realized that the wings were still folded. There were, I suppose, three possible courses of action: (1) try to spread the wings; (2) try to get the thing back on the ground with wings folded; (3) eject —this being R. Bacon's selection. Lt Barnes decided on (2) and success- fully landed the F8U back at base. The US Navy believe that this is the first time such a thing has been done, sug- gesting that the absent-minded Lt Barnes will get a pat on the back as well as a disciplinary raspberry. Of all the comments on this I par- ticularly liked the one attributed to John Cunningham, as solicited by an enter- prising reporter on The Daily Tele- graph. DH's director and chief test pilot said he thought it was "indeed a remarkable performance," adding with a chuckle: "I should say that this was something which perhaps only an American could do. You can take that which way you like." • • Channel Air Bridge missed an opportunity to cap their rivals Silver City in the correspondence columns of The Times (see this page last week). Under the heading "Tunnel Or Bridge?" they should have written to the editor: "Sir—There already is a bridge. Yours faithfully." • What is the value of goodwill?BOAC's 1959-60 report, noting that the BOAC Associated Companies' share ofMalayan Airways' profit was £5,151, says: "In both years the item of Good-will which in fact represents the value of the aircraft was written down in suchamounts as, on that scale, would extin- guish the item in 5 years." Query No 1: How can fleet value beequated with Goodwill (capital G or not)? Query No 2: Is it really Malayan Air-ways' intention to extinguish the item Goodwill over the next five years? I am assured that the answer to thesequestions is quite simple. When BOAC, Qantas and the Malayan, Singapore andBorneo governments took over the air- line, the fleet value had been depreciatedto zero. But obviously the fleet still had a market price, and Malayan Airwaysweren't going to give it to BOAC and partners for nothing. So, as a book-keeping convenience, fleet value was equated with the airline's goodwill,which was in effect what BOAC and partners were buying. "The only goodwill that's going to bewritten off," a BOAC Associated Com- panies' spokesman assured me last week,"is the book-keeping item." Click went the shutter of Flight's camera, and out came a picture of which this is a small detail, ^ho is the saintly glider pilot? For the whole picture see page 216 • I thought twice about ringing SirCharles Boost for his views on the new BOAC chairman's suggestion thatBritain must win the supersonic airliner race. After all, Sir Matthew Slattery iscareful to acknowledge the disadvan- tages of the supersonic airliner—and heis saying something positive, even if he doesn't mention BOAC's £15 millionaccumulated deficit. But instead of sponsoring a scramblefor the supersonic airliner, should not I confess that this Flight picture is slightly less spontaneous than the one above. It's a contri- bution to the cross-Channel "tunnel or bridge ?" controversy. Mr Mekie of Silver City asks "why either?" while his rivals in British United Airways appear to have already solved the controversy. See second item on this page Sir Matthew have first tried to get every-one to walk out to the thing in an orderly way? Anyway, he has said what hethinks, rightly or wrongly, and evidently regardless of what the Ministry thinks.Thank goodness there is one man in British aviation who isn't scared ofdoing that. I rather liked The Economist's head-ing to its comment on Sir Matthew's views. Expressing succinctly the feel-ings of all those who shudder at the prospect of history—quite recent history—being repeated, it read simply: "Wait For It." * * * But my staff have had hundreds ofphone calls this week enquiring about Sir Charles Boost's reactions to theBOAC chairman's supersonic remarks. So I just had to ring him. Unfortunately,according to his public relations officer, he has been ordered to rest after a three-day supersonic celebration party at Imperial British Air Power House. But,said the spokesman, he could tell me that Sir Charles is "terribly excited." • "I don't want to fly to New York intwo and a half hours."—Sir Matthew Slattery, chairman of BOAC. • A reader, after seeing my July 29 piece on the historical accuracy of a Battle of Britain pilot-author, writes: One hundred lines yourself—Bf 109, not MelO9! Author R. Bacon [grudgingly]: Oh, all right. • Here we go again—a new aero-nautical term is devalued almost before it is accepted. I refer to "second-generation," as applied by Vickers to the Vanguard and VC10, and by de Havil-land to the D.H.121. In the latest edition of Boeing Magazine, the 720 is describedas "second generation." By this measure, I suppose, theViscount 810 is a fourth-generation turboprop and TCA's Vanguards aresixth-generation turboprops. • * * Talking about generations, Sir Roy Fedden says in so many words that ifBritain doesn't get cracking on a space programme soon, "generations yet un-born will never forgive us." That's all very well, and perhaps this is one of thebest reasons yet put forward for a British space programme. But how are we goingto get these unborn generations to con- tribute some £ s d? Englishization • Now being tested on TWA jet flights between New York and Los Angeles, says TWA, is "a new concept of containerization." ROGER BACON
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