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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 2161.PDF
FLIGHT, 30 September 1960 545 CORRESPONDENCE The Editor of "Flight" is not necessarily in agreement with the views expressed by correspondents in these columns. The names and addresses of the writers, not for publication in detail, must in all cases accompany letters. Long Time No "C" Why BEA has dropped its CI fear is quite a question. Is CAA C.A.A.C.At Mr Fox's suggestion?* A.N.A.C, not TAA Would give the right inflexion;T.A.L.C. for TCA, To better its complexion. But please, no more B.E.A CJust BEA will do. We've made short-haul air transport pay And made it cheaper, too. A body that can do all thatIn working for the nation Has surely shed sufficient "fat"To lose its Corporation. Ruislip, Middx PETER W. BROOKS, Technical Assistant to Chairman, BEA *See letter from Mr D. K. Fox in "Flight" of September 9. Coanda's 1910 Jet Experiments COME time ago. Fritz von Opel's 1929 flight in a solid-propellant^ rocket aircraft was quoted as the first jet-powered flight by a man. It seems that the first jet flight could well be that claimedby Henri Coanda in December 1910. He built what might be termed a "piston fan jet"-powered biplane, in which a pistonengine drove a ducted fan, the air impelled by which was mixed with fuel and, with the piston engine's exhaust gases, producinga jet stream. Coanda says he lifted the machine off the ground, but at too high an angle; the wing heeled over and he could notcontrol the aircraft.. He injected more fuel into the turbine, but this set the aircraft on fire; he cut off the fuel, the biplane stalled,and Coanda was thrown clear of the machine as it fell to the ground. If this is a true account of what happened, the half-centenaryof the first flight by a jet powered aircraft will fall in December this year. Coanda appears to have made a large number of otherbrilliant inventions, and is now working on a 500km/hr "flying saucer" to sell at the price of a medium-priced car.Croydon, Surrey T. R. SERVIAN Cross-Channel Ballooning AS was to be expected, the recent balloon crossing of the• Channel gave rise to considerable telephone querying here. Our first intimation that such an event was taking place wasa telephone call from a journalist on the South Coast on the morning of the take-off. He wanted to know when the Channelwas last crossed by a balloon. Not keeping this sort of thing on my scratch-pad I started to look back through the volumes of yourexcellent journal and after a full morning of index-searching I came to the conclusion that the last time the crossing was madewas reported in Flight on December 19, 1935, when one of 11 balloons from Gelsenkirchen landed at South Cockerington. Inthe Gordon Bennett Balloon Race in September 1933 a team from Dusseldorf landed at Berwick-on-Tweed (Flight, September 28).On February 14, 1929, you, Sir, reported that, a balloon which had ascended from Bitterfeld "last Sunday morning" was besetby a storm during an inland cruise and finished up near Aberdeen under the impression that it was in the Netherlands. Perhaps all of these may be dismissed as involuntary and asbeing over the North Sea; but I think a crossing mentioned in your issue of June 25, 1925, fills the cross-Channel requirements.Mrs John Dunville, accompanied by Capt M. Dunville (her son) and Cdr Baldwin made an ascent in the balloon Banshee HIfrom the Welsh Harp, Hendon, at 1 a.m. on June 21 and landed near the Belgian frontier later that morning. This also clearsup any queries about the last woman, the last mother, the last mother with her son, the last night trip, the last night trip by awoman and so on ad nauseam. I hope I am right but I am quite ready (and willing) to becorrected. It certainly seems to be later than the crossing quoted by some reporters—that of 1913, when the Gordon BennettBalloon Race competitors, aiming at Geneva, managed in one case to land near Bridlington, having started from the Tuileries.As a matter of interest, one of the competitors in that race was a Mr John Dunville in Banshee. London Wl F. H. SMITH, Librarian, the Royal Aeronautical Society A Rain of Farthings From AVM Sir John W. Cordingley, KCB, CBE, RAF(Retd).VAOU were kind enough to print my appeal to your readers to -*- send unwanted farthings, now obsolete in our currency, tohelp this Fund. Your readers may now like to know that already we have received over 13,000 farthings. Bearing in mind the highcost of postage and stationery, and since many were sent anonymously, I should like to take this, my only opportunity,to thank all who have turned out their cupboards in this helpful way. Not all your readers sent farthings. Silver threepenny bitsand other coins helped to produce a total of nearly £50. One postal order was accompanied solely by the message "With love."A reader who had no farthings sent £1, representing 960 farthings, following it up later with a cheque for a further £4. I wasparticularly touched by his regard for the RAF, since he described himself as "an old horse soldier of World War I." Incidentally, among coins received were several minted in thereigns of George II, George III and George IV. Every little helps, and the farthings will soon be doing goodwork for relief of distress among serving and ex-Service members of the RAF, WRAF, their families and dependants. London Wl JOHN W. CORDINGLEY, Controller, RAF Benevolent Fund Australian Industry and the RAAF TN regard to Mr D. C. Clayton's letter in the July 22 issue•*• concerning Australian aircraft production: The facts are that the Australian aircraft industry supplied 3,500 aircraft to theRAAF in 1939-45, and 2,850 engines. Without Australian-built Tiger Moths, Wackett Trainers and Wirraways the RAAF couldnot have been trained for Pacific operations and the EATS system in Australia simply could not have operated at all. That is history—I have read Herington and Odgers several times. The Beaver- brook cable of 1940 and the subsequent allocations of UK-USaircraft to other theatres starved the RAAF—but in this connec- tion I was referring to the Pacific. Of course the RAAF got air-craft to fight in RAF squadrons, or for the EATS squadrons formed by the RAAF for the German-Italian campaigns. Butthe Pacific War was another matter. Vengeances and Liberators are mentioned in Mr Clayton's letter.The RAAF got Vengeances because an Australian Cabinet Minister was given them in Washington and did not realizethey were of no use in New Guinea. Mr Odgers' volume of the RAAF Official History distinctly says that most of the hundredsof Vengeances were not used operationally and were actually withdrawn on General MacArthur's personal orders. The RAAFin the Pacific got Liberators only when they were replaced in the USAAF as heavy bombers by the B-29. The RAAF in the Pacific was never given first-line, first-rateoperational aircraft throughout the war—unless the Kittyhawk could be so described in 1942-43. The RAAF's Mustangs werenot in operation until the very last weeks of the Pacific War. In 1942-43 the RAAF simply could not have fought in NewGuinea at all without home-grown Beauforts, Beaufighters, Wirra- ways and Boomerangs. There was nothing else to fight with exceptsome Hudsons. In other words, the RAAF was given weapons when it wasfighting in Europe and Africa, but not to defend its own shores. The lesson thus learned is very deep in the Australian conscious-ness, and most vividly in the minds of all RAAF senior officers today, who saw this at first hand. Melbourne STANLEY BROGDEN Living Near London Airport AS a long-suffering resident of south-west Middlesex I should• like to take Mr Estill to task about his remarks [Correspond- ence, September 16] concerning the price of property near LondonAirport. Local inhabitants are not trying to profit from a rise in theprice of their property, nor are they trying to throttle the growth of London Airport as a world centre. All they want is peace andquiet. Most of us were born in this area long before LAP came into existence and, strange as it may seem, most of us like it here!Why should we move just because of short-sighted planning in the building of an international airport in a heavily populatedfog-zone? One shudders to think what might happen if one of the bigjets goes the same way as the unfortunate Viking in Southall.
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