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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1619.PDF
FLIGHT, 9 November 1961 723 f The Breguet Atlantic at Toulouse Colomiers during the naming ceremony. Below, the traditional champagne bottle at the moment of impact Breguet's Atlantic Makes its Bow BY MARK LAMBERT "FLIGHT" PHOTOGRAPHS WITH full military honours, and before an audience of VIPsfrom all the participating NATO nations, Mme Messmer,wife of the French Minister of Armed Forces, named the Breguet Atlantic at Toulouse Colomiers last Friday. Several companies of paras in their dappled battledress greeted the Minister's motorcade with its motor-cycle outriders. Gathered in the hangar were a hundred or so high-ranking representatives of the nations taking part in the production programme. The military and civil formalities having been completed, the official speeches began. The Atlantic stood, so neatly painted and fully equipped that it might have been a regular squadron aircraft. I have seen many French formal occasions and this one followed the traditional pattern—except when the proceedings began to centre on the aircraft, to see which we had all gathered from most parts of industrial NATO Europe. This has been a success story, a NATO joint programme which has worked effectively and produced a tangible result which is obviously good. The Atlantic prototype is a fine achievement; and it is one of those prototypes which has flown faultlessly since it first took the air. Since October 21, Bernard Witt, Breguet's chief test pilot, with Perineau, his flight test engineer, have made something approaching 20 flights. They had tried stalls in all configurations during the third flight, and at Friday's ceremony they made demonstration fly-pasts on one engine. In accordance with present French policy, this first proto- type was fitted with a large proportion of its operational equipment, including electronics, autopilot and weapons racks. When I visited Colomiers in April to see the 941 STOL transport, the prototype Atlantic was "under wraps" across the hangar. Now it is flying, and the second prototype is structurally complete and being equipped in the same part of the hangar. It is to fly next March. There were rumours that a large order was to be announced at the naming ceremony; but it was stated only that orders were ex- pected in the first half of next year for aircraft to be delivered in 1964. If the Atlantic had been a purely French and Breguet project, its history to date would have been creditable. The surprising fact— and even those in charge sounded just a little bit surprised—is that 14 nations co-operated successfully in the original planning of the aircraft, seven have been involved in the construction and five have been concerned in the financing. The story began five or six years ago when NATO formed a steering committee to draw up a specification for a standard maritime patrol aircraft. Cmdt Rene Bloch, present chairman of the committee, told in a crisp, lively speech how the initial prospects had been poor. Other efforts at standardization had been none too successful, but it was realized that this project must work if the whole concept of joint design was not to fall by the wayside. It was as important for Europe as for NATO. The team had to learn not only what to do, but how to do it. They finally wrote a detailed specification and «alled for proposals. Eleven designs were sub- mitted and, after the most careful and impartial assessment, the Br.1150 was selected ia October 1958. The French Government immediately ordered prototypes and the detail design and con- struction got under way in Holland, Belgium, Germany and France.Now, Breguet's recently signed agreement with Grumman makes a US Navy order not impossible. Britain was content to soldier on with the Shackleton, andCanada had just procured the Argus, so Avro pulled out of the Atlantic programme, to the chagrin of the other countries andthe detriment of the British airframe industry. Rolls-Royce, on the other hand, continued their stated policy of working on aEuropean scale and supplied the Tyne turboprops. De Havilland joined in with the propellers. The first three Tynes for the firstprototype have indeed been loaned, but those for the second have been bought. Six more, for the third and fourth prototypes, havebeen ordered. The NATO steering committee, on which Canada and Britainwere represented as observers—the RAF has said it would replace Shackletons only with Atlantics—planned a completely new search,identification and attack system for the Atlantic, incorporating the best equipment offered in the US, Canada and Europe. The menaceof missile-equipped, high-speed, long-endurance submarines to the NATO maritime countries is obviously acute, and only theAtlantic had the speed, range, equipment and offensive capability to deal with them. It is regarded as something of a key weaponin this field, although it is capable of working effectively with surface ships, helicopters and smaller aircraft in the hunter-and-killer role. It can fly for between 12 and 18 hours, can cruise fast at The Hispano gear, Rolls-Royce Tyne jet-pipe and wool tufts on the wing. The civic dignitary is examining the externally mounted bomb doors
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