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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1632.PDF
736 FLIGHT, 9 November 1961 Straight and Level HERE is another first for Britishaviation. In 1170 that celebratedEnglish inventor Henry II suffered severe buffeting from Thomas a Becket. Henry's clear grasp of the buffeting problem is illustrated by the remark he made at the time: "Are there none of the cowards eating my bread who will rid me of this turbulent priest ?" Royal ingenuity triumphed, and the said Becket was laminarized (i.e., laid flat) by the now classic method of multiple perforation of the skin. This was over 700 years before Prandtl and all that jazz. Should 1 tell the Daily Express ? # Congratulations to the Flight Safety Committee for their new and enlarged edition of Focus, the journal which disseminates information about air safety. It is an excellent step in the right direction, but it is only a first step. Circulation is private and limited to "people in a position to take action in the field of aviation safety." And although there is no identification of the parties concerned in the incidents and accidents described, the technical Press is limited in the extent to which it is allowed to give wider currency to the contents of Focus. I would like to see this journal given much wider, and more open, circulation. I do not think that the Press would fail to exercise the discretion that is needed in dealing with air safety; if it does so, then the experiment to get Focus into the hands of as many people as possible will have failed. But I think the experiment is at least worth a try. % One of the best things about the Historical Group of the Royal Aero- nautical Society is that its members get some fun out of doing a real job for posterity. The sorting of facts from legend or fiction is a fascinating process —to which, I hope, Sir Frederick Handley Page's recent talk, "The Birth of the First Big Aeroplane" (page 722) will be conscientiously subjected. Because the H.P. tradition needs no legend to sustain it; and the prevalent notion (supported by Sir Frederick's title) is, I submit, legend. I believe that the first big aeroplanes in the world were made by Igor Sikorsky in Russia. The first was built in 1913 and had a wing span of 92ft, A devel- oped type, flown in 1914, had a span of 102ft. The first big Handley Page aeroplane was the O/100, first flown in December 1915. It had a span of 100ft. % On opening a copy of the Weekly Clanger, the new British news weekly, I was surprised to see a photo of Mr Fred Knocking, chairman and managing director of Mammoth Intercontinental Airlines. This was evidently a slip-up, because the accompanying article, under the heading "Air Chief Blasts Industry," was all about Sir Charles Boost. It read: "Tall, balding Sir Charles Boost (6ft 4in; 1901b max gross), lean as a whippet after years of eating above the clouds in jets, slumped into his deep leather armchair at Britain's staid oak-panelled Air Power Club. (Air Power men all lowered their newspapers; they invariably listen when Sir Charles is talking.) "Just back, from Paris, Fra. France's / consider it proper that a responsible column such as "Straight and Level" should direct the attention of its readers to crafty reflections of the craft of public relations. I cite the adjoining picture, wherein the words "Pan American," on the Boeing 707 so fortuitously positioned in the background, are auto-suggestive of "clipper." In fact, I am able to reveal, the ship is H.M.S. "Victory." teeming (pop. 8m) capital city, home of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Folies Bergere, Brigitte Bardot, and other tourist attractions, Britain's prince of air supremacy had a revealing story to tell. " 'I've been shopping for jets,' boomed bluff, empurpled jet chief Boost, in a voice that set the chan- deliers a-tinkling. 'I wanted at least 40 de Havilland Britannias from the Westland group and 50 turboprop One-Elevens from Hawker-Siddeley (you know, the Handley Page/Beagle/ de Havilland/Vickers/Folland/Scruggs consortium). But would anybody listen to me? Did anybody's bosses start unrolling the red carpet for me? No, they didn't. Gad, sir, it's a scandal! I'm going to emigrate from London. Eng, to London, Ontario, and operate Douglas 707s or Boeing VClOs.' " 6 Letter to this column about my piece on Qantas V-jets:— "You are up a gum tree about the V. It is not a capital V, but a boomerang symbol. Hence the logical title for this aircraft is the "Boeing Boom- erang." A check of the wing plan form will confirm this theory. "As for Jet Era 2, I expect you will receive cartloads of cards of irate comments from the comrades—re- member the Tu-104?—Yours, etc." 0 British United has set a fine example in publishing an annual report. Sparse though the information is—a mere fraction of the amount published by the corporations, and a slightly larger fraction of that published by other airlines—it is infinitely more than is published by any other independent. Perhaps other independents will follow suit. I hope so, because operators who hide the financial facts about them- selves are not really justified in appear- ing before the Air Transport Licensing Board as equals of operators who do reveal their financial position. At present the Board is spending hours and hours checking the financial resources of applicants for licences. They would spare themselves much effort if, as in America, every airline were required to publish the facts and figures about itself. £ Now J know why BOAC have opened a service to Manila. The publicity boys discovered a town in the Philippines called Boac. 1 have had a look through my Times Atlas of the World index, but I can find no places called Cunard Eagle or British United. So this is one route that the corporation will have to itself. Seriously, good luck to BOAC's new Manila services. ROGER BACON
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