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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1748.PDF
854 FLIGHT, 30 November 1961 (T) Straight nd Level MR MOAN (Lab): Will the Mini-ster reconsider his decision toexempt toy balloons from the regulations against emitting or dis- playing any communication or ad- vertising in such a way that they are audible or visible from the ground? MR JOHN FUMBLING (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Planes): No. Sir. MR MOAN : Is the hon. gentleman aware that the desire to operate toy balloons —at a profit—is a pimple on the face of our affluent society? Does the Mini- ster realise that here is a social evil of the same potential as Bingo ? MR FUMBLING: I will draw my Right hon Friend's attention to this point. MR GROAN (Cons): What effect will the Wind of Change have on private toy balloons? Can the Minister make a statement ? MR FUMBLING: I would ask the House to be patient in this matter. It would be premature of me to anticipate the findings of the Royal Commission on Aerial Locomotion set up by Mr Gladstone in 1874. MR MOAN: IS the hon. Gentleman aware that the last member of this Commission passed on in 1912? MR FUMBLING: I would remind my hon. Friend of an old tag my Latin master was fond of repeating: De mortuis nil nisi bonum. MR MOAN: I consider the hon. Gentle- man's reply most unsatisfactory. I demand a probe into the operation of toy balloons by private enterprise, and in particular the accident rate of pri- vately-owned balloons compared with those of the State corporations. MR GROAN: IS the Minister aware that the noise of bursting balloons will, if allowed to go uncontrolled, make this city an unlivable hell? MR FUMBLING : No, Sir. • It has often seemed to me that television interviewers regard it as professionally smart to be as aggressive and bullying as possible. But never have 1 seen such bullying as that to which Sir Geoffrey de Havilland was subjected during a BBC Tonight programme last week. It was supposed to be an interview about the memoirs he has just published, but these were scarcely mentioned. There wasn't anything about him as a person or about his fascinating life. In fact it wasn't really an interview—the inter- viewer seemed to do all the talking. He dismissed 50 years of work in a few seconds with still photographs of the 1910 aeroplane, the D.H.4, the Puss Moth and the Mosquito, and then de- voted a long time to an elaborate cine- film of the Comet disasters, as if they had happened only last week. It seemed as though Sir Geoffrey alone had been responsible for the Comet disasters. The interviewer wound up by taking a poor view of the chances of British aircraft against those of America and France. I agree that Sir Geoffrey need not have appeared on the programme and that he need not have answered the questions. He is such a shy person that, to my knowledge, he has never before agreed to a television interview. And he is too polite a person not to have answered the questions, which he need not have done. But there is no excuse for what amount- ed to a public display of cruelty. This is Mr Paul Anderson, America's Olympic world champion weight lifter, and he has just done a "snatch" with a C-130 (lightly loaded, of course). Get the point? Well, he is a champion weight lifter, and so is the C-130! Get it? Seriously, Mr Anderson puts his muscles to uses other than Lockheed publicity: he has been doing a demonstration tour of the USA on behalf of a boys' club • Some time ago we said "thank you" to London Approach radar for guidance given to Flight's Gemini through the London control zone. Now we offer a similar word of thanks to Farnborough, who when a colleague visited Odiham recently to see the RAF's new Belvedere Squadron, vectored the Gemini through their area in low cloud conditions and provided a similar service back to Fairoaks on the return journey. Air traffic control in this country is often criticized for rules and regulations that restrict the movement of private aircraft. In our experience anything reasonable that we ask for is always granted courteously and promptly. • NATO code-names for Russian aircraft lend themselves to all sorts of manipulation—and falsification. I offer the following suggestions for code- names to cover the probable develop- ments of Beauty: Night fighter version: Black Beauty; reconnaissance version: Beau regard; ground attack version: Beau Geste: chemical warfare version: Beauty Sleep; Khrushchev's VIP version: Beau Frere; weather reconn. version: Beau Temps. News releases on my desk this week:— • From a Cessna release:— "Cessna's Anniversary Fleet was un-veiled with sparkling showmanship. Over 1,200 Cessna salesmen, industry represent-atives, and component manufacturers marched through the streets of this mid-western city (Wichita) with a brisk pace set by a colorful 120-piece band. "The serpentine parade v ound its wayto the civic Forum building and a huge mid-way, complete with barkers and acarnival atmosphere. On the mid-way were 16 sparkling new Cessnas and a replica ofClyde Cessna's first airplane ... As visitors took an opportunity for a quick peek atthe new airplanes, the mid-way suddenly fell dark and the crowd silent. "Doors to a brightly lighted adjacenttheatre were thrown open . . . The glamour of vaudeville days held forth as a full-scaleminstrel show kept spectators wide-eyed for the next few hours with a combinationof product presentation and razzle-dazzle." (2) From a Boeing news release (about the Spacearium at the forthcoming Seattle World's Fair):— "Opening with the lift-off of a spaceship from Earth, the film takes the audience past the moon, the Sun, Mars, the asteroidCeres, through the rings of Saturn and past the Sun's most distant planet, Pluto."In interstellar space, the cinemato- graphic journey continues past a flare star,the huge red sun Antares, the glowing hydro- gen spiral of Beta Lyra, a double star andthe Lagoon Nebula to the center of our own Milky Way galaxy."At this point the film telescopes time and distance to leap into intergalacticspace to give the audience views of the star cluster NGC 6539, and Andromedaand other galaxies containing a hundred billion stars." I wonder when it'll be on at our local fleapit. Thinks: hope the hundred billion stars include Sophia Loren and Harry Secombe. • Affluent Society Note: A Flight colleague on holiday in Palma recently was accosted near the cathedral by some children begging for money. Being softhearted, he distributed a few pesetas and walked on, only to be sternly up- braided in Spanish by a peasant woman on (he gathered) the undesirability of encouraging begging in the young. In her left hand was a cauliflower and in her right hand a TWA overnight bag. • I have just heard about a really imaginative handicap race that took place at a Royal Australian Air Force display. The field comprised a Winjeel, a Dakota, a Vampire, a Canberra on one engine, a Canberra on two, a Sabre with 30 rockets and a Sabre clean. The Dak came in first. ROGER BACON
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