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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1783.PDF
M 27 53 VOLU ME 8O THURSDAY 14 DECEMBER 1961 Edito r-in- Chiej MAURICE A. SMITH DC Editoi H. F. KING MBE Technical Editoi W. T. GUNSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE IN THIS ISSUE From All Quarters 896 " we jolly sailor boys " 898 Air Commerce 9OO Missiles and Space-flight 904 Straight and Level 9O9 Service Aviatio n 910 A New Front Door for Britain 911 OverheadJLondon 914 En Route Air Navigation Charges 916 March of the Runways 918 International Airports 919 Airport Installations and Equipment 924 Correspondence 936 Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd, DorsetHouse, Stamford Street, London, SE1: telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137).Telegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s.Overseas £5. Canada and USA $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorizedat New York, NY. Branch Offices Coventry: 8-10 Corpora-tion Street: telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham: King Edward House, NewStreet, 2; telephone Midland 7191. Man- chester: 260 Deansgate 3; telephoneBlackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595 Glasgow: 62 Buchanan Street Cl; tele-phone Central 1265-6. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner & Co(Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd,1961. Permission to reproduce illustra- tions and letterpress can be granted onlyunder written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with dueacknowledgement. Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 New Approaches S a follow-up to the co-operation between British and Soviet scientists at Jochell Bank, and as a new approach which might generate further co-operation in the future, the forthcoming visit to the Soviet Union by Blue Streak engineer Geoffrey Pardoe and television company director the Earl of Bessborough. is to be welcomed. Equally welcome, in the Lords debate last week, was a suggestion by Lord Bessborough that private enterprise should raise some of the money needed to finance a communication satellite programme. Two other peers. Viscount Caldecote and Lord Fleck, both complained that no details of GPO thinking on communication satellites had been made public: perhaps the GPO may confide in the nation next year, when the Bell Telephone Laboratories Telstar will be among a number of orbiting US communication satellites using the GPOs ground station at Goonhilly Downs. Cornwall. The Most OF all the yardsticks whereby aeronautical progress is measured, speedrecords are probably the most significant and certainly the most dramatic. In post-war years they have assumed a special importance, for whereas formerly the laurels went to specially built racing or sprint aircraft, they have more recently been passing to military types. The new world speed record of 1,606-342 m.p.h., set up by Lt Col Robert B. Robinson. US Marine Corps, in a McDonnell F4H Phantom 11, calls for comment on several counts. In the first place the new speed mark represents an increment of almost exactly 1,000 m.p.h. since Gp Capt Wilson's historic performance in the Gloster Meteor 16 years ago (almost to the week). Another reason is that the highest speed attained on the record flight—some 1,650 m.p.h.—represents, at the stated altitude of 45,000ft, a Mach number of almost precisely 2.5. Third it must be remarked that an aircraft of the same type has already reached an altitude of nearly 100,000ft (actually 98,557). In the fourth place the Phantom II is probably the most effective manned bomber- killing system available today. It has, incidentally, two seats. A fifth, and especially notable, consideration is that this aircraft has exceptional capabilities in terms of range (its fuel capacity of 3,200 US gal is far greater than that of any comparable machine in the Western world). A sixth point is that it is, in its own right, a very potent bomber and attack aircraft, approaching the Lan- caster in carrying capacity. Seventh, it is a carrier-borne aeroplane, burdened with all the attendant paraphernalia. In the speed context we might well have added that a Phantom II has averaged about 900 m.p.h. (Ml.2) over a 3km course while flying at a maximum height of only 300ft. On the engineering side the remarkable fact about the Phantom II is that, although its structure incorporates important areas of steel and titanium, it is far from being an all-steel aircraft like Britain's Bristol 188. Yet, as we have noted, it has flown at two-and-a-half times the speed of sound. This is well beyond the threshold usually ascribed to light-alloy aircraft. We remember hearing at the Paris Show a famous aircraft designer declare that the Phantom II is the outstanding example of brute force and ruddy ignorance; and certainly it bears more resemblance to a meat axe than to a rapier. But as an example of aeronautical engineering in the seventh decade of the twentieth century the new world-record holder is, as its compatriots might put it, the most.
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