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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0476.PDF
474 FLIGHT International, 29 March 1962 (J) Straight and Level SCENE: Air Transport Licensing Board courtroom, Therese House, London EC1. Unidentified woman in green overall rushes up to this journal's representa tive: Woman: "When are Spurs playing Madrid ?" Our representative: "I'm afraid I've no idea." Woman: "But you're a reporter, aren't you?" Our representative: "Yes, but . . ." Woman: "Well, there's an airline man out there who wants to put in an applica tion for a group charter to Madrid but he doesn't know the date . . ." • A small man with an enormous, com pletely bald, egg-shaped head jumped out of the hedgerow and stood in the middle of the road agitatedly waving his slide-rule. I ordered my chauffeur to stop. "Are you Roger Bacon?" asked the stranger. I noticed he had the Scruggs crest embroidered on the breast pocket of his white laboratory coat. "Yes," I replied, baffled. "Follow me," he ordered. Though unaccustomed to such disrespect, I did so. As he turned I observed that on his back were stencilled the words BEIGE BASHER. Beige Basher! Britain's ultimate weapon, on which work was temporarily suspended two years ago after an expenditure of £200m! I followed the strange boffin through a hole in the hedge. There, as far as the eye could see, were Beige Bashers on their launch pads, pointing yearningly towards Space. "It's been T minus ten seconds and hold ing for two years now," explained my guide tearfully, patting the vernier rocket of the Beige Basher on pad number one. As he did so a startled chicken flew out of the booster skirt and disappeared into the dense bindweed that entangled the lox fuelling equipment. A family of field mice had made its nest in the upper launcher hold-down access doors. A young oak was growing out of the re-entry vehicle, and ivy clung to the second-stage tankage on pad number two. Washing belonging to gipsies who had made their home in the Beige Basher on pad number five hung limply from the umbilical cord. Just as I was about to ask my guide how the Beige Basher programme was going, a Ministry of Planes canteen van drew up. Two Ministry deputy secretaries ard a Treasury official jumped out, collected the eggs from the nearest booster skirt and drove off at high speed. "They're trying to get a return on their investment," my gjide explained. He added that next week he was emigrating to the Galapagos Islands, where there were more opportunities than in Britain for technicians. • Do you remember my scheme for blow ing up an airliner under controlled condi tions observed by the Press, so that the newspapers could, for once, be correct in reporting an explosion? I am still looking for a means of combating sheer invention. Take this, for example:— ''Prince Philip stayed at the controls of a crippled plane today and brought it down to a safe landing. The plane, a twin-engined Dart Herald, had just taken off from Brasilia, the jungle capital of Brazil, when its port engine started misfiring. As alarm bells rang in the cockpit, Prince Philip switched off the engine, turned the plane back and radioed the control tower. Officials who had seen the Prince off watched tensely as the Dart Herald came spluttering into the runway . . ." —Daily Mail, March 17. * * * "Prince Philip's forced landing in a Dart Herald airliner at Brasilia at the week- This man has been in stickier situations than this one, but he seems to be doing quite well in his efforts to get this MGA out of the mud in Pound, Virginia. His name is Capt Francis Gary Powers end was caused by a faulty fire warning circuit . . . Mechanics travelling with the royal party found nothing wrong with the engine."—Daily Mail, March 19. LETTER . . . Dear Rog, Thanks for the free publicity for my Caff. Don't be like Fortes Delta and pass by —come in and have a free cuppa sometime. Harlington FRED • Mr R. T. Partington-Dishforth of "Spottersdene," Blastfurnace Terrace, Chorleywood, has found in his attic a tail Her name is Sherry Lange, and you have seen her before. She is the girl who wrestles alligators in her spare time, and she is so nice I thought I would show you another picture of her. Here she is in the intake of a National Airlines Boeing 707 P & W JT3—by sheer amazing coincidence just as a publicity photo grapher happened to be passing by float from a Von Soderwasser VS-2 flying- boat of 1909 together with copies of the 1917 and 1918 Christmas issues of La Vie Parisienne. He asks whether any readers have other components of this aircraft, or copies of La Vie Parisienne containing VS-2 rigging instructions, and if so whether they would kindly forward them to him by express registered post. • From Peterborough's column in The Daily Telegraph:— "A quaint habit of another age is retained by Lord Brabazon when he lunches at his club, White's. "Yesterday he ate there wearing his bowler hat." ROGER BACON
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