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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0719.PDF
FLIGHT International, 3 May 1962 717 Letters The Editor of" Flight International" is not necessarily in agreement with the views expressed by correspondents in these columns. Names and addresses of writers, not for publication in detail, must in all cases accompany letters. VG: 1949 Project SIR,—In your editorial of April 12, "VG for SST," you rightly draw attention to the recent swing of interest towards so- called variable geometry for supersonic airliner projects in this country and America. From your references to the work of others in this field, it might be of interest to you to know that in 1949 I applied for my first patents for variable sweep (a term I prefer to variable geometry), following work which commenced in 1947. In 1949 I submitted a thesis, with wind tunnel results and project designs for a supersonic twin-jet fighter, to the MoS. This project was fully discussed at a meeting held under the chairmanship of the then Director of Military Aircraft Research and Development, with the Director-General of Scientific Research (Air) and representatives from the RAE also present. A further meeting was held later at the RAE. In other words, the project was given a fair hearing. But with the limited funds available at that time, it was evidently too much to expect a development contract for something which proved to be at least 15 years ahead of its time! Complete patents and patents of addition were taken out in GB, the USA, Canada and France in 1950 and 1952, and the American patents were finally granted in 1955. These and the Canadian patents still have about 12 years to run. The case for variable sweep and these projects and results were fully described in an article by me published in the September 1955 issue of Aeronautics. A VS naval fighter project was submitted to the US Navy in 1956 and re-submitted to the MoS following renewal of US interest in VS and questions in Parliament in 1958. NASA and leading firms in the USA and this country are aware of this work, and even if an aircraft is produced which does not actually incorporate these patents—which incidentally include control by VS—I hope that this original research of fifteen years ago will not be forgotten. Bournemouth, Hants L. E. BAYNES New York-Boston and London-Glasgow SIR,—A few weeks ago you made reference to the large number of seats being offered by British European Airways on their London - Glasgow route, and drew a comparison with Eastern Air Lines operations on the New York - Boston service. Roger Bacon now says in the April 12 issue of Flight International that the current BEA scheduling of 1,000 seats per day "... approaches the record for the greatest capacity scheduled by any one airline on any route in the world —almost as many as on Eastern Air Lines New York - Boston 'Air Shuttle'." I feel that these two items distort BEA's achievements for the following reasons:— (1) London - Glasgow is approximately 400 miles while New York - Boston is only 200. Presumably the greater the distance, the greater the attraction of air transport, although it is conceded that traffic potential does decrease with in creasing distance. (2) Accepting the population of New York and London as being equal, that of Glasgow is 1,089,000 whilst Boston is considerably smaller at 697,000. (3) 1,000 seats per day is, in my opinion, nothing like "almost as many as Eastern Air Lines New York - Boston 'Air Shuttle' " (viz 1,520 per day). (4) Total seats offered by Eastern on this route are, as your article pointed out, approximately 2,100 daily. (5) BEA have a monopoly of the London - Glasgow - route; Eastern is only one of three major competitors (albeit the busiest) on the American route. Unfortunately I have not got the total scheduled capacity of the latter route on a seat basis, and therefore cannot determine Eastern's proportion. However, on a flight basis, they offer less than 40 per cent of all scheduled daily flights on this route. As the only small capacity machines operating are Northeast's Viscounts (and which only account for about a dozen of the 70-odd round trips flown daily) I doubt if Eastern offer more than 45 per cent of the seats on this market. Bearing all the above in mind, I feel that BEA still have a long way to go on the London - Glasgow haul. Best wishes to your publication. Weybridge, Surrey GWILYM MCCOACH Captain, BSc, AMIMechE Dive Bar SIR,—Having much enjoyed reading Frank Beswick's inter view with Sir Miles Thomas (pages 86-87 in your January 18 issue), I hope Mr Beswick will not mind if I take the liberty of making a couple of comments in regard to his remark— "Incidentally, I should emphasize that the reference to the Stratocruiser was his, and was due to no prompting from me!" I must confess I'm a little puzzled as to why your dis tinguished contributor should have found it necessary to have gone to such pains to have disassociated himself from Sir Miles' own, very frank, comments on the many delightful passenger (and crew) comforts so many tens of thousands of transatlantic and transpacific passengers still recall with nostalgic and happy memories about these fine old trans ports: alas, unlike the Constellation/Super Constellation series, and the DC-6s/DC-7s, the much-respected Strato- cruisers are no longer with us. For obvious reasons, the giant jet transports of this era are not fitted with sleeper bunks. And whilst various con figurations in the passenger cabins of Boeing 707s, 720s, DC-8s and Comet 4s naturally include delightfully artistic bar-lounges, the unique atmosphere of strolling downstairs for drinks in the congenial company of one's fellow passengers is, let's face it, gone! But it's certainly not forgotten, as Sir Miles has stated in his interview. Finally, on the supremely important question of crew com fort on the flight deck (having experienced several authorized visits whilst I was an employee of BO AC), possibly with the sole exception of the old Boeing 314 flying-boats no other transport aircraft has ever had such a magnificently spacious cockpit layout as did the Stratocruisers. In voicing such praise, I'm fairly sure my own comments would be enthusias tically endorsed by the captains and other crew members. I would be very interested indeed to learn Mr Beswick's own candid opinions on this important subject. Nairobi, Kenya DENNIS M. POWELL [Mr Beswick comments: I liked the Stratocruiser and hoped that advancing science and technology would make available the same relaxed travel atmosphere to a wider travelling public. I am sceptical of the grim-jawed, tight-seated, stick-it-out-it- is-a-shorter-flight attitude. Because I take this view I wanted to make it quite clear that Sir Miles' reference to the Strato cruiser was in no sense prompted by me.—Ed.] "Classified" or "Secret" SIR,—Why on earth can't the Ministry of Aviation talk plain English? Why, for example, do they say something is "classified" when they mean secret ? London W14 GEOFFREY DORMAN ["•Classified" refers to the various security gradings; for example, a non-secret subject may still be classified as "confidential"—Ed.]
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