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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0948.PDF
946 FLIGHT International, 14 June 196 LETTERS... The Monorail SIR,—I have only just read your article on communications with London Airport (April 19), as I am on a circulating list for Flight International and have been away. May I suggest that it avoids one of the more important questions which one rarely sees mentioned ? 1 cannot speak for the Paris end of this service but 1 do know that an appre ciable number of the passengers arriving at LAP do not want to go to the centre of London and would avoid it if they could. Whatever connecting system is used it will only con vey more congestion to the centre of London and this should be the thing to avoid at all costs. But the difficulty is that with the present arrangements there is no alternative unless you can arrange to be met at the airport by car. Staines is the nearest large town to LAP yet it is very poorly served by a bus every hour, taking three-quarters of an hour for the journey and entailing a change of buses with numerous village stops on the way. By direct route, Staines is only three miles away, and a fast bus service, stopping only once or twice, should make it possible to do the journey in 10 or 15min. To say there is no demand is quite stupid—there is no demand for the existing service because it is just a time- waster! From Staines there are very good train, coach and bus services, both to the south-west of the country and to the south and west residential areas of London—where quite a number of travellers want to go at the conclusion of their journeys. A very large number of passengers arriving at LAP only go up to London because they want to connect with the mainline train services to the rest of the country, or because it is simpler to get accommodation diere before continuing their journeys on the following day. There seems to be no effort at all made to avoid this extra distance, which is often opposite to the direction they wish to travel. For instance, why should it not be possible for travellers to board Western Region mainline trains at, say, Slough and Midland Region at Watford Junction? A simple arrangement like this would often save half-a-day's travelling time and enable passengers from LAP to complete their journeys on the day of arrival. Of course it would need the co-operation of British Rail ways, a fast coach service and some publicity. Only those who use the airlines know ho* totally inadequate are the connecting services and how simple it would be to make vast improvements. Surely the convenience of the travelling public merits some consideration ? Egham, Surrey E. SHIPLEY Was the U-2 Rammed ? SIR,—I would like to attempt to answer Mr Carr's criticism that a computer, human or electronic, would be required to render a zoom-climb above the opsrational ceiling of a fighter sufficiently accurate to attempt to ram a higher-flying aircraft such as a U-2 Flight Internationl, May 24). I suggest that the attacking pilot could estimate target speed and height, perhaps with ground radar assistance, ar.d use, say, 500kt at 68,000ft as the base line of an inverted triangle of velocities. His own collision course, representing the hypotenuse of the triangle, would need to average 700kt at an inclination of 45°, starting from a point directly below, at 58,OOOft, and on a parallel track. This would guarantee arrival in the vicinity of the target, allowing smill climb corrections to be made continuously, by the simple expedient of keeping the unfor tunate U-2 directly overhead as though at the top of an elevator shaft 10,000ft long. The turn of 90° to port that Captain Powers had completed just before he was intercepted seems to me to provide additional food for speculation. First, the slight loss of altitude implied, and change of bearing, may have enabled ground radar to fix his position accurately for the first tims in view of the alleged unreliability of most radars at these height ranges. This could explain the apparent excitement of the fighter controller in exclaiming "He is coming lower," followed, one presumes, by some instruction to the fighter like "Begin your climb over Sverdlovsk in three minutes"—perhaps missed by the listeners. Secondly, assuming a missile launched from the ground was already on its way at the time, might not the corrections involved have incurred a stalling of heavily loaded control surfaces at such an altitude? This could be the point that impressed Dr Barnes Wallis in the course of lecture questions at an RAeS branch meeting at Eton College some years go, which reputedly convinced him of an assured future for variable- geometry wings and manned aircraft. Perhaps a reader can enlighten me on that point? I am sure Mr Carr is quite right in his assessment of air- to-air missile climb capability instead of a fighter making a similar journey, but an infra-red homing device is unlikely to lock on to the target at as great a range as the human eye with the assistance of at least a short vapour trail following the U-2. Thus, a computer is more likely to be required for launching the air-to-air missiles at the correct angle. In any case, the missile school of thought has not, in my opinion, satisfactorily explained the second parachute observed by Capt Powers still in the air after he had reached the ground. A first-stage booster recovery system must surely have reached the surface before him, whilst a second stage of three, if used, is likely to have a distinctively different type of parachute on account of the high velocity of the expended rocket. Incidentally, it is quite likely that the Russians have de veloped and practised the art of zooming attack ever since an attempt was made to drift photographic balloons over the Soviet camp at high altitude. I recollect reports that there was surprise in Allied circles at Russian success in bringing down even more vulnerable but perhaps higher- flying targets than the U-2. Cirencester, Glos G. B. BATHURST 727s for the "Big: Four" SIR,—With reference to your news-item "727s for the Big Four" (March 22 issue), I would like to query the second paragraph, which states: "Boeing's achievement is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that this company's products, apart from the old 307 [my italics], have only been in airline service for three-and-a-half years." May I suggest that the comment (in italics) could very easily be misunderstood? For example, although the pio neering 247/247D series of 1932-34 became virtually obso lescent once the DC-2s and DC-3s followed Boeing's original "first," surely this does not alter the indisputable fact that previous transport aircraft built by this company achieved considerable successes with several of the world's major airlines in two previous decades. The long years of airline service by two other famous Boeings—the Type 314 flying- boats used by Pan-American and BOAC and the better- known 377 Stratocruisers—have each contributed so much to the reputation of Boeing-built aircraft in the past. Therefore, despite the latest success of selling the Model 727 to America's "Big Four" operators it may not, after all, be as surprising as intimated in your report. Had Douglas, Lockheed or even Convair risked their own funds to build an equivalent transport to the 727 formula, there is little doubt that one or more of the "Big Four" would probably have ordered the tri-motor rear-engined jetliner from one of Boeing's main competitors. Thanks to the world-wide sales of the 707s and 720s the producers of these jet transports have achieved an unequalled reputation which will probably never be seriously challenged in the present era. Nairobi, Kenya DENNIS M. POWELL Space-age Discovery? SIR,—I understand that the greater the altitude of a satellite, the more room there is for it. Can it be that, at last, we have an explanation of that hitherto incomprehensible riddle:— (Q.) Why is a mouse when it spins? (A.) Because the higher the fewer. London Wl F. H. SMITH
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