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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 2016.PDF
;l •*•••"'-"•'* , f|.|CHT ^ International THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 13 1962 Number 2792 Volume 82 Editor-in- Chief IAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. F. KING MBE Technical Editor W. T. GU NSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World New* 428 Air Commerce 430 and 466 Missiles & Spaceflight 432 and 464 Farnborough Week 433 Round the Stands 440 Sport and Business 459 VTOL in America 460 Straight and Level 463 Letters 47 0 service Aviation 471 Industry International 47 2 lliffe Transport Publications Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, SE1; telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137). Telegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5. Canada and USA S15.00. Second Class Mall privileges authorized at New York, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, King Edward House, New Street, Birmingham 2; telephone Mid land 7191. Manchester, 260 Deansgate, Manchester 3; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 62 Bucha nan Street, Glasgow CI; telephone Centra! 1265-6. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner * Co (Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © lliffe Transport Publications Ltd, 1962. Permission to reproduce illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 Robust Though Rationalized THAT healthy competition exists in the rationalized British aircraft industry was vividly demonstrated during Farnborough week when Sir Aubrey Burke, deputy managing director of the Hawker Siddeley Group, described as "nonsense" the proposed national investment in a supersonic airliner. There are, he considers, many other technical develop ments of more immediate importance which are also in need of support, such as blind landing and V/STOL research. It has been suggested that Sir Aubrey's words were "sour grapes" because BAC has got the supersonic airliner study contract and Hawker Siddeley had not. In any case, the industry is now a two-party system which ensures that there is competition in matters of policy, if not in actual products. There is no question that, in the matter at issue, someone is right and someone is wrong. For the Minister of Aviation, Mr Julian Amery, to shelve plans for the supersonic airliner would for many reasons be long- term folly. It is quite untrue that the airlines of the world foresee no requirement for such a machine. No less a spokesman for the airline industry than Sir Hudson Fysh, chairman of Qantas, considers Sir Aubrey's attitude to the SST "open to great question." No one, he says, wants to hurry the introduction of such an aircraft; but absolutely in evitably it will come. The question is who will build it. Are Great Britain and Europe, asks Sir Hudson, going to leave it to the USA and Russia? The present, he says, is the time for decision, so often have we seen how great is the penalty of being too late in developing a new type of commer cial aircraft. No Dichotomy As an advocate of the supersonic airliner Sir Hudson, of course, has a particular interest. He reminds us how distant is Australia from the world's great centres of culture and business. It now takes 31 hours to fly from Sydney to London, and if the journey could be made in 12 hours the advantages, in his estimation, would be very great indeed. So much for the supersonic side. Yet, although, as we have said, the shelving of the SST would be long-term folly, to spend money on the SST to the exclusion of flap blowing, jet flaps, boundary layer control, blind landing and so on would be short-term and medium-term folly. Sir George Edwards has done the industry a service by exemplifying at Farnborough the real and encouraging SST entente achieved with the French, pointing the way ahead both technically and politically. For his own part, Sir Aubrey Burke has rendered no less a service by reminding everybody that this must not be allowed to prejudice projects of more immediate value. The laudable exhibition on the Ministry of Aviation stand at Farn borough, which typified the progress made in every field of research, from 0 to 3,000 m.p.h., was a token that, from the national point of view, there is no dichotomy on the question of how resources should be deployed in aeronautical development. There is, however, a new embarrassment now that the Americans have indicated that after all they propose to go for a cruising speed of something like Mach 3. In Los Angeles a few days ago representatives of Douglas, General Dynamics, Lockheed, North American and General Electric affirmed their belief in this concept. Thus, just as Britain and France begin to perceive with reasonable clarity the way into commercial super sonic flight, the Americans further complicate an issue of the highest international significance.
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