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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0259.PDF
PLIGHT P International Official Organ of the Royal Aoro Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 190S THURSDAY FEBRUARY 2 1, 1963 Number 2815 Volume 83 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. F. KING MBE Technical Editor W. T. GUNSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News 248 Air Commerce 251 Convair's OETOL 258 Straight and Level 260 Flying Steel 261 CL-84 264 A Snipe is Re-born 265 Letters 268 Industry International 270 World Gliding Championships 271 Missiles and Spaceflight 274 Service Aviation 2 78 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 J15.00. Second Class Mail 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 Central 1265-6. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner & Co (Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Hiffe Transport Publications Ltd, 196S. Permission to reproduce illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. The Weapon that Never Was DRAMATIC is the adjective to apply to the Air Ministry's Press facility at RAF Scampton last Thursday—not only because it provided the first official statement, by Bomber Command after the demise of Skybolt, but because it was by way of a fanfare marking the introduction of Blue Steel into RAF service. At Scampton, almost 20 years ago, 617 Sqn was formed to make the dam busters' raid, and now this same squadron is the first in Bomber Command to be Blue Steel-equipped. To Scampton, then, came Fleet Street's air correspondents en masse, to be briefed by the Commander-in- Chief on the deterrent capability of his Command and to see Blue Steel in situ. With air marshals, air commodores and group captains in pro fusion, and wing commanders and squadron leaders everywhere one looked; with Blue Steels being tested, serviced, fuelled and loaded; and with Vulcans taking off into swirling snow from snow-cleared runways, this was Bomber Command on show. What, in fact, was the message which emanated? In brief, that "Sky- bolt is dead. Long live Blue Steel." Throughout his briefing the C-in-C made not a single reference to Skybolt, the Command's Weapon That Never Was. He concentrated entirely on a Bomber Command with Blue Steel as principal weapon, carried in Vulcan B.2s and, subsequently, Victor B.2s. A report of his briefing and of the visit is given on page 250. This could be summed-up by saying that Bomber Command have now buried the past and look to the future—with a British air-launched missile that will last for "quite a number of years" and which (in the Command's view) gives the United Kingdom a credible nuclear deterrent defence force. GETOL THE coming years may bring a merging and a metamorphosis of transport means and methods bewilderingly complex and vast in scope. The beginning is seen not so much in the advent of the air-cushion vehicle as in the growing family of these vehicles which, individually or collectively, can assume the functions of many and diverse forms of waterborne and land-going transport. Now in being or in prospect, for example, are the ACV ship, boat, amphibian, train, car, lorry and hand ling system. In the ram-wing craft we see one merger with the aeroplane, and in the hydrofoil-stabilized craft a possible rapprochement with a rival system. Now, for the first time, this journal describes (pages 258-259) an aeroplane which operates with a form of air-cushion undercarriage. Known as a GETOL (ground effect take-off and landing) aircraft, it is expected to need a lifting thrust only about eight-tenths of its own weight, and to retain the desirable features of the pure VTOL aircraft while surpassing VTOL by offering greater flexibility of operation. Yet this imaginative project by Convair is not the first of its kind. The Russians claim to have tested in 1940 "an aircraft which, instead of wheels, made use of an air cushion"; and in the early days of his research Mr Christopher Cockerell put forward a similar proposal. The scheme is now the subject of a patent by Hovercraft Development Ltd. In Britain's programme for VTOL aircraft—one which this journal believes to be of prime importance—the GETOL aeroplane must be ac corded the attention it manifestly deserves.
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