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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0262.PDF
* -J§™* 'w fi' *«# ^.Tfc. Five-thousandth Test Flight English Electric test pilot Keith Isherwood before taking off from Warton on February 11 on the 5,000th Lightning test flight. He himself had made 328 test flights in these aircraft Three-thousandth Helicopter built by Textron's Be// Helicopter Co at Fort Worth, Texas—a UH-/B Iroquois. Armed with four M-60 machine guns, it was handed over on February 7 to Maj Douglas M. Moody, operations officer at Eagle Mountain Army Airfield, by Len Seitz, Bell military contracts administrator. A note on the company's sales appears below 250 FL1GHJ Internati 21 Febn 1961 WORLD NEWS . . . Bell Helicopters in 1962 Textron's Bell Helicopter Co and its two manufacturing licensees delivered $24,700,000-worth of commercial heli copters and spare parts in 1962. The number of helicopters produced was 207; in 1961 the number sold was 194, valued with spares at $16m. Military production remains classified, but accounts for an appreciably greater dollar volume. Last year saw the first commercial sales of the turbine-powered Bell 204B, a variant of which with BS Gnome engine is produced by Agusta in Milan (the company's other licensee is Mitsui & Co, of Tokyo). Pre viously, practically all commercial sales had been of various types of Bell 47, ap proximately 3,000 of which have been delivered (this figure can be reconciled with the total given in the caption above when it is remembered that it includes production by the licencees). BOMBER COMMAND'S BLUE STEEL SCAMPTON is the first RAF Bomber Command station to be equipped for Blue Steel operations—No 617 Sqn has already trained on the weapon, No 27's training is well advanced and No 83's will follow—and at Scampton last Thursday the AOC-in-C, Air Marshal Sir Kenneth Cross, gave a briefing on the capability of the command as a nuclear deterrent force. He also referred to the Thor system and described Bomber Command's worldwide commitments. To back up his words, there was a presentation by the station of its Blue Steel facilities, and a demonstra tion by two Vulcan B.2s carrying the wea pon. Sir Kenneth evinced great confidence as to Blue Steel's capability and validity. He said it had exceeded specifications in range, accuracy and reliability of compon ents. Out of the last ten test shots at Woomera, nine had been successful; and it would be valid, he thought, for "quite a number of years." Already, 140 training sorties had been carried out with Blue Steel, and the average time taken to train crews was only 15hr. Reasons for this shortness of time were that the crews al ready knew their aeroplanes well, and the number of ground training exercises they had done at Lindholme. Sir Kenneth stressed that Bomber Com mand had "learned about the weapon as it was tested." Two units had been re sponsible for bringing Blue Steel into ser vice—No 18 Joint Services Trials Unit at Scampton and No 4 JSTU at Edinburgh Field, Australia. It was hoped, later this year, to fire training rounds at Woomera. In firings that had already been carried out, from Vulcan Is and 2s, flown by both Service and civilian test pilots, there had been "many successes" plus some failures. Looking to the future, Sir Kenneth said that Wittering—where Victor B.2s are based—would be the next station to be equipped for Blue Steel operations. The facilities were already there. The AOC-in-C put his talk about Blue Steel into the context of the present state and immediate past history of Bomber Command. Reminding his audience of a sentence in the 1958 Statement on Defence —"if the deterrent influence of the bomber force is to be effective, it must not be thought capable of being knocked out on the ground"—Sir Kenneth spoke of the early-warning system and of Bomber Command's dispersal tactics. When, later this year, Fylingdales became operational, it would increase our warning time to eight minutes; at present, tactical warning was provided by UK and European radars (via Fighter Command) and by DEWline and BMEWS via NORAD. Part of the com mand's reaction to a strategic warning was dispersal—for which over 40 airfields are available. (As the AOC-in-C put it, "we'll use any runway belonging to anyone, provided it's a good one.") Sir Kenneth had a word of praise for Thor—a weapon system which he didn't think had been appreciated in this country. From 1959 to 1961 it had been the only strategic missile system in use, and since 1959, Thors had been at constant readiness without any interruption. At the time of the Cuba crisis, 59 out of 60 had been ser viceable—the 60th was being used for training. Yet the decision to phase-out Thor, a soft-skinned weapon, was a good one. It had always been understood that when Atlas and Minuteman came in, Thor would phase out. Phasing-out also applies to the Valiant. which has now disappeared from the Bomber Command medium bomber force, now entirely composed of Victors and Vul- cans. The Mk 2 Victors and Vulcans, accord ing to a chart which Sir Kenneth showed, had better performance—as to height and speed—than equivalent US or Russian types, and could attack targets 1,500 n.m. away without flight refuelling. Their wea pons included mines, HE bombs, nuclear free-fall and nuclear air-to-surface (i.e., Blue Steel) weapons. The facilities at Scampton which pre pare Blue Steels for operational service are located in the missile servicing and storage building, where the missiles receive physical examination and complete func tional testing, test bays for checking indi vidual units being located along one side of the building. Missiles are lifted by cranes on to transporter vehicles which have movable davits, carrying the Blue Steel in lifeboat fashion; they are transferred on to loading trolleys and raised from these on to the aircraft by its bomb release slip hook. It is hoped to publish, in a future issue, photographs illustrating these installa tions. Two Vulcan B.2s, flown respectively by Sqn Ldr D. R. Carr and Fit Lt P. F. Thompson, took off in swirling snow—no V-force airfield has been out of action this winter—and their appearance, with the aerodynamic weapon whose explosie power is "in the megaton range" bulging beneath the fuselage, gave formidable point to the AOC-in-C's remarks about th's new aspect of Britain's deterrent force
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