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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1637.PDF
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 12,1963 Number 2844 Volume 84 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. F. KINO 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 News 448 Air Commerce 451 The Caravelle 45 6 Fly-in at Rock-ford 459 C-141 ROII-OUt 462 Sport and Business 466 In the Air 468 Straight and Level 471 Letters 472 H.126 at Work 474 llssiles and Spaceflight 475 The PFA's Big: Weekend 480 Service Aviation 482 Industry International 484 lllfft Transport Publications Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, SB1; 'elephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137). lelegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas£55s. Canada and USA $15.00. 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 « Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 62 Bncha-nan Street, Glasgow CI; telephone Central 1265-6. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner <fe Co ^niblishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. 1®,D^fe Transport Publications Ltd, j.'"5». Permission to reproduce Illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts w comments may be made with due acknowledgement. Official Organ of the Royal Aero Clue Firtt Aeronautical Weekly in the Work) Founflei in IMS Death of a Sport ? PRIVATELY shown in London last week was an aeronautical film of uncommon importance and exceptional interest. We judge it important because its showing over the National Broadcasting Corporation network of the USA must have left with the American public an impression of British aviation far broader, more vivid and more lasting even than the recent dramatic orders for One-Elevens and Concordes. Allowing for certain inaccuracies and anomalies (which would, in any case, jar less on American than on British audiences) the film must have been enthusiastically acclaimed by a nation near-sated by spectacle. Not only has this film brought, in effect, the 1962 Farnborough display to the American public, but it has done so with tremendous ebullience of spirit and with a genuine appreciation of the epic and the historic. Some explanation and comment is called for respecting the Hitchcock-ish title Death of a Sport. The sporting association arises primarily from the fact that the film is one of a sponsored documentary series wherein sport is the principal theme; and although in this particular instance private flying is accorded only incidental coverage, the competitive element in aircraft construction and operation is deemed by the producer sufficient justification for inclusion in the series. Alas, while Britain is made to appear a very live-and-kicking nation indeed in respect of her accomplishments in these hard-contested fields of activity, the film gives British sporting flying a somewhat unceremonious and, we would suggest, a trifle premature, interment. Inexorably, it is explained, the little aero planes have been driven from Britain's airspace by civil and military operations. . . . Or New Wings? To an American observer the foregoing might appear a broadly justifi able belief, for one has only to turn to pages 459-461 of this issue to gauge the scale and scope of private flying in the USA today. Where else on earth, other than at Rockford, can more than three thousand private aeroplanes be found on one airfield, and where can be discerned such freshness of thought and variety of design? We have accorded the Rockford Fly-in generous coverage in two consecutive issues, in the knowledge that there can be few of our British readers who will not be astonished, fascinated and instructed by the types of aircraft depicted and described. What more evidence is needed to emphasize the importance of a healthy sport-aviation movement to a great civil-aviation country such as the United States than to note that the administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency—Mr Najeeb Halaby— flew in (by JetStar no less) to address the gathering and to answer questions. Amongst the professional ranks connected with civil aviation in the United Kingdom there is a strong body of opinion ready at any time to deprecate the value of sporting aviation. This was particularly apparent from much of the evidence presented to the Hamilton Committee invest igating the whole question of pilot training for commercial aviation. Yet it is heartening to note that the committee looked beyond these shores before reaching its conclusions and recommendations, many of which were influenced by the view that "British civil aviation at the moment suffers from the comparative weakness of its private and general aviation, despite the enthusiastic efforts of clubs and groups throughout the country." Comparative weakness and death can be far removed from one another —especially if an infusion of fresh blood is given, as by the Junior Wings Scheme outlined on page 451 and by such successful events as the PFA International Rally (pages 480-481).
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