FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1981.PDF
784 FLIGHT International, 14 November 1963 WORLD E W S Australia's TFX Bill Mr Athol Townley, the Australian De fence Minister, said in Canberra last week end that Australia would pay £A56m (£44m sterling) for the 24 TFX aircraft ordered to replace Canberras in.the RAAF. This price covers unit development costs; a year's spare parts including engines; handling equipment; training aids and initial training of crew. This deal is indeed a bargain so good that, as Sir Robert Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister, said when the order was placed last month "No government could spend money on anything else." The low price stems partly from the sheer magnitude of the TFX programme (1,700 aircraft, the vast majority of them F-111A, the type bought by Australia) and partly from the fact that the US Government is obviously prepared to sell at less than cost in order to gain contracts which might otherwise go to her allies. More Belfast Orders? Northern Ireland's Minister of Com merce, Mr Brian Faulkner, mentioned "two strong sources of interest" in the Short Belfast at a press conference in London last week, when he said that production prospects for the aircraft were improving. These "sources of interest" were in addition to the MoA order for the Belfasts for the RAF. TWA and the Concorde General Andre Puget, president and director-general of the BAC-Sud Concorde programme, has written to the president of TWA, Mr Charles C. Tillinghast, chal lenging his suggestions that BAC and Sud are "following a policy of their Govern ments to deny competitively advantageous delivery positions to American customers" (Flight International, October 31, page 713). Gen Puget points out that Pan American had been granted "exactly the same advantages" as Air France and BOAC. He noted that in June TWA had been offered a draft contract for six aircraft with delivery positions 21, 24,26, 29, 30 and 31, but that it declined the offer as too removed from initial deliveries. Pan American placed their order on June 4. After subsequent negotiations between Gen Puget and Mr Tillinghast, delivery positions 22, 32, 34 and 38 were reserved for TWA and, though not as good as the positions previously offered, these would permit TWA to have the Concorde in service at approximately the same date as Pan American and Continental who had ordered before. Breguet 941's Tour In the recent European demonstration tour by the prototype Breguet 941, in a total flying time of 45hr over a hundred landings were made and more than 600 civil and military passengers carried. Breguet say that test pilot Bernard Witt and his crew "displayed all the possibilities of the 941 while at the same time keeping strictly to the schedule, which ended in a spectacular demonstration from the Issy- les-Moulineaux heliport." The French Deterrent M Pierre Messmer, French Minister of the Armed Forces, announced last week that, "taking no notice of foreign protests," France will not merely continue the pro duction of fission weapons but will proceed to arm herself with thermonuclear devices also. The 60-kiloton free-falling bomb would be deployed with "15 to 20" Das sault Mirage IVs by the end of next year, out of the planned force of 50 aircraft. (An anti-Gaullist newspaper claims that "Manu facturing problems and difficulties in the system of the delivery of the bomb" have caused a three-month delay to this pro gramme.) Also published last week is the report b\, M Le Theule, the Government's Rapportew on the military budget. M Le Theule states that the three missile-firing submarines "Could not be operational before 1973,'' and that a gap in delivery systems will exist after the Mirage IVs cease to be credible. Money has been set aside for the develop ment—as an interim solution—of an air- to-ground ballistic missile "to be delivered by a modified Mirage IV" (possibly the projected version with TF-106 engines, stressed for low-level operations). Never theless, M Le Theule considers that a surface-based ballistic missile would be easier to develop, "cheaper and less vul nerable." Soviet Mobile Missile Fleet Special units employing "rocket carriers" are now operating with the Soviet Navy, according to Moscow Radio on November 10. Operating in co-operation with the submarine fleet, the rocket carrier is described as "one of the fastest ships in the world," having a "wide range of action, high precision delivery, and great destruc tive power." Chinook's 3,900-mile Flight A Boeing-Vertol CH-47A Chinook of the US Army recently flew 3,900 miles, from Pennsylvania to Alaska, in 33hr 50min. Aberdeen proving ground, Maryland, described the flight as "the longest without escort by a Chinook-type aircraft." September Exports The value of British aircraft industry exports during September is stated by the Board of Trade to have been £8,089,043; this compares with a total of £7,131,368 for September last year. Largest part of the September 1963 total was made up of exports of engines and parts, amounting to Antelope Airlift by a Wessex of 815 Sqn from HMS "Ark Royal," when the carrier recently put four of [its Wessex helicopters at the disposal of the East African Wild Life Society to help lift rare Hunter Antelopes 180 miles from Burn to Tsavo National Park. The aircraft made two trips a day, carrying four or five of the animals, which are in danger of ex tinction owing to poaching \
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
