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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 2019.PDF
tSDAY NOVEMBER 2 1, 1963 Number 2854 Volume 84 Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. F.KINQ 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 822 Concorde Powerplant 824 Air Commerce 826 "Air-Cushion Vehicles" supplement How to Win a Medal 835 Art and Aircraft 838 Letters 8 39 Straight and Level 841 Sport and Business 842 Missiles and Spaceflight 843 Service Aviation 848 Industry International 850 Hifh) Transport Publications Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, SE1; telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137). Telegrams Fllghtpreg London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. 'Overseas £5 5s. Canada and USA $15.00. Second Class Mall privileges authorized " New York, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, King Edward House, New ptreet, Birmingham 2; telephone Mid land 7191. Manchester, 260 Deansgate, Manchester 3 ; telephone Blackfriars 4412 w Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 62 Bucha-aan Street, Glasgow CI; telephone antral 1265-6. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner & Co Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Dlffe Transport Publications Ltd, «0S. Permission to reproduce illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due "knowledgement. Swing-Wings IT was Dr Barnes Wallis who fought hardest and longest for the variable-sweep wing. Such a wing can be spread out laterally to provide maximum lift at low speeds, and also to permit sustained cruising at below Mach 0.8, even at extreme altitude, with reduced angle of attack and minimum induced drag. For supersonic flight the swing-wing can be folded backwards to a sweep angle as high as 80°, to match the aircraft to any desired combination of Mach number and altitude. It is beyond dispute that any aeroplane designed to spend any significant proportion of its life at high supersonic Mach numbers can be made considerably smaller and more probably lighter if it has a swing-wing. For many years Dr Wallis has led a research team at Weybridge who are charged with investigating advanced ideas. Five years ago this team led the world in the technology of variable-sweep wings, both as regards aerodynamic design and the manner in which the wing is hinged to the fixed structure. But Dr Wallis has, like many another British visionary, proved to be a prophet "not without honour, except in his own country." Vickers, his employers, have financed his idea generously, but the British Government appear to have done little with his results except to ask him to pass them across to what is now the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This was in 1958. On March 22, 1962, the Minister of Aviation announced that he was placing with British Aircraft Corporation a design-study contract for a swing-wing aircraft. He was careful to assure the House of Commons that this move did not "commit the Government to building such an aircraft." A Winner for America The foregoing history is not untypical of British inventions. Had the variable-sweep aeroplane been conceived elsewhere it would doubtless already be the subject of licensing agreements, with British firms working under contract to the Government. As it is, the United States of America now has a clear lead in this field, as the result of a series of major develop ment programmes by NASA and many manufacturers. It is the swing-wing which will enable the General Dynamics/Grumman F-lll series of fighter/bomber aircraft to fulfil essentially the same missions as the TSR.2 on little more than half the thrust; but the American aeroplane is in consequence more complicated, and poses more severe development problems. Similar considerations apply to a supersonic airliner, and hundreds of American SST engineers are at present feverishly trying to decide whether to go for variable sweep or not. It is a decision fully as weighty as the choice of cruise Mach number. Ideally, the F-lll programme should have been timed to give the US industry substantial operational experience of the swing-wing which could be fed into the SST design. This will not now be possible, and the difficulties of trying to sell to the world's airlines such a complicated and unproven piece of machinery as a swing-wing SST appear formidable. Yet. when all is said and done, variable sweep is only an extension of such traditional changers of geometry as the variable-incidence wing and the trailing-edge flap. The Americans will, as usual, make it work, and they will make it work to their commercial advantage.
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