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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 0370.PDF
Official Organ of the Royal Aaro Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 THURSDAY FEBRUARY 13, 1964 Number 2866 Volume 85 Editor-in-Chief MAU RICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. f. KING MBE Technical Editor W, T. OU N8TON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CA8EY Managing Director H. N.PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News 228 Air Commerce 230 Straight and Level 240 The Steel in the Blue 241 Letters 24 6 Expensive Noise 248 Industry International 26 4 Sport and Business 25 6 Service Aviation 257 Missiles and Spacefligrnt 258 Hiffe Transport Publications Ltd, DorsetHouse, Stamford Street, London, SE1; telephone Waterloe 3333 (Telex 25137).Telegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s.Overseas £5. Canada and U8A $15.00. second Class Mall privileges authorizedat New York, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora-tion Street: telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, King Edward House, NewStreet, Birmingham 2 ; telephone Mid- land 7191. Manchester, 260 Deansgate,Manchester 3 ; telephone BlackfHars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. aiasgow, 62 Bucha-nan Street, Glasgow Cl ; telephone Central 1265-6. Bristol, 11 Marsh Street,Bristol l; telephone Bristol 21491/2. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner * Co(Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197.© Illffe Transport Publications Ltd, 1964. Permission to reproduce illustra-tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extractoor comment* may be made with due acknowledgement. No Snipe from a ChoughO N pages 241-245 we report without critical comment the major presentation of Bomber Command to the Press, arranged last week by the Air Ministry. To do so does not imply that there are no comments to be made. The main news "peg" of the occasion, to which both the Secretary of State for Air and the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief lent the full weight of their support, was the fact that the V-bomber force can now be regarded as a low-level strike arm, able without prejudicing its high- altitude capabilities to penetrate enemy defences at heights of 2OO-3OOft and to fire modified Blue Steel missiles from these levels. The cost of modi- fications to enable the bombers to do so was described by the Secretary of State as "miniscule." The AOC-in-C indicated that some V-bomber crews are already trained in the low-level role. While we have become used to the extrapolation of V-bomber capa- bilities into reconnaissance, defensive radar jamming, conventional pre- cision bombing, missile carrying and aerial refuelling, there can be no dis- puting the fact that the Vulcan and Victor have all the attributes of high- altitude aeroplanes—relatively high aspect ratios and light wing loadings, and relatively lightly stressed structures. To suggest—as it was suggested at Wittering and accepted unquestioningly by the national Press—that "negligible" modifications turn them into low-level attackers is to ignore fundamental aerodynamic and structural engineering facts. It would take more than a coat of camouflage to turn a Himalayan chough into a skimming snipe. To be fair to Mr Fraser and Air Marshal Grandy, terrain-clearance radar may not be necessary, as it is in the TSR.2, because the V-bombers' low-level speeds will be of a very much lower order, and one must not forget that in northern Europe there are no sizeable topographic obstruc- tions between the Netherlands coast and the Urals (although the TV masts proliferating all over Europe are a frightening hazard). But to rely on the table-flat topography of the North European plain for low-altitude attack is to restrict the front over which a strike can be made and, therefore, to aid the concentration of defences. If, to make low-altitude turbulence bear- able on high-altitude airframes, the V-bombers have to reduce speed significantly, it will make them easy prey for defensive close-range missiles and even snapshooting artillerymen. ...... Lengthened Life or Premature Scrapping? In the ultimate nuclear retaliation role, for which the V-force exists, the continuation of airframe life is of course an unimportant factor. It is in giving the bomber crews adequate low-level training that the main objec- tions to last week's statements arise. Remembering that the RAF con- sidered the safe low-level flying life of Canberra interdictors (aircraft with stiffer structures than the V-bombers and more suited, one would suppose, to the contour-flying role) was only 50hr, then to give crews any amount of V-bomber low-level flying training will be tantamount to scrapping their aircraft. Far from extending the life of the V-force until 1970 or 1971, as was suggested last week, it could well ensure that we had no effective V- force left by the end of the year. There is, of course, the remote possibility of wholly synthetic low-level training, but no mention was made of it last week. At worst, the Wittering presentation was misleading; at best, it left unanswered major technical questions.
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