FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1964
1964 - 0514.PDF
307ft/GHT International, 27 February 1964 Spectacular Background for the Hawker Siddeley 748 as it flies above Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach during its current South American Tour. At La Paz Airport (altitude 13,398ft) the 748 was the first foreign aircraft to use the new 14,500ft runway, and there the President of Bolivia watched an engine-cut take-off demonstration at full passenger load announced—is leading to an aircraft with less reinforced plastics in its structure in order to make a better compromise between cost, integrity and weight. A C of A for the 218 should be gained late this year, and it is Beagle's intention to put the aircraft into production as soon as manufacture of the 206 is really "over the hump." In the three years since Beagle started operations the company has sold a total of 322 aircraft: 33 Airedales, 60 Terriers, 49 Mk 9s, 22 B.206s, an autogyro (Beagle Wallis) to the Army, and a total of 157 D.4 and D.5 aircraft (now called the Husky), most of the latter having gone to Portugal, Nigeria and Ghana for "aerial work." Of these 322 aircraft no fewer than 247 have been bought by 14 countries outside Britain. Deliveries total 244, including 192 for export; the backlog is thus 78, including 52 for overseas customers. Mikardo on Britain's Defence Addressing a public meeting at Preston, Lanes, last Sunday on "The Future of the Aircraft Industry," Mr Ian Mikardo (a former MP, a member of the Labour Party National Executive, and prospective Parlia- mentary candidate for Poplar) alleged that though Britain was spending more on arms than ever before she was worse defended than at any time in her history. "Though we have dissipated £4,000m on aircraft in ten years," he said, "and thoughwe use up three-fifths of our top-grade scientists in the task of producing British designs of modern weapons so that we shan't be dependent on foreign ones, we nave scarcely anything of our own to show 'or it, and we are almost completely dependent on foreign arms. 'Just look at the record. Our battlefield nuclear devices—Honest John, Corporal and Sergeant—are American. Though we pay for them in dollars we have no right to use them of our own volition, because the warheads are under American lock and key. After citing other foreign-built equipment Mr Mikardo continued: "The Government justifies all the expenditure on our aircraft, missiles and arms industries on two grounds: first, that it creates an export trade; and second, that it produces new inventions which help civilian industry. But neither of these grounds stands up to a minute's serious examination. The export story won't work, because we spend more on importing weapons than we earn from exporting them. "Though the Government pays for almost all the research, the findings are retained as the private property of the companies that do it. There is no inter- change or passing on of discoveries, either for the benefit of other firms or for saving the taxpayers' money." Honour for Aerodynamicist The Wolfe Award, for outstanding re- search by a scientist working for the De- partment of Scientific and Industrial Research, has been made to Mr H. H. Pearcey of the Aerodynamics Division of the National Physics Laboratory. The award—worth £500, and the sixth of a series of ten—recognizes the importance of Mr Pearcey's work on the complex airflow phenomena associated with high-speed flight. The Short Crusader? Not an impression of the Belfast-built Ling-Temco-Vought Crusader which was rumoured a few weeks ago to be in the offing for the Royal Navy, but a short Crusader nonetheless. The A-7A VAL light attack aircraft has begun development for the USN and USMC, as a replacement for the Douglas A-4E Skyhawk, and the USAF is also interested. The aircraft has, essentially, a shortened Crusader fuselage with an enlarged and fixed-incidence wing. The engine will be a subsonic version of the P & W TF-30 engine being developed for F-l 11. Total procurement may exceed the 1,300 Crusaders built
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
