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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 1922.PDF
FLIGHT International, 25 June 1964 Letters Letters for these columns are welcomed, though "Flight Inter-national" does not necessarily endorse the views expressed. Name and address should be given, not necessarily for publicationin full. Brief letters will have a better chance of early publication. Atlantic Competition SIR,—I have just seen Flight International for May 28 and Mr Frank Beswick's interview with Sir Miles Wyatt. In paragraph 4 of his preamble, Mr Beswick says: "Having said that, I must make it equally clear that I have never accepted the argument for, say, a competitive British service across the Atlantic. The fact that the first independent company to be granted a licence to operate such a service promptly made a deal with the relevant corporation supports the doubts which many of us held about the economic commonsense of such competition." May 1 point out that the facts are as follows? Cunard Eagle Airways Ltd were granted a London/New York licence by the ATLB on June 22, 1961. BO AC appealed against this grant, and the appeal was heard in September 1961. On November 21,1961, it was announced that the then Minister of Aviation (Mr Thorneycroft) had revoked the licence. Cunard Eagle Airways had ordered two Boeings for this service. Preparation for the introduction of the jets proceeded and in April 1962 the first-ever British independent jet service was operated, between Bermuda and New York. On May 5, 1962, the first independent jet service over the Atlantic was operated on the London-Bermuda-Nassau - Miami route, followed two days later by another mid-Atlantic service terminating in Jamaica. I believe it was on June 4, 1962, that BO AC signed an agreement with the Cunard Steam-Ship Co Ltd by which BOAC-Cunard Ltd came into being, which facade of a company took over the whole of Cunard Eagle Airways' Western Hemisphere operations and the bulk of BOAC's Western routes. Questions to Mr Beswick:— (1) What was so prompt about it? (2) Did you not know that the Cunard Steam-Ship Co made the "deal" with BOAC and not "the . . . inde- pendent company" ? (3) On what grounds did "many of us" doubt the economic sense of such competition? (4) Who are "us"? (5) Have you studied the North Atlantic market ? (6) Would you say that "many of us" doubt the economic sense of PanAm and TWA operating in competition ? (7) Against whom would the economic results of "such competition" have operated? Against the public? Against Cunard Eagle Airways? or against BOAC? Statements like the one made by Mr Beswick make one despair of ever having British aviation accurately reported. Let it be stated once and for all time that the deal with BOAC was made by the board of the Cunard Steam-Ship Co and not by—indeed, against the advice of—the management of Cunard Eagle Airways Ltd. Oslo M. A. GUINANE [Mr Beswick comments: "Mr Guinane is at pains to emphasize that the BOAC-Cunard deal was made by the Board of the Cunard Steam-Ship Co and not by the management of Cunard Eagle Airways. But this fact is in no way contradictory to the point which I tried to make in the article of May 28. Indeed, I said (in a part which Mr Guinane does not quote) '/ always admired the energy which aviation characters like Harold Bamberg and Freddie Laker put into their businesses, and I can see an argument for the sort of competition which they origi- nally offered. . . . But when an organization gets too big for the sort of capital which such people can provide, then the larger, impersonal organization invariably seeks ways and means of eliminating competition.' Nothing which Mr Guinane now says controverts this point. "Of course, I accept his assurance that the management of Cunard Eagle were against this deal, but they managed but did not own. Other people were putting up the capital and they were entitled to make the decision. This is part of the economic facts of life about which I spoke."—Ed] 1063 Progress—the Disease of Mankind? SIR,—"Progress," writes J. A. Banham in a letter in your issue of June 4, "is essential for humanity. We have made it necessary by permitting the population explosion . . . progress is essential for mankind, and hence ... we need to develop the Concord." This strikes me as a very con- vincing argument for using Concord development money to produce more food and a cheap and efficient method of birth control. The Concord is a very beautiful and impressive aeroplane (now that the range and payload have been increased), but most people know that it is being built more for prestige than out of necessity. At the same time, the Short Skyvan has languished for years for want of funds. Which of these two aeroplanes will benefit mankind more ? Mr Banham also uses the familiar argument that the Concord will advance technology. Well, we have had quite a few stupendous advances in new materials over the last twenty years, yet a medical friend of mine had to throw away his machine-forged scalpels when they went blunt (very quickly) because they would not take a new edge. He now uses his old hand-forged ones which he has had since before the last war. Then take the deal door of my con- servatory. It went rotten in three years. The previous door, also of deal, had lasted ninety years. Plenty of scope for a bit of really practical progress in these two fields. And finally, at the risk of being reactionary, repetitive and obvious, might I suggest that it is about time somebody progressed towards an aeroplane which "lands slowly and doesn't burn up" and is nice and quiet as well ? "Progress" is one of those emotive words which is com- pletely meaningless unless it is linked to basic truths and true needs. By a happy juxtaposition of examples, the Concise Oxford Dictionary puts progress in perspective: "the progress of civilization, the disease made rapid progress." The whole of mankind is suffering from the disease of progress. London SE12 EDWARD LESLIE Swing: Wingery SIR,—In a letter published in the June 4 issue of Flight International, Lt Cdr F. P. U. Croker comments on the relative merits of variable-sweep wings and thrust deflection and asks whether a TFX type aircraft might beneficially be designed around the latter. The short answer to this would seem to lie in the fact that TFX is essentially a supersonic dash aircraft—in that for most of its missions, combat or weapon delivery takes place during a comparatively short period of supersonic flight. To give as large a mission radius as possible the outward and return cruise phases need to be flown as efficiently as possible and in practice this means subsonically. Now, as Lt Cdr Croker points out, deflected thrust may be capable of sufficiently augmenting the wing lift obtained with a fixed low aspect-ratio wing to give acceptable take-off and landing speeds. However, it cannot perform the remain- ing task of the variable sweep wing, which is to provide the high lift/drag ratios (and hence high cruising efficiency) given at subsonic speeds by a wing of high aspect-ratio and moderate sweep. As a result, although the variable-sweep aircraft carries a considerable weight penalty when com- pared with its fixed-wing counterpart, the latter is likely to have a performance advantage only in an all-supersonic flight profile—and this despite the extra fuel it can carry. Bearing in mind the stringent requirements for ferry range and loiter capability in the TFX specification, it is difficult to see how variable geometry could be avoided—although a fixed wing of compound sweep type (a la Lockheed SST) might go some way in the right direction. Unless one accepts the extra weight and complication of fore-and-aft translation for the entire wing, the problems of trim and stability make the location of the pivot point all-important for a variable-sweep wing. If the pivot is chosen to be some distance outboard of the wing root, then the highly swept fixed part of the wing inboard contributes very little to the lift given in the low sweep, low speed mode; wing lift and hence centre of lift at subsonic speeds is
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