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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 1944.PDF
FLIGHT International, 25 June 1964 1069 the publisher's blurb tells us, "may justly be called the long arm of America"—by Martin Caidin. This is Mr Caidin's fortieth book, and he leaves the reader in no doubt about his enthusiasm for what he calls "this aerodynamic marvel." One interesting picture he publishes is of "The Four Horsemen," the four-Hercules aerobatic team. In an epilogue he describes the Hercules' successor the StarLifter as "a great logistics weapon"; and no doubt in due course it will form the subject of another book by him. In 34 fewer pages, Carroll V. Glines Jr has covered the whole history of the United States Air Force The Compact History of the United States Air Force. Hawthorn Books Inc; obtainable from THE GLOSTER GLADIATOR Bailey Bros & Swinfen Ltd, Hyde House, West Central Street, London WC1. Illustrated; 45s). The author, a lieutenant colonel, writes a vivid, terse prose, and his style is matched by Gil Walker's strong, wiry sketches. Col Glines ranges from balloon days to the XB-70; his pages are bursting with statistics and the book provides useful documentation on a great history, from the original American Air Service to the Army Air Force and the present USAF. Quite clearly, the Americans have great and justifiable pride in their air arm, which they view with an unashamedly biassed and patriotic air. The British tend to take a lighter view, and nowhere was this more evident than in the Auxiliary Air Eorce squadrons in pre-war days. In The Flying Sword The Story of 601 Squadron (Macdonald & Co Ltd, Gulf House, 2 Portman Street, London Wl; illustrated, 30s net) Tom Moulson recalls some of the squadron's escapades, particularly its "war" with 600 Sqn. This started when both were formed in 1925, and flared up annually in summer camp combats. In a raid on Lympne, 600 "systematically bombarded the 601 tents with every imaginable obnoxious missile . . . dead rabbits, birds, crabs, bombs of soot and flour, and balloons containing a mixture of ink and milk. They smothered the tents with red and yellow ochre, sacks of bad eggs, old fruit, fish and potato peelings. Finally, as the half-sleeping pilots staggered choking from their tents, cartons of treacle and silk stockings loaded with cow manure fell upon their heads." Even worse, a task force stole 601 's coveted wooden Flying Sword under cover of the raid. Of course, the sword was shortly afterwards recovered, by a gas-mask party under cover of a screen of "foul-smelling white smoke" laid on Hawkinge while the 600 officers were in full evening kit drinking their sherry. " Like other Auxiliary squadrons, 601 made a distinguished contribution to the war record of the Royal Air Force. It was disbanded in May 1945, re-formed in June 1946 and finally dis- banded—along with other RAuxAF fighter squadrons—in 1957, a disbandment that caused much resentment. There has never been anything quite like the auxiliary squadrons, with their enthusiasm and individuality, and Tom Moulson's book recalls both their carefree and heroic days. There is a great gap between such weekend pilots and the pro- fessional spy in the sky, the U-2 pilot such as ill-fated Gary Powers. In The Craft of Intelligence (George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, 20 New Bond Street, London Wl; 30s), Allen Dulles, former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency, expresses the unequivocal view that the U-2 flights were necessary to keep the United States informed about the Soviet missile programme. He also says that though, traditionally, officialdom keeps quiet about espionage operations, in the case of the U-2 so many people were involved in • building the aircraft that they would have known an official denial was false, and sooner or later the project would have leaked out. Before the Powers episode, the United States had gained a great deal of information from U-2 flights; and, as Dulles points out, has profited from them subsequently: "In more recent days, it was' the high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance flights which gave the 'hard' evidence of the positioning in Cuba of Soviet medium-range missiles in late October of 1962." No aircraft, whether U-2s or A-lls or SSTs, can come into being without design skills and complicated production techniques. In Tooling for Aircraft and Missile Manufacture (McGraw-Hill Publishing Co Ltd, McGraw-Hill House, Shoppenhangers Road, Maidenhead, Berks; illustrated, £5 16s 6d) a large number of US aerospace industry executives have contributed their wisdom and experience to what is in fact a highly knowledgeable symposium on how to plan, tool-up for and manufacture aircraft and missiles, prepared under the supervision of the American Society of Tool and Manufacturing Engineers. Behind the manufacturers are the scientists, the aerodynamicists, the researchers. Two recent examples of their contributions to the fund of knowledge are K. N. Dodd's Mathematics in Aeronautical Research, one of the Oxford Mathematical Handbooks (Oxford University Press, Amen House, Warwick Square, London EC4; illustrated, 21s net), and an Oxford Mathematical Monograph called The Theory of Laminar Boundary Layers in Compressible Fluids by K. Stewartson (OUP; illustrated, 63s net). But what can brilliance of research, and the organization of production techniques, avail if there is mis-direction of policy ? In a Penguin Special, What's Wrong with British Industry? (Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middx; 3s 6d), Rex Malik takes a fairly sharp look at the British aircraft industry in one of his chapters. He finds the Government the villain of the piece, for lack of technical know-how on the part of its officials, for its ideas on security, and its prevarication, which "may make an aircraft turn out to be a dead loss, even though the machine itself may be a good one"; but he is not averse to taking a swipe at individual com- panies. Whether he is a prophet remains to be seen: "the monster that is Concord," he avers, "will appear late on the scene and cost more than the estimates." This will not make it any the worse an aeroplane, especially as it is being endowed with longer range, greater power and more reserves; and the statement that by the time it is airborne, "it would be surprising if there is no American Mach 3 transport in the production pipeline" seems a reasonable enough conjecture. But Mr Malik's look at the industry as a whole has the refreshing frankness of an outsider's viewpoint. raft of Intelligence 3jen Dulles OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED Model Maker Annual, edited by Vic Smeed. Model Aeronautical Press Ltd, 38 Clarendon Rd, Watford, Herts. Illustrated. Price 10s 6d. Luftsplonage, Vol. I by Karl-Heinz Eyermann. Deutscher Militarverlag, Berlin Treptow, Am Tretower Park 6. Illustrated. Price DM27.50. Luftspionage Vol. II, by Karl-Heinz Eyermann. Deutscher Militarver- lag. Illustrated. Price DM27.50 John Goes Gliding, by Ann Welch. Jonathan Cape, 30 Bedford Sq, London. Illustrated. Price 15s net. The Physics of Lightning, by D. J. Malan, DSC, FRSSAF. The English Universities Press Ltd, 102 Newgate St, London EC1. Illustrated. Price 25s net. Alles Over de Fokker Friendship, by H. Hooftman. L. J. Veen's Uitgever- smij NV, Leidsegracht 78, Amsterdam-C. Managing a Transport Business, by W. S. Barry. George Allen & Unwin Ltd, Ruskin House, 40 Museum St, London WC1. Illustrated. Price 35s net. Meteorological Glossary, compiled by D. H. Mclntosh, MA, DSC. HMSO. Illustrated. Price 32s 6d net. Aeromodelling, by Ray Malmstrom. Arco Publications, 9 Grape Street, London WC2. Illustrated. Price 5s. Southern Cloud, by I. R. Carter. Angus & Robertson, 54-58 Bartholo- mew Close, London EC1. Illustrated. Price 21s. The Spectrum of Strategy, by E. J. Kingston-McCIoughry. Jonathan Cape, 30 Bedford Square, London. Illustrated. 25s net. Ascalon, by Jerrard Tickell. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, St Paul's House, Warwick Lane, London EC4. Illustrated. 2s 6d net.
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