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Aviation History
1967
1967 - 1337.PDF
1020 FLIGHT International, 21 December (967 WORLD NEWS ... added. They had played a large part in improving the handling qualities of all aircraft. He had been horrified to learn that ETPS had only had a Lightning aircraft for a year, and wondered why the school had not been allowed to have one of the complete TSR.2s to use. Mr M. B. Morgan, Controller, Guided Weapons and Electronics, Mintech, re- called the early days of flying at ETPS and the rapid development of flight test techniques brought about by wartime pressure. He thought that the ETPS move to Boscombe was right from the operational standpoint. It was a good area for test flying, well away from con- trolled airspace, and the students would be in an environment of flight and sys- tems testing of all kinds of A&AEE. Gp Capt W. P. J. Straker, ETPS Com- mandant, reviewed the progress of the two courses which were being dined- out and made presentations to several Champagne with the Captain for Miss Sheila Scott, round-the-world woman pilot, seen here with Capt George Baldwin, who commands RNAS Yeovilton, after she had had a taste of Hunter flying in one of the Royal Navy's T.8s of the departing staff. He will continue in his present appointment when the school moves to Boscombe. Two other, highly amusing, speeches were made: by E. A. (Chris) Wren, on behalf of the aeronautical press; and by Lt Cdr Verle Klein, USN, who, as winner of the McKenna Trophy and course leader of No 26 Course, had double honours to perform. The evening ended with the tradi- tional high-spirited exchanges between staff and students. It was anything but a sad farewell to Farnborough. Parliament The Minister of Defence for Equipment, Mr Roy Mason, had an extremely rough passage at Question Time on Wednesday afternoon last week; in fact, had Prayers not traditionally come before Questions, he might have been glad to have the order of procedure reversed. However, he was rewarded (if reward it be) by having his picture on TV that evening, as the man who had said that the F-llls were going to cost £50 million more, to coin an H. M. Bateman phrase. F-llls, though, were not the start of Mr Mason's troubles, though they accounted for a good deal of them. The first ball, so to speak, was bowled by Dr David Kerr, who asked what the cost would be of a UK anti-missile system for defence against nuclear rockets. Prohibitive, said Mr Mason, succinctly—an answer which provoked a splutter of supplementaries from Dr Kerr. Is my hon Friend aware of the deduction which must follow from that brief, pithy and highly pointed answer? Is he aware that what he is saying in one word is that Britain is totally in- defensible in the event of nuclear war- fare? What further deductions are he and the Secretary of State for Defence going to draw from that nutshell of an answer? Perhaps Mr Mason would hardly have had time at that moment to recall Hamlet's "bounded by a nut-shell, and can count myself a king of infinite space." He stuck to his guns, that the cost was prohibitive—even the simple United States ABM system was costed at about $5,000 million; and he admitted to Mr Wingfield Digby that Britain had not made a study of the feasibility of such a system. But it was when members got on to F-lll costs that Mr Mason's hard times really began. Assailed by Mr Gordon Campbell, Mr Rafael Tuck, Mr Neil Marten and Sir Cyril Osborne about the effect of devaluation, he said it would add on average about £5 million a year. Would he reconsider this un- warranted expenditure? Mr Tuck wanted to know. No, Mr Mason assured him; we had got a very good offset agreement, enabling us to get $325 million worth of equipment sold to the US, and we had already sold $178 million worth. The last word in this group of supple- mentaries came, however, from the Opposition's chief defence spokesman, Mr Enoch Powell, and it was quiet but steely. By how many years does the annual increase of £5 million have to be multiplied? he wanted to know, and got a one-word answer—ten. This was not the last of the F-lll, though, at this Question Time, for Mr lames Davidson asked why "the residual requirement" for a high-level reconnis- sance and strike aircraft couldn't be filled by the remaining V-bombers, or seaborne aircraft, instead of by F-lllKs. Mr Mason pointed out that the F-lll was a Canberra replacement, required as much in Europe as elsewhere, although it would be deployed from the United Kingdom only, except for occa- sional overseas training. Then when the Earl of Dalkeith asked, out of the blue, whether there was any truth in the rumour that "this is a fixed-wing aircraft and not a swing-wing aircraft, which presumably would weaken its role?" Mr Mason fenced diplomatically: I cannot answer for rumours outside. Nor could he, it seems, be allowed off the hook for quite a long time yet, and he may well have wished that Mr Healey had been there—indeed, as Mr Frank Allaun put it to the Speaker a little later, "Unless the Defence Minister is ill, should we not be told why, when we have a whole series of Questions to him, he is not here to answer them?" This "point of order"—ruled by the Speaker as not a point of order—came at the end of another round of questions on defence expenditure, one of which, from Mr Allaun, asked that the Minister should convey to the Cabinet "the view of many Labour MPs that the whole of the proposed £100 million a year cut should come from arms and not a single penny off tjhe social services"; while another, from Mr William Hamilton, ex- pressed the "almost unanimous desire on this side of the House that we should get out of Malaysia very much quicker than we are intending at the moment." Thus from both the benches behind him and in front, Mr Mason came under fire; and the breadth of criticism on defence matters was shown by a further crop of questions on aircraft procure- ment costs, ranging from Sir Gerald Nabarro suggesting that, following de- valuation, the Government should cancel orders for foreign aircraft and buy British equipment (including resuscitating TSR.2), to Mr Hamilton's suggestion that the Minister of Defence should delight the international bankers by cuttinj defence expenditure—by the siml means of cancelling orders, as the nea for the aircraft was "very problematic indeed." As Mr Mason also had to answei questions on Sea Dart, Project Mallard nuclear weapons, Phantoms, Rapier arms to Australia and South Africa, sub marine SSN.07 and British Indian Oceat territories, and altogether gave °< answers—an intensive and exhaustive kind of mental PT—he too must havf been sorry that the Minister of Defen« was not in his place, and not sorry when, after the hour appointed, Questioi Time came to an end.
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