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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 2549.PDF
FyBmnr INTERNATIONAL. incorporating AEROPLANE Thursday 7 August 1969 Number 3152 Volume 96 Founded in 1909. Official organ of the Royal Aero Club. First aeronautical weekly in the world. Published by lliffe Transport Publications Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1. Telephone 01-928 3333 Telegrams/Telex: Flight lliffepres London 25137 © IPC Business Press Ltd 1969 Editor: J. M. Ramsden Air transport editor: H. A. Taylor Production editor: Roy Casey Assistant editors: Neil Harrison, CEng, AFRAeS Humphrey Wynn, BA Assistant technical editor: Michael Wilson, BSc, CEng, FBIS, AFRAeS Advertisement manager: David Holmes Photographic librarian; Ann C. Tilbury Editorial director: Maurice A. Smith, DFC Managing director: H. N. Priaulx, MBE In this issue World News 190 Air Transport 192 Light Commercial & Business 200 Letters 202 Private Flying 204 Cranfield Review 205 Industry International 215a Spaceflight 216 Defence 221 Straight and Level 222a Front cover An Italian aeroplane with a British engine, the Macchi MB.326 is an excellent example of the integrated trainer/ light-strike formula. It has sold well, and is built under licence in South Africa (as the Impala) and Australia. This particular example is the strike version, the MB.326G, powered by the 3,410lb-thrust Rolls-Royce Bristol Engines Division Viper 20 turbojet. Anglo-French Helicopters Although the Ministries of Tech nology and Defence are reluctant to admit it, there is not the slightest doubt that the Anglo-French heli copter deal is causing concern. Exces sive development costs are threatening already overdue production decisions. The Sud 330, a medium tactical helicopter developed before the agree ment, will have to be accepted. The British requirement was for 40 machines capable of being air-trans portable by Hercules to meet "East of Suez" emergencies. This require ment changed with the 1968 Defence White Paper, if indeed it did not vanish altogether. The real snag in the programme is the French choice of the Sud 341 as an LOH (light observation helicopter). This was a French design, developed from the extremely successful Alouette series, and Britain did not object to French design leadership even though the French military requirement was for only 100 aircraft compared with 600 for the British. But the 341 was due to enter service in 1968, and the original target cost of about £50,000 is now nearly £100,000. The French proposed to use the Bolkow rigid rotor, and to develop a special buried tail rotor, the "fenestron." Vast sums have been spent on this work,. but the Bolkow rotor has had to be abandoned in favour of the existing Alouette-type rotor, now over ten years old, and the fenestron has also proved more difficult than was ex pected. It may even be dropped in favour of the old-type tail rotor. The British Army may now have to make do with fewer LOHs than it requires, and it will have to suffer further de livery delays. The Fairchild Hiller OH-5A, the Bell JetRanger or the Hughes OH-6A could have been de livered by now at a cost of less than £40,000 each. Such is the measure of the competition that European col laboration has to combat. The third helicopter in the Anglo- French package is the Westland WG.13. It is the only one of seven Anglo-European aircraft projects of which Britain has design leadership. This helicopter and its Rolls-Royce BS.360s were the only part of the package from which British technology could benefit—though the French have subsequently insisted on designing their own Army "gunship" version. Development of the WG.13—the first original British helicopter since the 1957 Scout—has run into problems far more severe than were foreseen when the project was launched, with inevit able cost-increases and delays. Origi nal target price of the British Army version, £140,000, is now likely to be at least half as much again. There were high hopes of the Anglo- French helicopter package. It was the first to conform with the "each-unto- his-own" method of collaboration whereby each partner took full res ponsibility for the design and manage ment of a particular project while the other undertook to buy and to build it. At the heart of the whole matter is the quality of the contract between buyer and supplier. One reason for the financial fiascoes of the past was the looseness of Whitehall contracts and, in consequence, of project man agement. There was a tendency to think that collaboration would be the panacea; but in fact it tended to make contracting disciplines even harder to apply. If it is difficult for Whitehall and Parliament to control the expenditure of taxpayers' money by contractors of British nationality, how much more difficult it is to control foreign firms. But the Anglo-French helicopter package, despite the disappointing set backs, still seems to offer the best formula for collaboration: national projects which the partners undertake to buy from each other. Not only should design leadership be clearly defined and unblurred, at least in these early years of collaboration; what might be termed contract leadership needs to be more sharply defined and firmly applied too.
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