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Aviation History
1975
1975 - 1426.PDF
172 J- WORLD NEWS Hubert Broad Flight readers, and particularly those of an earlier generation, will join with us in mourning the death on July 30 of Capt Hubert Broad at his home near Basingstoke, after a long illness. He was 79. His name is one that inevitably arises in any reminiscences of British aviation in the years between the wars, though he was equally active in the war years. Hubert Stanford Broad was born on May 18, 1897, and learnt to fly at the Hall School of Flying at Hendon in 1915, soloing on a single-seat 35 h.p. Caudron. Armed with pilot's certifi cate No 2,044, he joined the Royal Naval Air Service at Eastchurch in time to be accepted for the very first course at Cranwell, then an RNAS establishment. Broad was one of a number of pilots lent by the RNAS to the Royal Flying Corps, flying Sop^ with Pups with No 3 Sqn. During a second tour of duty he flew Camels with 46 Sqn, and the end of the war found him instructing at the Fighter Pilots Flying School at Fairlop. Like so many ex-Service pilots, Broad immediately after the war turned his hand to joy-riding, firstly with Avro, and in 1920 in America. Returning to Britain in 1921 he came sixth in the Aerial Derby air-race FLIGHT International, 7 August 1975 around London flying a Camel, the be ginning of his competitive and record- flying career. Polished airmanship brought his name to the attention of de Havilland, which took him on its staff in October 1921 as chief test pilot. Operations at Stag Lane, a name that was to become synonymous with light aviation, had begun earlier that year under Alan Cobham. In those days almost every firm was operating on a shoe-string, and some were largely understaffed, either tem porarily or permanently. Broad there fore found an opportunity to broaden his experience with the aeroplanes of the companies. Thus he flew Handley Page's W.10, Handcross and Hendon, the Parnall Pipit and the Saunders A.10 Fighter. Seaplane experience came via the Gloster II and III racers at Felixstowe, and in 1925 he flew the III in the Schneider Trophy, finishing second to America's Jimmy Doolittle. 1925 saw the birth of one of the greatest of all light aeroplanes, the DH.60 Moth, and Broad made the second flight in the prototype with Geoffrey de Havilland. A large part of Stag Lane activity was given over to demonstrating and racing Moths, usually in the immacu late hands of Hubert Broad, with F. E. N. St Barbe, the founder-director of the company who died in Cornwall on July 1 (see Flight for July 10, page 30) in charge of sales. The clear Hubert broad and Gipsy Moth on the occasion of the 24hr endurance record in 1928 superiority of the Moth was recog nised in 1926 when it won the King's Cup, flown by Broad, who set up a 24hr endurance record in the type. His 14-year association with de Havilland ended in 1935 when he joined the RAF as a test pilot. In 1940, after a year with the Royal Air craft Establishment, he went back to industry, this time as chief production test pilot for Hawker Aircraft. With more than 7,500hr on 200 types. EEC productivity figures challenged The figures currently being used by the European Common Market Com mission for the assessment of EEC aerospace production are felt by the UK industry to be grossly misleading. Similar figures produced in France (some of which were recorded in Flight for May 29) exploit the ECC assessment to stress low UK produc tivity. The accompanying tables are taken from the EEC's European Aerospace Industry: position and figures, revised and expanded up to February 1975. They show the sales, people employed and sales per employee on a straight division basis. The unit of account is a notional unit for assessing inter national activities within EEC. UK industry critics of these EEC statistics claim that "only officials who are statistically wholly illiterate would think of using figures of sales per person, or gross output, as an indication of productivity." They make no allowance for bought-out items which, in a country like the Netherlands, for example, must be very considerable. The EEC figures do differentiate sales within ihe aero space industry in one country,1 but not the internal trading conducted be tween the industries in several coun tries, as occurs in co-operative produc tion programmes. The EEC figures show that British engine output was 130 per cent higher than the French figure and that the British equipment output was four times as high. French airframe output is listed as higher than Britain's. The bought-in element in French output is obviously higher than Britain's, yet the estimate of gross sales per per son assumes a constant ratio of net to gross output. The only worthwhile measure is considered to be value-added per per son. The UK Census of Production and the French Enquete Annuelle indicate that in 1972 French value- added per man was 39 per cent above the British figure. Adjustments for taxes and social security reduce this to something like 3 per cent. The 100 per cent advantage to France quoted by the EEC figures is felt to be mis chievously misleading, and British aerospace industrialists are surprised that the EEC gives them currency as an international reference. SALES PER PERSON EMPLOYED* West Germany Belgium France 1969 11,483 9,333 12,910 1972 14,145 11,333 13,167 SALES AT CONSTANT 1969 PRICES** West Germany Belgium France Italy 1969 598 42 1,252 208 1970 685 38 1,364 218 1971 679 49 1,368 197 1972 742 56 1,429 307 AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY EMPLOYMENT 1969 1970 Italy 7,703 10,771 Nether lands 109 109 106 135 1971 Nether lands 15,571 20,454 UK 1,647 1,423 1,349 1,392 1972 UK 6,641 6,566 EEC 3,856 3,837 3,748 4,061 1973 USA 18,634 19,916 USA 26,126 23,630 20,096 18,363 1974 West Germany Belgium France Italy Netherlands UK EEC USA Canada Japan 52,076 4,500 96,977 27,000 7,000 248,000 435,553 1,402,000 44,400 23,100 56,206 4,700 103,364 29,500 8,000 237,000 438,770 1,166,000 35,800 25,600 55,173 4,849 108,646 28,000 8,000 218,000 422,668 951,000 28,700 26,500 52,455 4,941 108,525 28,500 6,600 212,000 413,021 922,000 28,800 26,000 52,985 4,380 106,132 30,000 7,000 206,108 406,605 948,000 30,200 26,026 54,015 4,451 — — — — — 968,000 — — *ln units of account at 1969 values. **ln units of account x million.
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