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Aviation History
1977
1977 - 0024.PDF
22 , THE PERILS OF PROPHECY just large flat expanses of green grass. One could land in any direction to suit the wind, whereas in America, said Norman, they were providing runways with hard surfaces. They envied us our turf, but it would not stand up to use in their varied climate. It was difficult to achieve the best pattern of criss-cross strips to avoid crosswind land ings, and every locality was of course different. The lecturer did not think that hard-surfaced runways would be needed in Britain for some time until traffic became so heavy as to wear out the grass. He imagined that a traffic density of 150 aircraft per hour in each direction would represent saturation. Four years later Nigel Norman read a further paper bringing the subject more up-to-date. Aeroplanes were changing their shapes and equipment—controllable-pitch propellers were appearing, high-lift devices were being fitted to more efficient wing sections and shapes were becoming sleeker. Landing speeds of 65 m.p.h. were now admissible and these, combined with higher wheel loadings, were making the hard-surface strip essential. Neither of these two lectures mentions noise as a problem at airports. The acoustic difficulties up to the advent of the jet engine had affected mainly the human contents of the fuselage, with the engine and propeller noise beating through the thin fabric, plywood or sheet-dural skinning of the cabin. Airstrips In the late twenties and the early thirties, airships attracted considerable attention. Many prophets persuaded governments and companies to invest a lot of money in large projects which actually went up in smoke with considerable loss of life. The forecasts made by some of those involved would perhaps seem laughable now had the finale not been so tragic. On no subject has optimistic prophecy proved so perilous. In 1938 Dr H. Roxbee Cox (now Lord Kings Norton) gave a lecture to the Weybridge branch of the Society in which he finally showed up the practical insignificance of the old so-called "Square-Cube Law." This had been used to discourage those who would build bigger aircraft. Roxbee Cox called his paper "Big Aeroplanes" and he startled his audience by showing with consistent logic, step by step, that it should be possible by applying existing practice to build an aircraft with an all-up weight of 223 tons and able to carry 200 passengers and their luggage, together with 224 tons of mail, at 315 m.p.h. over a still-air range of 4,000 miles. It would be a flying-boat with the hull blending into a thick "V" wing. There would be six engines of about 6,000 h.p. each. This brought him to the limiting factor of propeller diameter. Six propellers of 29-4ft diameter would cover three-quarters of the span in a single row. Of course, he considered various engine and propeller alternatives, but the salient point is that a leading aeronautical scientist was thinking ahead con structively. Wartime curtailment Roxbee Cox expanded the same theme but in a much bigger way with very wide horizons in his Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture to the RAeS on May 30, 1940. Unhappily, the war had broken out—some nine months earlier; this curtailed the policies he put forward and wartime secrecy prevented his saying many of the things he had in mind. Nevertheless, there is a hint in one sentence that the civil possibilities of jet and turbine propulsion should be investigated. Although nothing had been made public about Whittle's work, then in its early stages, there can be little doubt that Roxbee Cox knew what was going on. The subject was indeed beginning to stir in other countries and he himself was to take a major part in British development work and its exploitation. Had he known then the shape of post-war FLIGHT International, I January 1977 jet engines, his large aircraft of the future would not have been hampered by propeller diameter. If Roxbee Cox gave a hint of jet power to come, another comparable clue to the future came from Dr H. E. Wimperis in a paper to the British Association in August 1939. He concluded: "... we may be very content to leave our successors the even more threatening menace of deal ing aright with the problem of atomic energy. This is not necessary for me to describe. I will only say that in a recent broadcast address Professor Cockroft spoke of an atomic trigger action between the metal uranium and a single neutron which is reported to be capable of releasing a 100,000,000-fold increase in energy! Perhaps," he continued, "there are immense practical difficulties in doing this on a large scale; I honestly hope there are! For ourselves we may well consider that in our own way we are quite sufficiently occupied with the thoughtful handling of our own special problem, how rightly to guide the future of flying." For a number of years before he spoke, Wimperis had been chief scientist at the Air Ministry. Doubtless he had inside knowledge and this was a veiled warning. The war broke out a month later and ended with the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What I have said so far has been based on papers pub lished in the RAeS Journal during the ten important years leading up to the outbreak of war. Some of the speakers were of higher intelligence and understanding than others, but all were respected professionals, even if on occasion subsequent events proved them to have been wrong. Now to jump nearly 20 years, at least to 1957, when Mr Duncan (now Lord) Sandys was Minister of Defence. The complete politician, son-in-law of Sir Winston Churchill and with little experience of aviation, he was responsible for the 1957 "Defence: Outline of Future Policy," a state ment of Government policy. In this he said "... the RAF is unlikely to have a requirement for fighter aircraft more advanced than the supersonic P.l [later to be called the Lightning] and work on such projects will stop." How joyful Marcel Dassault (nee Bloch) in France and Northrop in America must have been to read this statement of British Government policy. In spite of Duncan Sandys we subsequently built over 2,000 Hunters, not only for the RAF but also for all those foreign countries who did not believe that the days of the piloted fighter were over. Even now, although we have had to drop out of that market, we read of "L'affaire Stehlin" in France when Dassault and Northrop were struggling for large orders for piloted fighters from Holland, Norway, Denmark and Belgium. This is 20 years after the "Sandys of Time" ran out. But politics is like that and although Duncan Sandys was a Tory, it was a Labour Government which cancelled the TSR.2 and made certain by having the jigs and tools destroyed. There is no profit in political prophecy. B
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