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Aviation History
1979
1979 - 0044.PDF
42 RAF five years from today, and we think you can do it. But never forget, Fozard, that your chief duty is to keep Sir Sydney happy and carry him with you. A typical managing director, you might say, with a cynical smile. But I took it very seriously at the time. I quickly learned to give in on what I had decided were the unimportant things. On the Friday in 1966 before he collapsed during his Saturday golf game, I spent an hour with Sir Sydney at George McLaren's board in the drawing office arguing fiercely why we shouldn't alter the P.1127 (RAF) tailplane planform (inherited from the Kestrel) to get rid of what Sir Sydney called that "unnatural bloody kink in the leading edge. Looks like mother done it." To my later and since continuing sorrow, I won. But who was right? You can see that kink in today's Harrier, Sea Har rier and AV-8B. We still have worries with the tailplane, and they're not entirely divorced from the fact that there's this bloody kink in the leading edge . . . Just in case you might think that I'm a one-hero man, I will now admit that I've been a life member of the Sir George Edwards Fan Club since I first heard him speak at Brighton in 1951. I regard a visit to Sir James Martin as the most noteworthy engineering short course that one can find these days. Bob Lickley has had a longer influence on my career and professional experience than Camm. One of the most memorable lunches of my life was with Sir Thomas Sopwith in 1977 at Compton Manor. What a truly great man Sir Thomas is. I'm better, too, at remembering pilots' names and very mindful of the debt that chief designers owe to the Bed- fords and Farleys of this world. I treasure a 1970 postcard from Sir Roy Fedden, whose wartime report for Cripps on "A College of Aeronautics" became, in 1946, my educa tional Book of Revelation. I read widely about the Victorian engineers. Those early Victorians had the right ideas on engineering. Not only did they value and reward the profession higher than society does today, but they also believed that the right and proper way to acquire the skills was to work with a great man. Engineering—particularly in aircraft—is a practising art. And, in Samuel Butler's words: "An art can only be learned in the workshops of those who are earning their bread by it." How will a young man learn tomorrow? By sitting at the feet of an international collaborative design committee? Peter Fichtmuller Dr Peter Fichtmuller is managing director of Panavia, the company responsible for Europe's biggest single aerospace programme, the Anglo-German-ltalian Tornado. He speaks not only for his generation, but for many great German aviation heroes ALMOST every boy is fascinated with aircraft and flying, JbV and so were we in the early 1940s during the Second World War as youngsters just below or at the begin ning of our "teens". And although in many instances air craft meant destruction and danger to ourselves, we were intrigued by these metal birds high up in the sky. When ever the noise of aircraft was to be heard and we had a chance to get away, we were out in the streets or in the fields. We knew all the characteristics of the various types, of fighters and bombers, friend and foe. These early impressions were followed by a long period of aviation vacuum. In 1945 all design, construction and operation of aircraft by Germans in Germany was sus pended. Design offices and factories were closed or pro duced subsidiary products. Many aviation engineers had left the country to work abroad. Aviation had become to me as to many others a foreign affair, something that had very little relevance to one's own life. It required a num ber of haphazard events in the 1960s to bring me back into contact with aviation. However, once being involved in the aircraft industry, the somewhat magical attraction of aviation has never ceased. Aviation industry in the early 1960s was already, even in the engineering area, a matter of teamwork in sizeable FLIGHT International, 6 January 1979 40 organisations with development programmes extending over years rather than months. And there were still quite a number of engineers around who had participated in the development and testing of aircraft in the 1930s and 1940s and some even in the pioneer days. Two of the celebrated circle of pioneering aircraft designers I was fortunate enough to get to know, not only by hearsay but also by meeting them personally. These were Willy Messerschmitt and Kurt Tank. Willy Messerschmitt, who died recently, shortly after his 80th birthday, was for the young novices of the 1960s the grand old man who filled us with awe. Later on when I got to know him I could sense that he was dedicated to designing aircraft and building them. His work impressed on me that dedication meant more than anything else; not to fight for any solution but for the best solution possible, and to enlarge the limits of technical feasibility at all times. Kurt Tank was one of the last to return from his emi gration for professional reasons, He is probably unique amongst the aircraft designers of his generation in that he was just as much a pilot and had been at the controls of all of his aircraft at their maiden flights. Both men are to me outstanding representatives of the homo faber, the
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