Seems like the guy I'd rely on to distract me from my plane crashing into the sea.
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
We are all rushing towards the last day of school here, but I'm not quite so distracted that I'm not feeling a bit guilty at seeing Flight gamely flogging the Tyne while the air slowly goes out of the Proteus. Don't get me wrong: If you have to buy a turboprop to put in your airliner, the Rolls Royce job is the one you want, just because they made the Dart work, and no-one else has made any of them work, the gas generators in helicopters aside. But that doesn't mean that I don't feel guilty selling the Vanguard to TCA! I just can't help thinking that slow and loud was not the right bet for a long range airliner, even if the Viscount seems to be just the thing for shorter routes.
Now back to important career-related activity like fitting a visit to a showroom to see an air conditioner into a Sports Day.
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Letters
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Level_Interchange Named for a traffic reporter, not the Family Circus guy. |
The Periscope Washington Trends reports that the Democrats think they can take the Congress in Fall, especially that the President is sick again, and that things might get weird if the President can't run.
National Affairs
"Rocking and Rolling" A riot in an audience watiing for a Bill Haley and the Comets set leads a sociologist to muse that "Rock'n' roll fever is caused by the same virus which induces panty raids and goldfish swallowing," although the facility manager is concerned about how that "jungle strain gets 'em mall worked up."
"Mr. 'If" of the Democrats" theorises that Symington might be the one! John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Kefauver, Robert Meyner, and Hubert Humphrey are all on the Vice-Presidential menu. It all takes up so much space that there's only room for a short story about McSorley's closing, and Ernest K. Lindley's ever earnest meditations on "Ike's Blueprint" to round out the section. McSorley's is, or was, an old-time New York saloon, and Ike's blueprint, which will survive him, if, Heaven forbid, is anti-communism abroad and the New Deal at home, eliminating "all disabilities from race and religion," and, in general, the middle road. (Leaving no room on it for Stevenson.)
International
"M. Mollet's Moment" Last week, Mollet could only muster 271 votes, less than half the Assembly, for a confidence vote on his latest plan for piecemeal elections in rebel-cleared areas of Algeria, with 200 abstainees. This week nothing has happened except, but Newsweek needs to run a photo that is news, which it can't do without running the same story again. Don't look at me, I don't make the rules! Stanislaw Mackiewicz, the premier of the Polish government-in-exile, has given up on exile politics and returned to Poland. Morocco's a bit of a mess in the wake of sudden independence. Dreadful Russian Communism is on the advance throughout the Middle East, while Argentina had a neo-Peronist coup last weekend, but everyone ignored it and it fizzled out. Canada isn't having a coup, but the pipeline debate continues to get attention in the not-boring countries.
Keeping Up With Russia
"Communism, Terrorism, tourism: Taming of the Bear?" is followed by "Shifting Tide of the Volga"
This is obvious a special report, but the typesetting implies a regular section with two (actually three, there's a profile of a prominent Russian Orthodox patriarch who is making political waves, page over), but the first bit is just an introduction to the second. Anyway, the advantage of writing out the full titles and subtitles is that there's not much new in the body of the article.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that if there is a recession, it won't be the fault of the President's health. The lead story explains why Washington is worried about the economy, but retailers aren't necessarily. (That is, they're not doing much about inventories.) "Here's the real story. The increase in business inventory isn't so bad right now. If it continues this way, we could be in trouble, but my guess is that it won't continue." The annual television manufacturer's convention thinks the industry should focus on "second" televisions, and, after that, colour. 
Stories about how people absolutely respect direct salesmen (and women!) now. This is followed by a box story about how business executives have to be good leaders, which means that they have to be aggressive, tough-minded, and good delegators. The title is a bit more "aggressive:" "To Step Up, You Sometimes Have to Step Hard." The obligatory story about business recruiters on campus is particularly long this time round.
Products: What's New has a Goodyear "Captive air tire" that it says "will obsolete the spare tire." That is, it has two tubes, with the inside one good for a hundred miles before it goes flat, too. The Thermo Hat Company has hats made of a "foamlike plastic fabric called Shellertex." It is an insulating material, but you can put it in a bath of ice water for the summer. Childhood Interests has a projector that plays animations on mirrors that rotate on a record player turntable.
American Machine and Foundry is building an underground missile factory under a limestone mountain near Huntsville, Alabama, for some reason. Henry Hazlitt is concerned that we don't remember that he's opposed to farm price subsidies, so he uses this week's Business Tides to tell us again.
Science, Medicine
"The Versatile Vertiplane" Vertiplanes don't exist, but if they did, the Army would like them, and Hillier and Ryan can sketch them up a storm! This is definitely Newsweek-quality news. Periscoping News reports difficulties "plaguing the U.S. effort to get earth satellites up before the Russians do." The engines keep flunking ground tests.
"Genius at Cal Tech" Murray Gell Man, who was also in the "Russia" news because one of the ways that the Russians are being new and modern is that they're hosting a big particle physics conference, gets in the news.
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| Nothing says "Western art is a living tradition" like a Rembrandt retrospective |
Art, Press, TV-Radio, Newsmakers
After some fooferaw about opera, Art checks in with a Rembrandt retrospective. That's catching up with the middlebrow market, right there!
The Daily Sketch gets a profile of the "How can the British press be so much more wicked than we can get away with even with their libel laws" variety, a very short profile of Robert Villers, the France-Soir reporter who got the "Secret Speech" transcript scoop, and Westbrook Pegler got some column space by denouncing some recent press awards.
The rapidly developing field of TV sports is the main story in TV-Radio, which also briefly reviews a game show and various TV plays, and also the eighth, and possibly last season of the Milton Berle show, which was closed by the one and only Elvis Presley.
Various royals, Edward G. Robinson (and, more importantly, his wife), pioneer journalist Homer Croy, American bullfighter Harry I. Whitney, Aristotle Onassis, Prince Rainier, and Harry S(.[?] When did the whole "it's not an initial, it's just 'S'" thing start?) are in the column for the usual reason. Sonja Henje has remarried, Marshal Zhukov is sick. Turner Joy, Margaret Biddle, and Hiram Bingham are dead. The death of Alice Lindsay Wynekoop, who was living under an assumed name, is revealed.
Movies
Fox has D-Day, the Sixth of June, which is actually a romantic vehicle for Dana Wyonter, with the invasion in a vital background role. The Proud and the Profane is Paramount, Deborah Kerr, and the Southwest Pacific campaign, but otherwise the same thing. Rosana is an Italian import with so much of Rossana Podesta that the reviewer gets tired of near-naked girls.
Books
For some reason, a review of a new translation of a Balzac novel leads the feature. Brian Moore's The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is exactly the novel you'd expect. Pierre Gascar's Beasts and Men is "macabre and gruelling," a collection of short stories. Francis Parkman's The Discovery of the Great West: La Salle, is a new edition, the first in 25 years, and much more sympathetic to La Salle than other biographers. But that's the challenge of being a pioneer.
Raymond Moley's Perspectives looks at "Big-Business Myths," such as the myth that business iusn't just great.
Flight, 15 June 1956
Leaders
"Cranfield Decade" The College of Aeronautics at Cranfield was dreamed up by Sir Stafford Crippss as a way of putting Roy Fedden and, later, Frank Whittle out to pasture gracefully, and with names like that involved, you know it's got to be somewhere in the vicinity, or perhaps on the other side of town, from good, as Flight makes clear with a "two cheers and a half-hearted hurray" Leader.
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| By Sergey Lysenko - File:Air-to-air with a Russian Air Force Ilyushin Il-62M.jpg on Wikimedia Commons, originally published on http: //russianplanes.net/id164205, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40618026 |
Anthony Spooner, "Flying the 707: A British Test Pilot Tries Boeing's Jet Transport" His recent 6000 mile trip to Seattle was not as exhausting as you might expect because he flew in a good old Stratocruiser and DC6B, more modern piston engined planes being faster but "certainly . . . not quieter." I haven't flown in a DC7, which must be the plane being criticised here, but I'm not surprised! Captain Spooner was ushered around the Boeing plant by an assortment of salespeople, just in case you were wondering why Boeing invited him over to have a look! He reminds everyone that the "prototype" 707 he was invited to fly is a different plane and quite a bit smaller than the production 707s that are still coming.
Here and There reports that some British fighter jets are now armed for low-altitude tactical atomic bombing, that the Comet 2 now has its full passenger-carrying certificate, that Robert Blackburn, who died last September at the age of 70, left £132,000, out of which a £17,000 death duty was paid. General Kammhuber is back in charge of the German Air Force.
"Canfield: The First Ten Years" Why would you go to Cranfield to study aeronautics when all the good universities have aeronautical engineering programs? Good question! Cyril Cleverdon(?) and Kenneth Owen get writing credits. I looked up Cleverdon in Who's Who, since the name seemed too clever by half, but he is a real person.
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| The Potz 75 prototype in 1955. RuthAS. |
Aircraft Intelligence reports that an additional $20 million of F8Us have been ordered, that the French Army has ordered 100 Potez 75s, that the Super Mystere B.2 has flown, that the ramjet helicopter that Kolibrie is flying around Holland is absolutely a real aircraft that will soon be in mass production, that the Russians have ordered a light helicopter, and the Chileans a trainer.
"Westland Wyvern: Design and Development of the Navy's Turboprop Strike Aircraft" It was, of course, completely nuts to assign a pioneering turboprop engine to a carrier strike aircraft on account of turbprops being intrinsically terrible at "stopping." The solution adopted was to use the pitch control of the constant speed, contrarotating coaxial props toto do the job, substituting one gear-grinding gadget for another. This was given up on after the first, say, five years of development in favour of a new control unit based on rate of change of angular velocity instead of velocity, which is control engineering lingo for "Harder to design, but better." With the new control, the Wyvern could at last be sent to sea in 1954, a mere decade after development began. The design account is long and thorough, and there is no doubt that the aircraft itself is an impressive bit of mechanical engineering. I see reference to a "75 ton steel casting," which is some kind of technical language, since I doubt the Wyvern secretly weighs 75 tons, but is the kind of thiing that would have have gone into a plane designed in 1935!
"A Tour of 2nd TAF: The RAF in Germany: Progress and Re-equipment" Swifts and Hunters are in Germany.
Correspondence
G. A. Farley of Leg Refrigeration writes to say that executive business planes are worth every penny. J. Chr. Hubach recalls the old days, before the war, aviation medicine in Australia division. R. M. Bass has a pedantic point to pick about terminology, while L. F. E. Coombes patiently explains to Geoff Dorman why airlines don't use inflight refuelling. Is Dorman really this dumb, or is he ginning up letters for the column? The Industry is all personal moves, apprenticeship prizes, and companies holding parties. (Rumbold, the aircraft cabin furniture builder.) Civil Aviation reports that Handley Page's "laminar airliner" proposal, featured in the corporate newsletter, is just a brainstorm, says the Ministry and Handley Page. We get a summary of a recent article in Western Aviation about the DC8, and talk of the DC9, which will be a medium-sized airliner comparable with the Convairliner. Caravelle testing has een completed. The Britannia will be flying (commercially) in "two months time."
Letters
A. D. Banks of Hollywood is tired of all those nay saying "comedy writers" and "social economists" who stand in the way of the glorious future of robot atom planes. The author of a book discussed in an article about old Hawaii is upset at Newsweek's interpretation, which is all I can say, because two pages and the rest of the letters column is missing. For Your Information profiles Newsweek's new sports editor.
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| The Hammond bit gets a partial pass for mentioning that he lived in a "loft castle" above Norman's Woe reef, which leads to this bit of classic American landscape art. By Edward Moran - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30705281 |
National Affairs
"From the First Family: Ike Will Run" The reaction to the President's surgery is so different from the one to his heart attack. He is not a well man. He is going to have health problems in his next term. He will be 66 in October, the male life expectancy is just 66.7, and life expectancy after a major heart attack in your sixties is less than four years. But, well, it's too late for anyone but Richard Nixon to take the nomination, and the only people who want Richard Nixon as President are the kind of people who like Richard Nixon, if you know what I mean. So we get stories about the "Lively Convalescent."
"Who is Disloyal?" Obviously, looking for Communists under the bed is the kind of thing a feverishly paranoid nursing home patient does, but no-one cares about that. What they do care about is how much work loyalty checks throw on people who have enough clout to avoid work! So lucky the Supreme Court stepped in to tell the Administration that it was only allowed to do loyalty checks on people in "sensitive" positions. The Court has ordered Kendrick Cole reinstated as a New York Food and Drug inspector, and up to 85% of the 9605 Federal employees who were required or encouraged to resign are in for the same generous treatment. The Senate has headed off cuts in foreign aid, there's still not going to be a steel strike this summer, and the Navy is going back to its old pants.
International
An entire box story dwells on Nasser's "drift toward Soviet Russia." Negotiations for the release of American prisoners in China continue. In Latin America, more on the Peronist attempted coup and the Argentinian government's efforts to "root out Peronism," and its possible ally, Communism. I can never remember if Peron was a Fascist, a Communist, or both.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that odds are that the Federal Reserve will cut the discount rate, that June auto sales were promising, that there does seem to have been a contraction in business activity in the spring, and that the President's economic advisers are keeping a close eye on things. The UMW is getting together with industry to invest $50 million on coal exports facilities for the European market, Standard oil and Continental Can are investing, the latter, among other things, building a research laboratory in Chicago; the British trade gap shrank in May to its lowest level since October, the Pennsy's lightweight Bud cars are a dream, Freeport Sulphur is building in Mexico after Louisiana raised its sulphur tax, and a Senate committee has heard that Russia and China are buying shares in US defence industries through Swiss brokers(!)
Sure, Hansen was a nonentity at antitrust, but at least his son became a dilettante historian!
Science, Medicine, Education
"Atomic Aftermath" Scientists agree that atomic fallout isn't a major risk to health at the moment, but this will change in an atomic war. They are worried about the effects of radiation-induced mutations over generations, though. Meteorologists have found no evidence of atomic tests affecting the weather, and food scientists really like radiation as a way of preserving food, and hope that people don't get strange about it. Turning to the Pacific, the question of how all the fallout from the Bikini test affected Marshall Islanders has been answered: Not very well.
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| Miracle anesthetic Neraval was the barbiturate Methitural. |
Education covers an Episcopalian private school in Oklahoma City where an integration fight blew up and the principal resigned over the board's refusal to admit a qualified 11 year-old, the latest peregrination of a Brownell sibling, and the Navy's new program to send a small number of its brightest enlisted men to college. so as to raise the tone.
Press, TV-Radio, Art, Newsmakers
John Steinbeck has been tapped to cover the conventions this summer, and has reached out to journalism schools to send him interns to do all the work. Astrologer Carroll Righter needs more free publicity, here are his celebrity horoscopes for all the politicians in the '56 race. Ike is a Libra with some Gemini and with Jupiter ascendant, will be more outspoken in 1956 and 1957 than he has been in the past. Researchers have discovered that Adlai Stevenson was very prolix back when he was a cub reporter in the Twenties.
Time for yet another story about TV comics, because Steve Allen's The Funny Men is out, and a long review is the perfect way to fill up some space. Victor Borges is quite the TV guy.
Art is in Venice for the Biennial, and you're not. Oh, and here's some reasonably recent graphic art for you.
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| Eclipsed by the Pan Am Flight 6 diching in October, I guess. |
The Rockefellers, Martha Raye, Calvin Coolidge, Grace Kelly, and Charlie Chaplin are in the column for the usual reasons. Marion Davies is in it because she has moved out of Hearst Castle, which is to be demolished to make way for a 29 room hotel, and Red Skelton is in it for volunteering to entertain the passengers when a Pan Am airliner encountered engine trouble on a flight to Honolulu and had to make an emergency diversion to San Francisco. At 88 years, 8 months, and 15 days, Senator Francis Theodore Greene of Rhode Island is now the oldest man to ever serve in the Senate. A Rockefeller is married, as is the daughter of the President of GM. Dana Wynter is engaged. Evelyn Nesbit has had a stroke. Sir Frank Brangwyn and Frank Trumbauer have died.
Movies
Paramount's That Certain Feeling is a comedy vehicle for the "shiny new Miss [Eva Marie] Saint" and also stars George Sanders, "who as the great artist brings fatuity to a new and appalling dimension," and Bob Hope, "who plays Bob Hope," and seems "a little tired." Safari, from Columbia, features the "Dark Continent being rather incontinent again." MGM's The Catered Affair gets a more measured but still negative review. Then the feature makes room for a news story about the reception of American movies in India.
Books
It's time for summer reading, meaning lots of capsule reviews of books from thrilling to worthy, and if you think I'm going to treat twenty-two titles in ta page and-a-half, you've got to be crazy. The only thing approaching a real review is one of J. C. Furans, Goodbye to Uncle Tom, which tis a positive review of a "flatly for the Negro" book that has me a little suspicious that there is more to it.
Raymond Moley's Perspctive discovers a new threat to American's precious freedom to pay for private power: "Atomic socialism."
Flight, 23 June 1956
Leaders
"Ideas and Applications" People are saying that while the Americans may be ahead, we have the ideas. This is nonsense! We need to do more with what we have, such as the turbojets and turboprops. Flight singles out short-field performance for aircraft and transports, perhaps even vertical takeoff. Ity also gives a bit more credit to Handley Page's boundary layer control airliner.
From All Quarters reports that the jet engine that Orenda has designed for the CF-105 has been named the Iroquois, that various new variants of RAF and RN aircraft have been designated, that the Westland Wessex, intended as an antisubmarine helicopter for the Royal Navy, should be in service by 1958, powered by two Napier Gazelle engines. The recent Valiant crash with the loss of three crew was caused by an electrical failure. We are promised a special "Airliners of the Future" issue on 6 July.
Here and There reports that Lieutenant General C. S. Irvine, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the USAF, has told the Symington committee that the USAF will have 600 B-52s by 1959, a hundred more than its last estimate. The Seamew accident seems to have been pilot error, we get a very brief biographical profile of Captain Spooner, the second part of whose account of "Flying the 707" follows immediately afterwards. I think it is just as clear as clear can be that BOAC is buying the 707. Stinson wants us to know that the lawnmower-type roller tires on its latest Voyager are perfect for rough fields and available for purchase now.
Making up the page count, and strangely interpolated into the midst of Spooner's highly positive review, are short bits about how the Valiant is using De Havilland Sprite rocket motors to improve takeoff performance, and belated coverage of the Cat's Eye optical amplifier under development at Wright Air Development Centre.
The Aeronautical Bookshelf has a biography of Chuck Yeager by W. R. Lundgren. The reviewer describes him as a "modest, sincere man," which, if you know Yeager, tells you all you need to know about the motives of author and publisher in bringing this book out right now. Speaking of horrible people in aviation with books, Hanna Reitsch has memoirs out. C. H. Gibbs' aircraft recognition handbook is out in a new edition.
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| Let's look at Silas Henry's 1819, five-rched stone bridge across Concococheague Creek on the National Road, not far from the first Studebaker farm/factory in the United States, just to rest our eyes from all that print. Not closed until 1979! Nance's next job will be as boss at the Edsel division! |
Aircraft Intelligence reports that the B-58 will serve as a mother ship for pilotless interceptors and that the F-101 Voodoo will carry a radar operator in an interceptor role, and even reports on the Piper Comanche, just shamelessly recopying Aviation Week's Industry Observer, before catching us up with Caravelle test flying (and the Djinn, for those who follow hopeless hielicopter plays), and word that the National Geographic Institute will take 6 HD 321s.
"'Flap-Blown' D.H. Sea Venon: Successful Trials with a Mk 21" More and more talk about maintaining low speed lift by directing engine exhaust over the flaps. This is pretty clearly important for carrier operations, although aviator's (and sailors'!) wives might be forgiven for worrying about leaving the plane depending on yet another gizmo in the takeoff! The article is mainly devoted to explaining how it works. Two pictorials, one of Cranfield class projects, the other of the Hunter, lead into an anniversary visit to Air Service Training, which is a quarter-century old, and takes us back to the days when the industry was desperate for paying customers, and AST found a market. Speaking of which, Dowty's silver jubilee is up.
Correspondence
D. F. Satchwell explains that all those regulations are just holding the air industry back. C. Arthur complains that various people get into the Birthday Honours list and various other aviation people don't, and it's not fair, and the Editor has to point out that the various aviation person referred to is OBE, CVO. A,. S. Richardson is very disgruntled with the state of British airliners. At least put Conways on the DC8s and 707s we buy! Herve Lauwick and J. T. Bennett recall the old days, before the war. Richard Bateson of the German Aviation Research Group of All-Britain is upset that so little of the captured German WWII research has been published by HMSO, and surmises that it is all still being held back by long-obsolete wartime secrecy rules, and not because it is all "publish-or-perish" piffle. 
The Industry reports that everyone is testing M. L. Aviation's new high pressure flight suits, that Mullard's new radar simulator is a convenient and inexpensive way to train radio operators, and that Bristol has continental licensees making its plastic 110gall fuel tanks. Shorts has a pilot plotting board, Aircraft Radio Corporation a lightweight ADF, and ITT a lightweight autopilot. Americans are so chintzy about buying advertorial space in Flight! Civil Aviation reports movement on the London-Moscow front, that the Beirut-London route has been inaugurated, that Flight's Arthur Browbeer was in and out of Midway Airport in Chicago in a Viscount and reports that everyone was very impressed with it. Aer Lingus is twenty, and poor John Profumo had to fend off a deranged FIDO-loving backbencher in the Commons the other day. No, burning all the oil in the world is not an answer to London pea soupers. Proper chimneys, good radars, and not burning coal are the airminded answer to London pea soupers.
Flight, 29 June 1956
Leaders
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| By Alan Wilson - Yakolev Yak-25M '03 red'Uploaded by AVIA BavARia, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons .wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29284086 |
and Farmers.
"Our Gentle Giants" It's a little daft seeing British troops being air ferried to Cyprus in Shackletons, but that's what you get when you don't order new planes, but the Britannia is coming and the Beverley is pretty good for what it is, and we should also mention some helicopters to be less embarrassing.
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| Unknown. Hosed by the DoD and from Wiki |
"Tushino Revelations: Sukhoi Supersonic Deltas in a Great Soviet Display" The big news is a modified Yak 25, larger and one with a fighter-style nose, the other a transparent one suggesting a light bomber role, and the Sukhoi deltas already mentioned, "very advanced planes indeed."
Here and There reports that the air show honouring the rotation of 200th Air Division is quite the thing, and while the Il-10s they were flying are leaving Germany, the MiGs that performed in the show are not. A mockup of the Orenda Iroquois is available to the press.
"Rolls-Royce Turboprops: An Account of the First Decade of Development" D. P. Huddie of Rolls Royce was over there in Canada to reassure them about the Tyne, and on the public side to give a nice historical talk about how Rolls Royce got to be the only company that makes turboprops that a customer with a choice will touch. (Whether that is going to include the Tyne is up for debate!) It was actually a pretty thorough talk with lots of operational details of the Dart.
Flight next sends a guy to fly the very sweet-looking M.S. 76, then a guy and a girl (Patricia and John Stroud) to see how they do air transport in Finland. Don't tell me! They put stuff in airplanes that are mostly DC3s and assorted little floatplanes, and fly it from one airfield to another! Am I close? A pictorial shows the difference between oblique and vertical photos, and Transair gets a full page advertorial for its DC3 wheel-well doors.
Correspondence
Mecure Galant, who does not seem to feel the need to sign by rank or employment, writes about how just the other day he was out in his ship doing a bit of the old supersonic flying over Germany when he(!) saw a shock-wave. Jolly good show! Peter Vollborth was at an air show in Germany recently where there were hardly any British ships. Shocking! David Keith-Lucas writes in with an appreciation of the late Wally Runciman. Maurice Austin recalls the old days, before the war, DH9 division. Colin Lamb saw a plane that he didn't recognise the other day, and Flight points out that he got the registration wrong, too. G. Burnett of Matane Air Services is upset that his competitors, Quebecair, got some free publicity and he didn't. The Industry reports that the hundredth Sycamore has been delivered, that R. B. Pullin will manufacture a range of Kearfott synchros, servomotors, and other precision equipment under a licensing agreement with the American company. Alex Moulton wants everyone to know that he has formed the Alex Moulton Development Company to develop various airminded things. Civil Aviation reports that the Britannia's service introduction has been deferred due to icing problems, that the new RAE cyclorama is the best airport illumination system yet. According to a TWA customer survey, TWA is the "housewives' choice." A BOAC Argonaut, and a Venezuelan Super Constellation have been in very serious accidents, it is reported as we go to press, so here's some statistics from California Eastern Aviation to show that flying is safe as houses. Hughes Tool is absolutely going to produce its own jet airliner and will deliver 30 to TWA and 10 to Delta in 1959. Convair is now in the picture, which means that this will actually happen, and that Hughes, Convair, and GE (providing the engines) will take a giant bath underwritten by the US taxpayer's spending on giant bombers.
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| Kearfott makes the gyrocompass that is going to go i n to one or the other top secret British rockets or missiles, I forget which one, but here's a picture of a Blue Steel on display at what looks like some old hoarder's back yard, but is, in fact, the Midland Air Museum. By Snowmanradio, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3117306 |
"Tacan Evaluated" The Second Annual Technical Symposium on Tacan met in Washington recently and agreed that it is an excellent radionavigation system that everyone should adopt. Then it was pointed out that the world is not going to throw out thousands of VOR/DME installations to use a system that depends on giant ground-based radards with their own problems. It was replied that Tacan is slightly lighter than VOR/DME. "Giant raspberry," it was replied to that. The Aeronautical Bookshelf has the memoir of a BOAC pilot, the Lincoln Press's Aviation Year Book 1956, and Milton Rosen, The Viking Rocket Story. Apart from being a great reference, where other than the Aviation Year Book can you learn that Martin and Convair are researching anti-gravity? The Rosen book is authoritative and has some gripping launch stand stories, including an occasion in which Viking 10 was saved after it caught fire on the pad by the expedient of shooting the fuel tank with a rifle to drain it.
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