Science: Death at Farnborough

Four years ago, Test Pilot John Derry became the first Briton to pass the speed of sound and live to tell about it (TIME, Sept. 20, 1948).* Last week, at Britain’s annual Farnborough Air Show, Derry was flying a De Havilland DH-110, a twinjet, all-weather fighter. Before 120,000 spectators, including his young wife, Pilot Derry climbed to more than eight miles and dived, jets screaming, straight toward the crowd. Down he flashed at more than 700 m.p.h. When he leveled off, the double thunderclap of his shock waves—palpable as ocean breakers—crashed against the crowd’s bodies and ears. Derry turned again to make a low pass. Then the crowd saw disaster: in eerie, total silence, the DH-110 disintegrated.

The fighter floated apart leisurely, as in a slow-motion movie. Light pieces fluttered to earth. The nose and part of the fuselage skidded through a wire fence lined with spectators. The two jet engines, weighing a ton each, curved across the field in an awesome arc. Tumbling over & over and whistling faintly, they headed for a little hill packed with picnicking families. The great crowd stood in stunned silence, watching the hurtling engines. Over the public-address system, the announcer shouted: “Look out!”

The engines soared for about a mile. One of them missed the hill, tore through a radio truck and smashed two motorcycles. The other engine, flying lower, broke in two and plowed two bloody furrows through the churning crowd. Besides Pilot Derry and his observer, Tony Richards, 28 people were killed, 63 injured.

Air Fair. In spite of this spectacular human tragedy, the show was an aeronautical and military success. Distinguished foreigners from 94 countries, including top aviation men of the Western world, swarmed out of London with hordes of eager Britons. Farnborough turned into a gigantic county fair as families picnicked on the grass or watched from the tops of cars.

The watchers got their money’s worth as Britain’s flyers showed their new wares with superb and sometimes reckless showmanship. The Supermarine Swift and the Hawker Hunter, R.A.F. interceptors, flashed past the stands 100 ft. off the ground at an official 715 m.p.h., only a shade below the speed of sound. Pilot Derry in his DH-110, which was later to crash, zoomed to 17,000 ft. in a vertical, barrel-rolling climb. All three planes dived at the field, bombarding the stands with shock waves that sounded like cannon fire.

Then came airliners and bombers. A Vickers Viscount liner swooped over the field with three of its four turboprop engines feathered, and did a climbing turn. A Canberra jet bomber whirled in acrobatics as if it were a carnival stunt plane. A Comet jet liner lumbered down the runway, then jumped steeply into the air, pushed by rocket boosters.

The Coming Delta. Most interesting sights of the show for future-minded airmen were carefully guarded glimpses of the Gloster GA5 Javelin interceptor and the Avro 698 bomber. Both are delta-wings, which British (and some American) designers believe are the coming thing for practical supersonic flight. Neither plane was permitted to show its full performance, but the big Avro 698, flown by hot-rod Test Pilot Roland Falk, went into a vertical bank 200 ft. above the viewing stands. It was only the fourth flight for the 698. Said a top U.S. plane manufacturer as the Avro shot past: “That pilot ought to be shot. He risked the lives of dozens of the top aviation brains in the free world.”

Whether flown by hot rods or not, the delta-wings are the hottest thing in aviation. They reflect the British philosophy of design. Britain needs speedy interceptors, like World War II’s Spitfire, which can climb rapidly to great height. They must take off from small fields. They do not need great range.

All this adds up, say British designers, to low wing-loading (plane weight per square feet of wing area). And the best way to get plenty of wing and still have a plane that will fly fast enough is to use the delta shape. Since the wing is broad from front to back, it can be fairly thick (and therefore strong), but still be “thin” in the aerodynamic sense.* Such wings are fast and have minimum trouble when passing through the speed of sound. They have large area and therefore plenty of lift, and there may be more room inside them for the multiplying gadgets that modern airplanes must carry.

For Mach 1.5. American designers, say their British colleagues, have neglected delta-wings because they are necessarily preoccupied with long range. To get range, they designed planes with long, slender wings and high wing-loading. These tend to be fine for range, but not so good for takeoff, climb, ceiling and maneuverability. Many British designers believe that they are also inferior to delta-wings for speeds up to Mach 1.5 (1½ times the speed of sound).

Comments from U.S. airmen on the Farnborough show were generally critical. Some, conceding that the British are forward-looking in design, refused to admit that the British have anything that the U.S. cannot match. Others pointed out that the British exhibit their designs (e.g., the ill-fated DH-110) long before they have been properly tested. Another criticism : the new British military planes look good in design and in flight test, but they have not yet passed the big test of battle, or even of service in tactical units. And they are not likely to get the big test soon: Britain’s aircraft industry, flying high in design, is woefully weak in production (see BUSINESS).

*Geoffrey de Havilland may have passed Mach i in 1946, but his plane went to pieces and he was killed (TIME, Oct. 7, 1946). The first man to break through the sonic wall in level flight: the U.S. Air Force’s Captain “Chuck” Yeager, on Oct. 14, 1947, in his rocket-powered Xi. *A wing whose thickness is small compared with its breadth from leading edge to trailing edge is “thin” aerodynamically, though its actual thickness may be large.