Science: Wings over Britain

Britons were flocking last week, as eager as race fans, to the R.A.F. experimental station at Farnborough, 33 miles southwest of London. The twelfth annual show of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors, billed as “the most spectacular aviation display ever held in Britain,” turned out to be just that. Britain’s aircraft constructors, slipping aside the wraps of military security, really had something to display.

One big attraction was the cigar-shaped, swept-wing Hawker P-1067 interceptor-fighter, powered by a Rolls-Royce turbojet and touted as the “fastest fighter in the world.” To show what the P-1067 can do, Hawker’s chief test pilot, Neville Duke, opened the throttle and snapped his plane low over the runway at 15 m.p.h. faster than the official world record (670 m.p.h.), held by the U.S.’s F-86 Sabre. The whip-cracking sound of its passage hit the crowd like an explosion and knocked a microphone out of an announcer’s hand.

Star of the Show. The Supermarine 508, a two-jet carrier-borne fighter, seemed just about as fast. Designed by Joe Smith, whose best-known plane is the famous Spitfire fighter of World War II, it has thin straight wings and a “butterfly tail” with two hinged sections at 45° from the vertical which function both as elevators and rudder.

But the star of the show was the Vickers Valiant, a four-jet, swept-wing bomber, which British airmen are already calling “the aircraft of the year.” It has more range, speed, altitude and load-carrying capacity than the Canberra, which holds the speed record over the Atlantic and is being mass-produced for the U.S. Air Force by Glenn L. Martin Co. in Baltimore.

Powerful and streamlined, the Valiant looks like an overgrown fighter, with its four jets so completely buried in the wing-roots that it seems to have no engines at all. Said one U.S. Air Force officer: “The damned thing looks as if it were going 600 m.p.h. when it’s just sitting still on the runway.”

Planes of the Future. The P-1067, Supermarine 508 and Valiant have already reached the production stage. Other standouts: the four-jet Short SA4 bomber, the Vickers Supermarine Swift, giant cargo-carriers, turbo-prop torpedo planes, transports and helicopters. Britain also has newer designs still being developed.

During the show, two tiny delta-wing jets, the Avro 707-B and the Boulton Paul P-III, whizzed past the stands with amazing maneuverability. They looked like boys’ paper darts, but they flew so fast that they had to land with parachute drags. Many British experts believe that airplanes like them will dominate the future. Britain’s Minister of Supply, George R. Strauss (who lets all British aircraft contracts), calls the delta-wings “maybe the most important new factor in aeronautics.”

The Farnborough show left Britons feeling pleased and proud. Always strong on jet engines (e.g., the Rolls-Royce Avon), Britain proved with its show last week that its designers are now producing military aircraft the equal or superior of any in the world.