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Fighter Future In fighter development today only scant traces of pattern are discernible. It appears instead as a jigsaw, comprising a multitude of machines designed or adapted for diverse purposes. As for the long-prophesied trend towards specialization, we need only remark that the Lockheed Starfighter, now sharing the limelight with English Electric’s P.1, can be a single- or two-seat fighter or trainer; a bomber – even an atomic bomber; it can be used for reconnaissance; or it can even oblige in the low-level attack role. Not so the coming generation of mixed-power interceptors, typified by the Saunders-Roe S.R.53, Dassault Mirage, Nord Griffon and S.E. Durandal, for their tactical employment is restricted by their inherently short endurance. The demand for all-weather capability and automatic armament triggering will become more insistent as the interception problem grows increasingly acute. The combinations of speed and height now threatened – if not by heavy and medium bombers, then by supersonic fighters masquerading as bombers and carrying atomic weapons – are gravely menacing, and human faculties will be sorely taxed unless unstinted electronic aid is forthcoming. Meanwhile, as missile development pursues its uncertain course, the gun may retire from the fighter scene with a metamorphosis – into General Electric’s “Gatling” multi-barrel 20 mm firing system, rotated at very high-speed by an external power source to give a rate of fire of perhaps 6,000 r.p.m. Air to Moscow The possibility of a new B.E.A. service to Moscow still seems to be some way off. The discussions in Moscow last November between the Corporation and Aeroflot about an interline agreement have so far come to nothing because, as it is now known, of the Foreign Office’s hesitation to approve an intermediate airport – Schoenefeldt in East Berlin and Templehof in the U.S. sector of West Berlin were considered – as the interconnecting point for the two airlines. B.E.A. are undoubtedly eager to open a service to Moscow – preferably as a through operation. Certainly the complication of a change-over point en route seems unnecessary. Vulcans into Service The first Avro Vulcan bombers are about to go into R.A.F. service at Waddington, Lincs. The station has been reconstructed for a training unit which, on lines similar to the Valiant training station at Gaydon, will produce the crews for the operational squadrons. |
Source: Flight International
