I had intended to begin my lecture in a non-controversial manner by referring to the engine which the Wright Brothers used in their historic flight. It has been my understanding that they approached a number of automotive manufacturers in an endeavour to get an engine made which would meet their requirements, but on each occasion were told that their specifications could not be met. Eventually they were forced into designing their own power plant and this, I felt, provided an excuse for my subject this evening, should any of my audience feel one were needed. I subsequently find, however, that some doubt has been cast upon the suitability of this introduction by the writings of Israel Katz of Cornell University, who states that the Wright Brothers, in fact, used a re-worked Pope-Toledo automobile engine at Kitty Hawk. I do not propose to enter the argument which I am sure will ensue, and which I hope will result in the records being put right.

In 1909 Monsieur Louis Blériot forged a link between our two countries, one might say an aeronautical link. He did so in an aeroplane which by today's standards took only a short take-off run and a short landing.

Today there are signs of new links being forged between the two countries and among them is co-operation in the development of vertical take-off and landing aircraft. There can, therefore, be no more suitable subject for a lecture in commemoration of Louis Blériot than one on “The Role of Jet Lift.”

I count it a great honour to have been asked by the Royal Aeronautical Society to deliver the Seventeenth British Commonwealth Lecture. Reading down the list of previous performers in this rôle one feels that it is indeed an election to a very select company.

I have chosen as my subject for this lecture the post-war progress of air transport in Europe. The title may sound rather pedestrian, but I have two main reasons for choosing this theme. First there is the personal reason. I have been intimately associated with the development of air transport in Europe during the post-war period and I am very pleased to have an opportunity to set down a record of the developments which have taken place during those years. Moreover, my associations with European air transport go back to its very beginnings, as pilot of one of Europe’s—and the world’s—first scheduled air services in 1919. The second reason is broader. I welcome an opportunity to review the post-war progress of air transport in Europe because I think that this will show what a revolutionary change the industry has undergone within the relatively short space of fifteen years.

Possibly since the beginning of time, and certainly since early recorded history, man has been engaged in a struggle to fly straight up and to cover distances (including short distances) at an ever faster rate. Aircraft using the principle of the rotary wing are one result. There is evidence to support a theory that such machines may have existed, in one form or other, well before the birth of Christ. For hundreds of years, experimental work has gone forward persistently.

The Short Brothers were well known to me by name for a good many years before I had the pleasure of meeting any of them personally. That was when I joined the Company in the middle of 1916. It must I think, therefore, seem strange to you that the honour, a very real one to me, of being invited to give this first lecture to commemorate their great pioneering work, should fall to me.

A big part of the span of man's life has passed since they began their activities; many of their contemporaries and friends of those early days have either passed on or have reached a ripe old age. It may well be that I know the brothers personally better than any one else living. Be that as it may, I am quite sure that none holds them in greater esteem.

The B58 was developed and produced for the United States Air Force by the General Dynamics Corporation, Fort Worth Division, Texas. Until recently the organisation was known as CONVAIR, Fort Worth Division.

The B58 provided an abrupt advance in the technology of military aviation. In one step the speed performance of the strategic bomber was more than doubled over that of its predecessors.

The development and manufacture of the B58 was accomplished under the Weapons System Management Concept. Development of the aircraft began in 1951 with the origination of design studies. Detail design and manufacturing efforts were started in 1954. Initial flight of the prototype occurred in November of 1956. An exhaustive flight test evaluation programme then ensued in parallel with production of the aircraft. The flight test programme utilised a substantial fleet of B58's, and the combined efforts of the manufacturer and the U.S.A.F.

The high speed aircraft whose low speed aerodynamic problems are discussed in this part of the paper belong to the future rather than to the past or present. Küchemann has shown how jet propulsion and the use of a new set of aerodynamics appropriate to supersonic speed lead one from the classical aircraft to new shapes suitable for achieving a required flight range. These shapes include wing-body arrangements with wing sweepback angles of 55° or 60° suitable for a Mach number of about 1·2, and slender, neartriangular wings with sharp leading edges suitable for Mach numbers of around 2 or more, depending on the ratio of span to length.

In the spring of 1914, in view of the tenth anniversary of the Aerodynamic Institute at Koutchino, near Moscow, I published a booklet in which I gave a survey of the Institute's activities since its foundation and concluded it as follows: “The problem of aerodynamical flying is solved, but, after the conquest of air space, another conquest, more difficult and of higher import, is offered to the ambition of man— the conquest of interplanetary spaces. “The brilliant progress of science gives hope that, in a more or less distant future, this problem will be solved in its turn through the patient and co-ordinated efforts of searchers impassioned by the greatness of this idea.

“The brilliant progress of science gives hope that, in a more or less distant future, this problem will be solved in its turn through the patient and co-ordinated efforts of searchers impassioned by the greatness of this idea.

The lightweight and compact separate jet lift engine has been with us long enough to have built up an acceptable level of confidence in its abilities, but there have been misgivings over the magnitude of some of the operational problems, in particular those of ground erosion and hot gas reingestion due to the high velocity jet.

The object of this paper is to present a Series of tests which has been made by Rolls-Royce to ascertain the nature of the problems and to put forward some simple solutions. It is not suggested that any of these solutions is unique but merely that they are adequate for our present needs.

The design of structures to resist jet noise fatigue demands a knowledge of a wide range of subjects from pure acoustics at one end to metal physics at the other. At the present time the various aspects of the problem are not sufficiently well known quantitatively for a purely theoretical design study to be made. Nevertheless a knowledge of the behaviour of typical forms of construction in noise environments can be used with a limited amount of theoretical work to indicate the most efficient types of structure. This approach to the problem is adopted in this lecture as it seems to be the most promising one available at the moment. It must be emphasised, however, that although some progress has been made in discovering the behaviour of a structure subjected to noise it is not possible to estimate the life of any component at the drawing board stage. Some prototype strain measurements and proof testing are therefore essential if one is to prove the integrity of the design.

If it implied anything in the context of high performance turbine engines, the mutilated quotation from “The Hound of Heaven” might conjure up a vision of afterburning turbojets, or turbo-ramjets, propelling second or third generation supersonic transports at very great heights. This would be a misleading picture, and it will probably emerge that the quotation has little to do with what follows, as this is largely concerned with subsonic flight—on which I believe the economic future of aviation will depend for many years.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss certain aspects of the costs of the United States Space Programme. Attention will be concentrated on the work of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The United States Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 charges the NASA with the responsibility of “exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States, except that activities peculiar to or primarily associated with …. defense of the United States …. shall be the responsibility of …. the Department of Defense.”

I am very happy to give this lecture and since it is in the nature of an historical review I make no apologies for requoting something I wrote on another occasion: —

I will, later in this lecture, show a film on the turbojet engine, which is a good example of this modern method of putting across educational and instructional matter on products and processes.

When I was invited to deliver the Lanchester Memorial lecture, I wondered why the great honour of being the first Frenchman selected for the celebration of the deeds of a great engineer was conferred on me. However, I am well aware that the Council of the Royal Aeronautical Society cannot make a mistake and there is good reason to choose, after so greatly famed professors, an engineer of the French Navy to illustrate, using a slightly different point of view, the influence of Lanchester on the development of aeronautics. This way, I do not have to apologise for a possible inadequacy which then would not be my own responsibility. I have only to do my best, so as not to betray the confidence of the Society.

Answering so plainly this first question, I had to find out how to fulfil my task. Possibly, my contribution to the intrepretation of the vortex sheets starting from the thin leading edges of a delta wing is more in the Lanchester line of thought than it is an extension of Prandtl’s inferences.

In addressing the Historical Group it is desirable to let technical detail fall into the background so that the more general consideration of personal problems, policy and organisation can be clearly examined.

Technical detail changes so much more with time than do the human and administrative considerations, that the greatest value for history comes perhaps from the study of the latter.

The possibilities of a vertically-corrugated web as a means of reducing thermal stresses naturally have for some time been generally appreciated by designers. The stress relief to be expected is examined in some detail here. It is shown that quite shallow corrugations can be effective in reducing thermal stress and that a flange-to-web connection at corrugation-pitch intervals can offer substantial advantages over a more continuous type of connection. Arguments are presented to show why straight-sided corrugations are superior to curved ones.

The lecture illustrates, by typical examples, the standard of mobility which can be achieved by present military vehicles. An outline is then given of the mobility improvements which might be obtained by the use of military ground-effect vehicles but, in the concluding section, emphasis is given to a number of generalised problems in the military operation of such vehicles which require detailed consideration before an adequate specification of ground-effect vehicles for military use is possible. The lecture deals only with overland vehicles —although capable of water crossing—which are designed specifically to exploit the ground-effect principle and whose capabilities for sustained airborne movement are limited to the ground cushion.

The aims of structure weight estimation are discussed and a review is given of its development in this country during the past fifty years from the simplest of formulae to quite detailed methods. The limitations of formulae derived only from statistical analysis of actual aircraft structures are noted. For aircraft of novel configuration it is essential for the weight of the basic load-carrying structure to be estimated by methods which are based upon the actual design and stressing procedures. The principles of “optimum” or “minimum-weight” structural design are a valuable feature of such methods and are briefly described. Statistical analysis, however, is still important for estimating the substantial weight of the joints, cutouts, transparencies and other features which transform a theoretical optimum structure into a complete and practical one. The problems of several aeroplane and missile configurations of current interest are discussed, and also the extent to which detailed design work is necessary to provide reliable structure weight estimates for such projects.

Helicopters have reached a state of mechanical reliability today comparable to that of the aeroplane. Rotary wing aircraft have been severely limited performancewise, however, by the fixed wing type of instrumentation commonly used. It has been impossible to operate helicopters throughout their complete flight regime in their normal operational areas during instrument flight conditions. This paper defines the problem, the approach taken by Bell Helicopter Company, the flight test programmes and results, and the future for helicopter instrument flight operations in both populated and remote areas using information sensors and displays designed expressly for VTOL machines.