Category Archives: Industry

Aviation Industry is 1958: Commercial Aviation (Turbojet and Turboprop Aircraft)

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With the inauguration of Boeing 707 jet service between New York and Paris by Pan American World Airways on October 26, a new era opened up for commercial aviation. This means that the commercial airlines are faced with a virtual revolution in their financial and mechanical operations. With no previous experience, airlines will have to use cut-and-try methods to find out how to live with the new situation. The airlines were already having trouble financing jet aircraft now on order, since current Civil Aeronautics Board restrictions make it hard for them to attract venture capital. Early in 1958, the CAB allowed a six per cent fare increase, the first in some 10 years. For jet operation, however, many felt this wasn’t enough. Braniff, for example, requested permission to impose a 15 per cent premium charge for jet flights. The airlines tried to solve some problems among themselves by lease arrangements, such as the one agreed upon by Pan American (PAWA) and National Air Lines (NAL). In this case, PAWA uses the jets during the summer for its European runs and turns them over to NAL for use on the New York-Florida route during the winter slack season.

All of these factors tended to put a damper on new orders for jets and turboprops. Thus, to obtain new orders the plane manufacturers had to agree, in some cases, to take back the used piston-engine planes currently in operation. As a result, the backlog of new planes has increased by only about 15-20 per cent since 1956. For the medium- to long-range planes, current backlogs are: Douglas DC-8‘s, 140; Boeing 707′s, 160: Convair 880′s and 600′s, 73; Lockheed Electras, 161. Piston-engine production has almost ended, with a total of about 100 piston-engine planes delivered in 1958.

Looking beyond the jets, which will span the United States coast-to-coast in a little over four hours in 1959, such firms as Boeing disclosed that their advanced research sections were examining the possibility of designing transports to operate at speeds up to 2,000 mph and over, requiring a little over an hour to cross the United States.

 

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Aviation Industry is 1958: Production

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Unofficial figures indicate that 4,000 military and about 6,500 civil planes were built in 1958. The military total includes 2,000 Air Force, 1,500 Navy, and 500 Army planes. Both these totals represent drops from the 1957 figures of 5,500 military and 6,656 civil. No estimate of missile production is available. It is estimated that 9,500 military and 10,500 civil engines, including piston, jet, and rocket engines, were produced, giving a total of 20,000; this continues the decline in engine production since 1956.

 

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Aviation Industry is 1958: Military Aviation (Missile Program)

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Missile expenditures continued to grow, with an estimated 1958 figure of $2.9 billion as against $2 billion in 1957. For fiscal 1959, this figure is expected to reach over $3.3 billion, half of which will go for intercontinental- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. On the other hand, expenditures for aircraft continued to decline steadily.

A new area in the defense picture is ground support equipment (GSE), most of which is for the new missile system. This is required because a great deal of test equipment and guidance and control ground support gear are needed to check the complex electronic and mechanical systems in the missile to insure good working order and to launch and guide the missile to its target. While the over-all responsibility for the design and selection of GSE is in the hands of old-line firms, a great many new firms have come into the picture as subcontractors, over and above the electronic firms brought into the field in recent years. These include such firms as General Mills, Food Machinery and Chemical Corp., and Fruehauf Trailer.

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Aviation Industry is 1958: Commercial Aviation (STOL and VTOL)

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Work continued on a number of experimental VTOL and STOL craft. Hiller Aircraft is testing a tilt-wing transport in which the wings and engines rotate from a straight up-and-down position on vertical takeoff to normal position for forward flight. Doak Aircraft tested a ducted-fan VTOL craft. Ryan Aeronautical completed a STOL plane which uses wings shaped like large flaps to deflect the propeller slipstream for short takeoff capabilities. Ryan is also working on plans for a supersonic VTOL interceptor which could be launched from an underground base.

 

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Aviation Industry is 1958: An overview

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The ever-faster pace of technological progress continued to keep the aviation industry in a state of flux. During 1957 the industry was just beginning to get adjusted to the drastic change in the military picture from manned aircraft to missiles. Throughout 1958, however, the continued number of successful satellite launchings and the 79,120-mi. journey into space by the U.S. Air Force‘s ‘Pioneer‘ lunar probe have caused the industry to readjust its plans to include programs aimed at space travel.

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Aviation Industry is 1958: Space Travel and Research (NASA)

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A key move in this direction was the setting up, by act of Congress on July 29, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as an independent government agency. NASA is placed in control of the nation’s advanced civilian research program and is specifically charged with furthering all nonmilitary space activities sponsored by the United States. This includes taking over the most important aeronautical research facility, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which has become the nucleus of the NASA. Close coordination is required between NASA and its military counterpart, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). NASA started operations with $300,000,000, with indications that its budget for fiscal 1959 will reach a half-billion dollars. ARPA is scheduled to spend about $173.6 billion on space research during fiscal 1959. This includes some $50,000,000 for ‘man-in-space’ work, a project for making preliminary studies of human capabilities in space.

 

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Aviation in 1953: Transport Plane Developments (Great Britain’s Atlantic Jetliner Service)

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Great Britain’s proposed Avro Atlantic delta-wing 74-113-passenger jetliner will reputedly fly from New York to London in 5 to 5y hours. Its specifications are: span, 121 ft.; length, 145 ft.; fuselage diameter, 12y ft.; gross takeoff weight, 200,000 lb.; payload, 20,000-45,000 lb.; cruising speed, 600 mph; cruising altitude, 40,000-45,000 ft.; minimum runway class, ICAO Class C; minimum runway strength, ICAO Class 4; pressure differential, 8.8 pounds per sq. in.; cabin capacity, 58,000 cu. ft.; and baggage capacity, 1,930 cu. ft.

The engines are enclosed in the wing, which also houses the fuel tanks. Although the Atlantic is described as a civil development of the Vulcan bomber the jetliner is much larger than the bomber. An Atlantic prototype could be flying by the end of 1956, and production aircraft could start coming off the line two years later.

 

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Aviation in 1953: U.S. Aircraft Production

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Aircraft manufacturing, always sensitive to national politics and world events, found those who determine its destiny torn between sincere efforts to reduce government expense and a rising realization that Russia appeared farther ahead in atomic weapons than some observers realized. It is expected that the new Congress will look very carefully at any attempts to reduce or stretch out the present air-defense program.

Stretch-outs are not new to the aircraft manufacturing industry. The past several years have seen a number of them, as the 143-wing Air Force objective date have been advanced a number of times. The recent changes during 1953 have been partly stretch-outs and partly changes in the aircraft procurement program, intended to expand available funds on newer military aircraft. In the past all wars have been fought with obsolete aircraft, because of continuous improvement in design and a certain time lag in development and production of new planes. While this continues, our air power is in healthy condition, provided we guess correctly as to when to shift from one production model to another. To decide this intelligently requires, of course, some knowledge of the comparable activity of a potential enemy.

For example, we have seen the evolution of the MIG-15 fighter during the Korean War. We also have reason to believe that Russia is now in the process of shifting available production facilities from medium-range bombers to long-range types capable of atomic bombardment of this country.

In spite of the 1953 changes in the aircraft procurement program, the manufacturers are having one of their best postwar years in terms of profit, and their combined backlog had reached $18.5 billion by the end of the first quarter of 1953. The production rate was approximately 12,000 per year during early 1953.

The commercial airlines, free from the fluctuations of the defense program, are growing rapidly and are in strong financial position; the new and rapidly rising segment of commercial operation, corporation-owned aircraft, continues to grow as such airplanes prove their worth.

A preliminary examination of our defense needs by the newly appointed Joint Chiefs of Staff resulted in setting up a tentative Air Force goal of 127 wings by July 1, 1954.

Civil aircraft manufacturers shipped 339 planes valued at $21 million during June. In May, manufacturers shipped 417 planes valued at $17.4 million.

Civil aircraft engine shipments totaled 524, adding up to 400,600 hp. This is an increase of 5%, in number, and 2% in horsepower from May shipments of 501 engines aggregating 391,300 hp.

For the first six months of 1953, the industry shipped 2,263 civil aircraft totaling 4,974,600 lb. and valued at $100.2 million. In the same period of 1952, the industry shipped $95.8 million worth of aircraft.

Engines shipped during the first half of 1953 increased 31%, in number, 19%, in horsepower, and 29%, in value, compared to the corresponding period of last year.

A three-man aviation subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, intended to function as a study group, was established by Sen. Charles W. Tobey (R., N.H.), committee chairman. On the subcommittee were Sens. John Sherman Cooper (R., Ky.), chairman; Dwight Griswold (R., Neb.); and Edwin C. Johnson (D., Colo.).

Senator Tobey said the subcommittee would try to define the ‘public interest’ in aviation and would review the statutes to ‘determine how well they are protecting and promoting the public interest under present-day conditions.’

Suggesting a case-study method, he said the problem of the nonscheduled airline operators, for example, might be approached by considering whether the public benefits most by strict regulation of entry into the air-carrier field, or by a freer method of licensing new service.

President Eisenhower asked Robert B. Murray, Undersecretary of Commerce for transportation, to re-evaluate national air policy through a study to be made by the Air Coordinating Committee (ACC) of which Murray was chairman.

In his letter to Murray, the President pointed out that there had not been a broad review of U.S. aviation policies in more than five years, and that many events of major significance had occurred in the meantime. The last survey was made in 1948 by the presidential commission headed by Thomas K. Finletter and by a congressional aviation policy group headed by the then Senator Owen Brewster and Representative Carl Hinshaw.

Although President Eisenhower’s letter to Murray directed that the new policy should be formulated ‘in consultation with appropriate industry, local government, and private aviation groups,’ Washington observers did not expect the Air Coordinating Committee study to involve open hearings of the type which previously were held by the Finletter commission.

Indications are the ACC will rely on aviation members of two Commerce Department sections—the business and the transport advisory groups.

 

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Aviation in 1953: Transport Plane Developments (Sabena Helicopter Service)

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Sabena put its first new Sikorsky S-55 helicopter in scheduled inter-European service Aug. 3, flying from Brussels to Antwerp and Rotterdam, and thus making Sabena the first operator to offer scheduled international helicopter service for passengers. Heliports have already been completed in the heart of Brussels, Liege, Lille, Rotterdam, and Cologne. A landing area is ready for use at the Antwerp Airport, two miles outside the city.

Sabena expected to have three S-55′s in service by 1954. They will carry seven passengers each and will cover the following routes: Brussels-Antwerp-Rotterdam, 70 mi., twice daily; Brussels-Arlon-Luxembourg-Sarrebruek, 185 mi.; Brussels-Lille, 65 mi., twice daily; and Brussels-Liege-Cologne-Bonn, 130 mi., twice daily. Three-minute stops will be made at Brussels’ Melsbroek Airport for transfer of passengers to and from airliners. Normally, the three S-55′s will have to cover more than 450 mi. of scheduled helicopter service daily.

Helicopter fares will be at the fixed-wing rate of six cents per passenger-kilometer. Representative fares on some of the services will be: Brussels-Antwerp, $2.20; and Brussels-Rotterdam, $6.90. These are one-way charges. The price for a roundtrip ticket on the Brussels-Rotterdam service is to be $13.20.

 

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Aviation in 1953: Transport Plane Developments (Safety Seating)

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North American Airlines, a nonscheduled operator, became the first U.S. commercial airline to install rear-facing seats on a regular flight. A DC-4, equipped with 80 seats facing aft, began transcontinental coach service, between Los Angeles and New York, May 31. Passenger response to the unusual ride was surprisingly enthusiastic.

 

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