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THE increasing dependence of the aircraft manufacturer on the civil airliner market has been a recurring theme in this column, reflecting the reshuffle which is inevitably going on at present. It has put the airlines in a strong bargaining position, and this has been reflected in certain outspoken criticisms of the manufacturers' practices by airline representatives. As it is an essential part of the national wellbeing that both the airlines and the industry should prosper, there is everything to be gained from the airlines getting the aircraft they need, and from the manufacturers putting their houses in order. The prominent place of these two aspects of the aviation world in national affairs makes them the subject of much ill‐informed criticism from outside, and the firms' tendency to look to the Government for support makes them unduly sensitive to public opinion. We feel, therefore, that much good will be done by the presentation of a paper before the Royal Aeronautical Society under the title Why Airlines are Hard to Please on March 26. The author is Mr B. S. Shenstone, Chief Engineer of British European Airways, who is well known for his forthright and apposite comments on airline matters.

AT the Society of Automotive Engineers' National Aeronautic Meeting held in New York at the beginning of April, Mr B. S. Shenstone, the Chief Engineer of British European Airways, presented a paper entitled ‘Supersonic Air Transports—An Airline Talks Back’. Nobody who heard this dissertation or read the summaries given by ourselves and our contemporaries can be in any doubt as to his feelings regarding the proposed Mach 3 airliner. Mr Shenstone says quite bluntly that to suggest that airlines can accept a 350 per cent increase in speed at one gulp and, in achieving it, deal with problems of a fundamental nature in structures, aero‐dynamics, operation and air traffic control without going bankrupt, is nonsense. He is concerned with the fact that it is the aircraft manufacturers who are applying the pressure for an immediate transition from the subsonic turbojet to the Mach 3 aircraft, whereas the airlines would be quite happy to see a less drastic progression that would give them time to accommodate the various innovations that these high speed aircraft will bring.

THIS article attempts to summarize the technical development of two‐seater sailplanes during the past thirty years. There is no attempt to contribute anything new to the art, but only to bring together information from various sources. It is also hoped that the data collected will be found useful to designers.

WE are greatly indebted to BRITISH EUROPEAN AIRWAYS—and in particular its Chief Engineer, Mr B. S. Shenstone, and his staff—for all the enthusiastic assistance they gave MR STEVENS during his several visits to Northolt and Renfrew to obtain the information on which his description of the CORPORATION'S maintenance system, which appears in this issue, is based.

ON this page last month we had occasion to comment on a paper delivered before the Royal Aeronautical Society by MR B. S. SHENSTONE, dealing with requirements for civil air transports. Some days after this paper was given, on April 10 in fact, another lecture before the Society dealt with matters of fundamental concern to the nation as a whole and to the aeronautical world in particular. This was given the title ‘Guided Weapons and Aeronautics’, the author being DR R. COCKBURN, who is Controller of Guided Weapons and Electronics at the Ministry of Supply. DR COCKBURN was of course speaking in a private capacity, and the views expressed were his own, but they must reflect in some measure current thinking at the Ministry.

THERE are several reasons why so many of the newer aeroplanes are equipped with twin‐fin tails such as those shown in Fig. 1 (p. 312), the fins being disposed as end plates on the tail plane:

A Report on the Second Conference Organized by the Southern Section of the Institution of Production Engineers and Held at the University of Southampton on December 18 and 19, 1953

In the design of an articulated connecting‐rod system for a radial engine, certain conflicting desiderata have to be fulfilled, which of necessity dictate recourse to compromise. Considerations of strength, weight, a small overall diameter, component interchangeability and satisfactory combustion in all cylinders, often mean irregular disposition of the wrist‐pin centres on the master rod and variations in the stroke of different cylinders; consequent on which small differences occur in compression ratio, leading to dissimilar combustion conditions between the cylinders.

BECAUSE soaring flight is a peacetime pursuit, sailplane development since 1939 has been negligible. Effort has necessarily been diverted into the design of large military gliders having no soaring ability. With so many out of touch for so long, it may be worth while to look back a little and examine the best of the immediate pre‐war period.

IN 1922 the world was startled by the announcement of a motorless flight of one hour's duration made at the Wasserkuppe by Martens. The machine on which this flight was carried out was the “Vampyr,” the first true sailplane, and the forerunner of all the types which have been designed in the ensuing years, whose development has made possible the achievement in the soaring competitions of 1935, when four pilots flew on the same day from the Wasserkuppe to Brünn, a distance of approximately 310 miles at an average speed of 40 m.p.h.