The Impact of the Jet in World Aviation

CHAIRMAN: The President, Mr. A. E. M. Inwood.

MR. INWOOD: Your Honour Lieutenant-Governor Breithaupt, Your Worship Mayor Lamport, distinguished guests, gentlemen of The Empire Club of Canada, and our very welcome unseen radio audience, who are with us through the courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it is my honour to introduce our guest speaker, Sir Miles Thomas, Chairman of British Overseas Airways Corporation who has just arrived from England on a brief visit to our country.

The sole objective of The Empire Club of Canada for the last 50 years has been to preserve and further the interests of Canada and a United Commonwealth of Nations, and in this connection, we continue to invite to our weekly platform here at the Royal York Hotel, learned and important personages from other nations associated with the Commonwealth.

In this regard, our guest speaker today is outstanding, particularly in the fast developing field of aviation which is bringing the people of the world closer together.

Our distinguished guest speaker, Sir Miles Thomas, has crowded his fifty-six years with accomplishments and exciting experiences.

It would seem from the record of his accomplishments, that he set out to contradict a statement of one of his early school masters which I take the liberty of quoting, if I may Sir,--"As for Miles Thomas, he could do better,--lacks concentration--shows aptitude but little appreciation."

Following his school days, during which time his major interests were engineering and transport, he entered World War 1, by joining an Armoured Car Squadron.

After fighting through the German East African Campaign, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps qualifying for his wings in Egypt.

He subsequently served with an operational squadron in Mesopotamia, Persia and South Russia, being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for aerial combat and low ground strafing.

After the First World War, he became associated with Lord Nuffield and in 1941, became Chairman of the Cruiser Tank Production Group and a member of the Government's Advisory Committee. He was knighted in 1943.

In 1949 he was appointed Chairman of B.O.A.C. This great Airline will safely speed you on your way to such places as Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Bermuda, South America, Africa, India, Japan, Australia and other distant countries.

It has been announced that at this very time, B.O.A.C. are planning a fleet of long-range passenger super-jets to streak across the Atlantic in pace with the sun, arriving in New York at the same time by the clock as they leave London.

The topic of his address is, "The Impact of the Jet in World Aviation," and it it now my very great pleasure to present to you the man who leads Britain's bid for world air supremacy--Sir Miles Thomas.

SIR MILES THOMAS: I am almost overwhelmed by the introduction your President has given to me.

I am greatly privileged to speak to such an important audience as is present here today. The privilege is more keenly felt because by nature I am a very shy person.

This shyness is hereditary-and, indeed, had not my parents been so shy as they were, I should be standing before you several years older than I am at the moment!

I have chosen as the subject on which I am going to talk to you today--"The Impact of the Jet in World Aviation"--partly because in this year of celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' achievement, I felt it might be appropriate if we took stock of events in recent times and also had a look into the future.

It also seems to be a privilege because this is the 50th year of your Club. It is evident that the year 1903 was indeed a vintage year.

Without doubt, as I am sure you will agree, progress in aviation in the first half of the present century has been so astounding as almost to pass comprehension.

Your fathers and mine might well have thought us insane had we told them that one day I should fly to you from Britain in merely a matter of hours. Yet that is precisely what I have just done. And hundreds of others, without any fuss, are flying the Atlantic daily in the greatest of comfort and are taking the journey for granted. A vast amount of work has been necessary, of course, to accomplish this revolution in travel and momentous developments have taken place in the field of aviation in our own lifetime.

Yet I believe that these developments, swift and often sensational as they have been, are to a notable extent the logical outcome of the basic scientific research and discoveries of great figures of the past, not least among them such men as Roger Bacon, the early English philosopher and man of science, and in later times Isaac Newton, Priestly and Faraday, to name only a few.

Then, in our own generation, men like Sir Robert Watson Watt, Sir Frank Whittle and others have been responsible for the present encouraging leadership which Britain and the Commonwealth enjoy in the design and development of aeroplanes, radio, and other modern advances. Indeed it is difficult to imagine that it is only fifty years ago this year since man first left the ground in a power-driven heavier-than-air machine. What a transformation there has been in that turbulent half-century! It has certainly been a period of revolutionary change throughout the world, especially in the sphere of aviation.

And here let me say that if I were asked which of all the remarkable events since Orville Wright's historic flight in 1903 is the one with the most far-reaching effects, I would suggest it was that which occurred in May of last year when 36 passengers took off in a Comet from London Airport on the first regular passenger service in the world to be flown by a 500 mile-an-hour jetliner on the route to Johannesburg, South Africa.

I think it can fairly be claimed that on that day the peoples of the world were startled into a realization that the jet age in international civil aviation had arrived with a dramatic yet smooth introduction. If you are interested in classical allusions, you will find one that is peculiarly relevant to that first jet flight among the writings of the Roman philosopher, Seneca, a far-sighted gentleman who went on record as saying: "Some day there will arise a man who will demonstrate in what regions of the heavens the Comets make their way. Why they journey so far apart, and what is their size and nature."

As Chairman of B.O.A.C., which operated the initial jet service to South Africa last year, I had the privilege of being a passenger on that first Comet service and as long as I live I shall recall my feelings of pride and exaltation when the British Comet touched down at Johannesburgh, having covered nearly 7,000 miles from London in well under 24 hours. Here without question was an aircraft to revolutionise air transportation and I think that our headway since then has fully justified all that I felt on that memorable day.

It cannot be denied that the success of the Comet was a stimulating tonic to the prestige and morale of Britain and the Commonwealth and that tonic became doubly invigorating as the new jetliner's sphere of influence soon spread from Britain and South Africa to the Middle East, to Pakistan and India, and to Burma, Siam, Malaya and Japan. Meanwhile, during next year we plan to introduce the Comet II--an improved version of the Comet I now in service--on our route between London and South America and later between Britain and Australia.

Let me briefly survey the record of the Comet since the day when the world awoke to the fact that an aircraft which could literally cut in half the size of the globe in travel time was in fact in commercial service. Our pattern for the development of the jetliner on the South African and three other routes from London--to Ceylon, Singapore and Japan--has been implemented step by step, according to plan, so that well before the end of the first year of their operations our Comets were flying in passenger service more than 100,000 miles a week.

For the record, the Comets in their first year of commercial service flew 104,600,000 revenue passenger miles and 9,450 revenue hours, carried 27,700 passengers on 250 return flights. What is more, they flew financially on their own wings. Carrying good loads, they made a genuine profit in their first year--and I make that statement categorically and deliberately because I know it has been said on this side of the Atlantic, though not in Canada, that the Comet was "quite a good aircraft but had one thing wrong with it--it couldn't make money".

That it can make a profit is a comforting thought to an airline operator--but I like also to dwell on the other benefits which this 500 mile-an-hour jetliner can bring.

Surely, with no part of the world already more than about 30 hours from any other, our whole concept of the globe must change. Passenger flights right round the world in 48 hours are not just a vision but a project that we in B.O.A.C. are planning at this moment. Such a scheme, to which I will refer in more detail later, could well help to speed the day when the family of nations became a real family for the first time in history. With distances so drastically annihilated vastly greater numbers of people in all countries will have an opportunity to get to know the other fellow and thus break down the barriers of ignorance and prejudice which have contributed so much in the past to misunderstandings and wars.

Surely, too, a plan such as we envisage means that remote and hitherto inaccessible parts of the world should be reached and developed more easily than before, to the immense benefit of civilization--developed to a much greater extent than in the past without calling for pioneers to lead a lonely, exiled existence for months or years on end. Moreover, the rapid transport of goods which would be possible under the plan should help to raise standards of living,--in my opinion one of the surest guarantees of peace.

Also contributing to peace in the world should be the fact that the jetliner will enable leaders of nations to meet conveniently and quickly, in an effort to solve troublesome problems. Ignorance, fear and want can be eliminated the more effectively in due course by the advent of the jetliner if only men will use the benefits it can bring.

Bound up with this question of offering efficient fast air travel is the problem of offering it more cheaply--and cheaper travel, I believe, is going to be the next vital phase of international airline development and one that may be regarded as more important than strictly technical advances in reaching speeds in excess of sound.

So much for conjecture. Let me now come to the more immediately practical contribution which we in B.O.A.C. are aiming to make. You may have been somewhat surprised when I said earlier that we are actually planning at this moment a future pattern of jet routes which will take passengers round the world in 48 hours. Yet already our experts are actively planning to provide the proposed round-the-world scheduled services with the later models of the pure jet de. Havilland Comet and with the new turbo-propeller Bristol Britannia, a highly promising airliner due for delivery to us within the next two years.

This Britannia aircraft, an economically important development, will not be as fast as the Comet but will fly at speeds approaching 400 miles an hour and will stay in the air a long time and will use less fuel per pound of thrust developed. Thus, it should give to Britain and the Commonwealth a lead in the introduction of long-haul, cheap, international civil air transport. Just as the Comet has astonished the world, so I am convinced that the Britannia, with its highly encouraging prospects and strong passenger appeal, will set the international air services by the ears because of the low cost of operation and the long distances it will be able to cover. In both the Comet and the Britannia we have a significant lead in Britain over the rest of the world. Furthermore, they are the only aircraft which B.O.A.C. at present has on order--a firm indication of our faith in these two types of jet airliners, of which we are proud to be the pioneering operators.

You will appreciate, however, that the inauguration with the Comet and the Britannia of global services cannot take place before many technical, meteorological, commercial and other problems have been solved. Such services must also, of course, be subject to agreements with Governments, including your own, of countries on the routes.

For a beginning, to pursue the matter a little further, it may be assumed that one of the shortest commercially profitable routes around the world from London would be via the fringes of the North Polar regions, the North Western part of Canada, the North Pacific, Japan, and thence back to Britain. Across the North Atlantic, however, weather conditions at altitudes of 40,000 feet and more-the top operating height of Comet jetliners-are as yet almost unknown. Much information about these conditions must therefore be obtained before jet services can be started over the Atlantic ocean. Moreover, a close study must also be made of the performance of pure-jet airliners on ice-covered runways in areas like our own where the temperatures are extremely low.

One of the problems, particularly in such temperatures, is to reduce the momentum of the jet with brakes. With jet aircraft there are no reversible propellers; therefore, we are examining the question of whether parachutes at the tail of the jet aeroplane would be practicable and whether some form of gear to reverse the thrust of the jets can be developed. We are also trying to find whether it would be cheaper to have flame-throwers which will take the ice off a runway, which could then be covered with sand so that the brakes of jetliners would act in the normal way. This is a seasonal problem that, I am sure, will be surmounted. It is, however, a substantial problem which will face us in the cold regions through which the jet air transports will operate. And here I would remind you that in the warmer climate of the Pacific we shall have vast distances to cover in entirely opposite conditions, all within a matter of a few hours of travel.

In the meantime, as we bring more and more Comets into service and are exhilarated at the thought of introducing the Britannia, we are continuing to fly some fine types of airliner, including the D.C.4 aircraft, which was built by the Canadair firm and is known by us in B.O.A.C. as the Argonaut. In recent years, before the advent of the Comet, this sturdy, dependable economic and comfortable airliner has been of immeasurable value to my Corporation. Indeed, I can say without exaggeration that it at once began to change the fortunes of B.O.A.C. when we took the first delivery of this type of aeroplane in London in the Spring of 1949-well ahead of schedule.

As an airline we were certainly fortunate in having been able to obtain Canadian aircraft at a critical period in our affairs. At that time the fiscal situation in Britain demanded that we should not spend money on American air transports and our own aircraft manufacturing industry was not yet in a position to produce modern, competitive airliners after its complete preoccupation throughout the war with the output of military types.

It was the combination of British Rolls-Royce engines in Canadian-built airframes that enabled B.O.A.C. to plug the economic gap in its finances and to begin flying financially on its own wings. The importance of the formation of an Argonaut fleet will be appreciated when I recall that four years ago B.O.A.C. had an annual deficit of approximately £ 8,000,000 sterling-24 million dollars. In any kind of currency, it is a great deal of money. The Argonauts have greatly helped us to eliminate that deficit and to make a modest profit in the past two years. Altogether, we have 22 Argonauts in service and they are operating efficiently on several of our main international routes, including those to Japan, to South Africa, to Africa and at times on special flights between Britain and North America. I could not allow this occasion to pass without deviating from my theme to pay a warm tribute to the Argonauts and to the Canadian enterprise which built them. They have been of inestimable use to B.O.A.C. in the past 41/z years and they are still doing excellent work.

Meanwhile, may I say what pleasure it gave us in Britain when Canada, through the purchase of de Havilland Comets by Canadian Pacific Airlines and the Royal Canadian Air Force and of Vickers Viscount propeller-jet aircraft by Trans-Canada Airlines, showed herself so ready to take an imaginative and practical share in the latest British civil aviation developments. Naturally, we also follow with the greatest interest Canada's own lively activity in the jet manufacturing field and I was glad to read that Sir Roy Dobson, the energetic Chairman of the Board of A. V. Roe (Canada) Limited, had recently stated that his organization felt that their Canadian venture had fully justified itself and the future of the industry in Canada would justify the continuance and increase of their efforts. There is no doubt, in my mind, that the Avro Canada undertaking can play, and will play, a highly important part in the development of the Canadian aircraft industry.

As I am sure you can imagine, we in B.O.A.C. were especially gratified to receive recently from Air Marshal C. R. Slemon, Chief of the Air Staff of the Royal Canadian Air Force, a letter which I should like to quote to you. It followed some Comet training which we were only too happy to give to Air Force crews who spent some time with us in Britain.

"Since delivery of our Comets", Air Marshal Slemon wrote, "the R.C.A.F. has been firmly launched in the field of jet transport. Having no previous experience in operating heavy jet type aircraft, a considerable training commitment was involved for both ground crew and aircrew before these historic flights became a reality. To this end the part played by British Overseas Airways Corporation was invaluable and cannot be spoken of too highly.

"Only a brief glance at the operations and flight planning manuals currently in use by the B.O.A.C. Comet Fleet, and now adopted by the R.C.A.F., is sufficient to understand the countless hours of research and development behind your present enviable record of successfully operating jet transports over scheduled routes for almost a year and a half. The R.C.A.F. was indeed fortunate to have benefited from the experience which you alone had gained in this field. I am firmly convinced that your decision to undertake the training of our crews and the high standard of proficiency set for them by your training staffs will bear fruit in all future heavy jet type operations in our service."

I ask Air Marshal Slemon to accept these words of appreciation.

Back in Britain, on the drawing board, are other remarkable British jetliners which will mark a still further important stage in the development of civil aviation--among them are proposed civil versions of the big Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor bombers and the Vickers VC.7 civil aircraft project. The powerful military aircraft which Britain has in mind may have performances as commercial airliners as unique as their striking configurations, for such aircraft do more than hint at the shape of things to come. Thus, in the future, not only will such "heavenly bodies" as the Comets "profoundly influence the affairs of men" but a whole galaxy of star British aircraft are likely to climb into ascendancy and enable us to carry more and more of the world's travellers more surely, speedily, comfortably and cheaply than ever before. My own wish is to see a large jet aircraft which will fly approximately 100 people at about the same speed as the Comet--500 miles an hour, perhaps somewhat faster--but at considerably less cost. An airliner of the kind I have in mind would give to the public the advantages of high-speed modern travel but at fares which should be lower than those which have to be charged with present-day aircraft.

In this great venture of travel by air it is essential to peer into the future. What will the years to come bring to British civil aviation? Already we can forecast with some certainty the pattern over the next ten years.

Only the other day I flew in Comet 2 from London to Rio de Janeiro in less than 12 1/2 flying hours. That is a considerable achievement and it is another demonstration how flying hours can be cut in half by the use of jet aircraft.

In the quiet research laboratories of our British factories, where the muted ticking of an electronic computer weaves some new aerodynamic formulae, or in test chambers where whirling turbine rotors running white-hot at over 10,000 revolutions a minute show through electronic strain gauges their rates of vibration frequencies on cathode ray screens, or on some airfields where clear-eyed young men casually clad in pressure suits and parachute packs climb into prototype aeroplanes with strangely shaped wings-all these and more mean greater speed, greater comfort and greater economy of jet travel in the years to come.

The British and Canadian character is strangely attuned to this air age. A shy, usually silent, appreciation of the romantic is allied to a keen desire to probe the unknown. We have patience to build finely and a quick, highly sensitive, creative imagination. To work in fluid elements, between ugly danger and calm transcending beauty, as are the sea and the air, brings out the best in a Britisher. This present Elizabethan age is repeating in the air what the first Elizabethan era saw at sea.

And today we are not blindly groping our way in the skies. As Chairman of British Overseas Air Corporation I can confidently promise faster, more convenient and more economical flying for the public of the world in the truly foreseeable future. With Comets and Britannias covering the long-distance routes, and Viscounts flitting nimbly on the short-haul feeder services, a well-balanced pattern of world-wide British jet air routes is developing.

As I have already briefly mentioned, we in B.O.A.C. are actively engaged now in arrangements for girdling the world with two routes-one in the Northern Hemisphere, the other in the South. With all-British jet aircraft we plan to fly west from London to Canada, and then, subject to agreement with your Government, across that great continent probably to Vancouver. From Canada the Northern route would cross the North Pacific to Tokyo and back through Manila, Burma, India and the Mediterranean area to London. The Southern route will go from London to New York, to San Francisco, and thence through Honolulu across the South Pacific to Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, and so back to Britain through Singapore, Calcutta, and the Middle East. That is the route we are operating now. We shall have spurs radiating southward from London to the Argentine and Chile, and down the spine of Africa to Johannesburg. We shall cover these routes with Comets, giving a first-class blue ribbon service, and Britannias providing reduced fares at only slightly slower speeds. When we have inaugurated and consolidated these services we shall improve on them, capitalising the lead that British engineers and technicians have put into the hands of us operators.

Already I have seen detailed on a drawing board in an aircraft factory in England, an aircraft seating 100 people that will travel non-stop between London and New York in seven hours; an aircraft that can fly from London without a stop to Nairobi; that can reach Australia in a day with a full payload of passengers. No place on earth will then be more than 24 hours distant from any other.

This is no pipe dream, but a target in clear focus. Freedom in the air is the heritage of Britain. The sky is boundless and our aim is to devote this second Elizabethan era to making the best use of it for the benefit of mankind. All of us now must strive to fulfil the hope, surely strong within our hearts, that air travel in this new jet age shall make a lasting contribution to human understanding and to the ultimate cause of peace.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Mr. James Joyce.