It is an honour and a privilege to commemorate the memory of Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith. It is 41 years since he linked by air the United States and Australian nations. Those 41 years have been years of phenomenal progress and growth from the infant industry of that time to the monumental industry of today.

Forty-one years ago the flying time from San Francisco to Australia was 83½ hours and the elapsed time was 10 days.

My object first of all is to illustrate the background pressures which generate a need for an aircraft such as the Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) and the various national gyrations which have pursued it through recent years. In describing past technical activities, I necessarily deal more with the UK contribution, rather than with Messerschmitt- Bolkow and Fiat, not with any parochial intention but because time is limited and I am naturally rather more familiar with that element from BAC work covering the Anglo-French aeroplane with Dassault and the UK studies which were intermediate between co-operation with the French and with our German and Italian colleagues.

Compared with most other industries a distinguishing feature of the air transport business throughout its history has been the rapid development and replacement of its flying equipment. Aircraft have evolved to meet the needs of expanding traffic and each generation has been succeeded by different, newer and better versions. The thirties saw the appearance of the all-metal monoplane with piston engines and propellers.

Air Cdre. Harland dealt with Project Management at Mintech, and Mr. Keenan described a type of Project Management in an aero engine firm.

Before considering other types of project organisation which can be used by the aircraft manufacturer, I should like to take a broad look at Project Management in relation to an aircraft weapon system required for the British Services. I should like to mention all the agencies involved in achieving the aim of producing an aircraft to meet the specification at the right time and cost since, as Air Cdre. Harland said, what is required is teamwork and mutual confidence between all agencies concerned.

By way of introduction to my paper and to place its subject matter in perspective, I would like to refer to a paper by A. Silverleaf, Deputy Director of NPL, Teddington, entitled A Review of Hovercraft Research in Britain (published in the JOURNAL, pp. 1019–1028, December 1968). Mr. Silverleaf presented a comprehensive review of research programmes at national establishments, in industry, and at universities. Although he did not specifically mention the College of Aeronautics by name, Mr. Silverleaf briefly commented on the research programme into external aerodynamics that is being conducted at the College.

The Edwards Report is the first comprehensive survey of British Civil Aviation for over thirty years, and it recognises this fact by supplying detailed examination of many aspects of the industry. In this review of the report selection will be made of what appears to be the salient policies of the report and around which the other recommendations follow.

Central to the report's recommendations is the view that controlled oligopoly, in which fares are fixed by a Licensing Authority, will lead to the provision of a more desirable air service than either monopoly operation of “uncontrolled” competition in which freedom of entry and fare fixing is allowed so long as basic safety requirements are satisfied.

Sandwich panels are utilised quite often in aircraft and missile structures mainly because of their high strength to weight ratio. The core of the panel, made of light material such as balsa wood or synthetic material, stabilises the face skin sheet which is usually metallic, and contributes to the shear strength of the section.

Rectangular sandwich panels have been analysed by various investigators. In particular, Reissner deduced the range of linearity of deflections as a function of the core rigidity relative to that of the face skin. Results for parallelogrammic sandwich panels, however, are not available.

Many structures are made up of skin material which is stiffened by reinforcing members. Configurations of this type are predominant in the aircraft industry where they are referred to as semi-monocoque structures. When analysing such structures, using finite element techniques, the reinforcing members (stringers) are lumped together to form pure axial elements and the skin is then represented by isotropic plane stress elements.

The purpose of this note is to report some recent observations of the tailoring conditions for combustion driven shock waves and to offer explanations for two distinctly different pressure histories recorded during the combustion process.

The technique of initiating strong waves utilising combustible driver gas mixtures, such as stoichiometric hydrogen and oxygen with a helium diluent, is now well established, see Gaydon and Hurle.

In a decade when aircraft design procedures involve analyses which display ever increasing accuracy to satisfy growing operational demands, it is not surprising that the boundaries of compromise rapidly converge upon the envelope of acceptability. A finished aircraft becomes the unique solution to a well-defined design problem–or what is even more frightening, it becomes a solution to a unique problem. If the problem changes after the solution has been produced… c'est la vie.

Fatigue in aircraft structures is a problem for which quantitative and generally accepted solutions are not available as yet. Even in recent years significant fatigue failures in aircraft structures have occurred. Some of these failures can be attributed to either poor design or underestimating of the fatigue environment. Unfortunately such statements are of little help since there are a confusingly large number of aspects involved. For a designer considering fatigue problems, experience, qualitative understanding and a good intuition are therefore essential.