The First Cierva Memorial Lecture was given in the Lecture Theatre of the Society on 16th February 1961 with Dr. E. S. Moult, C.B.E., B.Sc., F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E., President of the Society, in the Chair. Introducing the lecturer, Dr. Moult said that, beginning in 1948, through the generosity of Wing Commander Graham Douglas, the Helicopter Association of Great Britain awarded a prize annually in commemoration of the great pioneer work of Juan de la Cierva in the field of rotary wing flight. When the Helicopter Association merged with the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1960 it was decided to institute a Cierva Memorial Lecture as a main event in the yearly calendar of the newly-formed Rotorcraft Section of the Society.

This was the first lecture of what he was sure would be an outstanding series and they were honoured by having with them for the occasion Dr. Carlos de la Cierva, son of the great pioneer. Professor Bennett had spent much of his working life associated with rotary wing aircraft and had been closely associated with Senor de la Cierva. He had been with the Cierva Autogiro Company for about 10 years, and for some seven years was head of the Helicopter Branch of Fairey Aviation; in America he was for a period a member of the British Air Commission and later, was Chief of Research of Hiller Aircraft. He was now Deputy Principal and Head of the Department of Aerodynamics at the College of Aeronautics.

The 1,190th lecture to be given before the Society—and the 44th Main Lecture to be held at a Branch centre—" Nuclear Power in Flight", by Professor A. D. Baxter, M.Eng., F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E., at that time Director and Chief Executive, Rockets and Nuclear Power, and now Executive Director (Engineering), The de Havilland Engine Co. Ltd., was given under the auspices of the Swindon Branch of the Society on 2nd February 1961. Mr. S. R. Hughes, A.F.R.Ae.S., A.F.I.A.S., Chairman of the Swindon Branch, opened the meeting by welcoming the President of the Society, Dr. E. S. Moult, C.B.E., B.Sc.Eng., F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E., and other distinguished guests attending this first Main Society Lecture to be given at Swindon. Dr. Moult, who presided for the rest of the meeting, expressed his great pleasure at being present on this occasion. Introducing the lecturer, the President said that Profesor Baxter, as he was still known, was educated at Liverpool University and from 1930-34 served an apprenticeship with the Daimler Company. During this time he took his pilot's “A” licence and was commissioned in the R.A.F.O. After a year as Research Engineer with the Institution of Automobile Engineers, he joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment in 1935 as a Technical Engineer working on gas turbine research and later, rocket propulsion. From 1947 to 1950 he was Superintendent, Rocket Propulsion Dept., R.A.E., and then joined the new College of Aeronautics as Professor of Aircraft Propulsion, becoming Deputy Principal of the College also, in 1954. In 1957 Professor Baxter left the College of Aeronautics to join The de Havilland Engine Co. Ltd. as Chief Executive, Rocket Engine Division.

In a paper delivered before the Society in March 1960, Morgan concluded that a Mach number of about 2.0 may prove a natural “fit” for the first generation of long-range supersonic transports. Sub-sequently, at the second Congress of I.C.A.S., Kuchemann developed the theme of fitting an aircraft to a particular duty and concluded that the slender wing provides a natural basis for the layout of the supersonic transport. It is convenient to accept these two papers as a starting point for a more detailed examination of the aircraft, since, taken together, they can be taken as fixing some of the major variables—range, speed and general layout.

Some remarks are first made on the pertinence of the topic chosen for a lecture dedicated to Dr. Lanchester. A brief historical review is then given of the development of University teaching and research activities in Aeronautics from the early years of the Century to the present. An imaginary but typical modern University Department of Aeronautical Engineering is described with particular reference to numbers of students, staff, laboratory equipment and budget. Some of the many research topics to which the Universities have made and are making important contributions are then discussed briefly. These are to illustrate the scope and tendencies of University research against the background of current developments in Aeronautics. Among the subjects referred to are such topics as the structure of the turbulent boundary layer and the measurement of skin friction, flow Separation phenomena, boundary layer drag and heat transfer at high speeds, aeroelasticity, the application of matrix methods to structural analysis using digital Computers, structural damping, secondary flows in propulsion machinery, the rotating stall and jet noise.

The paper concludes with some general remarks on the relationships between the Universities, the Government Research Establishments and the Industry and on the future of University research. The importance of maintaining on the one hand the independence of the Universities and on the other hand the closest contact between them, the Government Establishments and Industry is strongly emphasised.

Law, Science and Aeronautics are defined in broad terms and some landmarks are outlined in the history of control of aeronautics by legal means.

The exercise of national sovereignty often means that relevant laws are a serious limiting operational parameter. This and other factors may hinder the development of international air transport (especially supersonic aircraft) and may thus threaten the livelihood of aeronautical scientists.

When aviation accidents occur, the operation of rules which determine “legal liability” may thrust an unfair financial burden on sections of the community which may be blameless from a scientific point of view. Suggestions for the future are made.

Scientific exploration into outer space provides a crucial opportunity for the nations of the world to co-ordinate the disciplines of science, law and politics in a way never before possible. Members of the Royal Aeronautical Society cannot afford to ignore this challenge and a practical suggestion is made as a first step in implementation.

The Fourteenth Louis Bleriot Lecture “ The Development of Short Range Air Transport through the use of V/STOL Aircraft,” by General Henri Ziegler, General Manager, S. A. Louis Breguet, was given before a distinguished audience which included a number of visitors from France, on 23rd March 1961 in the Society's Lecture Theatre.

The President, Dr. E. S. Moult, C.B.E., B.Sc.(Eng.), F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E., presided at the meeting. Before the formal proceedings the names of 17 members elected to Fellowship of the Society since December 1960 were read by the Secretary. (These names were published in the January, February and March JOURNALS—Ed.)

After congratulating the new Fellows, Dr. Moult said that this was one of those great occasions of the Society when they united with their friends from France to revere the memory of Louis BleYiot, the first aviator to cross the Channel. This was on the 25th July 1909; since then, they would agree, great things had happened in the field of aeronautics.

The Sixteenth British Commonwealth Lecture, The Story of Indian Air Transport, by Mr. J. R. D. Tata, Chairman of Air-India International, was given before a distinguished audience on 18th November 1960 at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Birdcage Walk, London, S.W.1.

The President of the Society, Dr. E. S. Moult, C.B.E., B.Sc., F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E., presided at the meeting. Before introducing the Lecturer the President explained that hitherto the election of Fellows had been initiated by the Council and announced once a year but, under the new By-Laws, Fellowship was to be regarded as a position which could be attained by any qualified member who had reached a position of eminence and responsibility in the profession of aeronautics. At the same time it had been decided that the announcement of such elections should be made not just once a year, but on occasions such as this.

The names of 22 members who had been elected to Fellowship since May 1960 were then read out by the Secretary. (These names were published in the December Journal–Ed.)

After congratulating the new Fellows, Dr. Moult said that the British Commonwealth series of lectures started at the end of the War in 1945, and had continued annually until the present day. Throughout the years they had had a series of outstanding lectures on subjects associated with aeronautics in the Commonwealth, given by most distinguished lecturers. The stature of this lecture was set for all time in 1954 when His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh addressed them on “Aviation and the Development of Remote Areas”. Now they were to hear about the growth of aviation in one of the great members of the Commonwealth. Air Transport in India was now thirty years old1 and there was no one more suited to tell the story of that thirty years than their lecturer, Mr. J. R. D. Tata.

Mr. Tata had been actively associated with this development all his working life. Indeed, it was true to say he had had a major part in it. He learned to fly in 1929 and personally flew the first scheduled transport service in India in 1932. He had been associated with aviation throughout all these years and a few years ago was president of I.A.T.A., the International Air Transport Association; he was now Chairman of Air-India International. He had great pleasure in asking Mr. Tata to give the Sixteenth British Commonwealth Lecture, “The Story of Indian Air Transport.”

The original concept of measuring strains directly from the surface of a structure by coating it with a birefringent material is credited to Mesnager (France, 1930), who was unable to obtain practical results at that time because of the lack of suitably sensitive photo-elastic materials. Subsequent attempts were made by Mabboux (France) in 1932, Oppel (Germany) in 1936 and K. O. Scott (England) in 1949. In March 1953, Col. H. T. Jessop published in the JOURNAL of the Royal Aeronautical Society the results of some research into the feasibility of bonding modern plastics on to structures.

The design of structures for operation at increasingly higher temperatures and under exposure to severe heating requires more detailed and more exact analysis to determine the most severe conditions under which a given structure is operationally effective. To meet this need, the following analysis has been devised, with the determination of stresses and deflections in plates due to non-uniform heating as its purpose. The analysis results also in the determination of the maximum loads which may be imposed on the supporting members by the plate due to its thermal deformations.

Detailed measurements in the wake flow behind blunt based two-dimensional and three-dimensional bodies have been made at M = 2. The results throw some light on the behaviour of separated flows and indicate the importance of flow reversal. The results for the two-dimensional body are in agreement with the Crocco and Lees’ theory on separated shear flows. A preliminary study of the effect of air injection at the base shows that the base pressures increase significantly.

The Forty-Ninth Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture, “Researches in Space Flight Technology,” was given by Dr. Abe Silverstein, B.S., F.R.Ae.S., F.I.A.S., Director of Space Flight Programs, N.A.S.A., before a large and distinguished audience in the Lecture Theatre, 4 Hamilton Place, on 12th September 1961. Air Marshal Sir Owen Jones, K.B.E., C.B., A.F.C, B.A., D.I.C., F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E., R.A.F.(retd.), President of the Society, presided. The Lecture was given during the Eighth Anglo-American Aeronautical Conference, and the President was accompanied on the platform by Dr. H. Guyford Stever, President of the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences, and Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Air Commodore W. P. Gouin, R.C.A.F., a member of the Directing Staff of the National Defence College, Canada, and President of the Canadian Aeronautical Institute.

As has become the custom, before the Lecture was delivered, the President presented the awards made by the Council for 1961 for outstanding contributions to aeronautics. The list of awards presented on this occasion was published in the June 1961 Journal (p. XXVII).

Introducing the Lecturer, the President reminded the audience that the first Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture was given in 1913 by Horace Darwin. The list of Lecturers, as they would see in their programmes, contained the names of eminent scientists and engineers from America and from this country. They had with them on this occasion a number of those who had given the lecture, among them their very distinguished visitor, Dr. von Kármán.

This lecture had been given alternately by a lecturer from this country and one from the United States, with one exception. On one occasion it had been given by the late Professor Ludwig Prandtl—a name well-known to them all.

Now Dr. Abe Silverstein was to give the 49th Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture and had chosen as his subject “Researches in Space Flight Technology.” Dr. Silverstein was Director of Space Flight Programs at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters in Washington. Before the N.A.S.A. was established on 1st October 1958, Dr. Silverstein had been Associate Director of the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory, Cleveland, a research centre of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which formed a nucleus of the N.A.S.A. Dr. Silverstein joined the N.A.C.A. in 1929 and spent much time at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory on wind tunnel design and high speed research until he was transferred to the Lewis Laboratory in 1943 to direct research at the Altitude Wind Tunnel. He had done pioneering work on large scale ram-jet engines and on the supersonic wind tunnels at Lewis.

The 1,186th Lecture to be given before the Society—and the 40th Main Lecture to be held at a Branch centre—“ Trends in Aircraft Propulsion” by H. Pearson, B.A., F.R.Ae.S., Chief Engineer (Performance & Research), Rolls-Royce Ltd., was given under the auspices of the Southampton Branch on 19th January 1961. Professor A. R. Collar, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.Ae.S., F.I.A.S., Vice-President of the Society, presided. A message specially recorded on tape by the President, Dr. E. S. Moult, C.B.E., B.Sc.(Eng.), F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E., was broadcast. The President said how much he regretted missing Mr. Pearson's lecture and the meeting at the Southampton Branch. He had looked forward to the occasion but he and Dr. Ballantyne, Secretary of the Society, were attending an international congress in Detroit. He was grateful to Professor Collar for deputising for him and sent his best wishes to the Southampton Branch and to everyone present on the occasion.

Professor Collar, introducing the Lecturer, said that Mr. Pearson graduated in Physics from Christ Church. Oxford, and since 1940 he had been with Rolls-Royce, working first at Hucknall on problems connected with exhaust systems. In 1943 he had joined the Rolls- Royce team at Barnoldswick under Dr. S. G. Hooker, now of Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd. Mr. Pearson had returned to Derby in 1946 as Chief Performance Engineer on turbine engines and three years later was appointed Chief Research Engineer. He was now a Director of the Aero Division of Rolls-Royce, and Chief Engineer (Performance and Research).

This short paper is confined to a discussion on one aspect of the Structural Design of Supersonic Transports. It is chosen because it covers the area in which the impact of supersonics is probably most critical from the structural point of view, i.e. kinetic heating.

It is of utmost importance that the significance of kinetic heating is not exaggerated. Adequate attention must be paid to assessing the degree to which past experience is relevant if excess weight is to be avoided.

It is in this direction that the discussion is aimed.

In view of the need to keep the paper short, attention is concentrated on the Mach 2 class of aeroplane constructed largely of aluminium alloy. Much of what is said will also have relevance to the Mach 3 class of aeroplane.

The history of the Agena space vehicle starts in the years immediately following the Second World War, when the Rand Corporation under a contract with the U.S. Air Force examined the potential applications of satellites, recognising their technical feasibility as an additional bonus from an inter-continental ballistic missile development programme. The U.S. Air Force kept this concept alive throughout the development phase of the ICBM programme; the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation actually received its first contract, for detailed engineering studies, in 1955. The Agena space vehicle has grown from these beginnings and is now the vehicle selected for a large variety of U.S. space projects. Most of these are satellites, but they include a few space probes and moon explorers.

The 1,179th Main Lecture to be given before the Society–and the first Main Lecture to be given in the new Lecture Theatre–“Ten Economic Lessons from Short-Haul Airline Operations,” was given by Mr. S. F. Wheatcroft, B.Sc.(Econ.), A.F.R.Ae.S., on 15th December 1960. Mr. P. G. Masefield, M.A.(Eng.), F.R.Ae.S., Hon.F.I.A.S., Immediate Past President, presided.

Before introducing the Lecturer, Mr. Masefield said ttiat this was an auspicious occasion because this was the first Main Society Lecture to be held in the Lecture Theatre. Although he was sure there was nobody better fitted than Steve Wheatcroft to give this first lecture and no more valuable subject than the economic lessons from short-haul airline operations, Mr. Wheatcroft unfortunately had let the side down by not requiring any of the modern pushbutton equipment which was a feature of the Lecture Theatre.

Steve Wheatcroft was known to everybody in air transport, not only in this country but all over the world, where he spent half his time when he was not advising B.E.A. on what not to do. Mr. Wheatcroft obtained his B.Sc. degree with first class honours in economics at the London School of Economics in 1942. After the war, during which he served as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, he returned to the London School of Economics, taking a Leverhulme Post Graduate Studentship and studying, in particular, the economics of air transport. He was appointed Economic Adviser to British European Airways in 1946 and subsequently joined the Commercial Department as Manager in charge of Research and Tariffs. In 1953 he left the Corporation to go to Manchester University as a Simon Research Fellow and wrote a book called “The Economics of European Air Transport”. Wheatcroft on “The Economics of European Air Transport” was still a standard and was rapidly becoming a classic work. Since 1954 he had acted as a Consultant and had been retained as Economic Adviser to British European Airways. In 1958 he was commissioned by the Canadian Government to make a study of the desirability and economic consequences of trans-continental competition and his report, “Air Competition in Canada,” was published in June 1958. In 1959 he was appointed Chairman of a Committee set up by the Government of India to investigate the cost structure of the Indian Airline Corporation. More recently he had been a member of the Tymms Committee to the West Indian Government to advise on civil air policy in the West Indies, and now, he was about to go to Nigeria to tell them how to do it.