VERTICAL TAKE-OFF

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29177, 11 April 1960, Page 22

VERTICAL TAKE-OFF

Tests Of New Jet Plane . (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, April 7. A vertical take-off aircraft yesterday made a major breakthrough towards the day when giant British jet airliners will rise vertically from the ground and make their journeys in forward flight and land vertically. A Short S.C.L. delta-wing research jet completed for the first time an entire sequence of flight operations for which it is designed. This final critical phase in the aircraft’s flight-test programme was made by the chief test pilot of Short Brothers and Harland, Limited, Tom Brooke-Smith, after several weeks of test flights ,at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Bedford. First he took the S.C.L. into a circuit of the airfield, made a long approach to the main runway and gradually decelerated until he was hovering motionless a few feet above the runway. Then to complete the sequence he accelerated away again into normal wing-borne flight, gradually gaining height, went into another circuit and landed conventionally. Previously, the plane, the first vertical take-off aircraft to be built in the United Kingdom, had taken off vertically and hovered on its four downward pointing Rolls-Royee turbo-jets. It had also flown conventionally, using its single horizontally-mounted propulsion engine.