Vicky

Britain's air scientists made a good try last week at passing the speed of sound with a controlled but unmanned "airplane."

Over the English Channel near Lands End, a Mosquito light bomber climbed to 36,400 feet. Lanky "boffin" (scientific expert) Gerald Bernard Lockee Bayne of the Ministry of Supply touched the bomb-release button, and "Vicky," the Ministry's bomb-airplane-rocket, plunged down through the thin, cold air.

From 2,000 yards away, Test Pilot Keith Butler dived his Meteor fighter at Vicky's torpedolike body and rudimentary, penguinlike wings as if he wanted to shoot her down. But he only shot photographs with five camera guns. Through his radio he reported: "Rocket dropping away in a glide ... a steady glide . . . still gliding . . . it's exploded. . . ." Vicky had not exploded. Her rocket motors were starting up with a belch of black smoke.

Trouble. But all was not well. Vicky did not pull out of her glide and fly level, as she was intended to do. She wobbled and rolled, then steadied, still gliding, and popped into a cloud at 10,000 ft. That was the last seen of Vicky except for a mass of information radioed to the ground by instruments crowding her insides. Apparently her gyro-pilot went haywire, and could not hold her in level flight.

Even if Vicky did speed faster than sound (as some British newspapers but no responsible British scientists claimed), she could not claim to have cracked the sonic barrier. Vicky got help from gravity, losing altitude all the time. According to the rules, a true airplane must at least fly level.

But the British are not discouraged. There are 23 more Vickys, built or in the works. Some of them, like Vicky No. 1, have straight wings. Others have wings swept back or forward. By the time the Ministry of Supply has tested them all, it hopes to know enough to design a full-sized supersonic airplane.

Squabble. When U.S. air scientists heard the triumphant trumpetings of the British press, they protested that they, too, had shot rocket-driven missiles through the sonic barrier. So they had, but their missiles were even less airplanelike than Vicky. Even the initially controlled V-2 (which reaches nearly five times the speed of sound) is not supported by the air, as a genuine airplane must be. The U.S. Navy's ramjet, or "flying stovepipe," is merely a power plant boosted into the air for a brief, uncontrolled flight.

Britain's Vicky was apparently more ambitious. Her body, eleven feet long, had only four-foot wings, but they were expected to hold her up in true, level flight. If her successors really fly level, and reach the planned 900 m.p.h., the British may claim one of the major credits toward building a supersonic plane.

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