AVIATION: The Bumbling Boffins

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"Fifty Percent Planes." As a case history of boffin botchery, Waterton cites the Gloster Javelin, a delta-wing, all-weather fighter on which he did all the initial testing (starting in 1951). The first four Javelin prototypes had serious engineering and stability problems, reports Waterton. Yet, despite a crash in which he almost lost his life, he said that his criticisms of the plane were generally ignored until Gloster's No. 2 test pilot was killed in a Javelin crash. (The Javelin recently went into limited R.A.F. service, is still restricted below maximum performance.)

Thus, says Waterton, "the users get 50% airplanes instead of 90% airplanes. We could learn here from the Americans. They ran into serious trouble with their F-100 Super-Sabre. Yet within three months the Sabre was given a redesigned tail, controls and wingtips, and was out of its troubles. Britain has demonstrated nothing to compare with these methods. Witness the Comet: a brilliant conception let down by aerodynamics, engineering and handling."

Gloster replied to Pilot Waterton's blast last week with the countercharge that he had not quit but was fired for his "disinclination to continue the necessary research flight-testing of the Javelin," dismissed his book as a mishmash of "harrowing self-dramatization, sensational slanders, half-truths, recriminations and flaunted betrayals." But Waterton refused to back down. Said he: "I say, appoint an impartial commission to go into the whole matter and look at the records."