Aviation

The Limits of Radicalism and Expertise

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Rick cites a remark by Senator Christopher Dodd about the financial regulation bill: “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” My observation is that Dodd’s remark was actually true, and would have been true to a substantial extent even if the bill had been properly read, debated, and analyzed. A more perceptive man than Dodd might have seen this as a reason to avoid making such overwhelming changes all in one fell swoop.

Several years ago, I posted about the failure of the FAA/IBM project for a new air traffic control system. The new system was known as the Advanced Automation System and was intended to be “as radical a departure from well-worn mores and customs as the overflow of the czars,” in the words of a participant. Another participant described the radical ambitiousness of the project as follows:

“You’re living in a modest house and you notice the refrigerator deteriorating. The ice sometimes melts, and the door isn’t flush, and the repairman comes out, it seems, once a month. Then you notice it’s bulky and doesn’t save energy, and you’ve seen those new ones at Sears. The first thing you do is look into some land a couple of states over, combined with several other houses of similar personality. Then you get I M Pei and some of the other great architects and hold a design run-off…”

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Sir Keith Park

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Tomorrow, on Battle of Britain day, a statue of Air Vice Marshal Keith Park will be unveiled in London’s Waterloo Gardens. Military historian Stephen Bungay:

The Battle of Britain was the most important campaign in the history of the RAF. That it was fought and won was down to three men. The first was Winston Churchill. He decided to fight it. The second was Hugh Dowding. He built the system that made victory possible. The third was Keith Park. He wielded the weapon that Dowding had forged and Churchill decided to use.

One of the top Allied air aces of the war, Johnnie Johnson, said of Park “He was the only man who could have lost the war in a day or even an afternoon.” And as Churchill said, “The odds were great, our margins small, the stakes infinite.”

More about Park here.

Via Mrs Moneypenny at Financial Times

Col. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby

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Col. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby

Col. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby, late of the Royal Horse Guards (the Blues), author of A Ride to Khiva: Travels and Adventures in Central Asia and On Horseback Through Asia Minor. He was also a pioneering aeronaut, author of A Ride Across the Channel: and Other Adventures in the Air. Col. Burnaby met his death in the hand-to-hand fighting of the Battle of Abu Klea, 1885. Queen Victoria fainted when she heard of his death.

Captain Frederick Augustus Burnaby of the Royal Horse Guards was no ordinary officer. For a start he was a man of prodigious strength and stature. Standing six-foot-four in his stockinged feet, weighing fifteen stone, and possessing a 47 inch chest, he was reputed to be the strongest man in the British Army. Indeed, it was even said that he could carry a small pony under his arm. … Nor was this son of a country parson entirely brawn. He also displayed a remarkable gift for languages, being fluent in at least seven, including Russian, Turkish and Arabic. Finally, he was born with an insatiable appetite for adventure which he combined with a vigorous and colourful prose style. Inevitably, these two latter qualities brought him into contact with Fleet Street, with the result that during his generous annual leaves he served abroad on several occasions as a special correspondent of The Times and other journals … .

From The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk.

I am halfway through “A Ride to Khiva” and I am very grateful to Google Books, which provides full text, out-of-copyright books, at this point everything published before 1922. Through this wonderful service, I have been easily able to make the acquaintance of this extraordinary officer in his own prose, via Kindle.

One quote from the book. Burnaby is in St. Petersburg, and he sends a written request to the Russian Minister of War, Gen. Miliutin, asking his leave to travel across Russia and on to Khiva, which is (at that point) still beyond the Russian frontier. Miliutin responds in the negative, and offering as his explanation that he cannot answer for the security of travelers beyond the Tsar’s domains.

I should have much liked to have asked Gen. Miliutin one question, and to have heard his answer — not given solemnly as the Russian Chancellor makes his promises, but face to face, as a soldier — would he, when a captain, have turned his face homeward to St. Petersburg simply because he was told by a foreign government that it could not be responsible for his safety? I do not think so; and I have a far higher opinion of the Russian officers than to imagine that they would be deterred by such an argument if used to them under circumstances similar to those in which I found myself.

Burnaby, of course, goes anyway.

For further details, see The Life of Colonel Fred Burnaby By Thomas Wright (1908), and The True Blue: The Life and Adventures of Colonel Fred Burnaby, by Michael Alexander (1957).

So Long, LORAN

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On Monday at 2000 GMT, the U.S. Coast Guard terminated the transmission of the LORAN-C radionavigation signal, marking the end of a system which has been an important factor in maritime navigation (and, to a lesser extent, air navigation) for more than half a century. The termination of LORAN was based on budget considerations and on the conclusion that LORAN’s functions have been supplanted by GPS. I’m not totally sure that this was a good decision.

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