Birth of the Airbus Family: The A310

The Airbus A310 prototype takes flight on 3 April 1982.

In the days following the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War in Middle East in October that year, the oil producing nations of the Middle East responded to American materiel support of Israel with an oil embargo that sparked a worldwide economic crisis as the price of oil abruptly shot upwards from $3/barrel to over $12/barrel in a short period of time. As a result, the airline industry worldwide embraced fuel efficiency as the new driver for future aircraft designs. While there were high-bypass ratio turbofans that powered the new widebody designs that were entering service (Boeing 747, Douglas DC-10, and Lockheed L-1011 Tristar), turbojets and low-bypass ratio turbofans were still commonplace in the short to medium-haul fleets worldwide. Many airlines indicated to the major manufacturers that there was a market need for a fuel-efficient aircraft in the 150-200 seat range over short to medium haul ranges. Of the big three manufacturers in the United States who dominated the world commercial airliner market, Boeing's plans were the most ambitious with the launch of not just one aircraft, but two aircraft with a common cockpit with the Boeing 757 and 767. It was in many ways the biggest gamble Boeing had ever undertaken, bigger than building the Dash 80 demonstrator that led to the 707 and even bigger than the launch of the 747 ten years earlier. News of Boeing's plans put pressure on Airbus Industrie to respond as all it had produced by that point was the A300. While there were a range of A300 variants with varying engines, payload and fuel capacities, they were all still essentially the same aircraft and hardly a family of aircraft. Two of the primary founders of Airbus and their heads, Roger Béteille (technical director) and Henri Ziegler (general manager), strongly believed that Airbus needed to emulate Boeing's strategy of building a whole family of different aircraft for different markets if the whole enterprise was to have a future beyond the A300. Boeing's idea for commonality with the 757 and 767 designs resonated with the Airbus team who was commonality among varied designs as a way of proving value to the airline customers, not to mention it would be a strong incentive for an Airbus customer to stay loyal to Airbus in the future.

Part of the problem Béteille and Ziegler faced was that most of the Airbus consortium partners saw the A300 as the end result of cooperation instead of the starting point for future cooperation. A lot of that was driven by the atmosphere of fiscal austerity of the 1970s in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis- Airbus' partner nations were hesitant of putting up more money into the venture, particularly when Airbus was still a bit player on the world market despite the success of the A300. In 1978, for example, Airbus delivered 15 aircraft, all of them A300s. That same year Boeing delivered 203 aircraft across three product lines- the 727, 737, and 747. In fact, it wouldn't be until 2003 that Airbus would deliver more aircraft in a single year than Boeing. When Boeing launched the 757 and 767 programs, they were also capitalizing on market vulnerabilities experienced by McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed in the wake of their trijet programs- Airbus wasn't really on Boeing's radar screen at the time. Despite the market effects on McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed, they were still delivering aircraft as well which were entering service on top of Boeing's numbers. You can imagine what a tall order it was for Béteille and Ziegler to convince the Airbus consortium partners that there was value and potential for the long haul beyond the A300 at a time when they were only building less than 5% of the world's commercial jetliners. It wasn't until mid-1975 that the board of Airbus Industrie endorsed the plan for a family of aircraft- and that endorsement is a testament to the persuasive powers of Roger Béteille and Henri Ziegler. In his book Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Dominance of the Skies, author Stephen Aris calls that 1975 decision as the most critical decision in Airbus' history. If Airbus failed, then it was only one aircraft, the A300, that failed. But if they became successful, then that one aircraft wouldn't be enough. The leadership of Airbus Industrie by that point had proven themselves remarkably adept in getting the A300 into production and to market while balancing the interests of the partner nations in the consortium. 

Winning a Swissair order was a strategic priority for Airbus

With the backing of the consortium to expand the Airbus product line beyond the A300, the next task at hand was to determine the configuration of the new addition. The first iteration dated back to the oil crisis of 1973 when A300 sales were near dormant (only four A300s were delivered in 1974). In response to what was seen as an evolving market for something smaller than the A300, what was designated the B10 was a minimum-change variant of the A300 that had a shorter fuselage but the same wing and empennage as the larger aircraft. However, the B10 proposal created a significant amount of discord at all levels of Airbus as the consortium partners argued whether it was needed or not. Lufthansa in particular was keen for a smaller A300 derivative and this had gotten the support of Swissair. In those days, Swissair was one of those flagship customers every commercial airframe builder wanted as a customer. They were a tough customer known to be one of the most difficult airlines to negotiate with- but a Swissair order was badge of prestige for any commercial aircraft design and with Swissair now allying with Lufthansa on interest for a smaller A300 derivative, winning Swissair as a launch customer soon became one of Airbus' primary strategic goals. 

By the time the two airlines were briefed on the B10 proposal, Boeing was well on its way to launching the 757/767 program and compared to those aircraft, the B10 had no fans with either Lufthansa or Swissair. Their objections of the proposal stemmed from two points- the first one was that by the time of proposed service entry, the B10 design would be based on technology and a design that was at least a decade old and more importantly, it had a worse payload fraction than the A300. The payload fraction is one way of measuring an aircraft's efficiency- how much payload can it carry compared to its weight. Since the B10 design had a shorter fuselage married to the A300's wings, it had less passengers (therefore less revenue) to offset the costs of carrying a heavier wing structure. This is one of the reasons why shrinks of commercial airframes tend to not do well in the market- like the A318, 737-500, or 747SP, for example. If the B10 proposal was ever going to get off the drawing board, it needed a lighter wing and whole host of improvements over the A300 to win over the airlines who were being offered the latest in technology with the 757/767. In an unusual twist of history, the prospect of trans-Atlantic cooperation offered an potential answer to Airbus' dilemma. Why not combine Airbus' growing widebody fuselage expertise with the technology and industrial muscle of the United States? The first feelers on such an idea came from McDonnell Douglas in the spring of 1975 for a joint venture for a 200-seat design called the DC-X-200. McDonnell Douglas had long been considering a twin-engine version of the DC-10 and the DC-X-200 was the latest iteration along those lines. However, once discussions moved beyond engineering to management, the talks quickly collapsed. That summer another offer came from Boeing who thought there would be some synergies with the B10 proposal and the 767 program. Whether Boeing was serious or just trying to distract Airbus is still a source of debate to this day, but the proposal would have consisted of the A300-based fuselage and 767 wings and empennage. At the end of the day, however, Airbus lost interest as it became apparent that they would end up a Boeing subcontractor in the joint venture. 

Lufthansa was an early A300 customer who drove the design of the A310.

Still keen to win over Lufthansa and Swissair, Airbus decided to follow as Boeing had done with the 757/767 and go with a two-crew flight deck and CRT displays. That would prove to be a relatively easy step to take but it still provoked the ire of the pilots' unions of several European carriers. The need for a new wing, however proved to continue to be problematic. I had posted previously that it had taken the personal intervention of a German politician, Franz Josef Strauss, to fund the A300's wing development and construction by Hawker Siddeley as a result of the British government's withdrawal from the Airbus consortium. Hawker was still the center of the most advanced wing design work in Europe and was in the process of merging with several other entities to form British Aerospace (BAe). With British Aerospace being majority owned by the government, there was considerable anguish at Airbus as to whether or not BAe would participate in the B10 project given the British pull out of the Airbus consortium in 1969.  When Hawker elected to remain an Airbus participant despite the pullout, they had absorbed a portion of the costs of wing development. Now that Hawker was part of BAe, no one was sure that the new entity was willing to front such costs again for the B10 project. Airbus decided at that point to turn to its partners for a wing design- Aerospatiale and VFW-Fokker each submitted wing designs and Roger Béteille was sure that whoever was chosen, it would be the end of Airbus as the other partner would feel jilted. As it turned out, neither was chosen- the German design was aerodynamically superior but the French design was structurally superior. A joint-wing design center was established to combine their efforts and word of this got back to BAe quite quickly that their replacement was in the works. 

The exact political machinations in the UK that resulted will be the subject of a future blog article, but they were contentious with pro-Airbus factions in the British government and those who favored a joint-venture with Boeing on the 757. At the end of the day, however, BAe did end up designing and fabricating the wing which was not only lighter, but was of supercritical section which made it not only more aerodynamically efficient but also offset the smaller size with a deeper airfoil section which offered more fuel capacity. Getting the wing also meant that the British eventually rejoined the Airbus consortium with a 20% share. On 9 June 1978, Lufthansa and Swissair issued a joint specification for the new aircraft and within a month announced intentions of placing orders for what was launched as the Airbus A310. On 15 March 1979, Swissair announced its launch order for 10 aircraft and 10 options with plans to use the A310 as a replacement for its legacy DC-9 fleet on its major intra-European routes. Lufthansa quickly followed with an order for 10 aircraft and soon after Air France and Iberia also placed orders, assuring the production and success of the A310. When the A310 prototype flew, it would later wear Swissair's colors on the right side and Lufthansa's colors on the left side. Many of the advances of the A310 were later incorporated into an upgrade of the A300, the A300-600. 

Further reading: 

How American Airlines Shaped the A300

How Rolls Royce Scuttled British Participation in Airbus

The Early Days of Airbus Industrie and How the A300 Got Its Name

Franz Josef Strauss: The Bavarian Politician Who Saved Airbus
How a Lot of Airbus Jets Were Born on Boeing Wings

Related reading:

American Airlines Picks the DC-10 (American's pick of the DC-10 is intertwined with the early history of Airbus)

Source: Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Domination of the Skies by Stephen Aris. Agate Books, 2002, pp 90-95. Photos: Wikipedia

During times of war, operational necessities sometimes breed unusual solutions- in the Second World War the most famous of these was the Japanese kamikaze. Though no Allied airmen were ever committed to a formal suicide mission, the desperation of the in its first half did lead to one program that probably comes as close as can be to a suicide mission- the Catapult Armed Merchantmen (CAM ) ship program put in service by the British during the early days of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Being an island nation, Great Britain was dependent upon maritime trade and in particular, dependent upon the Atlantic convoys from the United States that delivered not just weapons and armaments, but also food staples and fuel. As the Battle of the Atlantic intensified in 1941, the German U-boat menace began taking its toll on merchant shipping that was Britain's wartime lifeline. However, the U-boats were only part of the problem as the Luftwaffe's long-range Focke Wulf Fw 200 Condor long range patrol bombers also preyed on the convoys and also provided eyes for the submerged U-boat wolfpacks.

The solution was the Catapult Armed Merchantmen and the Hawker Sea Hurricane. Approximately 36 cargo ships were fitted with a rocket-driven catapult mounted on the forecastle of the ships. The catapult was mounted in a fore-aft orientation and slightly offset to port to which the Sea Hurricane was mounted. The first Sea Hurricane variants only had local reinforcements and attachment points to the catapult trolley. Two pilots were assigned to each CAM ship and alternated 12 hour shifts. Once a Condor had been sighted, the alert pilot strapped into the Sea Hurricane and the rocket catapult fired, moving the Sea Hurricane and the expendable trolley at 3.5Gs while the pilot had the engine running at full power.

The CAM ship's forward structures were shielded to prevent damage caused by the rocket blast. Once committed to launch, the pilot had to use 1/3 starboard rudder to overcome the Hurricane's tendency to swing to port at full throttle. In addition, 1/3 flap was used to help get the Sea Hurricane airborne with the trim tabs set to neutral. If too much back pressure got applied during launch, the plane would stall and fall into the sea, so pilots would brace their right arm by shoving their right elbow against their hip to prevent inadvertent back pressure from the G-forces of the launch.

Launching the Sea Hurricane and engaging the Condor was the easy part of the mission. Since there was no way of returning to the ship, the pilot only had two choices- either ditch near the ship or hope there was enough fuel to head for land. Ditching a Sea Hurricane wasn't a great option- the bottom mounted radiator scoop easily flooded and the aircraft would sink quickly. If land was too far away to reach, the preferred option was to bail out rather than ditch the aircraft. Timing was of the essence, as exposure in the cold North Atlantic required an expeditious rescue out of the water. Later versions of the Sea Hurricane were fitted with two 44-gallon underwing tanks to extend the range and make reaching land more feasible.

As a result of the risks to the pilot in launching the Sea Hurricane, it was considered a last resort as most convoy captains didn't want the rocket flash to attract the attention of the Condors. By 1943, though, the CAM ships and their risky missions were superseded by the arrival of the first small escort carriers called MACs- Merchant Aircraft Carriers. The MACs were small escort carriers that lacked any hangar facilities and carried its Sea Hurricane complement (usually five) on the deck exposed to the elements. As a result, the Sea Hurricanes were only good for about 30 flying hours before saltwater corrosion took its toll. Although Sea Hurricanes were also deployed on the larger fleet carriers of the Royal Navy, handing idiosyncrasies on landing made them quickly superseded by purpose-built carrier fighters.

Source: Aeroplane Monthly, April 2010, Volume 38, No. 4. "Fierce Wind over the Deck" by Philip Jarrett, p36-40.

Probably the first attempt at an all-in-one hunter-killer aircraft to hunt down and destroy enemy radars came in 1944 with the Royal Air Force's Project Abdullah. Unlike US efforts that focused on radar-finding aircraft to cue attacking aircraft, Project Abdullah consisted of an electronic radar hunting device fitted to three Hawker Typhoons of the No. 1320 Special Duty Flight in May 1944.

In the cockpit of the Typhoon was a CRT display connected to a radar homing receiver. The receiver was tuned to the known operating frequencies of the German radar. Once in the vicinity of a suspected radar site, the pilot turned on the Abdullah equipment and once alerted to an active radar site, he would try to visually locate the site and either attack it or fire smoke marker rockets to mark it for further attack by waiting aircraft.

Despite an impressive step forward in the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), the German countermeasures were as simple as either turning off the radar knowing the Abdullah aircraft were in the area to changing the radar frequency as the homing equipment on the Typhoon had to be preset before takeoff.

Source: Wild Weasel Fighter Attack: The Story of the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses by Thomas Withington. Pen & Sword Books, 2008, p23.

Now entering service, the Hawker 900XP business jet is the latest variant of a line of business jets that have been in continuous production since 1962, longer than any other civilian jet. Only the Boeing 737 comes close, having been in production since 1968.

The original production version, the Hawker-Siddeley HS-125, was built and designed with the airframe failures of the De Havilland Comet in mind (the HS-125 design originated with De Havilland) had a robust structure that was even approved for operations from unpaved and sod runways. No airframe in this family of aircraft has ever suffered a failure as a result.

The first HS-125s were powered by Rolls-Royce Viper turbojets which were loud and not only fuel-thirsty, but also oil thirsty as the oil wasn't recovered from the bearings of the engine and one of the tasks of the copilot was to pour more oil into the turbojet before each flight. The first big leap in the design came in 1976 when Garrett TFE731 turbofan engines were added to the 125-700, making it, along with the Lear 35 and Falcon 10, one of the first turbofan applications in business jets.

The next leap that made the design a commercial success came in 1983 when the 125-800 rolled out with new longer span wing and a wrap around windshield to reduce drag.

There is an apocryphal story that when they were designing the cabin cross section for the HS-125, De Havilland engineers went to the London clubs frequented by executives that they expected to form the market for the aircraft and measured them to be sure the cabin was sized properly.

Source: Flying, October 2009. "Hawker 900XP- The newest version of a first generation business jet is the best one yet" by J. Mac McClellan, p43-45.

Lebanon's first Hawker Hunters were six former RAF F.6s that were paid for by the United States in 1958. A further set of ex-Belgian Air Force Hunters were then added to the force in 1965-1966. A final order was placed in the 1975 with the deliveries completed in 1977 during a lull in the civil war. Operated by the 2nd Squadron of the Lebanese Air Force, the aircraft saw combat in the 1982-1983 conflict with two shot down and one heavily damaged. By the early 1990s the remaining Hunters were stored as the Lebanese Air Force concentrated its operations with helicopters.

With a new administration in place in 2008, the Lebanese Air Force planned to strengthen itself to replace the various militias around the nation. Quite remarkably, the stored Hunters are being returned to service with reports indicating at least six are now operational. It appears that the Hunters will be operated pending delivery of 6 to 8 BAe Hawk jet trainers from the United Arab Emirates Air Force.

Source: The Hawker Hunter: A Comprehensive Guide (Modelers Datafile 16) by Paul Bradley. SAM Publications, 2009, p35-36.

On 7 September 1941 the first 24 Hawker Hurricanes arrived at Vaenga-Pervaya airfield near Murmansk to form Royal Air Force's 151 Wing composed of both No. 81 and No. 134 Squadrons. This first group was departed the carrier HMS Argus which delivered them into the Soviet Arctic. The rest of the wing's aircraft arrived five days later via cargo ship at the port of Murmansk and the 40 Hawker Hurricanes flown by RAF pilots was code-named Force Benedict.

For over a month the RAF pilots of the two squadrons flew combat missions over the Kola Peninsula against the Luftwaffe and also flew escort missions for the bombers of the Soviet Union's Northern Fleet Air Force. Fifteen Luftwaffe aircraft were shot down with only the loss of one pilot and one Hurricane.

On 11 October 1941 Soviet Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov signed an order creating the 78th IAP (Fighter Air Regiment) to operate the RAF's Hurricanes after the RAF pilots departed back for the UK. Four days later the 78th IAP (made up of three squadrons) was declared operational and became the first unit in the Soviet Air Force to operate foreign aircraft in wartime.

Source: Aeroplane Monthly, September 2007. "A Biting North Wind" by Yuriy Rubin, p23.