Are there any other threads to
this fas-cinating story around.
Frost has family in New Zealand... somewhere.
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http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/frontpage.html
"The Sunday Times"
March 26 2000
BRITAIN
(Some photo's at website)
Light years ahead of its time:
the British prototype of the experimental plane known as Project Y
was designed to take off and land vertically
Revealed - Britain's 1950s flying saucer
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
Saucerful of secrets: the disc-shaped Avro plane
was intended to fly at 2,500mph
IT is the nearest the RAF got to a UFO.
Recently discovered photographs taken at a secret laboratory in
the 1950s reveal for the first time how close Britain came to
developing a saucer-shaped stealth fighter after the second world war.
The pictures, taken at a research centre in Canada,
show a revolutionary ultra-high-speed jet fighter
designed by the British engineer John Frost.
Aviation experts who studied the pictures last week said the jet
incorporated some of the features on America's stealth fighter plane.
Work on the aircraft in the 1950s was codenamed Project Y.
Frost and his team initially set out to build a disc-shaped machine with
vertical takeoff, but ended with a sleek, arch-shaped aircraft.
"The pictures are a wonderful find," said David Windle,
who has researched the history of Project Y.
"It is technology that Britain just lost
and it is a pity the project was abandoned.
Who knows what would have happened if they had pursued it."
The photographs were taken at a laboratory in Malton, near Toronto,
where Frost was working with Avro-Canada,
a subsidiary of the British firm Avro,
to develop a jet fighter for the Canadian government.
He wanted to create an aircraft which could fly at 2,500mph
and take off and land on its tail.
The existence of Project Y has been known about for years,
but no pictures of the aircraft have ever been found.
An aviation researcher accidentally discovered the photographs
in a file at the Public Records Office in Kew.
An elongated saucer shape was used
because of the revolutionary "radial flow" jets designed to
power it.
The engines were designed to emit the exhaust gases
from several small nozzles, increasing the thrust of the jet.
Aviation experts said last week that the prototype vehicle
would have been almost invisible to radar because
of its slim cross-section.
It would also have been more likely to evade enemy missiles
because of the lower heat output through the numerous jet outlets.
It is not known why the revolutionary jet never went
into production, but the project was abandoned before the plane
had its first test flight.
Reach for the sky: despite its sleek look,
the Avro never flew
Alex Raeburn, then assistant superintendent of manufacturing at Avro,
described the life of secrecy for those on the base.
"The security was very tight," he says.
"Armed guards were stationed on the doors
and drawings were taken away as soon as we'd made the component.
In fact, we never knew exactly what it was we were making."
Verne Morse, one of the team who worked on the secret project,
said he was amazed any pictures had survived because of the total
secrecy surrounding the project.
He described how he saw a subsequent model designed by the team.
"When I saw it [the plane] for the first time I was stunned,"
he said. "I'd heard rumours we were working on a flying saucer,
but I dismissed them.
Now, here I was looking at it, and I was speechless."
In 1954, the Canadian government decided to end the development
of the aircraft.
The American air force took over the project
and later a scaled-down version of the plane became an "air
jeep",
which was nicknamed the Avrocar.
Raeburn said he witnessed test pilot Spud Potocki flying the
saucer-shaped craft.
"I remember him flying up to the hangar windows
and looking in like a humming bird might do.
When he flew in cold weather the engines sucked pieces of ice off
the puddles. They'd float around in the air, shining in the
sunlight."
Professor Michael Graham, professor of aerodynamics at
Imperial College, said: "In the 1950s there was a lot of interest
in different aircraft shapes.
This is built like a kind of flying wing.
Its ability to hover is useful for landing in rough places."
While Frost worked on Project Y,
American engineers were developing their own
ultra-high-speed jets at desert bases in California and Nevada,
which led to the development of spy planes such as the U2.
In 1961, however, despite the successful flights of the Avrocar,
the American air force halted all funding for the company's researchers.
There were no more British-designed flying saucers
and Frost left Avro and moved to New Zealand, where he died.
Last week Tony, his son, said:
"Dad was a brilliant artist who was always designing things,
but he combined that skill with being a very capable mathematician
and great lateral thinker."
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