Abstract
As technical progress has improved the airborne performance of aircraft, so the difficulties associated with their take-off and landing have increased.The grass airfields which were still commonplace at the end of the Second World War have now developed into complex arrangements of concrete runways of up to three kilometres (two miles) long, taxiways, dispersal areas, and so on. The main disadvantages of these large airfields, both for military and for civil aviation, soon become obvious: —(i)The enormous expenditure in either case; for military aviation this expenditure has to be approved, but it is at the expense of the production of actual aircraft—like Ugolin who ate his children so that they would not be fatherless;for civil aviation, the high cost of airfield construction has hampered the development of aviation in the remote areas where it would be of particular use in raising the standard of living.(ii)The lack of flexibility of air forces operating from fixed bases, thus reducing their efficiency.(iii)The increase in vulnerability as destructive weapons become more highly perfected.
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