Image Building at the Big Show

At first glance, the 27th Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport seemed to belong to the U.S. Not only was the U.S. exhibit the biggest around, but it had an extra impact: it was a celebration of the 40th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's historic transatlantic hop to that very same airfield.

In flew a replica of the Spirit of St.

Louis to go on display under a model of Eero Saarinen's St. Louis arch out side the $250,000 U.S. pavilion. In side the pavilion, 75 companies plugged their products with splashy displays.

Nineteen more showed their wares around the field. Gemini Astronauts Michael Collins and David Scott were there along with the 250-seat DC-8-61, largest passenger jet now in scheduled operation. Experimental craft ranged from Ling-Temco-Vought's V/STOL XC-142 to Martin Marietta's Lifting Body, in which astronauts may some day glide back from orbit. In military aviation, the star of the show was General Dynamics' swing-wing F-lll fighter, flown from the U.S. and shown for the first time abroad. No less anxious to unleash a spectacular were the Russians, who contributed to the show's remarkable catalogue of names and numbers with the YAK-40 jet transport, the turboprop AN-22 which can carry 720 passengers, and the 300-ton Vostok satellite.

Europeans Mean Business. Beyond all the U.S.-Soviet image building, though, it became clear that the Western Europeans are expanding their own aircraft making with renewed confidence. By pooling their strained capital resources through mergers and joint efforts, they are getting ready to compete with such U.S. giants as McDonnell Douglas, Boeing and Lockheed. "The Americans would like to have a monopoly on the aircraft industry," says Director van Meerten of Holland's Fokker, which has just test flown its new F28 twin-jet transport, "but we are here to tell them this is not to be."

The French, who normally like to go it alone, are the most aggressive joint-effort boosters. This year the Transall, a German-French military-cargo plane, is to go into service. The Breguet 1150 antisubmarine aircraft, produced by France, Germany, Belgium and Holland, is also being delivered. A FrancoBritish combine has announced plans to build a supersonic Jaguar fighter. And France and Britain are thinking of spending $2 billion for a twin-engined variable-geometry fighter to compete with the F-lll.

Trouble in the Civilian Sector. Still, the European combines have yet to profit from rising civilian demand. Orders for Caravelles, Tridents and null have been disappointing, and British, French and West German manufacturers are struggling to get a medium-distance "Airbus" off the drawing boards. Plans now call for delivery in 1971. In the meantime, U.S. companies may well corner most of the market for subsonic jet transports.

By then, however, the Franco-British SST Concorde should be setting commercial aviation records. A full-scale mock-up of the droop-snoot plane was a big attention-getter at the air show. Larger than the Russian TU-144 SST and carrying about half as many passengers as the American version, the Concorde is scheduled to make its first flight on Feb. 28, 1968. The estimated price of the plane has already jumped from $7,000,000 to $21 million. Even so, the partners hope that when the 1,450-m.p.h. Concorde goes into commercial use in 1971, it will snare a sizable chunk of the market before the Boeing SST begins hopping the Atlantic at 1,800 m.p.h. in 2 hrs. 20 min.--a full 55 min. faster than the Concorde.

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