On Trial . . . America’s First Jetliner
By A. M. “Tex” Johnston
Chief of Flight Test, Boeing
as told to Thomas E. Stimson, Jr.
CRASH BOATS are standing by off Mercer Island!” “All airports in vicinity of Seattle are closed to normal traffic!” “Rescue helicopter now on patrol off Seward Park!” “Fire fighters standing by!” “Your chase plane is airborne!”
Reports like these were part of the pre-flight preparations in July when copilot “Dix” Loesch and I prepared to streak down the concrete runway at Renton Airport and lift the prototype of America’s first jetliner into the air on its initial test flight.
Boeing’s 707 “Jet Stratotanker-Strato-liner” is considered the safest passenger transport ever built, yet Dix and I were happy about the elaborate precautions to rescue us if anything went wrong. All our recent preflight and ground tests had been perfect. We were expecting a normal routine ride on the first flight, but there’s always a chance that the unexpected can happen.
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Steam Will Power Tomorrow’s Planes!
The oldest prime mover—steam—is staging a comeback. Read what amazingly logical things can be accomplished with new designs in planes through the use of steam as a power plant and control medium.
by EARL D. HILBURN
Aeronautical Engineer
EVERY once in a while we have to “get back to nature”—get back to the simple things our dads used. Often we find that we’ve been on an engineering merry-go-round and that the old gentlemen who were our forbears had some right good ideas in design, but were unable to use them to the fullest extent of their theories because the right materials were not available in iron, or steel, or something else.
And every so often the subject of what tomorrow’s airplane will look like bobs up in some writer’s mind. He is usually hard pressed to get something really new to write about, so he lays it on thick and the resulting pipe dream generally makes an air-minded man who has any air “savvy” pretty sick.
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Can you guess what song is now stuck in my head?
“It’s raining trout. Hallelujah it’s raining trout!”
It’s Raining Baby Trout
By Claude M. Kreider
LAST SUMMER almost 3,000,000 baby trout “rained down” over 662 blue lakes in California’s lofty Sierras.
This was not a miracle of nature brought about by the storm clouds hovering over the high peaks. It was a manmade phenomenon, the result of a long experiment in modern trout culture and the planting of fish by airplane.
For many years Sierra lakes, barren of fish life, and other lakes heavily fished, were stocked with trout by the use of pack mules, each carrying two 10-gallon cans of baby fish. Many were lost in transport, others injured. The packers had to stop often along the rough trails to replenish the water in the cans and thus provide the necessary oxygen to keep the fish alive.
Often there was no trail, even for the sure-footed mules, and the men had to complete the journey carrying the cans upon their backs. Several days were often required for one journey. And the cost was prohibitive, averaging almost $20 per thousand trout.
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I can’t decide if this plane looks more like a fish or a banana?
Proposed Dual-Purpose Plane To Rise Vertically
THE machine illustrated at the left, in various operating positions, is the subject of a recent U. S. patent issued to Umberto Savoia, and assigned to the Fiat Co., well-known Italian manufacturers. Its purpose is to unite the horizontal flight of the ordinary plane with the vertical flight of the helicopter; without complexity of machinery to convert horizontal drive into vertical. As will be seen, the plane can be tilted back at right angles, so that the traction of its propeller is vertical; and land in either position. Another design contemplates a double body, in which the rear fuselage is hinged to the front, so that the angle between the two may be altered. Wide ailerons and large empennage will be required, and powerful engines, probably with a propeller (or pair) of variable pitch.
Tiny Blimps Carry Flying Electric Signs
BILLBOARD blimps, carrying” flashing neon signs through the night sky above big cities, form the latest innovation in spectacular advertising. The aerial electric signs, developed and patented by Goodyear Rubber Co. experts, spell out sentences a word at a time like many of the big displays on New York’s Great White Way.
Ten lighting units, each approximately six feet high and four feet wide and formed of a maze of curving and zigzag neon tubes, are attached to the side of the semirigid dirigible before the take-off. An ingenious hooking arrangement permits them to be attached or removed in a few minutes. Each unit is capable of producing any number or any letter of the alphabet.
During the flight, an automatic mechar nism makes the proper contacts to spell out the desired words on the side of the blimp. Perforated tape, similar to that used in player pianos, runs through the switching mechanism, the perforations tripping mechanical fingers to make the electrical connections. The sign remains the same until the next series of perforations is encountered, flashing on another series of letters.
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Will Airborne Police Enforce World Peace?
PARACHUTE AND GLIDER TROOPS, WITH NEW TACTICS AND EQUIPMENT DEVELOPED BY THE ALLIED NATIONS, MAY BE THE MEANS OF PREVENTING WORLD WAR III
By VOLTA TORREY
ADDITION of a vertical flank to America’s armies has hastened victory. Napoleon could not cross the English channel, but General Eisenhower could—with the help of airborne divisions. In the Orient, too, these “sons o’ guns with tons o’ guns” have literally leaped forward. Flying infantrymen are one of this war’s most spectacular and significant developments, and may be a means of preventing a third world war.
“The day will most assuredly come,” says Maj. Gen. F. A. M. Browning, commander of Britain’s first airborne division, “when airborne armored forces will control the world, and the inhuman, though at present inevitable, bombing of women and children, inherent in strategic bombing, will be a barbaric relic of the past.”
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THE KID WITH THE KAISER CONTRACT
by Dean Jennings
Stanley Hiller, teen-age tycoon, casually sat down in his workshop and built the co-axial flying machine Da Vinci dreamed about.
WAY back in the florid days of the Renaissance, when painters were social heroes and scientists were frequently hauled off to the clinic for nitwits, the great painter Leonardo Da Vinci invented a flying machine— on paper.
It would have two motors, one above the fuselage, one below, with long horizontal rotor blades revolving in opposite directions. This curious gadget was the father of all helicopters. But Da Vinci’s friends said he was as nutty as a squirrel, assuming they had squirrels in those days, and the idea never got beyond the drawing board.
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Planes “Type” Messages in Sky
Radio taps the keys as seven-ship flying typewriter prints 15-mile-long placards at 10,000 feet.
By Herbert Johansen
WRITERS in the sky have abandoned old-fashioned, one-plane “penmanship.” Now they’re “typing” out their aerial messages in neat block letters.
The “keys” of Skytyping are seven planes that fly a straight, parallel course across the sky. Electronic controls puff smoke at preselected intervals to form celestial letters as in the word “T E S T,” shown in the photo at the top of this page.
A “mother” plane, flying in the center of the formation, automatically controls the entire operation. It transmits a constant stream of radio tone signals at one-second intervals. As receiving sets in each of the seven planes, including the mother plane, pick up the signals, switches are thrown in a control board that has 200 plug-in sockets. The board in each plane has been preset according to a message pattern.
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