New Flying Battleship

Huge All-Metal Biplane, Tested for Uncle Sam, Carries Six Guns and four Tons of Deadly Bombs

NEW war terrors are forecast on this page in our artist’s conception of the new giant bomber, the Curtiss “Condor” swooping down to destroy an industrial center. From its three two-gun nests machine gunners pour streams of bullets at enemy planes attacking from any direction, while the man at the bomb controls manipulates them to drop the explosives through an opening in the fuselage. With 90-foot wing spread and two 600-horsepower motors, the plane, which is all metal, weighs, loaded and manned, over eight tons, including four tons of bombs. In recent tests for War Department and Air Service officials, the huge plane took off in 200 feet and made 100 miles an hour, flying and landing gracefully. It carries 640 gallons of gasoline and has a cruising radius of 800 miles

Air Mattress Dons Wings To Become Emergency Glider

TAKING his cue from the inflated canvas life boats with which many ocean liners are equipped, a Russian inventor has produced a rubberized fabric glider for air liners. While not intended to replace parachutes, it is pointed out that the collapsible glider can be stored in a minimum of space in a large dirigible, and launched through an opening in the hull when necessary.

When deflated, the glider occupies no more space than a trunk, and weighs but 93 pounds. It can be pumped up in less than 15 minutes with an ordinary hand pump, and when inflated becomes an amphibian glider 20 ft. long, with wing spread of 24 ft. In the air the craft is as easy to handle as a conventional glider.

Der plane! Der plane!

Largest Private Plane is Flying Yacht
• THE huge machine illustrated here appears to rival some of the air liners that have figured in trans-ocean flights. It is, however, the property of a wealthy British sportsman. Its cabins are luxuriously furnished as living quarters for protracted trips; the upholstered seats and berths folding to make living and sleeping quarters alternately commodious. Its size and power may be imagined from this view of its exterior.

My favorite quote: “The British jet plane, Gloucester, played an important part in turning back the robot attack on London.”
Damn those robots!

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THE JET PLANES ARE HERE!

THE thrilling story of how the jet-propelled plane was developed in this country in almost complete secrecy was revealed recently. The beginnings go back to 1941.

In the fall of that year, the employees of the Statler Hotel in Boston were puzzled by the behavior of a mysterious English guest named Whitely. He ate his meals in his room, had a private telephone installed which did not go through the hotel switchboard, and asked that all his errands be handled by one bellboy. After a week, he left the hotel.
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The “Dynamic Control” Ocean Liner

By Hugo Gernsback

THE tendency at the present time in airplane building is toward constantly increasing size. It is probably realized by all who have concerned themselves with aircraft that the larger machines are not very far in the future. From the earliest Wright airplane, which weighed approximately 1/2 ton, to the present record holder, the DOX, which weighed fifty tons, took a period of some 26 years. The 10,000 ton airplane, projected on a like time-scale, would, therefore, make its appearance not later than the year 1952. However, with the nature of the present-day technique, it is quite possible, at this moment, that the 10,000 ton plane will be here much sooner.
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Inventors Patent Odd Designs for Safer Airplanes
Unusual ships, straying away from accepted designs, are being tried in an effort to increase safety and simplify air travel. Some of the ideas are shown here.

TAXI PLANE Picks Up FREIGHT And Passengers for AIRLINER
HIGH speed taxi planes that can come and go from a giant “mother” air transport at
will are proposed as a means of providing fast, non-stop transcontinental air service. The smaller ship, released over a city, would land at the airport to discharge and take on passengers and freight, then soar upwards again to catch up with the slower airliner.
As may be seen from the sketches, the method of launching the taxi plane is very similar to that used by the U. S. Navy in handling pursuit planes on dirigibles. A trapeze crane lifts the small ship into the hull of the transport, where passengers may be transferred to roomy quarters on the airliner.

This reminds me of all those persistence of vision gadgets like clocks and hubcaps.

Autogiro Blades Form Screen for Floating Ads After Dark

DISPLAY advertising at night by means of a magic lantern suspended beneath an autogiro, with the rotating blades serving as a screen, is a German inventor’s latest medium for placing a product before the public eye.

The magic lantern assembly is placed in a torpedo shaped carriage equipped with vertical and horizontal rudders to keep it in perfect alignment with the autogiro flying above. It can be raised or lowered by means of a cable, for focusing the advertiser’s message on the blades. When landing, the projector is drawn up into the fuselage.

To insure perfect reproduction of the advertisement, the under sides of the rotor blades are specially treated. The autogiro has been found to be particularly adapted for this type of aerial advertising because of its ability to hover almost motionless in the air, while the blades revolve fast enough to form an uninterrupted screen.

Plane Wing Carries 14 Men
SOVIET military aviators have converted an ordinary two-seater airplane into a troop transport carrying 14 soldiers by building a special compartment onto the bottom of the plane’s lower wing. The men lie in a prone position within the compartment and are fully protected from the wind.
In test flights the converted plane earned 14 men and gas spreading equipment with a total weight of 4,400 pounds at a speed of 111 m.p.h. The plane will be used in time of war to land special troops behind enemy lines, a military strategy resembling Soviet experiments with mass parachuting of troops. The plane can also be used to transport wounded soldiers to base hospitals.

Daring Bird-Man Soars At 10,000 Ft. On Homemade Wings

FOR three years Clem Sohn, parachute jumper of Lansing, Michigan, dreamed of the time when man might go aloft and soar like a bird. Recently his dream became a reality.

Clad with foot-webbing and home-made wings of airplane canvas, he bailed out of a ship at an altitude of 12,000 feet. During the first 2,000 feet of his fall, he kept his wings folded at his side while he tested his leg-webbing. Slowly, he opened his wings to check his descent, and for more than a minute he banked, looped, climbed and zoomed to right and left. At 6,000 feet he pulled the rip cord of his parachute and floated back to earth.

While aviation authorities who witnessed the stunt failed to see any practical value in man’s new “conquest of the air,” Sohn was already at work designing bigger wings and planning future aerial maneuvers.

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Inventors Patent Odd Designs For Safer Planes

Unusual ships, straying away from accepted designs, are being tried in an effort to increase safety and simplify air travel. Some of thef ideas are shown here!

The odd looking barrel shaped airplane above is based on the patent of Hans G. E. Roth, of New Rochelle. N. Y. It differs from the successful Stipa-Caproni barrel shaped ship, built some time ago in Italy, in that the propellers are not mounted within the tunnel itself and in the curious arrangement of vertical fins above and below the main wing. These fins aid in lateral and directional control. Passenger accommodations would probably be located in the thickened portion of die barrel about the main wing, while die crew would be in the lower fin as shown above.
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It seems like they didn’t quite understand that the planes were the important part, not the tower.

Giant Air TOWER to GUARD PARIS
TO GET defense aircraft into action more quickly, architects of Paris have worked out plans for a huge aerodrome tower, more than a mile in height, which will literally hurl planes, into the air at the 5000-ft. level, ready for combat.
High-speed elevators would bring planes from the roof-top-level landing field up to each of the three aerodrome platforms. Swooping downward after leaving the inclined take-off platform, planes would reach flying speed with little loss of altitude.