“Commuter” helicopter pictured at right and below is claimed to be the world’s first successful two-place co-axial rotary wing aircraft. The all-metal blades line up fore and aft above the aluminum tear-drop fuselage and all controls are contained in a single unit. In recent public tests it performed vertical take-offs and landings and turned on its own axis while hovering. The pilot is Stanley Hiller, Jr.

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Why Wing-Flapping PLANES Won’t Fly

THE odd plane described here is just another manifestation of the wing-flapping idea which has cropped up periodically ever since man first considered the conquest of the air.

There is a certain brand of inventor obsessed with the idea that the only satisfactory way to achieve flight is by a literal application of bird-flight principles. To this class of inventor all present day aircraft appear completely unsatisfactory particularly in their use of airscrews rather than wing beats as a means of propulsion. Read the rest of this entry »

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Build A Glider-Copter

AN 86-lb. helicopter glider, believed to be the smallest aircraft in the world today, has been developed and flown by Bensen Aircraft Corporation of Raleigh, N. C, for use in engineering tests of lighter-than-man helicopters.

Like soaring gliders and sailplanes, the helicopter glider has no engine; it is towed by a car until it becomes airborne and will stay in the air as long as it is towed or as long as there is sufficient wind to keep its rotor blades turning.
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Rail Flyer to Set New Speed Marks

THE rail flyer, the inventor has called this new space-consuming creation of engineering, and it has several very good reasons for its existence.

It is so constructed that it is able to overcome one of the great problems of rapid transportation; the problem of traction. Every vehicle has tractive power, the ability to move forward under applied force.
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Let’s Use Helicopter Cavalry

Swooping in suddenly, helitroopers on powerful “sky horses” could wreak havoc with enemy troops.

By Frank Tinsley

SCATTERED along the western slope of the Asiatic coastal range, the copter troopers and their mounts cluster in little groups as the rising sun climbs behind them. The jump-off moment is fast approaching. Within minutes, the sun will burst blindingly above them to cover their westward assault.

The first elements of the blitz landing—submarine-borne marines —had hit the enemy coast only three days ago, seized the controlling crests and passes of the coastal hills in bloody fighting, well covered by massive flights of water-borne jet fighters. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW IN THE AIR

VANGUARD 2C is new VTOL (above and at right) with ducted fans in wings, pusher prop in tail. Cruising speed is 165 mph.

KAMAN DRONE helicopter carries two torpedoes weighing 1,000 lbs. for 110 miles.
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FLYING SAUCERS FOR EVERYBODY!

Within ten years you may be commuting by plastic saucer, flying from your backyard.

By Frank Tinsley

IT IS a bright morning in 1965. At precisely eight a. m. Joe Lees emerges from the back door of his lakeside cottage, only 75 miles from his job in the city. In the graveled center of his backyard his jaunty new plastic saucer rests lightly on three tiny balloon tires.

Greeting his neighbor who rides with him, Joe lifts a flush flap in the saucer’s rounded nose. He turns a recessed locking handle and throws back the bubble-like windshield. Spring loaded, like the hoods of today’s cars, the enclosure lifts easily. As it does, the interlinked nose cone swings down to form a handy step. Read the rest of this entry »

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IS THE PILOT OBSOLETE?

Missiles and rockets guided by “machines that think” are already in the air. Do our fantastic plans for tomorrow doom all piloted aifcraft?

By R. C. Sebold,
Vice President of Engineering, Convair, As told to B. W. Von Block

THE war of the future? Giant intercontinental missiles hurtle through space at 10,000 miles an hour —untouched by human hands. Pushbuttons send a screen of supersonic interceptor missiles streaking skyward to blast the attackers to bits with atomic warheads. . .

This is what you read in Sunday supplements. Tomorrow, say the aeronautical crystal gazers, the only humans left in the skies will be passengers. Not only fighters and bombers will be controlled by electronic brains, but so will commercial passenger and cargo transports. The pilot, these pundits claim, just isn’t stylish anymore.
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New Glider’s Propellers Worked by Foot Power
A glider now being built in Germany is equipped so that it can be propelled by human power. When the pilot turns pedals located beneath his seat, power is transmitted to a propeller by means of bicycle chains and reduction sprockets. Although the propelling force developed is not great, it is expected that the glider will be easier to control than one that is flown without power, and as a result, its inventor says it can be kept in the air for a longer time.

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GIANT JUNKERS AIR LINER Designed for Ocean Trade

FOLLOWING closely on the heels of the successful flights of the giant Dornier “DO-X” comes the announcement that Professor Junkers, the seventy-year-old German pioneer airplane builder of Dessau, has made highly pleasing test flights with his “Goliath G-38.”

Although not a true “flying wing,” the Junkers monoplane has adopted many of its features in order to cut down parasite resistance. The four engines have been placed in the leading edge of the single unbraced wing while the fuselage is extremely small for a plane of this size, being not much more than a strut to hold the tail assembly after the trailing edge of the wing has been passed.
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PLANE TALK

Edited by H.H. Arnold

Ten years of Commercial Aviation

TEN years ago the first aerial mail line had been in operation for a very short time. The war trained pilots were trying to make up their minds whether to take up aviation as a profession or to get jobs on the ground. The Army and Navy had hundreds of surplus airplanes which they were selling for almost nothing. There were then a few far sighted people who were convinced that air transportation must certainly come into its own some day and were struggling with short air lines. There were hundreds of gypsy pilots picking up a few dollars here and there as they flew around the country. Then there was the trans-continental air mail system operated by the U. S. Post Office Department.
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AIRWAY TO EUROPE

NEW SAFETY DEVICES GUARD TRANSATLANTIC PLANES

By PAUL A. CLARKSON

ON WINGS sixty-two feet longer than the ship in which Columbus sailed to the New World, Pan American Airways’ 82,500-pound “super-clipper” flying boat will soon lift from Long Island Sound on its initial passenger run to Europe. In twenty-four hours, it will cross the sea on which Columbus’s Santa Maria tossed for ninety-two days. Half a hundred passengers and a cargo of 5,000 pounds will ride in the great silver-colored hull of this aerial luxury liner. Read the rest of this entry »