Capt. Rickenbacker’s Airplane of the Future
By CAPT. EDDIE RICKENBACKER
America’s war-time ace of aces who is now prominently connected with Fokker Aircraft tells of the remarkable ships of tomorrow now being built, and predicts revolutionary developments in flying.
SEVEN years ago with a pilot, mechanic and a traveling companion, I began an air tour of the United States.
It was a visionary journey in a cabin plane, with my companion, a young newspaper friend, making his first air tour. We rode in the cabin of the plane, carried our luggage in the baggage compartment and caused no little commotion as we began our trip from a landing field near New York City.
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I had no idea that people were working on in-flight refueling this early.
FILLING STATIONS of the SKY
How Fuel Is Passed From One Plane to Another to Keep Record Shattering Endurance Flyers Aloft Hour After Hour Ever wonder how endurance flyers managed to take on fuel, oil and food when on their record-breaking jaunts? The special technique employed by their sky tank wagons is graphically explained in the drawings and photos on these pages.
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It sure would suck if you dropped something.
Youthful Miami Inventor Blazes Another Trail in the Safety of Flying
ONE of the difficulties of air travel is the impossibility of making repairs outside of the cockpit while the ship is in flight. This holds particularly true when the trouble is centered about the tail. James Terry, inventor, of Miami, Fla., is shown demonstrating his safety device which makes it possible to make repairs without landing.
AT LAST — a Convertible AUTO-PLANE
by THEODORE A. HODGDON
A STARTLING new vehicle which may be used in the air as a fast, sturdy airplane, and on the ground as a speedy, comfortable two-passenger coupe car, will shortly be available to aviation enthusiasts. The craft is really a streamlined mid-wing monoplane of 30-foot wing span, propelled by a 125-horsepower air cooled motor of regulation aircraft type. For ground use the ship may be quickly converted into a streamline car, simply by removing the wings and the rear end of the fuselage, leaving the closed cabin body resting on its three wheels, ready to drive through the streets. This transformation occupies about 20 minutes, by means of quickly detachable joints.
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America’s Flying Salesmen
They’re opening new sales territories, doubling their business and flying more miles than the scheduled airlines.
By John L. Scherer
COWBOY singing star Gene Autry spends more time in the cockpit of his Beechcraft Model 18 than he does in the saddle. Autry is a skilled flier with an Air Transport Pilot rating. A typical business trip will find him flying to 32 cities in 32 days, covering more than 4,200 miles. “It would be impossible for me to. maintain such a tight schedule without my own plane. You just can’t make commercial airline connections that way,” says Gene. Besides skipping the schedules and connections problem, Autry has had only two field delays in as many years—both due to weather rather than maintenance trouble.
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Flying Cameras Map America for War
By ANDREW R. BOONE
FROM aerial photographs snapped by giant bombers soaring four miles above the earth, U. S. Army engineers are compiling maps that will serve as eyes for our armed forces if they ever have to wage a defensive war on American soil.
Flying out of Fort Lewis, Wash., the camera planes have recently been engaged in photographing all unmapped areas between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific, from Puget Sound to the Siskiyou Mountains of California. With their multiple cameras they make five pictures at a crack, one straight down and four at angles ahead, astern, and to the sides. Finished prints of the photographs are sent to the 29th Engineers at Portland, Ore. Here, in two old school buildings, they are turned into topographical maps showing all important features that would figure in wartime plans.
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Why Don’t We Build An Atoms-For-Peace Dirigible
Here is a bold plan for displaying peacetime uses of the atom to the peoples of the world.
By Frank Tinsley
EARLY last year, President Eisenhower asked the Congress for funds with which to build a fission-powered merchant ship for the global spread of peaceful atomic knowledge.
“Visiting the ports of the world,” the President stated, “the ship will demonstrate to people everywhere the peacetime use of atomic energy, harnessed for the improvement of human living.”
In Washington, the basic idea of a floating exhibit of American fission techniques was received with general approval by members of the Congress. Some of the plan’s technical aspects, however, generated a bit of discussion. To avoid protracted experimental research and thus speed the ship launching date, it was originally decided to fit the vessel with a duplicate of the power plant used in the atomic submarine Nautilus.
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THE FEEL OF DEATH IN THE AIR
This report of an aerial combat was written in a hospital at the request of the medical officer attending the pilot. The physician was eager to know, as accurately as possible, the pilot’s thoughts and emotions as he fought and suffered his near-fatal wounds.
by Pilot Officer Stanley Hope, R.A.F.
WE WERE on one of the usual offensive sweeps—a daylight raid on some works near Lille. During a widespread dogfight over the target I chased a 109 down several thousand feet, but lost him in a cloud. Pulling up to regain my height, I found the sky completely empty.
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Floating Mooring Mast Proposed as Way Station for Airships
CONVINCED that battle fleets of the future will require the aid of rigid airships as long range scouts, aeronautic experts recently have suggested an ingenious method of mooring rigids to the mast of a moving depot ship at sea, as pictured above.
The depot ship, preferably a converted cruiser, has a hangar forward for small fighting planes, with a launching deck from which the planes are seen taking off to protect the rigid as it returns from a trip.
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This seemed sadly topical.
Flying Gold Out of Tibet
Planes Invade Land of the Lamas CARRYING millions of dollars worth of gold out of Tibet by airplane is the job of a young American who has become a cabinet minister in the Government of the Panchen Lama.
Until the present, Tibet, remote and inaccessible, has resisted all encroachments of the Machine Age.
Now, the Panchen Lama, back on the throne after a 12-year exile in China, has decided to modernize the country with radios, automobiles, hydro-electric plants, and other inventions.
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