How The Flying Saucer Works
If you haven’t seen saucers yet, you will—and they’ll be built to Air Force specifications.
By Willy Ley
Editor’s Note: Ever since 1950 when TRUE The Man’s Magazine discussed existence of flying saucers, the world press has been continuously interested in the flight possibilities of disc-shaped aircraft. The most recent Air Force report on flying saucers, issued in November 1955, states that there are rational explanations for practically all the so-called flying saucer “spottings.” Most interesting portion of the Air Force report to many readers, however, was the section dealing with America’s plans for building a disc-shaped aircraft capable of vertical flight and easy maneuverability. To bring you more details on exactly how such a craft would operate, we have asked the world-famed authority on rockets and guided missiles, Willy Ley, to visualize for us how the craft now under development for the U.S. Air Force might be constructed in the light of what is now known about jet propulsion and vertical flight. Mr. Ley’s observations are based on conversations with VTO authorities in the U.S. and on a lifetime of research in jet propulsion and rocket-powered flight.
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Six Hours to Europe in Stratosphere Liner
Traveling three times faster and with greater safety than planes operating in the ordinary air lanes, great air liners of tomorrow will drone through the purple darkness of the stratosphere to connect the principal cities of the world in the space of a few hours, is amazing prediction of Prof. Piccard, conqueror of the upper atmosphere.
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BALLOONS to Deliver Mail to Planes
PAUL P. HORNI, of Newark, N. J., has recently been granted patents on a device which holds promise of supplying the intermediate towns along the air routes with air mail service.
The device consists of a pair of captive balloons which are separated but bound together with a spreader bar. The balloons may be permitted to rise to any desired height, where the mail plane flying between them may pick up the mail sacks which are held above the center of the spreader bar.
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LOS ANGELES RACES Prove Air THRILLERS
More and more power and less refinement of streamline design is the cry of present day designers as proved by contesting planes in great 1933 Los Angeles Air Races. Flown across country by an eye witness this up-to-the-minute account of the past year’s aviation progress summarizes records, achievements and points out the races’ thrills.
by JAMES BOWLES
ROARING across the continent in 11 hours, 30 minutes, Col. Roscoe Turner not only clipped 63 minutes from his former east-west trans-continental speed record, but he inaugurated something new in the way of planning his route.
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ICE-ISLAND in Mid-Atlantic Proposed
SEADROMES for ocean landing fields are not a new idea, a steel ‘drome designed by Edward Armstrong, recently described in these pages, being well on the road to practical acceptance. But the proposal to build seadromes of ice, recently advanced from Germany, seems fantastic until one realizes that the idea has already passed the experimental stage with flying colors.
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Planes That Go Straight Up OPEN NEW FIELDS FOR AVIATION
By Edwin Teale
AMONG the skyscrapers of lower New York City, a few weeks ago, a strange wingless craft drifted down in a vertical landing. Its wheels touched the concrete of a pier and rolled less than a dozen feet. With balancing wings eliminated, it represented the latest style in autogiros. The flying windmill has taken another step toward the goal of a thousand inventors, the helicopter.
An autogiro can descend vertically; but it can take off only after a run. A helicopter could get out of a field the size of its landing gear. It could climb straight into the sky, could hover like a humming bird, and could drop like an elevator descending its shaft. Entirely new realms of aerial travel await the perfection of such a craft.
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Skywriters see it this way
They spell from right to left and make words that are 15 miles long.
SO YOU have a new pen that writes under water, a pen that writes for three years without a refill, and never leaks. Kid stuff!
I know a bunch of guys that write with a gadget that can make letters a mile high, write a word 15 miles long that’s visible for 40 miles, and can write 15 miles of letters in 20 minutes.
Yes, I’m talking about “sky scribblers,” the smoke writers. It all started back in 1922 on England’s Derby Day at Epsom Downs. Everything was going along as dignified as usual with King George and Queen Mary there to add a bit more tone to the affair. Suddenly some chap glanced upward at the sky, clutched his ascot and yelped, “Blyme, look there now, it’s bloomin’ writin’ in the sky!”—and thereby began a unique industry, Skywriting.
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