Richard Du Pont—Millionaire Glider Fan

ONE would expect to find a Du Pont in a Washington drawing room or on the sands at Newport; but young Richard Du Pont, son of the industrial magnate, reverses the procedure by spending a great part of his time in a workshop.

Out in the San Fernando valley, a short distance from Los Angeles, stands a small laboratory. There young Du Pont and his co-workers are daily experimenting to make the air currents safer for glider-conscious America.
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The last section of this article (Buying Hats by Radio) seems like a weird addition. Apparently television and radio advertising are the only thing that can save the world.

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What Will Happen to Flying?

by CAPT. EDDIE RICKENBACKER

Commander of the First A. E. F. Air Squadron in the World War.

GIANT dirigibles a mile in length, airplanes capable of flying at 500 miles an hour—these are only two amazing developments which Capt. Rickenbacker predicts are waiting just around the corner of the new air age in which we live. Being the greatest of America’s war aces as well as a motor car engineer of national reputation, Capt. Rickenbacker’s predictions are those of a recognized authority.
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Rockne Plane Crash Inspires Safety Inventions

FOLLOWING the recent tragic crash of a tri-motored airplane in which Knute Rockne, Notre Dame’s famous football coach, and seven others were instantly killed, a new impetus has been given to the invention of safety devices designed to prevent the recurrence of such catastrophes in the future. It will be remembered that one wing of the Rockne plane was torn off in mid-air.
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Eye-Shade for Watching Planes
A NOVEL card-board shield, shaped to fit tightly around the eyes, has recently been devised for watching airplanes, boats and other objects where glaring reflections are hard on the eyes. The inside of the shield is painted black.

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Freak Plane Crashes

By RAOUL WHITFIELD

Wartime Aviator and Famous Author of Air Fiction ISSOUDUN, FRANCE. August, 1918. Grey sky, spit of rain. Two fifteen-meter Nieuports doing combat work at eight thousand, just under the clouds. And then, wings too close, the crash!

I’ve seen a lot of sky bangs. This one took the prize. I watched it from the earth—it was my turn to take one of these ships up next. It was my turn, but I didn’t take one. They tangled wings, and one ship spun free like a top. A wing dropped loose as she spun, But not her wing—the other plane’s. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cars That Fly

YOUR car of the future may have no wheels. It may not even touch the road as it races along the turnpike at speeds well above 100 mph while you and your family sit back and enjoy the ride—without fear of accident or injury.

This revolutionary new mode of travel was recently unveiled by the Ford Motor Company in the form of the Glideair—a wheel-less vehicle that rides on a thin film of air a fraction of an inch above the road. Read the rest of this entry »

Bottoms Up!
IT LOOKS like an aviator’s nightmare of a mass crack-up, but it’s just the way one airport solves a “parking” problem. Due to lack of space, these light planes are set up on their noses in a hangar at Boston Municipal Airport, their propellers protected from injury by wooden blocks. By using this unique, if unorthodox method, 15 ships can be stored in the same space that five would ordinarily use.

Floating Fuel Station for SEAPLANES

IN THE future, when airplane travel comes to be as commonplace as automobile travel, we may expect to see floating filling stations, such as shown in the drawing above, dotting the airplane travel lanes of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This is by no means a fantastic project of dreamers, for already just such floating service stations are to be seen scattered along the Pacific coast; and a west coast oil company, looking to the future, has announced its intentions of establishing a chain of 99 such stations for the accommodation of planes journeying up and down the seaboard. Read the rest of this entry »

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Firefighting Helicopters

Guardians of our national forest reserves now have a versatile weapon to pit against nature’s ancient and devastating enemy—fire.

BY DAVID P. GODWIN, Asst. Chief, Div. of Fire Control, U.S. Forest Service, as told to James N. Miller

THE newest and most promising tool tor the protection of our national forests is the firefighting helicopter. Its practicability has already been proven in tests conducted by Army and Forest Service officials.

The greatest value of the rotary wing aircraft lies in its ability to hover and land almost anywhere. Visibility is not a serious problem for the craft literally can feel its way through darkness or cloudy flying weather by circling around trees, mountains and other obstacles. In these respects it is superior to the airplane which has been used by the Forest Service for some 25 years.
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Experimenter Flies With Bat Wings

RESURRECTING an ancient theory of the Greeks which had to do with the flight of humans equipped with bird wings, Adolph Matz, an aeronaut of Brookline, Mass., recently gave a demonstration of a novel means of self propulsion through the air by the use of bat’s wings.

Made of heavy cloth and braced with wooden ribs, the wings are strapped to the body as illustrated in the photo below.

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Flying Cameraman Ousts the Old-Time Prospector

Where prospectors of the old school searched the gold country for years in quest of the precious metal, the modern aerial cameraman discovers and records all the salient features of a mineral-bearing region by the simple click of a shutter. Read here how the amazing instruments disclose topographical secrets to flying prospectors.
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Fit to Fly a Jet?
OUR jets are the hottest things in the air and it takes hot pilots to fly them. Even the fighters cost a few hundred thousand dollars each and Uncle Sam makes certain he doesn’t put a muttonhead behind the stick whenever there’s flying to be done. It’s easy for him to select good pilot material, however. Read the rest of this entry »