If he actually tried to jump off that cliff with those I’m guessing this is the last picture of him alive.

Oregon Man Builds Flapping Wings for Mountain Gliding
WITH only a pair of strange cloth-covered wings strapped over his arms, Joe Fodie of Rowena, Oregon, hopes to glidfe through space by the power of his arms alone, after jumping from a mountain top precipice. Should this intrepid inventor glide safely to earth, it will be the first time man has flown through the air under his own power. The queer wings are hinged at their center, with a stop to prevent them from buckling upward. As the arms are moved upward in flight, the outer halves of the wings would naturally fold inward; on the downward stroke they flatten out again, providing lifting power. Fodie designed his wing action to resemble as closely as possible the flapping motion characteristic of a bird in flight.

Metal Rotors Help Helicopter Fight Ice

All-metal rotor blades and a cabin floor hatch are novel features of a Sikorsky helicopter being tested by the Navy for use on carriers, battleships and cruisers. The blades are more easily adapted to de-icing equipment than the wooden ones now used and are less likely to be damaged. Air-sea rescues and cargo loading are simplified by the hatch. To protect deck personnel and prevent the blades from striking a rolling deck during landings on heavy seas, the tail rotor is mounted on an arm that extends upward high enough to give full head clearance. Designated the XHJS-1. the craft carries five, has a 110-mile-an-hour top speed and range of 330 miles.

My favorite part is the caption: “Solving a dynamics problem with the Boeing Computer”. THE Boeing computer? What just the one? Do they all have to share?

What’s it like to be a Boeing engineer?
Boeing engineers enjoy many advantages — among them the finest re-search facilities in the industry. These include such advanced aids as the Boeing-designed, Boeing-built Electronic Analog Computer shown above.
This is part of the stimulating background that helps Boeing men maintain the leadership and prestige of an
Engineering Division that’s been growing steadily for 35 years.

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This article is supposedly about German secret weapons, but really is a propaganda piece expounding on the superiority of American arms and engineering. My favorite quote is: “So far the Germans haven’t come through with anything approaching the new British-American jet-driven plane, which is already in production.”

As far as I know the Germans already had Me-262’s in the field at this point. The the only American jet to be deployed in the war was the P-80 and by the end of hostilities in Europe, a grand total of 4 had made it to Europe.

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SECRET WEAPONS

by Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson

“Our new weapons,” says Admiral W. H. P. Blandy, “can be and are kept secret, except that the enemy receives hill knowledge of their effects.” Here, in a sober analysis. Mi’s military analyst debunks the Herrenvolk’s “secret weapon” scare.

OUT of the rumor factories of Stockholm, Bern, and Berlin come periodic threats of miracle-working Nazi “secret weapons” that will blast the Allies sky high and clinch the war overnight. Are they sheer bluff?

As this is being written, a hullabaloo is still raging in the press over the much-touted German “rocket bomb.” Dr. Goebbels himself, fanning the propaganda flames, has claimed that a whole British convoy was wiped out in the English Channel in a matter of minutes by murderous long-range rocket shells. He would have us believe that the entire North French coast is a solid mass of rocket batteries capable of lobbing 12-ton bombs over London, each one powerful enough to devastate 20 square miles.

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Given all the stories I’ve been reading at the Consumerist, it wouldn’t surprise me if the airlines still used these things.

Electronic Machine Speeds Fliqht Information to Area Offices

American Airlines has turned to an electronic machine to provide fast, accurate flight information to all its offices in the New York area. The machine, the Magne-tronic Reservisor, is already in use, handling reservations automatically. In its new utilization, information on all flights, incoming and outgoing, is fed into the whirling drum that is the machine’s “memory,”
and is then available at any airline office in the area. To obtain the information, an agent has only to push a simple combination of buttons on the branch-office keyboard. The answer is returned in flashing lights. Immediately available flight information allows the agent to answer queries at once instead of checking bulletin-board postings.

I’m not quite sure how adding an unneccessary tail to a car makes it highly streamlined, but I do like his driving goggles.

Aerocoupe Speeds 75 M.P.H.
HIGHLY streamlined and following accepted aeronautical design in construction, a novel aerocoupe developed by Richard Crossley, of East Haven, Conn., has a top speed of 75 m.p.h. The cabin resembles an airplane fuselage, featuring longerons, braces, etc. For traction, the vehicle is equipped with three airplane-type wheels.

Interesting article from just before WWII pointing out that the U.S. air force sucks ass, has slow planes, is disorganized and hobbled by politics.

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Our Air Force - A Farce!

“We are five years behind England and Germany in planes, engines and equipment and a full 10 years behind in the development of our air force as a third arm of defense”

by Major Al Williams

AMERICA is not an airpower! We have, instead, two flying services— one with the Army and the other with the Navy—and they are not adequate for the defense of the nation.

As airpower goes, I estimate that we’re about five years behind Europe’s leaders in planes, engines, and equipment, and a full 10 years would be needed for the maturity of a brand new service. This goes in spite of a European demand for American fighting ships, in spite of “downhill” speeds of from 575 to 700 m.p.h. claimed for blunt-nosed radial engined planes, and in spite of a college-student civilian training program which portends to be a solution to the pilot problem.

Our air-cooled engines are good, and hold their own with foreign radials. Our ships came in handy in the scramble for planes after the Munich incident; they are fill-ins for building programs that weren’t geared to air war. But they are powered by engines which can’t approach the English Rolls-Royce streamlined power plants, for instance, and none of the planes is in the same speed bracket with standard fighting ships of the airpower nations.

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Flying BARREL to Carry 100 Passengers

Development of a huge “flying barrel” transport plane capable of carrying a hundred passengers inside its thick tubular hull is foreshadowed by recent successful test flights of the hollow fuselage plane shown in the photograph directly above, designed by Engineer Stipa of the Italian Caproni works. The picture shows: double cockpits placed on top of the cylindrical body, but in the refined version of the plane for large scale passenger traffic, the piloting compartment is faired into wing and propeller is driven through gears much like the dirigible Akron.

I never go anywhere without my asbestos parasol.

Styles for Cold and Heat

RIGHT, Wiley Post, world-girdling flyer, in a suit built for stratosphere trips. It is airtight and connectable to a super-charger on his engine; and will stand 100° below zero. Below, a London fireman in the newest asbestos suit to keep out flame. It seems like a case of extremes meeting.

This reminds me of the ill-fated Rotary Rocket company.

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Daring Rocketmen to Invade the Stratosphere

The rocket-shooters are going to pitch in again this coming summer. Undaunted by reverses and tragedies during the past year’s experiments, the rocketeers are tackling their work with renewed vigor and ambition, plus improved apparatus and chemicals.

Ernst Loebell, famous German engineer and rocket designer, promises to bring the rocket engines to their greatest point of achievement next summer. He is now in this country and is an active worker in the Cleveland Rocket Society.

Loebell has been carrying on bis preliminary experiments on the big Hanna estate in a suburb of Cleveland. In their operations the Cleveland group has been making use of the lessons taught by the experiments of Loebell’s countryman, the late Reinhold Tilling, a noted radio engineer and rocket builder.

Prior to his death. Tilling had been experimenting with rockets and rocket planes for months. The success of a rocket which reached a height of (6,000 feet in 1931 spurred him on to the construction of a rocket with glider wings which unfolded when the fuel was exhausted and brought the projectile gently to earth. This feat was hailed as one of the first practical steps toward the development of mail and passenger carrying rockets.

The Tilling rockets were set in motion by telignition from a distance of 100 yards. They attained a speed of 700 miles an hour and landed five miles from the starting point, in accordance with calculations. Herr Tilling was working on a system designed to manipulate his rockets by radio control when he and a female assistant were killed in the explosion of a rocket which they were charging.

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Build your own JET ENGINE!

Order these plans today
1. Jet Propelled Bicycle, Assemble your own. Photo and instructions, $1.00
2. How to make experimental jet engines. Seven sheets drawings with information and instructions $2.95
3. Both of above in one order $3.75.
SEND NO MONEY. Order both at once $3.75 C.O.D in USA plus c.o.d postage.
Send check or Money Order and we pay postage. Get other information too. Rush Order.

J. Houston Maupin, Dept. 55, Tipp City, Ohio

Needless to say, many of the predictions in this article didn’t pan out.

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Is Aerial Warfare Doomed?

Original Editor’s Note - Statements by aviation enthusiasts that airplanes will wipe out cities, destroy fleets and armies, and win the next war prompted this article by Lieut. Hogg, noted writer on military topics. In it he makes startling revelations about the effectiveness of the airplane as a military weapon. The observations and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be construed as reflecting the official views or opinions of the United States Navy Department.

Startling Statements About Aerial Warfare

During the World War airplanes sank no battleships, destroyed no city, and failed in every attempt to bomb or gas an enemy out of a military position.

The first 30 days of any major war will see the complete elimination of air forces of belligerent powers.

No aviator entertains the thought that he is going to fly over the enemy anti-aircraft battery in time of war - and live to tell the tale.

Air raids over London and Paris during the four years of the World War destroyed less than $5,000,000 worth of property and killed fewer than 700 enemy civilians.

It would take 75,000 bombers to carry the load of bombs equivalent to the weight of shells carried by the 15 battleships of the U. S. Navy. The cruising radius of those bombers would be only 500 miles. A battleship can travel 15,000 miles, regardless of weather.

A shell will drill through heavy armor plate, or through concrete walls. It explodes inside to produce a shattering, internal explosion. A aerial bomb, having no such power of penetration pops off like a paper firecracker against whatever it hits.

It would take 28,000,000 pounds of phosgene to “wipe out” an area the size of New York City. To accomplish this the enemy would have to have 14,000 large bombing planes and 280 naval airplane carriers to bring the planes within striking distance of New York.

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