The Flying Flapjack
BY GILBERT PAUST
It looks like an aviator’s nightmare, but this Navy job is the fastest - and slowest - plane in the air.
THE Navy has a flying Flapjack, and brother—it can fly! It all began on a day in November, 1942, when the doors of the Vought hangar opened and test engineers trundled out a queer, saucer-shaped object on two long, stilted legs—and claimed it was an airplane. The V-173, they called it, and gave credit for its design to an aeronautical engineer who had been active in NACA research and had recently joined the staff of Chance Vought: Charles H. Zimmerman.
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Be sure to check out the awesome cover of this magazine.
WAR Invades the Stratosphere
WHETHER any region of the earth is to be free from war and rumors of war, predicted for us thousands of years ago, is doubtful. War has been carried into the depths of the sea, to deserts and jungles, and high above the clouds. The scientists have barely succeeded in opening the stratosphere, or highest level of the air, to research exploration, than it is being surveyed as a possible battlefield.
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In 1930 airplanes of the 94th Pursuit Squadron were flying around with little swastikas on the side of their planes. (second page, second picture) I wonder how long that lasted.
Romance of Plane Insignia Dates from World War Days
DURING the World war the various fighting squadrons of the Air Service adopted the policy of painting insignia on their airplanes.. These insignia reflected the experiences of the pilots or of the squadron in war, or perhaps had no significance other than that which the original design itself intended to convey. The squadrons of the United States Air Corps have, as far as possible, continued in peace the same insignia as were used during the World war.
Insignia, besides promoting an esprit de corps provides a means of identifying the planes of a particular squadron. At the Air Corps maneuvers held at Mather Field, California, this spring, squadrons were assembled from all parts of the United States; Pursuit from San Diego and Detroit; Attack from Galveston; Bombardment from Langley, Va., and Observation from San Francisco. The insignia of the various units, to those who were not abroad in 1917-18, represented considerable imagination and initiative in their preparation, but to those who served in Air Units during the war they awoke memories of the past and brought forth many reminiscences.
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I’m not sure this would actually help you learn how to fly, but I’ll bet it would be really fun for kids. Someone should make one of these now and hook it up to a flight sim.
Students Now “Fly” without Leaving Ground
ALL the sensations of looping the loop. going into a tail spin, and flying blind through fog are afforded students of the Array Air Corps at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, by an ingenious “primer plane” that never leaves the ground. A miniature fuselage, fitted with a propeller, ailerons, elevators, and rudder, is attached to an electrically-operated framework, and in the cockpit a prospective pilot does his first “flying” in safety.
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Pinwheel Bus
Time-killing bus rides from airports to cities will soon be quick hops in ten-place copters.
FROM the window of the airliner, you look down upon the city of your destination. The plane turns with deceptive laziness—you’re moving at a rate of almost 200 miles per hour—and approaches the field. Minutes later you step to the ground. Ah, the wonders of flying. The two cities are 200 miles apart. You’ve gone from one to the other in a little over an hour.
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This looks like it would be a lot of fun.
Plane on Motor Car is Short Cut to Flying
Student Learns in Safety to Control His Craft and Maneuver It as Though Actually in the Air
So that a student pilot may learn the feel of the controls of a glider or airplane before he risks his first solo flight, a foolproof training machine has been designed by a Beaver Falls., Pa., inventor. Seated in the cockpit of a captive plane, the pilot may send his craft through the maneuvers of diving, banking, and zooming; but the worst that can befall him if he should crash is a gentle bump on rubber-padded cushions. For a training lesson, an instructor takes his place at the wheel of a motor truck that carries the machine, and starts it across the airport field.
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36 Killed on the “Hindenburg” But Records Prove That Zeppelins Are Safe
by Bob Gordon
TO MOST of us Earth-bound mortals, there is something singularly terrifying about death from the sky. The only terror equal to it is death from fire. When the two horrors are combined in one spectacular disaster such as overtook the airship Hindenburg, we of panicky imaginations are prone to ignore facts, prone to throw up our hands and cry, “That is enough!”
Yet the men who must face this fate again if airship progress is to continue are far from ready to cry enough. Every uninjured survivor of the Hindenburg crew hurried back to Germany, that he might get a berth in the next great Zeppelin, the LZ-130, rapidly nearing completion.
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The first page doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the article, but it looks like a pretty cool show.
Count Ten and Then Pull String in Leap from Plane
Two thousand feet in the air, a man in a heavy canvas flying; suit crawls from the cockpit and edges his way along the wing of an airplane. Harnessed to his chest and back are two bulky packs. He nears the end of the wing, steadies himself a moment as he rises upright, waves one hand at the pilot, then calmly steps backward into space. As the body plunges downward his lips move rapidly, framing the words: One, two, three, four, five, six. seven, eight, nine, ten! At ten he jerks a cord at his shoulder and out of the packs billows a great silk parachute. As it tills with air, the speed of the falling man slackens, until finally he is drifting slowly downward for a safe landing.
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Proposed Rotary “Aero-Zep” Uses Novel Screw Vanes
A MOST unusual type of dirigible involving wide departures from established principles has recently been patented by two South Dakota inventors. They call it the “Rotary Aero-Zep,” and aside from the fact that the entire craft is designed to be constructed of aluminum, the most novel feature of the invention is the metal gas bag which is designed to revolve around the frame trackway carrying the passenger car, screwing the airship forward in the air through the action of spiral vanes mounted on the side of the bag.
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