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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Airplane Influence in Speed Boat
SPEEDBOATS have for many years been the subject of attack by inventors. Many of the so-called “solutions” are merely brainwaves such as wheels in water for the boat to run on and so on. The readers of Modern Mechanix and Inventions will immediately recognize something rational in the above solution, which is a development of existing elements, put together in a new way so as to achieve new comforts, new speed and utter dryness.
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Fighting Chinese Pirates with U.S. Marines
by JOHN CLOVELLY
Seven Yankee gunboats, patrolling the Yangtze river in conjunction with those of other nations, wage constant war against the bandits who infest this district which boasts one-third of the world’s population. Little known activities of this romantic branch of the foreign service are described in this article.
WHILE riding through an almost endless succession of dangerous rapids, whirlpools and currents in the Yangtze River, about 160 miles above Hankow, a merchant vessel operated by an American, named Captain Baker, suddenly went aground. It was night-time and a stone’s throw away could be dimly seen the craggy outlines of the shore.
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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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Turbo Wheel Liners to Speed Across Seas
AVIATION’S rapid strides are revolutionizing all other modes of transportation. Railroads are meeting the demand for greater speed with streamlined trains. Automobiles are following the most modern trends in streamlining.
On the seas, however, even a streamlined ship will not be able to meet the competition of regular airplane schedules touching airports anchored in the ocean. Resistance from wind is great, but the sea itself slows down an ocean liner much more.
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Those are some pretty awesome models but that second article is a very scary idea. I’d be pretty pissed if my doctor tried to brand me..
Young Shipbuilders Take Cruise in Their Giant Models
ALL honors for constructing real boat models go to a couple of Berlin youths who have turned out in their own workshops the two amazing creations shown in the photo above. Perfect duplicates of the training frigate “Preussen” and the cruiser “Hindenburg,” the two models are large enough to carry real sailor passengers, as you can see in the photo. The model of the “Hindenburg” has full fighting equipment, and an anchor that actually anchors.
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Skin Brands to Prevent Frauds
INDELIBLE messages tattooed on the skins of patients who have had surgical operations or have suffered injuries were urged recently in England to prevent fraud. Such a course would prevent duplication of claims by persons who try to collect many times for physical deficiencies which they have had since birth. Often they deliberately undergo an accident to collect damages.
Air Bubbles to Save Life at Sea
FOR more than two thousand years, sailors have known that a little oil, poured on the raging billows, will quiet them almost magically. In many rescues from a distressed ship during a storm, we read that oil has been used. A method, more efficient than simply pouring it over the ship’s side, is to put the oil into cloth bags, through which it will leak gradually, and tow them at the end of ropes, so that the oil is distributed very thinly. It is necessary only to have a thin film, to break the “surface tension” of the water; and the waves are no longer able to hold their height so readily.
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Strange PERILS of Making MOVIES Beneath the Sea
Hollywood’s most intrepid cameraman relates startling adventures he has encountered making undersea movies which chill your blood.
by HOMER SCOTT - Pioneer Underwater Cameraman
IN 14 years I probably have gazed into the cold eyes of more curious fish and looked on the bodies of more actors and actresses beneath the sea than any other man. From the shores of Southern California to the rocky coast of the Socorro islands, far south in the Pacific, and even off the shores of New Zealand I have descended many times in one of my half-bells, my legs dangling puppet-like in the cold water, to photograph dramas that sometimes thrilled me more than were the audiences that viewed the results on the screen. ] When the editors of Modern Mechanix and Inventions asked me to write of the thrills and tell you how these scenes are filmed, I said to myself, “Gosh, there’s nothing very interesting about undersea picture-taking.”
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Splicing a Cable in Mid-Atlantic
The author of this article went as a member of the crew of the cable ship in order to get this vivid, first-hand story for you.
By BURT M. McCONNELL
Photos by Author
TORN and twisted, an ocean cable last winter lay buried under a layer of clay two miles beneath the gray-green, foam-capped waves of the Atlantic, three hundred miles east of Halifax. It was shattered by the terrific earthquake that shook the Atlantic seaboard for a distance of 1,000 miles and put out of commission about half of the underwater communications between the United States and Europe.
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