AVIATION

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 5, 6 July 1922, Page 7

AVIATION

NOISELESS AND INVISIBLE

IMPERIAL AIR DEVICE

THE BURNEY SCHEME,

.. (rnox our own corr«spßn»bnt.)

' ' LONDON/12th May. About twenty members of the Industrial Group in the > House of Commons met to discuss Commander Burney's scheme for establishing an airship mail and passenger service to Australia, via India. Mr. A. H. Ashbolt, in an address on the Imperial aspect of the scheme, is stated to have intimated that the Australian Commonwealth Government would probably be prepared to vote a subsidy of £150,000 a year towards the cost of the scheme, though the matter was not definitely settled. Commander Burney was present and explained his proposals.' It is proposed that a company should be formed,'■ to which the Government would be asked to transfer, free of cost, all its airships, material, and airship bases. The capital wonld be £4,000,000, consisting of £1,800,000 in ordinary shares, and the remainder in debentures. Financial backing would be sought from the Government to the extent of asking it.to guarantee a 6 per cent, dividend, free of income-tax, \pn the ordinary shares for tea years, and also the interest on the debentures, which would be redeemed'after ten years. The company would undertake to institute a repayment fund of £25,000 a year as soon as the debentures were redeemed to repay the advances from the Government. Conwnandr Burney estimates that the time-table between London ami Australia would, be: ■■/■•' " • Days.' : . • Bombay ■ 5£ Rangoon 7£ h Hongkong 8£ Australia ....V: 11& The meeting was informed that the type of a-irahip contemplated would carry 200 passengers and ten tons of mails. One of the points discussed waa the advantage to the country of being tble to command the services of^ a fleet of airships which, in tune of'war, could render enormous assistance in co-operation with submarines. The members decided to form,themselves into a committee and send a deputation to the Committee of Imperial Defence, to urge the commercial possibilities and the advantages from the point of view of defence of Commander Bnrney's scheme. AN' INVISIBLE AND SILENT > AEROPLANE. ■The TJa>iteilStates is tackling, the problem of invisible and almost noiseless aeroplanes, and now the possession of such a machine is described as being no longer a figment of the imagination. Secret trials have been nuide of- the almost noiseless wiaged'machine. There was the whin- of the propellor, bat the big engine, silenced by a new device, made practically bo sound. Wind-noises from struts and wires can be eliminated by having machines that need no such external bracing, while air-screw noise, by developments in variable pitch blades, should soon be reducedj when required, till a machine steals across the sky with so little sound that it cannot be-heard by the people below. Actual tests have revealed that this machine., its wings and hull ."doped" a neutral tint, can skim astonishingly near a battleship without the keenest look-out being able to distinguish it. The aim now, is to render it still more difficult to be. seen. When the torpedo-plane • whirls in, almost toneffing the waiter,' to send its tapering missile to cripple' some super-Dread-nowght, what reveals as much as anything this winged menace is its shadow. Can. that shadow be eliminated or lessened? Specialised research-workers answer "Yes." They are now planning various jealously guarded ways of breaking those heavy, tell-tale shadows, of deflecting lightrays. The significance of such experiments was revealed when a huge "bomber," carrying a load equivalent to enough missiles to lay streets in ruins, climbed—owing' to the special preparation of its engines—till, it was at a height imoossible to reach during the raiding period of lha- war. Here, now, is seen the full menace. The' winged monster which, with high-flying motors,. having devices' permitting the pilot at any moment to silence their deafening roar, has' added to its terrors laboratory secrets which—applied to a .machine'already high in the air against a viuit eltiHivc Wkgnimitl—ennta'a on it