WAR INVENTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 18851, 28 January 1925, Page 10

WAR INVENTIONS

THREE GRATUITIES GRANTED. WIDOW TO RECEIVE £15,000. LONDON, January 14. Amo::'; those awarded gratuities for war inventions by the Royal Commission are M. Constantincsco—wfc.o is also the invenior of a gear!ess mntor car—and Walter Ihuldon, who share £85,000 for oil impulse synchronising gear, enabling airmen to lire machine guns through revolving propellers. The widow of Commander Porte, designer of the ill-fated Felix town ferry aero-boat, will receive £15,000. [Colonel John Cyril Porte, C.M.G., then Commander, R.N., invented and developed the flying boat. In 1914 the boats weighed well under two tons. In 1917 they weighed five tons, and an experimental boat, the “ Porta Baby,” was so largo that it .carried on the top plane a scout land aeroplane with its pilot. In 1915 the “Porte, Super-Baby’’ was able, to lift fifteen tons, and had engines giving 1,800 h.p. 'These flying boats from 1917 until the end of the war were most effective against German submarines. In that year 158 enemy submarines were sighted by aircraft operating from England, and of these forty-four were bombed by flying boats.)