PLANE TEST DELAYED
APPEAL BY CHURCHES “WOULD EMPTY PEWS" NEW YORK, Nov. 24. The first test flight of the world’s largest land-based plane was postponed until after church time in California yesterday, because local clergymen protested that the spectacle “would empty the pews ” A crowd of 100,000 saw the 132-ton aircraft take off gracefully from ban Diego airfield in the afternoon Built by the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, the plane has six pusher-type engines and is known as the XC99. It carries a crew of nine. The plane is 182 feet long and its tail towers 57 feet into the air about the same height as a five-storey building. It has a maximum range of 3000 miles, and a top speed of 300 miles an However, it is smaller than Howard Hughes’ giant flying-boat which nade a short flight recently. The flying-boat weighs 200 tons, carries 700 soldiers a*,d is 219 feet long.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GISH19471215.2.53
Bibliographic details
Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22511, 15 December 1947, Page 5
Word Count
153PLANE TEST DELAYED Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22511, 15 December 1947, Page 5
Using This Item
The Gisborne Herald Company is the copyright owner for the Gisborne Herald. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of the Gisborne Herald Company. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in