A STEAM AEROPLANE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4631, 4 December 1934, Page 2

A STEAM AEROPLANE

SECRET GERMAN INVENTION. Through the invention of a startlingly novel turbine Germany is believed by experts to have stepped well ahead toward the era of safe and silent flight irf steam-driven aeroplanes. Enthujsiasts for steam have never lost fatith in its superiority over other forms of propulsion both for automobiles and aviation, but have admitted that means had to be found for utilising its powers without involving weight and bulk of mechanism and fuel.

This problem, it is believed, has been solved by Herr Huettner, chief engineer of the Klingenberg Electricity Works.

constructed in great secrecy on the outskirts of Berlin.

(Some of the first details of Herr Huettner's revolutionary steam engine were given by Mr H. W. Bolsover, one of two brothers living in Whitby, England, who have devoted 35 years to the study of steam of steam-car and steam-aviation developments.

According to these details, the new turbine has no such impedimenta as separate boiler and firebox or steam pipes to link with the power and motion apparatus.

|The steam generator or "boiler," consisting of rapidly-heating coils of tubing, is actually one of the two rotors, and, while providing the su-per-heated steam, also transforms some of it into power. What is more,

It has been known for some time it revolves within its own furnace, in that a steam-driven aeroplane, ex- company with its fellow-rotor, pected to be capable of a6oto 70 Thus the whole "engine" becomes hours' non-stop flight at a speed of one complete unit. The heat is fully 23X) to 260 miles an hour, was being utilised, there being little opportunity

for its waste or dissipation, fflhe coils of the whirling motor-

culm-boiler are also fitted with specing washers that are, in addition, fanblades, so that the rotor provides its own forced draught. It burns oil-gas—crude oil or paraffin forced through jets to an atomised state. The gas is forced through

combustion jets in the outer casing so that the flames sweep the rotor coils with great velocity. The new turbine gives one horsepower with every 21 lbs of its own weight. That installed in the aeroplane utnder construction is understood to be of 2500 horse-power. The plane is expected to be able to rise to 43,000 feet, and to carry a load of one ton oln a sixty hours' flight.

" The advantage of steam aviation," Mr Bolsover said, " is its silence and safety. To raise steam, only crude oil, which has a high flash point, need be used; or paraffin, which, can be carried in tanks, infinitely more safely than petrol, may be employed'. There is, therefore, no fear of a machine taking fire after a crash or catching fire in the air.

"The era of steam aviation is already dawning. A steam-driven aeroplane, constructed in America by Messrs George and William Besler after three years of experiments, recently made three flights at Oakland Airport, California. "At a height of 200 feet "the pilot, calling to. spectators below, was heard and answered. Think of that in comparison to the deafening roar of an internal-combustion-engined iplane. Conversation was possible among the passengers all through the flights. "Think of the importance of en-

gine silence for military aviation." In a recent number Mr Bolsover's mlagazine, " Steam Car Developments and Steam Aviation," records that the Berlin correspondent of the Czechoslovakian newspaper Prager Tagblat had been arrested for furnishing his paper with news of the German steam aeroplane.