TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 20489, 17 May 1928, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Mr Henry Ford’s aeroplane proposals are crystallised in a demand for a Diesel motor capable of producing about one bourse power for every pound and a half of engine weight. The design for that is already under way. How revolutionary this simple formula really is, is seen by comparing it with the efficiency of present gasoline engines. Onlv the best of the latter can equa this ratio. Mr Ford would have a Diesel engine giving as high weight-per-power efficiency, yet retaining all the Diesei engine advantages, particularly that of requiring a far lighter fuel load. Such a motor, of 1000 horse-power, Mr Ford has now set a staff to design and put to practical test. This engine will be installed in a multiengined air liner of huge proportions. It will follow the lines of a double-opposed piston engine already built experimentally. This drives two propellors, mounted in tandem.

The plans call for an all-metal airplane carrying a half-dozen of the new engines, each driving twin propellors mounted in the wings of the machine. Provided with a battery of motors of the specified efficiency, Mr Ford feels that problems of aero-dynamics and body design can be solved to create a giant flying machine carrying, roughly, a crew of 30, a passenger list of from 100 to 150, with fuel and at speeds to make trans-Atlantic voyages. Mr Ford believes in big airplanes, not, as has been represented, in “air flivvers.” course the more flying done the better,” Mr Ford says. “So far, however, the pilot’s training and ability are too large a factor

in safety to permit the ordinary person to take to the air. The bigger and better equipped the airplane, the more hope there is of making control in the air automatic. Our own metal planes will fly in calm weather, hands off. But present planes are 90 per cerft. men and 10 per cent, plane. For safety and reliability we must reverse that.” He expects to have the full scale model of the new motor ready this year, and this seems to be the feling of other engineers in the experimental plant, though some add another half year and still others look dubious. Extraordinary as are the specifications for the new engine, when all the factors in the situation are considered—Mr Ford’s individuality, his vast facilities for experiment and his disregard for cost —it is not hard to accept his own hopes for an early test of a Diesel motored plane.