MYSTERY AEROPLANE

Taranaki Daily News, 10 December 1931, Page 7

MYSTERY AEROPLANE

FLYING IN UPPER AIR. TREMENDOUS SPEED CLAIMED. i London, Nov. 29. Tho Paris correspondent of the Referee states that an amazing mystery aeroplane, which has been built to the order of. the French Air Ministry and will shortly take the air may make all existing machines as obsolete as honse cabs. It is a medium-sized monoplane, with a normal around speed of 150 miles an hour, but is specially adapted to ascend 12 to 15 milee, and to fly in the upper strata at from 200 to 500 miles an hour, thus bringing New York within six hours of Pans. The pilot and mechanic will be enclosed in an airtight, heated duralumin cylinder, but must fly blind, as the tiny windows are certain to be frosted over by the intense cold. The controls are operated through padded joints. The Air Ministry is confident that its technicians have evolved an alloy capable of preventing intense cold from cracking the strongest steel like china. The unknown factor, it declares, is not the aeroplane’s performance, but the weather in the stratosphere. Some meterologists surmise that in the upper strata there is a perpetual calm, while others predict terrific storms and 200-mile an hour gales, making high flying impossible. If the flight in successful, the pilots will fly in a region where the earth ia spinning below, and time is suspended. The aeroplane at present stands in the original workshops of Farman Bros., in Paris. The engine is a Farman 350 horse-power, with a triple, supercharged rotating mammoth propeller capable of doing 26,000 revolutions a minute. The Air Ministry would not permit, the photographing of the machine. |