DEADLY MACHINE

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1935, Page 3

DEADLY MACHINE

NEW AMERICAN AIRCRAFT. LATEST “MYSTERY” PLANE. Details were published at New York recently of a “mystery” bombing aeroplane of unusual design which has just been completed at the Boeing aircraft factory at Seattle for the Army Air Corps. It will be the first machine flown by the army or the navy to have, four engines. These are 800 h.p. Pratt and Whitney Wasps which can be replaced by 1000 h.p. engines if these should be made available within the next two or three years. The machine, it is stated, will be able to carry six tons of bombs 6000 miles without refuelling, and its highest speed will be 230 miles an hour. The aeroplane, it is claimed, will be, if it comes up to expectations, the deadliest air machine in the world. Its range will greatly exceed that of the latest types of trans-ocean machines built for commercial use. Made of metal sheets consisting of duralumin sandwiched between two thin layers of pure aluminium,. it is a lowwing monoplane with retractable landing gear. It is capable of reaching a height of 30,000 feet (over five and ahalf miles). Provision has been made to supply oxygen for the crew at such levels. ■ '

Unlike previous American military models, in which open cockpits have always been insisted upon to give the pilots and gunners the maximum visibility, it has a closed cabin with mach-ine-gun turrets in the nose, on each side of the fuselage, behind the wing, and on top of the fuselage near the tail.