ROBOT FLIGHT BY AIRLINERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23186, 27 April 1945, Page 2

ROBOT FLIGHT BY AIRLINERS

More Than A Dream WILL BE REALISED IN THIS AIR AGE LONDON. Sir Henry Tizard has put his vision into words and said that we shall fly across the Atlantic in automaticallycontrolled aircraft which will not need even a navigator, and this not 20 years ahead—but soon. Sir Henry Tizard is no dreamer. He is now president of Magdalen College, Oxford, but was formerly chief of aircraft research at the Ministry of Aircraft Production. He is not, therefore, a man given to fancies. Inevitably the post-war age will be the flying age, which was gaily forecast as due after the last war, although it did not arrive in any real sense, and it is certain that we shall presently look back to the aircraft of those days and of to-day as we now look back to other forms of primitive transport. The astounding new scientific developments now available —many may not be revealed for security reasons—will ultimately affect the lives of each one of us. It all began with the engineers and scientists who were not content with the orthodox methods of making machines go into the air, but who “played about with” models driven by rockets or jet-propulsion, or both. The first practical experiments that led to the development of these bombs began in Germany in 1928. when rocket-driven aircraft experiments were carried out. The full-sized rocket-propelled aircraft flown by the German pilot, Stainer, provided a number of adventures. One of the two rockets used exploded in mid-air and the machine caught fire, but the pilot, in his own words, “dropped the craft to tear the flames off it” and landed safely. But he also said: “It was extremely pleasant to fly by rocket. I had a feeling of soaring and only the loud hissing sound reminded me of the rockets.” It is a virtue of the rocketpropelled and jet-propelled aeroplanes that they are smooth and vibrationless in flight, and for this reason all pilots who have had experience of the new methods prefer them. Smoothness m flight is an essential quality for the popularising of civil aviation.

Faster than Sound While the flving-bomb has directed attention to the "uncanny” side of current inventions, the idea of travelling automatically at over 700 miles an hour at 40,000 feet above the earth has a fascination peculiarly its own. Travelling faster than sound is now a Wellsian fact, and it means that if it were applied to local travel the journey between London and ManChester would take roughly a quarter of an hour, and between London and Edinburgh about half an hour How automatic flight will be controlled is no longer a serious problem, but no details may at the moment be given. That it can and will be a feature of after-war air travel is indisputable. High-speed travel in full comfort over long distances is the ideal aimed at, but it is more likely at first that most of i<. will be pilot-controlled in jet-reaction (or jet-propelled) aircraft, about which the public has been allowed to know a little in the last few months. When Air Commodore Frank Whittle made jet-propulsion in this country practicable he marked a new epoch ip aeronautics. The stratosphere Pinger of the future will have no need for alarm at the suggestion of great speeds. There will be no sensation of speed Sv more than there is in high-flying craft of the ordinary type. Air pressure cabins travelling at 600 or 700 miles an hour will provide great comfort. and as “there will be nothing much to see” the cabins are certain to have many amenities. There are indeed many advantages in stratosnhere flight by jet-propelled planes. Not least of them is that of safetv, since in place of the highlyinflammable fuels used in ordinary aircraft. non-inflammable fuels for the motive turbines are used m jet-propul-sion craft without any loss to efficiency.