Automatic Plane.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20648, 24 June 1935, Page 6

Automatic Plane.

Austrian Inventor’s Wizardry. JN THE PRESENCE of military and aviation experts and the attaches of foreign Powers, the wonders of an amazing new “ automatic ” aeroplane have been demonstrated in Vienna by Captain I. N. Boykoff (says a London journal). The plane itself is an ordinary Junker all-metal model, but the steering is the thing, for it is absolutely automatic. This “ robot ” plane can be manoeuvred at will from land. It can rise, sink, glide, tip sideways, curve, dodge, all without the presence of a pilot on board. There is nothing to prevent a human being from actually being on board. But he is superfluous. “He just keys in the automatic control and goes off to fight with his machine gun or to attend to his bombs,” was the remark of a military pilot after examining the plane. Bomb Releases. The automatic control is so devised that it can be “ set ” at the departure on a certain course which it will keep with mathematical accuracy. The “ robot ” plane is unaffected by either darkness or fog and it can be fitted up with automatic bomb releasing apparatus, timed to start working when the plane shall have reached a certain point along a given course. There is a third way of flying this plane, besides the pilotless pre-determined-course method and the free-to-attend-to-machinc-gun-pilot method. This is by wireless control from a land station or from another plane. It would, for instance, be possible for onesingle aviator from aboard his machine lead and control a fleet of, say, 400 or 500 of these “ robot ” planes, all dropping bombs as directed. Captain Boykoff is a former Austrian naval officer who became one of Austria’s best war seaplane pilots. lie is an excellent engineer and turned his w’hole attention to automatic control six years ago. ITe was emploved by a German firm and it was in Germany that he built his amazing “ robot ” plane. Nothing positive can be obtained from him in answer to the suggestion that he may have given Germany the benefit of his invention. The general impression, however, is that he has done so while reserving the right to give the patent also to his own country.