BELL JET AIRACOMET

ATC Observer, Volume 3, Issue 8, 2 March 1945, Page 7

BELL JET AIRACOMET

'J'HE cloak of secrecy which has guarded the Army Air Force’s jet propelled plane so thoroughly for more than three years, is gradually being lifted. And while military security still maintains a rigid vigil on many details of the P-59A Airacomet, there are some facts which the War Department has brought into the open. For instance, the United States’ first jet propelled plane, designed and built by Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York, is known to be extremely fast and has already been rated as well over 400 miles per hour. Weighing better than 5 tons, the P-59A has a slender fuselage, a long upswept tail, and a wing span of 49 feet. Like the Kingcobra, the P-59A employs the laminar flow wing type which, combined with the lack of a propeller, makes definite inroads on the effects of compressibility and insures higher speeds. An external source of electrical power is generally used to start the engine. The jet is quite smooth and produces a continuous stream _ of gases. The engine has little vibration, so little in fact, that it was found necessary to install a vibrator on the cockpit panel to insure elimination of “stickiness” from the needles of the instruments. It was in California, at a secret

base near Muroc, that most of the experimental flight tests of the Airacomet were conducted. Robert M. Stanley, now chief engineer of Bell Aircraft Corporation, was the first American to fly the jet plane. On October 1, 1942, when he was the Company’s chief test pilot, he took the XP-59A up to a height of approximately 25 feet. He came down, took it up again, and the following day, flew to altitudes of 6,000 and 10,000 feet. On that day, Brig. Gen. Lawrence C. Craigie then a colonel and chief of the aircraft project section — became the first Army Officer to fly the plane. Lawrence D. Bell, president of Bell Aircraft Corporation, forsees tremendous possibilities for jet propulsion in the post-war world. “Within five years, no military fighter planes will be built which do not incorporate the jet propulsion principle,” Mr. Bell declares. “There is no doubt that jet powered planes will make all present types obsolete in years to come. “This will give the military aircraft industry a huge job after the war because it will have to build a new type plane which will supplant every fighting craft we know now. Bombers in the near future will use jet engines in some form, and probably civilian transport planes, too.”