Evening Star Newspaper, February 9, 1930, Page 97

NGTON, D. C, THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHI —— - — — hich Will W '‘BY ISRAEL KLEIN. DISCORDANT note rises out of the symphony of aeronautical progress to sound a warning against what may be too optimistic a view of the practical possibilities of the air- plane. . It is a note as of the smashing of idols, the cry of an iconoclast in the midst of a pleasant, lulling satisfaction over the way aviation has progressed so far and the direction it is going. The man who sounds this discord is one of the greatest and most respected aeronautical engineers in the United States, if not the world. He“has lived and prac'iced aviation ever since his early youth and has accom- plished as much as any other aviation en- gineer in the world—if not more. He is William B. Stout of Detroit—automo- tive and aeronautical engineer, whose name emblazons two successful air lines between De- troit and Chicago and™between Detroit and Cleveland, and .whose all-metal tri-motored ships carry passengers, mail and freight over many other air lines and for many a private individual and commercial firm. “BILL" STOUT, as he is known throughout the automotive and aeronautical industry, is " the aeronautical iconoclast. While he watches other great aviation engineers build promising idols devoted to the huge and multi- powered airplanes, the mammoth dirigible, the tailless ship and the unique passenger-carrying *“Flying-wing,” he strikes out at them ruth- lessly. To the right and left he swings, regard- less of the dignity and authority of those he hurls from their pedestals. Yet “Bill” Stout builds as he demolithes, he dreams as he awakens others from their dreams. And his dreams are at once practical and ex- treme. “‘Size,” he cries, “is determined by commer- cial factors, not by engineering. Comfort and range are the fundamentals.” And- almost in the same breath he adds: . “The airplane of the future is yet to be built. today.” s Séout sees promise of iomethlng‘rsdleal turn- ing up very soon, for he points out that $750,« 000,000 has been put into commereial aviation in the last two years and nothing has yet had time to come out of it. When it comes, then will come the revolution in aeronautics. But big airplanes? No. At least not of the size Dornier, for example, is building. Air- -William B. Stout, aircraft genius. planes of 30 to 50 passenger capacity, no more, he sees ahead, for these will be commercially’ practicable, and “Bill” Stout is a practical dreamer. Today, regardless of Stout and his beliefs, huge airplanes are being built abroad and greater ones are being planned. But these are to solve special national problems of trade, not as commercial aircraft per se, Stout has- tens to explain. AIRPLANES of 100 to 200 passenger capacity and even more. Planes with 8 and 12 motors of 500 to 1,000 horsepower each. Gigantic winged monsters roaring over the sea at 150 miles an hour, sailing over the Atlantic or the Pacific in a single hop. Planes without fusclage. Planes without tails. Planes carry- ing their passengers, freight and other essen- tials in two-story wings of expansive dimen- sions. Mother planes carrying smaller craft. Express planes and local. Planes of all sizes and designs, but mostly huge and awesome and following about the same lines you see in the cemmercial airplanes of tdoay. Some of this is fact already. There is the great 12-motored Do.X of Dr. Claude Dornier, which recently carried 169 persons in a trial flight over Lake Constance And there is the new Junkers 100-passenger aircraft, the largest plane in the world. At these “Bill” Stout strikes. The great Do.X with its 169 passengers had room for only two hours’ supply of fuel. And since it burns 2,000 pounds of fuel an hour, its range was quite limited. For every hour added to its range, 15 passengers would have to be sacri- ficed from its capacity. The Junkers plane, he adds, has been built by the German government to solve govern- menl preblems, wot commercial ones. “BB\'OND a 30-passenger size,” he explains, the cost per passenger becomes prohibi- tive. Such sizes are not commercially feas- Sble, although they're easy to build. “Profits from ton-miles of pay-load,” he re- g It won't even look like the plane of in Switzerland. . FEBRUARY 9 YUW. i — 15 in, Big Planes or Small? This “flying wing,” planned by the General Development Co. of Connecticut, is one of jour such 200-passcnger ships to be placed in service late this year. -~ William B. Stout, Pioneer Genius of Flying, Here Gives an Unusual Forecast of Aviation, Declares the Seven Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars Invested in the 1wo Boom Years of Airmindedness Have Not Had Time to Produce Anything New. peats, “is what we have to achieve—not size*™ And the plane that will reach over long dis- tances practically and profitably won't be any of these huge monsters that are being planned today, but smaller, more efficient types that are still to come out of the research labora- tories. In this Stout sums up his idea of the direc- tion aviation should take—in fact, will take. For Stout is a positive personality. He says what he believes in short, crisp sentences, and he doesn't hesitate when he makes a predic- tion. There's no reason why he should be hesitant about this subject, \for Stout has grown up with the airplane. It was he who startled experienced aero- mautic designers with his principle of the thick- winged monoplane as opposed to the biplane with thin wings, and it was he again who cdused the engineers to take notice when he showed them his designs for an internally trussed monoplane. The great Ford tri-motored airplanes that fly the Stout Airlines—his own transport serv- ice—are products of these ideas and his third significant notion—that of all-metal construc- tion. So “Bill” Stout, having accomplished all this, is in an authoritative position to say whatever he thinks. Sometimes what he says is not to the liking of most others in the industry. But “Bill” Stout is of the type that hews to the line. “This industry is only 4 per cent developed,” he remarks. “Ninety-six per cent of the air- plane is yet to be designed. How can we base our hopes in the huge 100-passenger airplane when we don’t yet fill the 20-passenger ships? We must advance in more easy stages. “The airplane of the future won't look at all like the plane of today. We're building kites now!” T is difficult to pin Stout down to a descrip- tion of what the future airplane will look like, but he does say that it will have at least twice the performance it shows today, that it will have a much greater cruising speed and longer range, that it will be of all-metal con- struction, and that its efficiency throughout will far exceed that of today. As for the large airplane—that of 100-pas- senger multi-motored type—Stout can’t see it as a commercially profitable and practicable possibility, at least for the coming generation, “Of course we’'ll have larger airplanes than those we're flying commercially today,” he says, “but the largest won't for a while carry more than 50 passengers, probably not far beyond 30. “The 100-passenger ship is today wholly impractical. Five 20-passenger ships would carry the same number of people much cheaper than one 100-passenger ship, and for a longer range. Furthermore, you wouldn’t have all your eggs in one basket in case of a crack-up.” German Junkers “Flying Wing,” largest land plane in the world, carrying more ‘than 100 passengers. 14 pascengers, Flying over it is an all-metal tri-motor plane carrying Strangely enough, Dr. Claude Dornier, who built the largest airplane in the world, the 12- metor DoX, agrees with Stout in most of what he says about the large plane.. Dornier says quite candidly that his huge ship would not be practical commercially as a tramns- oceanic carrier. THE Do.X, for instance, has a fuel range of . 2,800 miles when fully loaded. That might > ehable it to make a flight to South America, by stopping for a second load of fuel at the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands, but the ship ° could hardly come from Europe directly L North America. % Yet the passenger and mail-carrying ca- pacity of the ship, fueled for a transaceanic hop such as this, would have to be limited to about 20 persons, including the crew, ahd a few sacks of mail. Hardly worth the trouble. WHER.E Dornier disagrees with Stout is in the German engineer's declaration that the Do.X would be commercially feasible for short-haul hops, such as flights between New York and Washington, or across the Great Lakes, or between imporiant cities on the At- lantic Coast. In such cases, the big ship would carry much less fuel and have room for 100 passengers. In fact, Dornier believes, such trips evuld be made profitably at a cost per passenger of one- half above that of railroad fare. But Stout, who has operated lines for three years, says t.hfi smaller craft are cheaper per passenger mile. Size, of course, is another point on which Dorner disagrees with Stout. In fact, Dornier ° says the present Do.X is only the forerunner of & super-Do.X, two-thirds larger than the .’ present ship. Only the inadequacy of present .- power plants, he adds, keeps engineers fram ' ! building planes two, three and even four times.... this size. One other airplane, about the size of Do.X, is already completed in Germany, t‘:fi another, even larger, is being planned for con- - struction in America. The other German plane is the Junkers J-38, termed the “flying-wing” because it aims to be nothing but one massive wing inside which accommodations have Been built for passengers, freight and fuel. WHAT is proposed to be the largest ship so . far contemplated is that planned by a newly-formed Connecticut company. ‘This also is said to be a “flying-wing” monoplane, with Troom for all facilities in the wings. It is to be - propelled by eight 1,000-horsepower motors, - In two banks of four each, driving two huge propellers, one at the head of double-unit fuselages. T The plane is being designed to carry passengers and a crew of 17, although !I?g maximum passenger capacity will be 206. The passengers will be divided in two decks in the wings, part in the cabins along the leading edge, the rest within one of the fuselages. Two of these planes are expected to be tfi;{}ly for tests by the end of 1930. ere are still others in America Europe who have faith in the mammoth ‘::gnoplan? and many of them have secured backing m meBIrtpgz‘j’ecth in hard cash. u ut is not a party to their enth; It may be a case of their all being out l;srl?&mi but Stout, yet considering the arguments he presents and the picture he paints of avi- at’oln's ‘!,uture, he is worth hearing. ‘In five years,” he says, “we planes ‘that can easily take mail !lhc:::ssh:;: Atlantic, at a steady cruising speed of 150 miles an hour, in both directions. And in 10 years these planes, improved even further will be“gn{yi;)g pt:ssengers across the ocean, u y en the won’| pasaeAngers at a t.ime.ey T W “Across the continent, most -distance flying will be done at night, so ub;%d: spoil the business day. There will be few day-fiying ltne:‘ of more than four hours. “Mass production for airplanes will come, and low cost. In equal quantity we can bufld * airplanes as cheap‘ ly as automobiles. b Copyright, 1930. :