Evening Star Newspaper, July 26, 1931, Page 67

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JULY 26, 1931 Airships Big as Steamships Tomorrow, Famous French Pioneer in Aviation, Forseeing Time WhenToday’s “Mechanical Birds” Will Be Mere Toys, Predicts Thousand-Ton Air- plane; W ithin the Next Cen- tury—Paris to New York in dwenty Hours. BY LOUIS BREGUET. PARIS. T IS the destiny of human beings to endeavor to increase their intelligence and develop their means of action. Man is born to struggle, and all the sources of life that work within him are constantly urging him to action and incessant prog- ress. He is the captive of his own achieve- ments—those that have raised him above the leve] of the animal kingdom and have made him man. Man is continually engaged in applying his intelligence, courage and perseverance to the search after new means of increasing his own powers by subduing the forces of mnature. Simultaneously, his knowledge has continued to develop for the greater comfort of his fellows. HE last century may be called the era of mechanics. It was the one in which steam brought railways and ocean liners into being. It was the century which saw manufactured power come into general use in all industries, the century in which electricity burst upon a world agog and startled mankind with new marvels, the century which saw the invention of internal combustion engines so small and light that motoring for the millions became possible. Ten years before the Great War the first airplanes caused us to lift our heads in wild surmise. This last conquest is a natural corallary of the achievements of the last century. The airplane has become an indispensable instrument to nations. Even more than the steamship, the railway and the motorcar, the airplane will be necessary in the future for the extension of commerce in all its forms. True, the machines we now possess are somewhat fragile. Comparatively speaking, they have only the strength of children, but they already show signs of the vigor which will characterize them when they reach adolescence and power- ful maturity. We should not listen to modern skeptics— they are very few in number—or entertain any doubt as to the future of aerial navigation. When we compare the Vikings’' ships with our armored battleships, and the caravels of Christopher Columbus’ time with the ocean greyhounds that link the continents of this earth, we should also make comparison be- tween the airplane of 20 years ago and those of today. What will airplanes be like when another century has elapsed? By that time our present super-machines will seem clumsily laughable. We need only look at our modern enginés, which weigh between 500 and 600 grams per horsepower, and remember the steam engines of the last century, which S i HILE all the world watches eagerly the flight of Col. and Mrs. Charles A. Lindbergh over the treacherous and long Northern Pacific route, such journeys will be mere commonplaces within a few years, according to the wiseacres of aviation. Within five years, predicts Louis Breguet, leading French airplane manufacturer, Paris will be brought within 20 hours’ travel of New York by means of 50- ton, or even 150-ton, airplanes. Buenos Aires and Tokio will be three or four days’ journey from Paris. Here is M. Breguet talking about 20-ton airships that will carry 10 tons of dead weight and lead all car- riers engaged in transportation the world over. He is certain that within the next century there will be giant mechanical birds of 1,000 tons displacement carrying 250 tonsv—in time of war each ship able to transport & fully armed battalion of troops! ; This prophet of the air is a pioneer French airman. He is founder and president of the Air Union of France. His fdrward-looking aspects of aeronautical develop- ments are recorded in the following “world s-eye” view of aviation. represented more than 100 kilos per horsepower. The deadweight of an airplane is about half of the total weight when the machines is fully loaded. Very few vehicles attain such a coefficient. The deadweight of a steamship is generally more than half the total weight with the holds full. Even motorcars have a higher proportion of deadweight. Only the motor lorry is anywhere near the airplane standard Col. and Mrs. Charles A. Lindbergh and the new monoplane in which they hope to fly over Northern America and the Pacific Ocean to Asia. in this respect. The passenger train is far below, and only the freight train can begin to compare with the airplane. Our big planes of the future, weighing something like 20 tons, and navigated under conditions of security and comfort which will permit of safe night flying, will therefore carry about 10 tons of deadweight. The crew, wire- less apparatus, etc., will represent from 3 to § per cent of the total, according to the nature of the service; that is to say, from 600 to 1,000 kilos. We can, therefore, reckon on a load in the neighborhood of 25 per cent, or about § tons. Few means of transport can rival these figures. A 1,000-ton airplane (assuming that it was decided to build such a machine) should therefore be able to carry a load of 250 tons. This corresponds to 2,500 passengers (each being reckoned at 100 kilos, with hand bag- gage), or 1,000 large packages of 250 kilos each, As we all know, a 1,000-ton vessel is quite & small one from the commercial point of view, Its tonnage is that of a large pleasure yacht, The vessels plying between Calais and Dover, Boulogne and Folkestone, are in the neighbor hood of 2,000 tons, and are designed to earry 500 passengers and from 50 to 100 tons of goods and mails a very short distance. The liners on the Marseilles-Algiers service have a tonnage of about 10,000; those that serve the East and the Far West, nearly 20,000; those that connect Europe and South America from 25,000 to 30,000 tons. The great Atlantic liners plying between Havre or Cherbourg and New York run to about 50,000 tons. Now, considering that the materials used for building modern ships are not essentially dif- ferent from those which will be needed for the big airplanes of tomorrow (such as rustless steel able to bear great strains), it would appear that the construction of these great aircraft, while costing more than ships on ac- count of the greater technical skill involved and the higher quality of the materials, would not be out of proportion to the expense of shipbuilding. All calculations concerning this questiom— and I have done a few myself—show that the cost of air transport, reckoned in relation to the distance covered, will not be very different from that of the other methods of locomotion Continued oRt Nineteenth Page