Evening Star Newspaper, January 3, 1932, Page 69

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY 3, 1932 Steam-Driven Trans- ports With Telescop- ing Wings Will Rush Traffic Through Air- lanes at Better Than 250 Miles an Hour, Said Lowell R. Bayles, ’Thompson Trophy Winner, in His Last Interview. EDITOR’S NOTE.—Just before he crashed to instant death last month at Detroit, Lowell R. Bayles, Springfield (Mass.), fiyer and winner of the 1931 Thompson Trophy race, in which he established a world record for land planes over a closed course, was interviewed about the future of flying. How does it feel to travel close to 300 miles an hour? 1Is the speed limit in sight? What does the future hold jor @viation? How about steam as a motive power? These were some of the questions asked. Fate overtook Bayles at his own game. In this, his last newspaper interview, he stresses speed as an important factor; in his last flight he had attained terrific speed when his plane went out of control and dashed him into eternity. “Dick” Bayles, conqueror of “Jimmy”’ Doolittle and other aces of the sky, the boy who in a few years rose jrom the mine pits of Illinois to the cockpits of the sky, is gone, but Ris last interview, in which he limns the future of aviation, lives on in the jollowing document. an BY LOWELL R. BAYLES. % '4s Told to George E. Pelletier. FLEW 286 miles an hour in one of the straightaway mile dashes at Cleveland, Ohio, last September and never went “black.” I didn't even go “black” in the Thompson Trophy race, America’s great- est speed classic of the air, although I had to average 236.239 miles an hour to win it, faster than man has ever flown in a land- plane for 100 miles over a 10-mile closed course. . Perhaps I'd better explain that going “black” is the average flyer's term for temporary loss of eyesight and consequent dizziness due to making sharp turns at high speeds. It is one of the big dangers of closed-course speed fly- ing and is responsible for some of the other- wise “unexplainable” accidents which have occurred in this work. Going “black” isn't being done this season as much as in the past, due to better designing based on past research. Present-day speed ships act much better than those of former days. In the Thompson Trophy race, going at better than 260 miles an hour at times, everything was just like a nice 100-mile joy ride to me. I even had time to look over the “audience” of some 85,000 people to see whether or not they were en- joying the show. I learned afterward that the race was much more thrilling to the grand stand crowd than it was to me as one of the contestants. I'm pointing this out to bring home the thought that the sooner the average person gets away from the idea that there is some- tgig physically dizzying about so-called “dizzying” spe:ds, the better for aviation in general and air transportation for commercial purposes in particular. Today some of our scheduled airlines are carrying passengeys at better than 150 miles an hour in comfortable, heated and well ventilated cabins. Tomorrow these same trans- ports will be making 250 miles an hour or better, as we are doing on the aerial race courses today. In fact, transports with these higher speeds could be built today except that provision must be made for landings and take-offs from ordinary airports, and for the necessity at times of bringing them down on smaller emergency fields in the event of motor trouble or bad wegther. The transports of the near future will get away from these restrictions. They will be virtually “flying locomotives,” probably powered by steam and having telescoping wings which will give them high cruising and low landing speeds, the ideal sought by all designers. Re- tractable landing gears we already have and their practical value in speeding up transport planes has been demonstrated over and over again. /A\S in the past, the airmail lines will be the first to reflect the value of the transition. The 110 to 125 miles an hour at which the mail is being flown now is much too slow, and it is my understanding that the Post Office Department 1s not tc renew present contracts with operators unless the latter can give assurance of carrying this valuable postal cargo at speeds between 160 and 170 miles an hour immediately, and promise 200 miles an hour in the very near future. The airplanes developed for the speed events at the national air races, with certain modi- ficaticns for payload, will make these speeds possible. These races, like the Schneider Cup races for seaplanes, test designs, materials and construction methods as nothing else will, The races are test tubes into which new de- sign ideas are poured and either proYe them- selves airworthy or fail and are abandoned. Air racing has the same relation to general flying as the Indianapolis and other autcmobile classics' have on the automotive industry. High-speed motors and carburetion for air- plane motors are developed around the speed courses of the Nation in the same way as lighter and more eflicient motors for motor cars are improved over the automobile race tracks of the world. What we've got to develop, if aviation is to make further progress, is greater speed on air transport lines. The racing ships will be expected to point the way in this direction. During the next two years we're going to get flying 286 miles an hour and beating all other contest- ants, Lowell R. Bayles was awarded the Thompson Trophy. He is here shown receiving it from the donor. more horsepower with less resistance—and that means more speed. Air or liquid cooled in-line engines of 1,000 or 2,000 horsepower are the answer, and sooner or later we're going to have them. TEAM has great possibilities which engineers are just beginning to touch. Ten years ago steam automobiles were developed which would have made the present-day car look like a piker, but their production was stified. The steam-driven automobile was not the failure many people believe. Work is now being carried on by several manufacturers in the steam-engine field for the airplane, and I personally believe such a power plant may be the ultimate answer to the problem of getting more power and more pas- senger-carrying capacity at lower cost. Just now the question of weight is the one which is bothering engineers working on this problem, but it will be solved just as the same difficulty was provided against in gasoline engines. Steam has many potential advantages. It de- velops terrific power at low cost, and, in the case of multiple-screw ships, four or six pro- pellers could be driven from one central boiler, saving the weight and resistance of the out- board engines of today. What the application of steam will mean to aviation remains to be seen, but it certainly may open the road to the practical development of “aerial trains” which have been in the dreams of operators for years. It would mean cheaper operation of large ships at considerably less hazard, and tHat's a combination which in time ought to make air travel as popular and as safe as train or bus travel is today. To my mind, the real prospects are along this line rather than by means of sc-called rocket planes. The future of the rocket-driven plane is very doubtful. We do not know enough yet about its nature and possibilities to predict with any accuracy. Nor must we try to foist too many novelties upon a public which is even now just beginning to take flying as a matter of course. Fear has given way to the question of fare, as far as air travel is concerned. The big thing now is to provide the speed which only air travel can give at a low cost. THE average man, we must keep in mind, still has some queer notions about speed in the * air. Never having been off ground, he thinks of speed in terms of the sensations of driving fast over a paved highway, and in this he is all wrong. Going 286 miles an hour, as I did at Cleveland, is much more amazing apparently to spectators than to the pilot. I had no sooner landed after making this record speed, than I was surrounded by newspaper men sll anxious to know how it felt. Here’s what I told them: “The going was fine, but the bumps were terrible.” Those who were there will recall that the 20-mile crosswind made low-altitude speed flying over the course very rough. And rough air, when you're going 286 miles an hour, is bound to give you a queer sensation. At that speed the bumps are just quivers, but they run up and down your spine as well as shake the ship. They are not so deep as the bumps one gets occasionally in an ordinary plane at a reasonable altitude, but much more dangerous. The strain is not so much the physical shock of being thrown about the cockpit as the men- tal turbulence of not knowing exactly what the next bump will do to an airplane traveling at four and a half miles a minute. Believe me, that’s something for the pilot to think about. A few days after I flew 286 miles an hour in a landplane for an average of 267 for four runs over a three-kilometer course, an unoffi- cial American record, a member of the Schnei- der Cup team in England made 404 miles an hour in one dash over a three-kilometer course and averaged 379. In the race itself the win- ning average was 343 miles an hour, or 11 miles per hour better than the previous year. These figures are impressive, but in some way not so significant as land speed records, be- cause, after all, it is in landplanes that the future of commercial air transport lies. I doubt that the industrial results of the speeds attained by the Schneider Cup flyers, amazing as their achievements may be, will be as permanent as those resulting from the land speeds attained in this country, not only by myself, but also in the transcontinental flights of Maj. James H. Doolittle and Capt. Frank Hawks, and the intercity records set by Hawks and James Goodwin Hall. Affer all, it is in the development of landplane speeds that the progress of air transportation lies, and these latter records have a direct bearing on this development. Moreover, the seaplane, it seems to me, has about reached its speed limit, while the land- plane still has far to go. The Thompson Trophy race was won in 1930 at an average of 201 miles an hour. In 1931 I averaged 236. This year an average of 260 to 275 miles will be necessary and designers are already work- ing on the 1932 ships with this in mind. This will mean & straightaway speed of well in excess of 300 miles an hour. ANO’I'HER factor which must be considered in comparing the speed of seaplanes with that of landplanes is the take-off and landing areas which each type requires. The seaplane which makes 400 miles an hour takes off in a sort of arc, with & run of from 2 to 4 miles, the torque of the powerful propeller dragging the ship around into the wind at the moment when flying speed has about been reached. 1t would be impossible, even if land enough were available, to try this sort of a take-off on wheels because it would probably result in a disastrous ground loop before the ship was even ready to leave the ground, due to propeller torque. Frank Hawks was telling me at Cleveland of the terrific hazard and strain which such a takeoff is on the pilots of the racing seaplanes, as compared with the straight and compara- tively safe takeoffs of our racing land planes, He said he could not see his way clear to tak- ing such chances, and those are my feelings. I think Hawks is right. Speed with safety should be the object, even in racing events. His own record of fast dashes here and there in all sorts of weather has done much more to stimulate air travel than the temporary ate tainment of greater speeds in very specially built ships over a measured course under only ideal conditions. As transport aviation reaches these higher speeds, there will be need, of course, of devel- oping larger airports. It is probable that this will mean going farther away from the center of communities and the establishment of a ferry service with small ships to the center of the community, in the same way as the trolley car and bus now supplement the railroad. (Copyright, 1932.)