In Detroit

When Henry Ford examined Lawrence Sperry's Messenger Plane at the Detroit Aviation races of 1922, he pronounced it possible to build such small planes in production more cheaply than his own well-known product. Ever since, frequent rumors have credited the great manufacturer as planning the construction of an army of "flivver"' airplanes to make flying as popular as automobiling. But the Fords are wiser than to imagine that this is immediately possible. They are, indeed, in aviation, but not building airplanes, nor trying to popularize them.

Henry Ford and his son, Edsel, are shareholders and prominent backers of the Stout Metal Airplane Corporation, constructing not "flivvers" but large, all-metal passenger planes of the most modern and refined design. Powered with a Liberty motor, the Stout plane can carry eight passengers within its roomy cabin and fly over 100 miles an hour for long stretches. According to a Dearborn announcement, five or six of these planes will be ready this year, and the great Ford organization expects to sell them, without difficulty, on behalf of the Stout Co. The Liberty motor is now getting out of date and, according to the same announcement, the Ford plant will build new and more powerful motors to replace it.

Nor does the interest of the two Fords in aeronautics end there. They are also backing with large sums of money the Aircraft Development Corporation, which is building the first all-metal airship ever planned. The fabric covering of the ordinary airship is here replaced by a thin covering of sheet duraluminum, perhaps not more than eight thousandths of an inch in thickness, and weighing scarcely more than the usual rubberized fabric. Such a metal covering would render an airship impervious to weather and constitutes a great progress in the art of airship building.

Why are the Fords interested in aviation? Certainly not to make money at the moment; the airplane and the dirigible company are spending money freely in experimentation, with returns only in the future. It is because they believe that aircraft will revolutionize transportation, and because they want Detroit to be the center of manufacture for the equipment of the air. They have recently donated an airport to the City--a model of its kind. When Dr. Hugo Eckener, commander of the ZR3 in its trip across the Atlantic, visited Detroit, Henry Ford invited him to bring the huge ship to Detroit. "We'd have no place to tie up. We'd have to have a tower of some kind to tie up to," said Dr. Eckener. "Well, I'll build you one," said Henry Ford. And he is now building a huge mooring tower--the largest and most developed of its kind.