Show

If no exciting stories came from the National Aircraft Show which closed in Detroit last week, that did not mean the show was not a good one. Rather it meant that the developments shown there, while important to the industry, were no longer spectacular to the layman, who has come to regard aviation as a matter-of-fact. The building of a 30-passenger plane is no longer front-page news.

As a thoroughgoing display of the industry's wares--there were 83 planes entered by 49 exhibitors--the show was a success. As to the immediate return in terms of sales, there was a difference of opinion. Seventeen manufacturers claimed 636 planes sold for a total value of $1,652,751. Largest claims: Buhl Aircraft Corp., 271 midget planes for $338,750; Pitcairn Aircraft Co., 38 autogiros for $322,000. But other exhibitors, despite an epidemic of price cutting, were frankly disappointed by lack of business. As he did at last year's show in St. Louis, Errett Lobban Cord began the price-slashing by reducing his Stinson Junior by $1,000 to $4,995, to get under the five-passenger Bird. Curtiss-Wright followed by cutting its four-place sedan from $6,370 to $4,595. Both builders admitted they could not make money at the price.

As had been expected, it was largely a "light-plane show," about half the planes on display falling into the price range between $1,000 and $3,000. Notable among the "flivver planes" were Stout's Sky Car (TIME, April 13), the Buhl Bull Pup, Curtiss-Wright Junior, the Aeronca and the Heath.

Other notable features:

The new Ford freight plane, powered by a single 600-h. p. water-cooled Hispano-Suiza engine. Except for the long snout-like motor and four-bladed propeller, the ship bears many outward resemblances to the tri-motored Ford transport.

The Lockheed Orion, a seven-passenger cabin plane with low wing and retractable landing gear, designed to fly 220 m. p. h., first of a fleet to be operated on Bowen air lines between Washington and Dallas.

The Pitcairn Autogiro, first display of a small model powered with a 125-h. p. motor and priced at $6,700.

Akron's Staff

No one was greatly surprised last fortnight when modest, youthful Lieut. Commander Charles Emery Rosendahl was given the most coveted station in naval aeronautics: command of the nearly-completed Akron, largest dirigible in the world. A veteran of 3,333 hr. airship flight, a survivor of the storm-torn Shenandoah, he is indisputably the Navy's No. 1 lighter-than-air man.

To Lakehurst Naval Air Station from Washington went Lieut. Commander Rosendahl last week, to assemble for his new command a crack crew--about ten officers, 40 enlisted men--from the personnel trained aboard the Los Angeles (his old command). As second-in-command of the Akron the Navy picked Lieut. Commander Herbert V. Wiley, a veteran of the Shenandoah and of five years service on the Los Angeles. Chief engineer, in charge of the eight Maybachmotors which will drive Akron at 83 m. p. h., is Lieut. Commander Bertram J. Rodgers.

Officers and crew were to remain in Lakehurst another week, thence to Akron for eight weeks intensive study of the new dirigible before it is hauled out of the Goodyear-Zeppelin dock for trial flights in July. The hauling will not be done by a ground crew of several hundred men. At Akron is being completed a mobile mooring mast, 76 ft. high, modeled somewhat after the tractor-hauled stub mast developed last year at Lakehurst. The new mast is self-propelled by a 225-h. p. gasoline engine which operates a generator and dynamo. Power is transmitted to caterpillar tractor "feet" at the bases of the mast's tripod legs. Two of the feet are motorized; the third is for steering.

Flights & Flyers

Vulture. Debonair Prince George Valentine Bibesco of Rumania, president of Federation Aeronautique Internationale, took off from Paris for Saigon, Indo-China last fortnight with two pilots and a mechanic. Their plane, the Count da la Vaulx* was a Ford tri-motor equipped with kitchen and bed, loaned them by King Carol. Their purpose: ostensibly to hunt big game; actually to compile a first-hand report on the redtape of international flying for presentation at the next meeting of the Federation. As the plane approached Allahabad, India last week a vulture flew into one of the propellers. About two hours later the propeller developed trouble, the pilot made a forced landing, the plane ran into a ditch, burned up. All four occupants escaped death but were severely injured.

The differences in air traffic rules among European states and the formalities insisted upon by many governments are a notorious nuisance and discouragement to private flying. Instances cited by LeRoy B. Manning, vice president and general manager of Century Air Lines, in Aviation magazine this month:

"If you contemplate starting from Croydon on a continental tour in a private machine, advice is to go to the airdrome the day before and get the necessary paper work in order. ... In Rome, where I once landed on a Sunday afternoon on my way to Naples, I was held overnight because the customs officer did not arrive until three hours after I landed. In Brindisi . . . where we landed for gasoline, we were in a hurry to be on our way over to Greece. But we had to remove the cowling from all three engines so that the local customs authority could examine the name plates on the engine crankcases and ascertain if the engines were the same as those named in our log books. Just what difference it could have made to him I was never able to learn. In Allerga [Italy] ... I once landed on a small intermediate military field due to shortage of fuel. I was immediately arrested and held over night because I had landed without permission--and permission had to be obtained formally from Rome before I was released. ... In one Balkan country, visiting aircraft are strictly forbidden to carry radio equipment. In the next country, only an hour's flight in distance, radio is required by law for every airplane carrying five or more persons. . . ."

"Treat," To speed his employer's friend Arthur Brisbane (see p. 48) from the National Aircraft Show at Detroit to the Ford plant at Dearborn, Henry Ford's Chief Engineer William Benson Mayo despatched one of their trimotored planes. Wrote Colyumist Brisbane of the flight: "Pilot William W. Mounts invites you to take the controls, not, however, letting go of the dual set himself. The plane puts its nose down, then puts it up, then turns on its side, going 130 miles an hour. That is supposed to be a great treat. It's a mistaken supposition

" Banging Bombs, High over Chesapeake Bay one day last week, in an Army bomber from Langley Field, Va., Capt. Robert G. Breene and Major Charles A. French were dropping explosive "eggs" into the water. Once when Major French pulled the release lever, no bomb left the ship; he yanked again. Then the officers looked overside, were horrified to see the last two bombs swinging beneath the fuselage, caught in a tangle of stray wires, banging against one another. Instantly Pilot Breene zoomed his plane upward, looped, spun, dove, climbed again in an effort to shake free the bombs. They still swung, knocked, banged. Pilot Breene then sped the plane inland over a wooded swamp, signalled his companion to jump, followed him an instant later. As the two officers drifted safely, slowly earthward beneath their billowing 'chutes, there was a terrific blast overhead, then a rain of metal fragments, bits of what had been an airplane.

*Named for Count Henri de la Vaulx, long-time president of the Federation, killed last year in the crash of a Canadian Colonial Airways plane near Newark, N. J.

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