Superseversky

Last December Pan American Airways invited four makers of passenger air transports and four builders of war planes to submit plans of ocean aircraft to its unsalaried technical adviser, Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Left out of the bids was a ninth manufacturer, Major Alexander de Seversky, who promptly secured P. A. A.'s permission to submit drawings. The plane called for was to carry 100 passengers, a crew of 16, fly 5,000 miles nonstop up to 20,000 ft. at 200 m.p.h.

Lockheed, Curtiss-Wright, Martin, North American Aviation all withdrew from the competition for reasons of their own. Secret plans for "dream planes" were, however, submitted last week by Boeing, Consolidated, Douglas, Sikorsky. With a grand flare of publicity came drawings from the ninth firm, self-invited Seversky, which suggested that the inventive Russian had out-dreamed them all.

The "Seversky Super-Clipper,'' at least on paper, would fly farther faster than any other, carry nearly twice the payload P. A. A. asked for. Its specifications: weight about 250,000 Ib.; five propellers driven by eight motors developing 18,400 h. p.; cruising speed a flat 250 m.p.h.; a wing 250 ft. long and triple fuselage accommodating 120 passengers, crew of 16, a dining room for 50, observation deck, cocktail bar, promenade, 70 toilets and a lifeboat. Pontoons serve also as shock absorbers, retract in flight into the hulls of the two main fuselages. The whole ship in stainless steel, by collaboration with Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co.. costs an unheard-of $7,000,000.

Its war potentialities would also be super. By stepping its gas capacity up to 42,500 gal. it could fly 12,000 miles, carry ten bombs weighing a ton apiece, as well as a "sizable" torpedo boat to maintain surface contacts or search suspected ships.

No Buck Rogers is 44-year-old Alexander Procofieff ("Sascha") de Seversky but successful head of Seversky Aircraft Corp., famed builder of army planes. A Russian naval flyer who lost a leg in his first World War engagement but recovered later to down 13 German planes, he went to the U. S. on a mission of the Tsar's Government in 1917, never returned to his sovietized land. Long a U. S. citizen, married to a U. S. girl, Alexander de Seversky joined the U. S. Army Air Corps Reserve, rose to the rank of major. In 1931 he organized his own company at Farmingdale, L. I., of which he is president, chief designer and test pilot. Many a Seversky design has been derided, but his planes in the air are fast, radical, practical, and he is producing them at the almost unequaled rate of one per day.

P. A. A. made no comment on the merit of Seversky's proposed ship, resolutely held secret the other submitted plans. As a $7,000,000 price tag had already been hung on the "Super-Clipper," it was obvious that Seversky had no expectation of getting an order.

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