POSTWAR AVIATION
In the high-flying, high-speed Stratocruiser and the fast Liberator Liner we see a type of transport that will become familiar in early postwar days. The development of airplanes with great load-carrying ability will have a great effect on the cost of air travel. Transports like the 100-passenger Stratocruiser will soon bring the cost of air travel within the reach of anyone who now can afford regular train fares.
Postwar days will also see a great increase in the use of air cargo planes. Typical of the cargo plane of the future is the Fairchild C-82 Packet, now in use as a military transport. The big, roomy cabin of the Packet is only slightly smaller than a standard railroad boxcar. As an Army transport, the Packet can carry forty-two fully equipped paratroopers or seventy regular troops. As a hospital plane, it has space for thirty-four litter cases and four attendants or seventy-five walking casualties. When used for cargo movement the Packet’s stern door opens to take a load of jeeps, trucks, artillery, munitions, and other military cargo equal in weight to nine tons. It is readily seen how valuable the Packet will be in postwar days. With its range of 3,500 miles, it will speed commercial cargo across the country at reasonable costs. In fact, all the big transports, such as the Stratocruiser or the Liberator Liner, are designed so that they may be converted to all-cargo planes. In the near future perishable foods and other merchandise, which heretofore have taken several days to cross the country, will make the trip overnight.
With the coming of peace, air transport and commercial aviation will grow by leaps and bounds. All the leading airlines and many new ones are planning expanded schedules and looking forward to a great boom in air travel. New transport planes are going into production in the plants of all America’s well-known aircraft manufacturers. The new airliners will not only be much faster, but they will also be equipped with every device that will make the air traveler more comfortable. The new airliners will be so fast that there will be no need for sleeper planes on coast-to-coast trips. Sleeper planes will be used only on long overseas trips. The planes will all carry more passengers during the day and that means that air travel will be almost as economical as surface travel.
The big planes for world travel will be ships like the seventy-ton Martin Mars flying boat and the giant Pan American Consolidated 204-passenger Model 37. Donald Douglas is building two new luxury airliners, the fifty-passenger DC-6 and the 108-passenger DC-7. The 100-passenger Lockheed Constellation will also be in service soon. Smaller planes operating on feeder lines will soon whisk passengers from small towns to the main lines of the transcontinental and world airways.
There has been considerable talk about the widespread use of the helicopter in postwar days. In spite of the great advances made in its development, it will probably be some time before its use becomes widespread. The helicopter itself can fly up, down, backward, frontward, and sidewise, but it is still difficult to fly unless its pilot has had considerable practice.
The helicopter gets its lift and its forward, backward, and sidewise movement from the big rotating blades above the fuselage. These blades have the same effect as those of a propeller. The big blades bite into the air as they turn. The shape of the blade is like the airfoil or wing of a plane. As it bites into the air it creates a lift just as a wing does. By the use of his controls the pilot can change the angle of the blades to increase or diminish their lift. For example, when the lift is reduced on a blade on one side of the plane it banks off in the direction of the reduced lift. The same holds true for any movement of the helicopter. A small rotor in a vertical position at the tail has controllable blades, and the machine is steered by changing the angle of these blades. The pilot of a helicopter of today is a very busy fellow. New developments, however, will probably simplify the operation of the machine.
