Evening star., 1926-11-27
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL =. COLLINS.

The experiment Of hurling 1912
tons of metal and liquids through the
air 1000 miles without a stop. and
bearing human beings thereon, has
not proved wholly successful. If sue
cess had been certain the attempt
might not have been made, for 1t was
in order to find out all the difficulties
that it was undertaken to fly two
naval airplanes from Norfolk. Va,
to Colon. Panama. They reached only
when the plane of Lieut. Comdr
Harold T. Bartlett sprung a leak in
its lubricating machinery and had to
come down on the coast of the Isle
of Pines. and later the plane Of Lieut.
Byron J. Connell was forced down
in the Caribbean Sea. and was found
and rescued by the cruiser Cincinnati,
stationed on the route for that pur
pose. The Bartlett plane travelled
| .O29 miles and that of Lieut.. Con
nell 1,l47 miles. The Bartlett plane
had sprung a leak in the conduit of
oil, and that of Lieut.. Connell had
broken a connecting rod of the engine.
Forthwith there comes a great out
cry derding the Navy and offering
advice that if the flyers had first
ascertained how much gas was re-
quired to run a mile they might have
multiplied that by the number Of
miles and so avoided coming down in
the ocean. How simple a thing 1t is
! for landsman to run a battleship,
or, with feet on terra frma, to soar
the clouds. with tons of metal and
gas-especially gas
X X X X
Naval officers are reticent as to
exactly what happened, for no official
details have yet been reported. The
fact appears to be that the new de-
| sign of Packard engines of 500 horse
mower each have not proved unbreak-
able. The oil is forced through a
system of small flexible tubing, so as
to lubricate all bearings automatically.
The pressure on the oil Is from 90 to
: so pounds per square inch, and, with
the constant vibration of the engines
in flight. 1t is very easy for the tup-
ing to spring leak. A hole no
larger than a needle-point would rood
the engine in few seconds, and
waste the OIL Yet the problem OF
such tubing has been solved in Ger.
tain steam engines which use OIL
under pressure Of 1900 pounds IN
Mace of 80. 1t will be solved in the
seaplane. A.,
The connecting rod Of one of the
r,anes broke. Any engineer knows
how helpless is an engine whose con-
Meeting rod is broken while the ma
chinery Is in action. The wonder IS
that the flying parts did not tear the
nlane to pieces or puncture 1t. so
The problen Of making a connecting
rnd y,,f which is so strong that it cannot
hreak-why that is the very secret
of the Deacon who stated:
Its mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus stan the
m the way to fix it, as 1 maintain,
To make that place as strong as
the rest"
It is officially stated that. before the
main flight. test flights were made,
November 21, off Hampton Roads.
with a load of 10000 pounds each; the
actual fight for Colon started with
81 600 hounds each, for the planes
carried full supplies Of gasoline and
oil and water for cooling the engines.
In flight. the weight Is reduced $50
hounds an hour, by the consumption
of gasoline and water. Neither plane
ran out Of gas. but there Is some
question as to whether they started
with too great an overload. While
the planes carried two engines, both
| were needed in flight. There was no
reserve power. In Co,ndr. Byrd $
plane were three engines, two of
which could run the plane.
In answer to public criticism Of
American progress in aviation. as
compared with that of Europe, 1t is
pointed out that Comdr. John Rodgers.
with Lieut.. Byron Connell the same
ICennell who made this flight, made a
world record with their flight Of 1.S41