Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1937-05-18
FUTURE A|RPLANES
TO USE CATAPU[T
Distinguished Gathering at
Langley Field for
Revelations.
BY JOSEPH S. EDGERTON.
Aviation Editor OF The Star.

~ VIZ As0Iios
BY JOSEPH S. EDGERTON,
Aviation Editor OF The Star
LANGLEY FIELD, Va. Nav ID
Dipping into its big silk hat, the Ma.
tional Advisory Committee for Aero
nautics today drew out in the presence
OF distinguished audience a strange
blrd-the airplane of tomorrow.
The hat is the N. A. c. AS research
laboratory at Langley Field, and the
audience Is composed Of several hun
dred Of the Nations foremost aviation
leaders, headed by the first aviator,
Orville Wright, and including such
pioneers as Glenn Martin Grover
Looming and Maj. Gen. Benjamin D.
Foulois, the worlds first military pilot.
TomorroW's airplane the Federal
aeronautical scientists revealed, will
involve such strange problems as
shock waves" which occur when air
moves at the velocity Of sound, in the
vicinity Of ITO miles per hour. Such
waves are encountered around airplane
engine coWlings and at other critical
points as airplane speeds approach 500
miles per hour
New Type Cowling.
Tomorrow's airplane will have its
engine inclosed in new type O.
coWling which will be efficient at the
tremendous speeds scientists believe
are coming, and which will be ca
pable Of doing what the present covl
cannot do in the way of effectively
cooling the engine. The limiting fac
tor in engine power, they showed, Is
the amount Of heat that can be car
ried away from the cylinders. The
newly developed N A. c. A. cowling
shown for the first time today is re-
garded as the most effective cooling
means yet produced. and 1t opens
new field in engine design
The committee showed experiments
in spinning tunnel which make it
possible to determine before an air
plane is built whether it will be sub
ject to fatal spinning haracteristics.
Models OF all new single-engine mill
itary airplanes now are being made in
this tunnel before the full-sized air
plane leaves the drawing board As
result, pilots need no longer jeopardize
their lives in night testing an air.
plane which may go into an uncon-
trolled spin and crash
Cleaning Metal Wings.
The airplane of tomorrow will have
wings OF cleaning metal, unmarried by
a seam or rivet. So effectively have
fuselaaes and engines been streamlined
that the wings today constitute the
greatest source Of air resistance. Il
was shown in the new 500-mile-
hour wind tunnel that exposing the
heads OF rivets as small as Lie Of an
inch on the wing of a 20,O0O-pound
airplane requires 81 additional horse
power at 225 miles per hour.
An increase in the size of the rivet
heads to 1892 Of an inch calls for
1872 additional horsepower to maintain
the same speed. Merely painting the
wing demands 81 horsepower more
than smooth metal wing for the
same speed. The day is at hand, it
was pointed out, when economy de-
mands that even the dust be wiped OF
the wings of high-speed Airplanes at
each stop to prevent the loss of speed
and horsepower.
Tomorrow's airplane probably will
have a tricycle. type of landing gear,
which was demonstrated here TODAY.
With such gear, the airplane can be
flown safely to a landing on ground
which the pilot cannot see without
danger OF nosing over or ground loop
ing. 1t was demonstrated
The airplane of the immediate future
may have to be launched from cata-
pault because of the ever-increasing
speed of take-off and the demand 1t
makes for larger airports
Delegates to the Twelfth Annual
Aircraft Engineering Research Con.
ference Of the N. A. C. A. left WASH
ington yesterday evening aboard the
Norfolk steamer for todays demon
STATIONS and conference at which
they will cooperate with the Federal
research authorities in laying out an
aeronautical research program for the
coming year.
The party which is at Langley today
will be followed by a similar group
which will leave Washington Wednes-
day night and participate in q ere
peat program at Langley Field
Thursday. Division of the program
into two sections was necessitated by
demands for representation of the
aviation industry which overtaxed
transportation facilities and the Ca
pacity Of the laboratories.
After nearly four hours in the lab
oratories the delegates will be divided
into conference groups, which will
meet this afternoon to consider the
outstanding problems of engineering
confronting American aviation and
deciding upon program Of research
for the coming year.