Evening star., 1940-04-28
New Diesel Engine
Designed for Army
Planes and Tanks
Light and Economical,
1t Uses Cos Costing
6 Cents q Gallon
q Associated PreSg.


NEW YORK, April 27.-A new
Diesel engine, designed for use by
the United States Army in both air
planes and tanks, was disclosed yes
terday by q Wall Street source.
Lightweight and economical, the
engine can be interchanged, with
simple notifications, between air
and land combat forces.
The fuel used by the invention is
standard No. 2 furnace oil, which
costs about six cents a gallon. The
builders of the engine claim it can
travel half again as far per gallon
Of fuel as a gasoline engine can 60.
The Army already has ordered
100 Of the engines for installation in
tanks before August and they are
being manufactured now in q new
$500, 900 plant of the Buda Co. at
Harvey. Ill. The first Of the engines
to power an airplane has been in
spected in Washington by Secretary
of War Woodring and high Army
officers.
Nine Cylinder Engine.
The engine is nine-cylinder.
radial-type, air-cooled. 1t is called
the Guiberson. Lanova Corp. of New
York, a Diesel patent-holding and
research organization. holds the
patent on one of its basic principles.
Officials of all three companies
connected in the enterprise assert
this to be the lightest Diesel engine
ever developed in this country, even
approximating gasoline engines In
the power output per pound-an &C
complishment hitherto attained only
in Germany, which powers most Of
it's long grange bombers with Diesels.
The new airplane engine is slightly
lighter than the tank engines, but
their makers say the addition of a
few extra strength parts would make
the airplane power plants perfectly
capable of driving the ground units.
It was pointed out that inter-
changeability of engines between
mechanical ground forces and the
air force would be Of high impor-
tance to Army units operating far
from supply DdSeS.
Fuel Oil Called Superior.
Diesel engine advocates also point
to the superiority in combat of fuel
oil over highly explosive gasoline,
and say the safety factor is i'm
portant even to commercial opera
tions.
S. A. Guiberson, jr., 66-year- old
oil millionaire of Dallas, is the in
ventor and developer of the new
engine. His friends describe him
as 'natural-born mechanic whose
hobby for Is years has been build
ing Diesels."
They estimated he probably has
spent around $1,500,000 out of his
own pocket in his experiments. add
ing: HE didn't have to do it and
ne wasn't responsible to any one:
his oil wells and his oil-tool busi-
ness permitted him to do whatever
he chose"
Actively associated with him Is
his 35-year-old son Allen, who
proved the family's faith in their
engine by flying behind it on its
first flight early this week from Dal-
las to Washington. The elder
Guiberson travelled to Washington
by commercial air line.
One of the grave engineering OBJ
stacles which always has confronted
Diesel builders striving toward a
lightweight engine has been the
original Diesel principle: High
compression of fuel within a cylin-
der results in combustion. To at
tain this high compression. heavy
cylinder walls, of great weight, were
necessary.
40 Years of Research.
Lanova Corp. comes into the pic
/ ture through 200 patents and pat
ent applications originating from
40 years of research by Franz Lang
of Munich, one of the original asso-
ciates of DR.. Rudolf Diesel. Lang
originated a "compressorless" en-
gine from which the present Lanova
combustion system was developed.
Albert Wielich, president of La
nova Corp, said successful demon
strations already had been made
with a number of automobile en-
gines of the practicability Of con-
verting them into DieSels through
the installation of special cylinder
heads and fuel injection systems.
But none of the men connected
with the work made claim that the
Diesel was likely to supersede the
gasoline engine at an early date.