The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-06-05

the 31st Wilbur Wright memorial lecture on Postwar Transport Aircraft" before the Royal Aeronau- tical Society in London, has just given the flying wing a definite place in aviation development which indicates that its actual appearance in the skies is only short time ahead. Main difficulties of the fly ing wing are in stability and con- trol. Assuming that these may be overcome, MT. Warner sees a real, though limited, place for this de- sign.
 Previous theorizing on the practi- cality of the flying wing has limited it to giant aircraft of 175 tons or more-as compared with the l2 tons of standard commercial DC-2 or the A gross tons of a Boeing 314 American clipper. Routes on which a plane of that size could find traffic are, of course, limited. For an airplane design to carry concentrated cargo only, however, MT. Warner foresees that the flying wing could be used in substantially smaller sizes, and such machine might have cruising speed 10 per cent higher than that of conven- tional aircraft.
 LARGE PAY LOAD
 ESSENTIAL
 For 2OO-ton flying wings, the speed might be 20 per cent higher and the cost of operation per ton r,ile might be 20 per cent lower than for a conventional medium sized airplane of 30 tons, such as the DC-4, the 40-passenger, four motored Douglas Skymaster. The 200-ton flying wing; by comparison, would have carrying capacity of some $50 passengers, would cruise at from 280 to 300 miles an hour in- stead of 180 to 200
 If the future development of the flying wing reveals no shortcomings MT. Warner believes that there might be place for such craft on Atlantic route, or on trans continenetal routes. Its limitations are that to secure these benefits of lower cost and greater speed, it must carry a high commercial pay load. This would tend to limit the use of a flying wing to a single schedule day, instead of to more frequent service which is more suit able to the convenience of the pas sengerS.
 All these problems of commercial postwar flying reduce themselves ultimately to the limitations of how much paying business there will be to carry.
 In the best pre-war years, trans Atlantic passenger steamship travel averaged less than 300 passengers day, each way. Less than 200 of those were first class or cabin pas sengers who might be expected to be potential customers for trans Atlantic air travel
 MAXIMUM TRAFFIC
 EXPECTED
 Taking those facts into consider ation and adding to them a possible 50 per cent increase to allow for the likelihood that Detroit auto mobile magnates having a deal to close in Europe will hop a plane in- stead of sending cablegram, the maximum postwar passenger traf- f1c to be borne will not immediately increase over 300 passengers day, each way.
 The question then becomes whe- ther all those passengers will want to travel on one huge flying wing making one flight each day, or whe- ther passengers will prefer to travel on smaller planes, flying on more frequent schedules. MT. Warner leans now to the latter view.
 Allowing for flights that may start from various points on the continent of Europe as well as from the British Isles, a normal traffic expectancy would be eight flights a day in each direction, the planes carrying up to 40 passengers trip, making the crossing in approxi- mately 20 hours elapsed flying time.
 Advent of the flying wing as a commercially profitable develop ment would therefore seem to de- pend as much upon the develop ment of more business for it to haul as upon it's aerodynamic imperfec- tions. When the traffic is there for 1t to carry, then look for the flying wing.