The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1943-03-11
SgSSSms%S
TODAY
and
TOM OR row
By DON ROBINSON
PARENTS
By DON ROBINSON
planes

shout, Hey, dad, can I have the
plane tonight I've got a date
with a girl in Chicago"
It was bad enough with auto
mobiles, parents protest. They
will never forget some of those
sleepless nights when they spent
hours pacing the floor listening
for the car to drive into the gar
age and fought off horrifying
mental pictures of smash-ups and
of their children lying unconsci-
GUS along the roadside.
But planes - youngsters going
for joy-rideS through the skies
that's most too frightening for
them to contemplate. Yet there
is every reason to believe that
private planes will, within few
years after the war, be Whizzing
around the air by the thousands
and our children will take fly
| ing as much for granted as we
oldsters have taken motoring.
SAFETY fears
When we actually learn the
facts about what those planes for
private use are going to be like,
some of our fears may vanish. At
present we are apt to picture the
rickety planes which used TO scare
the daylights out of us when some
local shoW-off would take one up
and see how close he could come
to his girls house without taking
the chimney with him.
But after the war the private
planes we picture now will be
as old-fashioned as a Model-T
Ford. For the people who plan
to make the private planes of the
future know just how fidgety we
feel about private flying and they
know that they won't get any
where with the idea unless they
can turn out planes which will
make it just about as safe to be
in the air as to be sitting in the
front parlor.
FLYING automatic
We got hint Of what is to
come a couple Of weeks ago when
the army announced that one of
it's huge four-motor Liberators
had actually flown itself for 1000
miles without any pilot aboard.
The plane seemer to be in trouble
off the Florida coast. The crew
bailed out and set an automatic
control to steer the plane out to
sea. The next day the plane, with
no human hand guiding it for II
hours, finally collided with a
mountain peak in Mexico.
The important revelation IN
this announcement was the fact
that a plane could fly automatic
ally, which is one of the great
steps forward in taking the dan
ger out of flying,
Until the war is over, most
manufacturers will talk about
safety discoveries in generalities,
but a clear indication of the trend
was pointed out recently by a
man who makes many of the
a f ty appliances which are
counted upon for safe flying. This
man, Ernest R. Breech, president
of the Bendix Aviation corpora
ton, told his stockholders:
1T is our conviction that the
average person wants to fly his
own small plane if he can fly
safely and automatically. De-
velopments to date make it pos
sible safely to say that we can
see the time of automatic flying
coming within the next few
years"
HIGHWAYS anyways
I don't know what the plane
of the future will be like, but if
it is to be safe enough for popu-
lar appeal it will have to dodge
mountains automatically, keep it.
self out of collisions with other
planes, find its way through for,
stand still in the air, land safely
when the gas runs out and cope
with all the other unpredictable
emergencies which have caused
crashes in the past.
! How all this will be taken care
of is a job for the smartest en-
gineers to work out, but the fact
that such a plane will be develop
ed is no longer to be doubted.
The whole aviation industry is
depending on it-and nothing can
stop it.
BY 1850 and probably before,
even the most skeptical of us are
apt to consider the anyways as
safe, it not safer, than the high
ways
Buy War Savings Bonds
Last wear timber production in