The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-06-13

TOCkeCS, WHen JQe pllOC WduUS LLllo extra lift, as in taking of from the deck of carrier, he merely oper- ates a control that opens the aper- lures at the bottoms of the cylin- ders. Jets of white exhaust hiss out and down, at the same time the pic lot advances the throttle to speed Up the planes engine and propeller. Before the plane has rolled more than few hundred feet 1t IS in the air.
 Advantage of this type of assist ed takeod for carrier-based planes with heavy loads of gas and am- munition for long flights are obvi. ous. There is a further advantage in extra bursts of speed in combat.
 Naval aviation, not having the vast number of planes and men that the Army Air Forces can muster, has not had the publicity plugs of its companion service. The Navy has few air stations inland, and its car- riers aer usually far from home. But naval aviation has a number of tricks stuffed in It's windsocks. Many cannot yet be revealed in full, but enough can be told to indicate that naval aviation is making sensation al scientific advances.
 THE FACTORIES ARE
 NAVY'S LABORATORIES
 Centers of naval aviation research are the factories of the plants build- ing naval aircraft, the Naval Re- search Laboratory at Philadelphia, and the impressive new Naval Air Station at Patuxent, Md, where tests of new equipment are conduct ed.
 There Is a new twin-engine car- rier-based fighter which Is expected to write naval combat history. It will be flown from the new 45.000- ton aircraft carriers now under construction. This new plane is in reality a Single-place dive bomber as well as a fighter. Its armament in machine guns and cannon is ex- tremely heavy. Yet its wings fold in the already perfected carrier-based style.
 There is new scouting plane for use on battleships and cruisers which the Navy believes will revolu- tionize observation work and bring 1t far in advance of the Japanese scouting from small fast planes, in which they have previously had the edge.
 There Is a new version Of the Douglas Dauntless dive bomber-the sixth modification of this carrier based plane-stepping up its horse. power, speed and bomb-carrying capacity.
 All these new planes and modlf- cations of previous models are a manifestation of the steady advance of flying. What really makes an ap- peal to the imagination is the dream stuff still in the laboratories and testing fields.
 For example. there is a new am- phibious glider under development which suggests intriguing new tac- tics in long-range sea and arborne invasion commando operations.
 There are new armors-light yet capable of protecting pilot and deli- cate instruments from bomb frag- mentation.
 DOUBLING PLANES
 FIREPOWER
 Another potent new weapon to in- crease the firepower of aircraft is the Douglas package gum. Shaped like a tear-drop bomb and hung under each wing of 8 plane just like bomb, this package contains two machine guns and ammunition. A pair of these packages containing four machine guns will double the f1repower of any plane mounting four fixed position machine guns, In an emergency, the package can be jettisoned by the usual bomb rack release, to tighten the planes load by 500 pounds.
 In time the 20 nm cannon may see itself replaced by something of larger bore. On test is new 37 nm. cannon for fixed mount that has in- teresting possibilities. It is only half the size of the IS nm. gun mount ed in Army's B-25;s, but whereas the "75" Is hand-operated, the "37" is being stepped up for high velocity automatic fire at the rate of ap- proximately l40 rounds a minute What it amounts to is 6 machine cannon firing projectiles an inch and half in diameter.
 More than year ago this writer gave one of the first accounts of the perfection of new radial air. craft engine developing more horse power than any plane motor yet de- veloped. At the same time it was permitted to give the first intima- tions of successful water injection into aircraft engines to supply tenn porary spurts of extra power at takeoffs and in emergency flying.
 These two most important dis closures, plus all the new develop ments the Navy now reveals to the public, give pretty clear indications of what mechanized "triphibious" warfare of the future will be like.