Flying Fords

Henry Ford took up flying 15 months ago. Last week his son, Edsel, called on President Coolidge in the Adirondacks, laden with photographs and sheets of statistics, to report what progress the emperor of the highways had made in his conquest of the air. First of all, Edsel Ford explained the ship/- that is to be standardized and produced, en masse, at Detroit. No air "jitney," it is a large ship, designed for commercial uses. It is an all-metal monoplane with three Wright-Whirlwind motors. It can carry a ton of freight, operating at a cost of 13.8 cents a mile. Its cruising radius is 2,500 miles. New, it costs the purchaser $37,000. It is planned to build 100 of these planes forthwith. After these are sold the price may drop to $28,000. Eventually, "we hope to put a machine in the air that will be as comparably cheap as our pleasure cars." It is to Henry Ford--and his son--that the U. S. has been looking for its first swarming fleets of aircraft. Extensive experiment was expected to preface the arrival of such fleets, and last week the experimental record, for flights on the Ford freight-and-mail routes between Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago, was announced as follows: Flights attempted .......1,492 Flights completed .......1,467 Miles flown .......295,000 Hours in the air .......3,354 Pounds carried .......1,644,000 Percentage of effectiveness .......98.3

There were 52 forced landings in the 15 months, 19 due to mechanical troubles, 33 to weather. Of course it was not Cheops who built the pyramids, but his engineers. Nor is it the Fords--except for their money, vision, facilities--who are responsible for the first plane to be marketed on a large scale in the U. S. From among all U. S. aeronautical engineers, Manufacturer Ford has taken unto himself--Engineer Stout. William Bushnell Stout was the mechanically-minded son of a pastor of Quincy, 111. He read the puzzle-pages and "Jack-of-all-trades" sections of the magazines. He was a champion whittler. His parents sent him to college in Minnesota, whither, after touring Europe, he returned, to teach manual training in a St. Paul high school. He wrote for the St. Paul Dispatch as "Jack Kneiff," telling youngsters how to make birdhouses, foot-stools, mechanical toys. Always studying, he toured Europe again, becoming chief engineer of a truck company when he got back. The Chicago Tribune employed him as technical and aviation editor; then Motor Age, then Automobile. He founded Aerial Age, and designed for the Scripps-Booth Co. the little sharp-nosed roadster that sold so well in 1914. The Packard people took him on as chief of their aircraft division. He went to Washington to serve the Aircraft Board. He rented a factory basement in Detroit and organized a company, with no funds at all. By circular letters which he had to print himself, he found 110 Detroit and Chicago business men willing to take a chance on the all-metal monoplane specified on his blueprints. One of these business men was Edsel Ford, whose father soon became interested in Stout's tools, jigs and patterns for producing metal airplane parts quickly and in unlimited quantities. There were long talks between the basement-dwelling designer and the slender, attentive overlord of the vast factories at Dearborn, with the result that Stout "sold the airplane to Henry Ford" and was invited to set up shop at a new airport Mr. Ford had decided to add to his Dearborn domain. Last summer there was a transaction involving about a million dollars: the Stout Metal Airplane Co. became a "division" of the Ford Motor Co. After 15 years of experiment, Engineer Stout had landed at the financial pinnacle of his field. Henry Ford's 63rd birthday chanced to fall last week, too, just after Edsel Ford left the Adirondacks. Mr. Ford called Detroit newsgatherers around him and celebrated by showing them a little 350-lb. contrivance with a French-designed three-cylinder motor, wings only 22 ft. across, a 15-ft. fuselage and a single seat. It was the Ford "sky flivver," dream of a million earth-bound citizens of small means. "At present the plane should be regarded entirely as experimental," said Mr. Ford, stepping into it and starting the engine for his guests' benefit. The plan is to replace the French motor (which has carried the craft

100 m.p.h. in numerous test flights) with a two-cylinder Ford-made unit, reducing the little ship's weight to 310 Ibs.

A guest of Mr. Ford's at this birthday ceremony was Baron Frederick Krupp. The scream and carnage of howitzers echo in men's ears at the mention of that name, and one pictures a fierce-mustachioed warlord. But the reality is far different. Blond, athletic, 20 years of age, well-spoken on history, art, politics, sport, the youth who will succeed his mother as director of the vast works at Essen is scarcely distinguishable in manner and appearance, from a U. S. college undergraduate. Last week began the second annual commercial airplane reliability tour for the Edsel Ford Trophy. Some 50 planes (last year there were only 17) were entered to start from the Ford airport for a 2,555-mile course--Kalamazoo, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Des Moines, Lincoln, Wichita, St. Joseph, Moline, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Fort Wayne and Detroit. Each pilot paid an entrance fee of $100, which will be refunded upon his return, together with $100 for expenses and $250 bonus if he has flown the whole course. Ford policy forbids Sunday flying. Last year the winner was the trimotored Fokker which was subsequently christened Josephine Ford and flown to the North Pole by Explorer Byrd.

Sea Swoopers

As gulls will wheel, descend and alight on the oily back of a lolling whale, U. S. naval aviators of the Pacific Fleet last week wheeled, swooped and taxied to a halt on the "flying deck" of the airplane carrier U. S. S. Langley, as she steamed along at 10 knots per hour off Point Loma, Cal. So admirably is the ship designed, and so expert had the fliers become, that 60 planes landed in succession--a "world's record"--with but one minor mishap. In the August Scientific American, p.104, will be found a descriptive, illustrated article on the Navy's two most modern airplane carriers, the U. S. S. Saratoga and Lexington, nearing completion at Camden, N. J., and Quincy, Mass. These ships (converted cruisers) will have armor-plated flying decks 880 ft. long and 85 to 90 ft. wide, squared off at bow and stern; the ships' turrets, military masts and single funnels being moved to extreme starboard to be out of the way. They will accommodate 72 planes each, travel 33.25 knots, and be heavily armed against torpedo or aerial attack.

/-All airplanes, whether land craft or flying boats, are commonly called "ships" by U. S. fliers. Slang term: "crate" (old biplane).