Packard's Diesel

A Stinson-Detroiter monoplane glided down upon Langley Field, at Hampton, Va., one day last week and the two men who stooped out of her cabin asked army mechanics to help them trundle the plane at once into a hangar.

That done, they hauled tarpaulin, chain and padlocks from their cabin and securely shrouded their motor from prying eyes. They had reached Langley Field in 6 hrs. 50 min. flying time and they took precautions because, underneath the chain-wrapped tarpaulin, was the first diesel-type motor ever used successfully for airplane propulsion. The flyers were Mechanical-engineers Lionel M. Woolson and Walter Edwin Lees. Their employer, developer of something new and great in the air, was Packard Motor Car Co.

No patents now are obtainable on diesels or their modifications, for plane-power or other drive.* Several manufacturers have been experimenting with diesel modifications for aircraft. Some of their representatives were at Langley Field last week, attending the fourth annual Engineering Research Conference conducted by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (initiated by President Wilson). It was to astonish their peers that Packard Engineers Woolson and Lees had flown the 650 wind-jostled miles from Detroit. It was to frustrate competitive inquisitiveness that they hooded their motor.

Five years Engineer Woolson and his research staff at the Packard plant have labored designing the motor. They had, first, the diesel principle to go on, i.e., that air can be heated by compression until hot enough to ignite a jet of fuel oil.

Their problem was to make such an engine light enough for efficient flying.

Their accomplishment, reached and tested episodically last year, is a nine-cylinder, radial, air-cooled motor. It lacks, of course, the sparkplugs, wires, magnetos, etc., essential in spark-ignited gasoline engines. A pipe line distributes oil under pressure to each of the cylinders. The present machine delivers 200 h.p., and is slightly less in diameter than gasoline radials of like power. It weighs nearly 3 Ib. per h.p., against the average 2 Ib. per h. p. of gasoline types. But it travels farther and more cheaply on a gallon of its fuel. For example, last week's 7-hour (actually 6 hr., 50 min.) astonishment flight required 54 gal. of oil, costing $4.68 and weighing 365 Ib. A gasoline radial would have required for the same trip 91 gal. of gas, costing $27.30 and weighing 546 Ib. On last week's short flight the gasoline engine and its fuel would have been slightly lighter than Packard's diesel and its oil. On longer flights with more gallons of fuel needed the diesel combination would obviously be the lighter. Other accomplishments included reductions of fire hazard (oil requires higher temperature than gasoline for ignition) and radio interference (by the electrical wires of the gasoline engine's ignition system).

Because no patents are obtainable, Packard is guarding its new product until it can get into production and thus "get the jump" on the rest of the industry. To that end the company has already started a special 300,000 sq. ft. factory and scheduled future production. And in anticipation of new profits Packard motor car stock last week began ascending.

Richthofen to Rickenbacker

Among the performers in the famed "Flying Circus" of the late Baron von Richthofen of Germany was a 22-year-oldster high in the Baron's esteem--Alfred Wolff, university graduate, engineer, early an ace. When the Baron was plunged to his death, many of his duties devolved upon Ace Wolff. Against French and English aces Wolff fought fierce battles. It happened that he had never to fight a U. S. flyer.

He was glad of that, glad the whole War was long over and done with, when he last week took charge of a U. S. flying field named for one of the greatest U. S. aces, Major Edward Vernon ("Eddie") Rickenbacker.

Rickenbacker Field, as all airmen know, is at Sioux City, Iowa. Ace Wolff happened by that city as manager of the Freiburg Players, touring the U. S. with their Passion Play (TIME, May 13). Ace Wolff and the Fassnacht family of Freiburg, Germany, who dominate the cast of the Passion Play, are old acquaintances.

They lately met again in Kansas City after years during which Ace Wolff was an engineer for the Mercedes and Junker concerns. Play-managing did not appeal to Ace Wolff so strongly as the chance to return to the air which was offered him in Sioux City by Arthur S. Hanford Jr. of Hanford Tri-State Air Lines, Inc.

U. S. fliers with War experience now mark Sioux City as a spot on their maps where they can stop for good talk, in the supranational camaraderie of the air, about flying and fighting on both sides of a line now erased.

*Similar is the case of radial air-cooled gasoline motors, and in-line water-cooled gasoline motors. Patents, however, still endure on Knight sleeve-valve motors. Hence in the U. S. only Willys-Knight and Steams-Knight as yet may use that type in passenger cars. Charles Y. Knight, sleeve-valve inventor, still lives, richly and quietly, in California (TIME, Sept. 27, 1926).