Fast Ford Freight

Through the aviation industry last week ran a sensational rumor: Ford Motor Co., a pioneer in building trimotored airplanes and a principal producer of them today, was "swinging around from trimotored to single-motored theory." As evidence, the report stated, Ford's airplane division was inviting its users to turn in their ships for conversion into single-motored jobs, with a 600 h. p. Cyclone or Hornet engine to replace the three 200 h. p. Whirlwinds. Supposed result: increased payload and speed. Supposed significance : that after five years of tri-motor production the company had found its line of work misdirected.

The rumor reached William B. Mayo, Ford's chief of aeronautical engineering, there lost most of its fever. The facts: Ford is developing, for freight service only, a transport about the same size as the tri-motor but with a single large engine. It will be slower than the tri-motors, which are intended for passenger lines, but will be cheaper to operate, because high speed is not essential and because only one pilot will be needed. The Ford company did advise owners of tri-motors that when their old planes are superseded by newer and speedier types of Ford tri-motors, they may easily be converted into single-motored freight planes.

Only existing air-freight service in the U. S. is Ford's own line between Detroit, Buffalo & Chicago. It has transported 10,000,000 Ib. of Ford products, does not accept outside patronage.

Narrowest Neck

In darkness "black as the shirts of the pilots," General Italo Balbo's squadron of twelve great Savoia-Marchetti seaplanes roared along the water off Bolama, west coast of Africa, to take-off for Brazil (TIME, Jan. 5). The first group of three black-winged ships, led by the General himself, vanished into the night, followed by a green-winged triad. Next came the red wings, but the third plane of that group faltered under its 10,000-lb. load, nosed down into the sea, killed its mechanic. The last triad, white-winged, was in the air ten minutes when its second plane crashed, burst into flame, sank with its entire crew of four. General Balbo learned their fate by radio, but he led on. Nothing was to be gained by turning back, after 14 months intensive rehearsal for this very moment. Moreover, before leaving Orbetello, near Rome, the handsome young air minister had told his chief, Benito Mussolini, "I foresee the loss of three out of the twelve machines." He would call the flight a success if only six reached Natal safely. Within an hour after the crashes two spare planes, left at Bolama, had taken off in pursuit of the squadron to replace their fallen brothers.

Through floating clouds, dimly illumined by the full moon which General Balbo had awaited, the formation flew south and west across the narrowest neck (1,860 mi.) of the South Atlantic, checking their course by radio with the seven Italian cruisers strung along the route

225 mi. apart. Now and then General Balbo would call the roll by radio. In mid-morning one of the replacement planes buckled under the strain, reported itself down with a leaky radiator near St. Paul's Rocks, over 500 mi. from its destination, where a cruiser promptly picked it up. The other replacement, too, flew with a leaky radiator for seven hours after its water was exhausted. Valiantly the crew forced it along by pouring mineral water, milk, brandy, whiskey into the radiator, but it finally came down 100 yards from a convoy cruiser. Later one of the downed planes was sunk in a collision with the cruiser which was towing it. Italo Balbo's prediction was fulfilled-- although four planes came down, only three were wrecked.

At the end of 17 hr. 10 min., the "black" triad glided through a driving rain onto the Potengy River at Natal, to the cheers of a great crowd of drenched Brazilians. On their tails came the green-wings; 25 min. later the four surviving reds and whites. Rome, of course, went mad with joy. And the Government let the crowds celebrate for a full day before divulging the tragedy of the flight's beginning.

General Balbo, 34, heavy set, with wavy brown hair, neatly trimmed beard and penetrating eyes, is one of Italy's most picturesque heroes. He was one of Mussolini's four Quadrumvirs of Fascismo who marched on Rome in 1922, has been closely associated with Il Duce ever since. To him is credited the invention of the castor-oil punishment for the early offenders against Fascismo.

Results of an Order

When a T. A. T.-Maddux airliner crashed into a southern California hillside and killed 16 occupants a year ago, Assistant Secretary of Commerce Clarence Marshall Young determined that there should be no more accidents like it if human care could prevent (TIME, Feb. 3; Feb. 10). He issued a series of "minimum requirements" of equipment and practice which all airline operators were compelled to meet in order to hold their licenses. Last week Secretary Young, and the industry at large, proudly surveyed the effect of his rigid administration: In the last six months of 1930 there were but three fatal accidents in scheduled air transport. Only two passengers were killed,-- both in the same plane, the pilot of which was also killed. The other deaths were the pilots of two mail planes. All three accidents occurred at night and in bad weather. Tentatively the Department "conservatively estimated" that scheduled planes flew 20,000,000 mi. in the six-month period.

The accident record appears in particularly bright contrast to that for the first six months of the year, when there were six fatal crashes with five pilots, one co-pilot and 22 passengers killed. In the last half of 1929 there were 15 fatal crashes, 17 pilots & crewmen, nine passengers killed.

Deaths & Decisions

God v. Pilot. One day in April 1927, a Lark biplane of Curtiss Flying Service came in from a joy-hop around old Curtiss Field, Long Island. As Pilot John Andrews banked for a last low turn over a corner of the field, a sharp up-current caught one wing, threw the plane into a sideslip, a crash. Pilot and passengers-- a Mrs. Mary Seaman and one Carl C. Stoll Jr.--were killed. Mrs. Seaman's husband brought suit in the New York Supreme Court, Suffolk County, for $25,000 damages. The jury decided: "An Act of God; no cause of action."

Attorney I. Balch Louis carried the case to a higher court, argued: God may have caused the wind-current; Pilot Andrews may not have foreseen it; but he should have foreseen it because of the prevalence of air-bumps around Curtiss Field; and he should not have executed any maneuver (such as a low bank) which--if a bump were encountered--might result in trouble. Hence he was negligent. ... In Brooklyn last fortnight the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court set aside the Act-of-God verdict, ordered a retrial on the ground that the hand of the Almighty, to the exclusion of the pilot's, had not been made sufficiently evident.

Expedition. In June 1929, a plane of the now-defunct Coastal Airways crashed en route from Albany to New York, fatally injuring Passenger Harold Gibbs. Equitable Life Assurance Society refused to pay double indemnity on Gibbs's $2,500 policy because of a stipulative clause that death in a "submarine or aeronautical expedition" did not call for double payment. Recently the Appellate Division ordered payment. Ground: the word expedition carries "a notion of exploratory or warlike enterprise. . . . The policy reader would not . . . conclude that a customary and usual trip or excursion in regular course of transportation by aeroplane would be considered an 'aeronautical expedition.' "

Both cases testified to aviation's rapid coming-of-age, supported the argument of thoughtful airmen that air travel is no longer a guesswork business beset by inexplicable accidents.

--The pilot, apparently lost in snow, fog and darkness, crashed into the Tchachapi Mountains of Southern California.

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