No Hands

It was an unusually fine day at Brize Norton Aerodrome, near London. The U.S. Air Forces C-54 let down to a perfect landing. Out piled 14 passengers and crewmen, including U.S. scientists and a Royal Air Force observer. No one had touched the controls all the way from Newfoundland. The plane had taken off, flown the Atlantic, and landed without a pilot.

About ten hours before the landing at Brize Norton last week, the C-54 was taxied out on a runway at Stephenville, Newfoundland, and pointed in the general direction of London. Colonel J. M. Gillespie, her commander, pushed a button. From then on, the plane behaved as if an invisible crew were working her controls. The four engines roared for the takeoff, the brakes let go, the plane sped down the runway and climbed up over the Atlantic while the wheels retracted automatically. At 9,000 ft., it leveled off and headed for London at normal cruising speed.

The commanding robot was a snarl of electronic equipment affectionately known as "the Brain." Everything it did on the long flight was "preset" before the start. In mid-Atlantic, the Brain picked up radio signals from a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. Later it picked up a beam from Droitwich, England, and followed that for a while. When the plane neared Brize Norton, the wide-awake Brain concentrated on a special landing beam from an R.A.F. radio and made a conventional automatic landing.

On the way over, the crew checked the course and watched the instruments. Most of them had little to do. They played cards and read books. (Reports said nothing about the flight engineer, who probably nursed his engines as usual.)

The Brain, whose official name is "Automatic Flight Controller," is not a new device; it has been under gradual improvement for several years. Before attempting the Atlantic hop, it had steered "the same airplane on long automatic flights around the U.S.

Nor is the Brain a guided missile steerer. It would not have reached Brize Norton if the British had not sent out a beam to lead it. In wartime, enemy countries would not be so helpful. The Brain's principal use will be in commercial airliners, to help pilots keep on their courses in bad weather and land in thickest soup.

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