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Show Clipper Ship, Marvel of Skyways "i required to go from New York to j Chicago and back by rail. The trav-j eler could leave New York late Sat-j nrday night and be In London In i time to start the business week first thing Monday morning. Instead of a pilot and co-pilot, like, our land transport planes have, the clipper ship has a captain and a navigator, for it Is an ocean-going vessel. - Automatic Flying. Most of the flying Is done by an automatic pilot that leaves these two officers free to keep close watch on the course of the ship. The condition condi-tion of the engine Is entirely In charge of the ship's engineer. Near- ly all of the many Instruments, gages, dials and Indicators are banked In the engine room, which Is I " " v jl required to go from New York to j I I I Chicago and back by rail. Thetrav-j I s- 11 cler coulJ leave New York late Sat-j f ' ' 1 nrday night and be In London In: I " P "3"j 1 j time t0 start the business week first ' iai" t H thing Monday morning. -5 K j I Instead of a pilot and co-pilot, like t " tViit our land transport planes have, the ., ,N -JJ, ts clipper ship has a captain and a 1 fvSJ navigator, for it is an ocean-going ' l( u vessel. , 1 , i n?. ' t . - Automatic Flying. vj ' Most of the flying is done by an ' vy l automatic pilot that leaves these two . -s x V,' - - vi officers free to keep close watch on , nj f ' "'e course of the ship. The condl- " v t'on 01 the engine is entirely in ' "Vv, j . ' z.' 'i-- charge of the ship's engineer. Near- ! I V "e j"" Z- " J-vV" a" ' "ie many instruments, cJ't1 I VL --y -C"' gases diaIs and lndicators are LjJ.) J? . 1 N!55Ssf'! i banked in the engine room, which is -3-,' i i V -N i: i Above, Artist's Conception of 1,500-Passenger Transatlantic Plane Planned In Germany. Right, Pan-American Clipper Ship. Below, Maxim Gorki, Russia's Largest Plane, Which Crashed, Killing 48. By WILLIAM C. UTLEY THE world, with America in the lead, Is entering a new and glorious era of transportation. transpor-tation. It might be called . the Era of Realization of the Fantastic. Fan-tastic. Not so many years ago in fact within the memory of children still In school covers of magazines of the so-called "science" and "invention" "inven-tion" type were filled with artists' startling conceptions of great flying palaces, then weird in appearance, which were to tie together the far ends of the earth In the future. Blase passengers were shown reading read-ing newspapers, playing chess or even shuffle-board while their great winged carriers cleft the clouds far above the vast expanses of ocean. Novels of highly imaginative fic-.v fic-.v tlon, typified by the "Mars" stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, bristled our spines with high jinks on other oth-er planets where the members of scientifically superior civilizations flew about the faces of their respective respec-tive planets in spectacular hops of thousands of miles at a time. Such wild literary entertainment we were wont, for fear of appearing appear-ing too silly to our neighbors, to leave in upstairs bedrooms, reserving reserv-ing the space on the library table for Dickens, Thackeray, Edgar A. Guest and the family Bible. And while deep In our hearts we thought it was "swell" reading, we knew that It was really "impossible stuff !" Yet, before the year Is out, regular reg-ular scheduled passenger service will be in effect between the United Unit-ed States and China. Not flying palaces, perhaps, but at least flying hotels will soon link the newest and most progressive of the great powers with the oldest and most mysterious of nations on another side of the world. Surprising enough, the giant ships of the air look very much like the artists' conceptions which graced the sensational sensa-tional press of a few years back. Most surprising of all, we accept the real thing with far less amazement amaze-ment than we did Its Imaginative forerunner. Now that the New Era is actually upon us, we accept w-lth little wonder won-der the fact that German engineers are planning the construction of a transatlantic air liner that will carry car-ry 1.500 persons. This flying boat will be literally a hotel" on wings. It will sacrifice none of the comforts com-forts of the great ocean liners, with their sport decks, entertainment facilities, etc. Ship Cars by Air. There will be elevators from deck to deck. There will be room for travelers to take their own automobiles au-tomobiles across the sea with them. Garages will he provided for these; special hoisting machinery will lift the cars up Into the plane. The ocean steamship has Its sup-r'y sup-r'y of life boats to turn loose from the mother ship In case of emergency emer-gency at sen, and the proposed flying fly-ing boat will not be outdone In this respect, either, for room will be provided to house smaller nuxil-ary nuxil-ary planes. These will take off from the surface of the sea by a powerful catapult which will assure their getting Into the air. This ship may sound a little fantastic to us. but by this time we are used to having fantastic new contraptions accepted as practical facts almost overnight The Ger- man designers promise us that such a flying ship as this will be ready for travel over the ocean In the very near future. Hardly less spectacular is the American marvel of the skyways, Flying Clipper No. 7, which Is now completed as the first ship ever de signed specifically for transoceanic travel. It will begin service, probably prob-ably on the route across the Pacific, Pa-cific, some time this summer. It is now finishing tests which so far have proved It to be equal to the bullying of the elements and the once forbidding distance between continents. With Its inception Into service the period of pure experiment experi-ment will be over. None of the comforts of rail travel need be sacrificed aboard the clipper. clip-per. Soundproofing of all passenger compartments reduces motor noise so that it is no greater than the unannoying noise of a pullman car. The passenger deck, 43 feet long, has a ceiling six and one-half feet high, so that even tall men need not stoop in walking. Thirty passengers and a crew of five can be carried. The spacious lounge and dining room seats 16 at a time. For sleeping, the passenger passen-ger seats can be converted into twelve single and six double berths ; In case of a "full house" there are four double berths available in the lounge. So far It has not been decided how to apportion the available space to passengers and cargo. This may depend largely upon the popularity popu-larity of lnter-continental air travel. For example, It will be possible with one scheme of distribution to carry 12 passengers, the crew, and a cargo of 2,200 pounds on non-stop flights of 3,000 miles. The clipper has four engines, whose 3,200 developed horsepower can climb 1,000 feet a minute with a load of 51,000 pounds. The plane's cruising speed at 12,000 feet Is 1G3 miles an hour, but It can do 180 and more if necessary. It can soar more than four miles high. Safety Clipper Watchword. Safety has been the watchword In the design of the clipper. If one of the engines should fail, the other three could finish the flight, carrying the 51,000-pound burden. Even if two of them should go dead at the same time, the remaining two would maintain the altitude long enough to allow the captain and his men an opportunity to make ready for any emergency. The sea holds no terrors for this remarkable ship. It could make a forced landing in a stormy sea with more ease than the gray gull it resembles. It can land or take off In a sea with waves running five feet high. Former clipper ships have been assisted in the water by pontoons suspended from the wings. No. 7 has a supporting device, new to American design, which is called a "sponsoon" and might he likened to an additional wing. This sticks out a short distance from each side of the body at water level. It serves to house the fuel tanks, also. The No. 7 Is larger In every respect re-spect than the clipper ship which recently flew from California to Hawaii Ha-waii and back again. The latter's four engines are each of 700 horsepower, horse-power, totaling 400 less than the No. 7. It has a 114-foot wing spread, weighs 10.000 pounds empty, 40,000 pounds loaded, and Its maximum cruising range Is 3.000 miles. The new clipper's wings are 130 feet from tip to tip. It weighs 23.100 pounds empty and can add a useful load of 27.000 pounds. Its maximum range Is 4.000 miles. If milcacre between stops were reduced the ship could carry 24 passengers and a pay load amounting to several tons to Europe over the route made famous by CoL Charles A. Lindbergh. Lind-bergh. With normal stopping periods Included, In-cluded, a ship of this type could fly from New York to London In about 33 hours, averaging 1G0 miles an hour. That Is less than the time In' the center of the wing. No. 7 is truly a symbol of the steps ahead which have been made in transcontinental air travel France is linking up even its most : distant colonies . with the French capital by means of ships of thla size, one of which has already been completed, the Lieut.-de-Vaisseau-' Paris. This ship Is the largest seaplane sea-plane In the world, with a wing-. spread of nearly 50 meters and en-1 glnes which develop more than 5,200 horsepower. It weighs 37 tons and has a crew of eight. Service has already started between be-tween the French capital and points in French Colonial Africa. The Netherlands have ordered new Douglas Doug-las planes for transcontinental lines. Service has been going along on schedule for some time between the United States and various South American points served by Pan-American Pan-American Airways. The Graf Zeppelin Zep-pelin is so regular in its schedule b-tween b-tween Germany and Brazil that no one mentions Its arrivals and departures de-partures any more. Use Isolated Islands. Since early this year, American ships have been busy carrying supplies sup-plies of all kinds food, clothing, cows, chickens, tools and building materials to once Isolated Islands in the Pacific ocean, so that they can be converted into habitable landing land-ing stations In the most Important of all the new sea routes, the one from the United States to China. The longest hop on this journey will be the one from California to Hawaii, a distance of 2,400 miles, to be covered in a little more than 17 hours, as the Pan-American clipper clip-per commanded by Captain Mustek covered it a few weeks ago. From Hawaii, the planes will go to Guam, Wake, Midway, the Philippine Islands Is-lands and Canton, China. England, France and Holland air services have attempted to lay the plans for air services to China, but have been stopped at the Chinese border. Germany alone of the European Eu-ropean nations has been able to get in with air lines. We hold this advantage: ad-vantage: Rapid and uninterrupted flight Is possible across the Pacific, while land flight from European nations na-tions to China face the obstacle of frequent stops for Inspection when crossing International boundary lines. Russian Marvel Crashes. With all the clipper ships considered, consid-ered, perhaps the most unusual of all the giants of the air was the Ill-fated Russian ship, the Maxim Gorki. It weighed 42 tons, carried 63 persons, had eight engines of a total of 7.000 horsepower, flew lfiO miles an hour and cost $4,350,-000. $4,350,-000. In It were a complete photographic photo-graphic studio, a photo-engraving plant, an electrically driven rotary printing press capable ol turning out 8,000 newspapers an hour, a radio broadcasting studio, talking movie equipment, a restaurant-lounge. restaurant-lounge. 16 telephones, an observation observa-tion saloon, business offices, sleeping sleep-ing quarters and a sound amplifier system. It was used, of course, for Soviet propaganda purposes. The crashing of the Gorki, with the loss of everyone on board, during dur-ing maneuvers over Moscow, was something of a shock to the builders build-ers of all large airplanes. It must be pointed out, however, that the accident ac-cident was no fault of the ship. A pilot of a smaller plane, stunting I against orders, ran Into it, head-on.) The Insubordinate flier was him- self killed In the crash. Not even the Eensatlonal maga-! lines predicted such unbelievable ' wonders as a flying newspaper plant, ! radio studio and moving picture the-j ster. |