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Show DIRIGIBLE TO LAND ON SEA IS PLANNED Burney Designs Working Model of Airship. London. The amphibian airship Is poking Its blunt nose over the aviation horizon. After months of experimenting, experiment-ing, In secret. It has been brought to the working-model stage by Commander Com-mander Sir Dennis Burney, builder and designer of the giant British dirigible K-100. The seagoing dirigible already Is being called a revolutionary creation. Five times as big as the Graf Zeppelin, Zep-pelin, two and one-half times as big as the R-I0O, it Is designed to alight on water as well as on land. It can be moored to a buoy floating in sheltered shel-tered harbors; It will be able to maneuver stnbiy In a 85-mlle-an-hour side wind, Commander Burney asserts, and can be towed to a dock at tbe water's edge as If It were an ocean Uner reuchlng port. Has Great Possibilities. If It comes up to Commander Bur-ney's Bur-ney's expectations, It will emancipate airships from the thraldom of fixed landing fields, mooring masts and ground crews. So far It Is little more than a project fortified by successful experiments with working models. Its construction has not been undertaken by the air ministry, and several years must elupse before Commander Burney Bur-ney finds the money necessary for his tnsk. But he Is determined to go ahead with his experiments and with the ultimate building. Already he foresees a day when bis mammoth silvery airship will float out of the clouds toward New York bar-. bar-. bor, carrying 150 or more passengers. To watchers on the Battery she will be a puzzling sight like and yet unlike un-like the Graf Zeppelin and the Los Angeles, An-geles, with which New York is familiar fa-miliar Her long, gleaming envelope will be flattened above and below, giving giv-ing her an elliptical shape when seen bead-on Instead of the circular cross-section cross-section shape of existing Zeppelins. Pontoons to Take Ballast Beneath her envelope will be a hull with giant pontoons, built on the lines of a ship. Instead of turning south toward Lakehurst, she will glide down gently, slowly, to the surface of some sheltered water perhaps Jamaica bay or the Great South bay, where there is comparative freedom from shipping. The two great pontoons will scoop water for ballast, thus holding the airship air-ship down while her passengers are taken off In small boats. Finally the enormous bulk of the dirigible, weighing weigh-ing 350 tons, can be towed like the Berengaria or Mujcstlc to a dock at the water's edge. What Burney has done with his seagoing sea-going airship Is simply to make the water his landing field. It has necessitated neces-sitated fur-reaching structural Innovations Innova-tions to prevent the airship from being be-ing blown over by a strong side wind. The most outstanding of these Is, of course, the elliptical shape a daring and frankly experimental departure In aircraft design. It achieves four objects: a reduction In wind resistance, resist-ance, a reduction of height a wider spread for the all-Important pontoons, and an Increase In the dynamic lift at a given speed. ' |