Second Flying Elephant

The empty engine mounts of the world's largest flying boat still gaped last week like empty tooth sockets. But in the well-guarded assembly building at the great Martin aircraft plant at Middle River, Md. the four 2,000-h.p. Wright Duplex Cyclones that will drive Glenn Martin's "No. 170" were on hand; so were the huge props. It would not be long before Martin's 170, called by the Navy XPB2M-I,-- would be ready for her first trip aloft.

To airmen who had seen Douglas' gigantic, 82-ton 6-19 (TIME, April 28, July 7) the 70-ton Martin 170 did not seem impossibly huge. But she was unmistakably a whopper. Last week she sat in the hangar where she had gradually been collecting herself over the past twelvemonth, after three earlier years of design and tests. Like a frowzy dowager with her hair put up in curlers, she was webbed over with girders, hydraulic jacks, assorted scaffolding; more than 100 workmen, looking the size of nits, swarmed over and through her.

Martin's executive vice president Joseph Hartson explained her disheveled condition. The scrambling Lilliputians were making the last of the static tests to be sure that she was sound of limb. She was being distorted by jacks, and her most fractional yieldings under the strain were being read to make sure that she would hold together under the buffeting of flight and rough-water landings.

Cautious Joe Hartson would not compare No. 170 with the Big, but he gave a few figures that were comparisons in themselves. She is precisely as powerful (8,000 h.p.). Her wingspread, a vast 200 feet, is 12 ft. less than Douglas' bomber. She is 117 feet long (132 for the 6-19). Newsmen estimated that the top of her tail was 30 feet off the floor, which would make it about ten feet short of B-IQ'S. Joe Hartson said 170 carried better than 10,000 gallons of gasoline (6-19 capacity, 11,000), but refused to give figures on her range, except to say that she could fly to Europe and back (as 6-19 can). Her armament, like B-19's, was a secret, but reporters could see at least six power-driven turrets.

Her expected performance is secret, too. To many a layman, the big Douglas' performance (cruising speed 186 m.p.h.) was a bitter disappointment, even though the Army Air Corps had patiently explained that the 6-19 was built not so much for use as for experience in building big ships. Probably there will never be another 6-19, but the lore learned in her building will go into many a fancier ship.

Perhaps the Martin 170, made in a later day, may be the first of a long line. Or perhaps she, too, may be the only one of her breed. But even if she turns out to be as slow as January molasses, she has already taught her makers many a valuable lesson that could be learned no other way.

-- Meaning: experimental (X) patrol bomber (PB), second of manufacturer's related design (2), Martin (M), first specimen in its own series (i.).

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