Aviation Research

There is much recent technical aviation news:

> The study of level flight speeds of more than 450 miles per hour is the purpose of a new $2,100,000 wind tunnel now under construction at Pasadena by the California Institute of Technology. The tunnel was financed by four members of the Aircraft War Production Council: Consolidated, Douglas, Lockheed, North American. An identical air tunnel is being built by Curtiss-Wright at Buffalo.

> To prevent the disabling "blackout" of a dive-bomber pilot at the moment he pulls out of a dive, Frederick P. Dillon of Los Angeles has invented a pilot's seat which automatically stretches the pilot out supine at the bottom of his dive. This posture change keeps the pilot's blood supply from being pulled away from his brain at dive's end. At the same time the mechanism relieves the pilot of control, turning the plane over to an automatic gyroscopic instrument. When the plane has leveled off, the pilot is returned to a sitting position, ready to take control.

> Future planes weighing 700 tons seem a "conservative" prediction, to H. D. Hoekstra of the Civil Aeronautics Administration.* Use of the metal beryllium he called a "tantalizing dream" because it would reduce the weight of a Douglas DC-3 (now 13 tons) by more than a ton. Glass fabric, bonded by plastics, seems to him an "almost Utopian material" for plane structures and wing covering. But he thinks that aluminum alloys will remain the leader for some time, with competition from stainless steel where corrosion is involved.

> An impact switch has been developed by Walter Kidde & Co. which automatically releases several pounds of compressed carbon dioxide gas into the engine compartment of a plane if it crashes, thus helps to put out fire even if the pilot is incapacitated. An adjustable trigger device prevents release of the gas by twists in flying, bumps in landing.

> Joseph M. Gordon, fluorescent and luminescent products consultant of New York, has made the use of black light for night flying,/- now usually confined to instrument-panel illumination, easily practical for all members of a bomber's crew.

Gordon's unit consists of plastic envelopes of assorted sizes and a lightweight portable black light lamp which can be placed on the navigator's table or worn like a miner's lamp. The envelopes are made of orange-red fluorescent-treated transparent plastic. The lamp may be the four-watt, 24-28-volt black light already standard with both the Army & Navy. When the lamp is held five inches above an envelope, the latter's fluorescent surface steps up the short ultraviolet waves enough to make them visible, not enough to destroy eye adaptation. The illumination, unlike that of an ordinary dim light, is confined to the reading surface, will light a 36-sq-in. map or photograph inside the envelope, but cannot be seen by an attacking plane.

*Heaviest U.S. plane to date is the Army's 82-ton B-19.

/-Complete eye adaptation to darkness takes at least 25 minutes, is destroyed by even one flash of white light. Black light (ultraviolet rays) does not interfere.

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