AERONAUTICS: Super Seaplane

TIME has recently (Nov. 17) described the Super Airship being built for the British Air Ministry; now comes a Super Seaplane for the U. S. Navy. A gigantic flying boat is to be used for long-distance scouting in the Pacific. Appropriately enough, it has been ordered from the Boeing Airplane Co. of Seattle, Wash. Fully loaded, the seaplane weighs 24,000 Ib. It has a span of wing of 87 ft. 6 in., a chord or width of 14 ft., a total area in its biplane wings of 2,400 sq. ft. The sturdy 60-ft. hull, built of the wonderfully light and strong duralumin, is lighter and less liable to soakage than the wooden-hull type of construction it Displaces, can keep afloat in the roughest sea. The wings, while fabric-covered, are also metal in their structure. Two huge Packard engines of 800 horsepower each revolve at 2,200 times a minute—hence their large power for comparatively small weight—while the propellers are geared down and therefore work more slowly and efficiently. The engines are placed in tandem, with a propeller at front and rear end. Thus, if one motor ceases functioning, there still remains sufficient power to sustain flight, and there exists no dangerous tendency to slew the airplane violently around—as is the case when there are two motors, one on either wing. Nothing illustrates progress in design so much as comparison. The NC-4, which crossed the Atlantic five years ago, had the same power as the new U.S. Navy boat—four Liberty motors of 400 horsepower each. It weighed 4,000 Ib. more because it lacked metal construction in wings and hull. It had a maximum speed of only 75 m.p.h., while the new boat will easily attain 100 m.p.h. Finally the NC-4’s range was only 1,600 mi. with every tank brimming with gasoline, while the new boat will have a range of 2,600 mi. Incidentally, this is the greatest range ever embodied in any airplane. True, Macready and Kelly flew 2,600 mi. non-stop across the Continent and still had gas to spare in their Fokker monoplane. But their ship was stripped bare. The new seaplane, when making a single hop from San Diego to Honolulu, will carry not just gas, but a full crew of five men and powerful fighting and bombing equipment.