Aeronautics: Sea Chain

A perennial gift to Sunday feature editors for the last five years has been the Armstrong Seadrome, vividly imaginative project for a chain of floating airports across the Atlantic. The perfect publicity subject, it offered serious readers masses of data on construction of huge platforms, stabilized high above the waves by means of weighted pillars, on problems of anchorage, navigation, operation, economics. For gumchewers there were exciting pictures of a seadrome at night, in midocean position, with flags flying, floodlights blazing, beacons stabbing the dark sky, gorgeous express planes gliding down to safe landings. Even the windows of the drome’s elegant hotel underlying the deck were pricked out with cozy lights.

Last week the Armstrong Seadrome leaped out of its accustomed setting in the feature supplements to land on page one of the nation’s press when the Federal Government indicated that it was ready to help finance the project, that it might even build and operate the whole system itself.

Money. For weeks Inventor Edward R. Armstrong & backers have been trying to borrow $30,000,000 from Public Works Administration to build five seadromes and string them out to Spain by way of the Azores. Aside from obvious national advantages to the U. S. the application cited such claims as:

¶ Construction and installation jobs would employ 10,000 men for two years. ¶ Required would be 125.000 tons of steel, five miles of anchor chain, 45 miles of cable, five 1,500-ton anchors, large quantities of electric equipment, radio apparatus, beacons, pipe, fittings, etc., etc. ¶ Airline operators would order $10,000,000 worth of new planes for trans-atlantic service as soon as work was begun on the dromes.

¶ Yearly operating cost of the five dromes, including overhead: $2,250,000. ¶ Yearly income after the fifth year would total $11.418,000, to be derived as follows: mail, $6,000,000; express, $105,000; passengers, $4,538,000; hotels, shops, concessions, hangar space, fuel & oil, $775.000. The system would collect $70 from each transatlantic fare (estimated at $350), $25 from each traveller to Bermuda, $10 from each week-end drome visitor.

At first Inventor Armstrong hoped to finance his scheme with private capital. The du Fonts, for whom he used to work as a consulting engineer, helped him in his early researches. He expected substantial backing also from General Motors until Depression upset his plans. Last March he organized Seadrome Ocean Dock Corp., with himself as president and majority stockholder. His backers include GM’s Board Chairman Lammot du Pont and President John Howard Pew of Sun Oil Co.

Government Take~Over? While Sea-drome Ocean Dock Corp.’s application was pending before PWA last week. Secretary of Commerce Daniel Calhoun Roper pertinently asked: So long as the Government would have to finance such a scheme anyway, why not let the Government take over and run the whole show? He detailed Director of Aeronautics Eugene Luther Vidal to examine the project. Director Vidal reported that the idea in general looked feasible, recommended that PWTA provide funds for an experiment by the air branch of the Department of Commerce. Secretary Roper precipitately announced that PWA would allocate $1,500,000 to build a quarter section of one sea-drome behind the Delaware Breakwater. The job could be done in four months, would then be “thoroughly service-tested before a commitment is made for a full unit estimated to cost about $6.000,000.”

Hardly was the Department of Commerce plan launched before it hit a snag. Secretary of Interior Ickes, PWA chief, coldly denied that any $1.500,000 had been allocated. Said he: “There are international and legal questions to be worked out. . . . The matter has been referred to the Department of State and the Department of Justice.” Two points to be settled: could public works fund be used for construction outside U. S. sovereignty? null a U. S. seadrome chain across the Atlantic produce angry growls from foreign powers?

Objections. Later in the week sour notes were raised in Manhattan where Inventor Armstrong appeared before the aviation section of the society of Automotive Engineers. His chief heckler was famed Pilot Clarence Duncan Chamberlin (New York-Germany). Pilot Chamberlin’s objections:

¶ “If they build one of those things and stick it out in the ocean it will be merely a monument to someone’s stupidity and not much else.”

¶To navigate by radio through bad weather, and land blind on a platform 300 ft. by 1,225 ft in midocean, is “utterly impracticable if not suicidal.” ¶ The seadrome’s deck, rising 100 ft. above the ocean surface, would frequently be obscured by low clouds. A plane coming down through the clouds would risk collision with the drome. ¶ When the Germans perfect their system of ship-to-shore flights, “a fair weather seadrome service will be a relic of the past.” ¶ If millions must be spent on seadromes, let the whole sum be used for one or two “man-sized” seadromes on which blind landings could be “not only possible but safe.” Although spaced farther apart than 500 mi., such dromes could easily be reached by ships of long cruising radius.

Inventor Armstrong, an aggressive man with a long, beetling upper lip. who was a circus strong man in the days before he became an able engineer, stood his ground firmly, insisted his dromes, equipped with a radio blind-landing device, were the only practical solution for the Atlantic air passage.