Glider Pilots Set New Records for Staying Aloft
WHEN The Outlook printed Lieutenant Tinker’s article “Statesmanship Run Wild,” it presented the latest news as to the achievements of the Germans with motorless airplanes. That article stated the surprising fact that a German had succeeded in remaining in the air without a motor for twelve and a half minutes. That article appeared in The Outlook for August 16. Since then German aviators have apparently proved that a man in a glider under proper atmospheric conditions can keep aloft indefinitely. If there is any limit to the time which a man can remain in the air in a glider, it would seem to be the limit of human endurance. First came the news of a German remaining aloft an hour or more. This feat of Herr Martens aroused extraordinary enthusiasm among the spectators. Then came the news of Herr Hentzen’s feat of keeping up for two hours and ten seconds, as we reported last week. Since then Herr Hentzen has added an hour to his record. More than that, other fliers have remained in the air for periods far exceeding the one which was a record less than a month ago. These German fliers not only keep in the air, but remain perfectly still like a kite, or soar in great sweeping curves or with sharp dives.
Not less extraordinary is the fact that some of these gliders have succeeded in landing on points higher than those from which they started.
American Glider
Still further, in these tests in Germany, a Dutch aviator, Herr Fokker, the designer of the famous Fokker airplane used by the Germans during the war, glided aloft for three minutes with a passenger.
The French trials which have been taking place have resulted in no such sensational results. Edmund T. Allen, the American who took part in the French trials has in the meantime gone to try his luck in Germany.
A special despatch to the New York “Evening Post” says that the feats of the Germans are the result of six years of experimentation, involving studies of the flight of birds with moving pictures of birds on the wing. One of the results of this experimentation was the discovery of the use which a bird made of its head in flight. Study of these birds’ heads convinced the Germans that the birds felt the air with their heads, and were thus enabled to adjust their muscular movements to the air currents. As a consequence, this despatch by Samuel Dashiell says, the Germans went to work to devise a method of sensitizing a man’s face, and they succeeded in doing so by the use of a liquid; so that “the pilot becomes endowed with a kind of sixth sense.” That, at least, is the story which this correspondent gets from a German aviator. The experiments are said to be continuing at Magdeburg and do not come under the control of the Allies. One may believe this German aviator’s story or not; but the records of the flights that the Germans have made seem indisputable.
Source: Outlook, 6 Spetember 1922