Aeronautics: Safer Airmail

For nearly three years the Post Office Department has been experimenting with asbestos mail pouches, but not yet has it found one which will protect mail from being charred in the burning wreckage of an airplane.* Asbestos pouches are used only for registered mail and jewelry. Despite the fire hazard, the Post Office had a proud record to announce last week. In the fiscal year ended last June it lost only .01% of 8,846,000 Ib. of airmail carried. All of the loss was by fire. In the previous year the loss was .03%; the year before that .06%.

But pilots flew and guarded the mail last year at a slightly greater cost of life than before. In fiscal 1931-32, 14 pilots met death in 32,200,000 mi. of flight, an average of one fatality for each 2,300,000 mi. flown. In the previous year there were eight deaths in 21,000,000 mi., or one in 2,670,000 mi.

* In Berlin Dr. Arthur Eichengrun, authority on non-inflammable cellulose products, is experimenting with a fire-extinguishing compound with which airplane materials might be impregnated. When subjected to heat, the compound is supposed to emit fire-quenching gases. A test reported by the New York Times last week: one-half of a miniature blimp was impregnated with Dr. Eichengriin’s solution, shut off from the other half by a bulkhead. The untreated portion was ignited, blazed away in a flash; the treated half remained intact, kept the whole structure aloft.