Three U. S. planes took on their fuel while in flight last week. Two of them used the well-tried hosing method. The third used a new catapulting device.
Hosing. A Keystone Army bomber over Manhattan and a Ryan monoplane over Fort Worth, Texas, each last week received their gasoline by hose. This was the method which enabled Captain Ira Eaker and his crew of four to keep the Army Fokker Question Mark above Southern California 150 hrs., 40 min., 16 sec., last January (TIME, Jan. 14), longer than any human had ever stayed in the air.
As the gas-thirsty plane flies in a straight course and at a steady speed, the refueling plane maneuvers into position above. When the two planes are in line, at even speed and 15 to 25 feet apart, the upper one drops a rubber hose. As the hose whips about, a man below catches its free end and inserts it into his fuel tank. Thus the two planes are connected by a sort of umbilical cord through which gasoline flows. In the Question Mark experiment, the feed hose would sometimes break loose, the men below would get drenched. But drenching was an incident which did not invalidate this refueling method. Food and messages were also passed between the two planes, a rope substituting for the hose.
Catapulting, previously experimented with, was tried out for the first time last week as an aid to a duration flight. The catapult roughly resembles a cannon on wheels. It can be trundled over a flying field wherever desired. Within the trough of the barrel a can of gasoline, oil or food is placed. The container rests against a powerful spring and has attached to it a rope. The rope hangs over two vertical, widely spaced arms fixed to the catapult chassis. In the mechanics of catapulting, a plane comes sweeping toward the machine about 20 feet from the ground. From the underside of the fuselage a rope dangles. At the rope's end is a metal hook. As the plane passes over the catapult the hook engages the contraption's rope (held horizontally by the vertical arms) and pulls. That pull releases the spring, which instantly projects the container from the trough at a speed of about 45 miles per hour. Such speed prevents a destructive jerk at the pick-up plane. Shock is further reduced by absorbers within the plane. After the flyers have snaggled their package they draw it into the plane through a trap door in the bottom of the fuselage, by a winch which the propeller air stream operates. Archie W. Card and Henry Bushmeyer invented the catapult.*