England has long boasted the so-called "Queen Bee" type of airplane which takes off, flies and lands without a soul aboard, being controlled by radio from the ground or by an accompanying plane. As yet it has no military importance because the system breaks down as soon as the "Queen Bee" gets out of sight of the operator. Last week the U. S. Army Air Corps announced in enigmatic but unusually enthusiastic language for that reticent group that it had gone the "Queen Bee'' one better. According to the Air Corps, an old single-motored Fokker had taken off from Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, with three men aboard, climbed to some 2,500 ft. where one of the men cut in the Sperry gyropilot and threw a mysterious switch. Then all three men leaned back with folded arms while the plane flew ten miles to Patterson Field and made a perfect landing, controlled not by a ground operator but solely by its own ability to follow a radio beam.
The search for an infallible blind landing system has proceeded now for years with constant view-halloos but never a commercial installation. Whether the Army's new device at last fills the bill was, in the absence of real evidence last week, doubted by most airfolk. Most promising indication was the fact that an integral part of the system is the Sperry gyropilot. This extraordinary device is already capable of so many feats that it is not difficult for some professionals to believe that it can effect blind landings.
The Sperry gyropilot is named for famed Inventor Elmer Ambrose Sperry who was the first man to bridle the principles inherent in the gyroscope. The gyroscope is a carefully balanced flywheel and gimbal assembly so mounted that when at rest it is free to turn in any direction. When spinning it has a quality known as "rigidity in space" or gyroscopic inertia. Turn or move the gyroscope mounting and the flywheel will continue to rotate in the same plane. This stability provides a known factor which can be used to determine or counteract all sorts of variables. Sperry Gyroscope Co. Inc. sells a gyrocompass which is standard equipment on most liners, gyrostabilizer to prevent ships from rolling, gyro-horizon to indicate the attitude of planes in relation to the horizontal, directional gyro to indicate direction for steering a straight course. Greatest refinement of all is the gyropilot, which is standard on most airline transports. It has two simple gyros, one (directional gyro) spinning on a horizontal axis, the other (gyro-horizon) spinning on a vertical axis. The pilot sets a course on the directional gyro and the plane follows it. If an air current tips up one wing, the movement of the plane around the rigid gyro activates the controls to counteract the motion. The gyropilot is so expert that it gives passengers a smoother ride than can the pilot himself.