Aviation's Future as Predicted by Harry Bruno in 1942
Larry Dighera
Aviation's Future as Predicted by Harry Bruno in 1942
Below is an excerpt from Wings Over America written by Harry Bruno,
the publicity agent of the early flying celebrities such as Lindbergh,
Earhart, Markham, ... Bruno became active in aviation as a youngster
at the time just after the Wrights successfully marketed the first
aircraft ever sold to the US Army. Bruno had designed, constructed
and flown (off a barn roof) an aircraft in 1910 at the age of 17.
In 1917 Bruno joined the Canadian Royal Flying Corps, as the American
air forces were only open to college graduates. After WW-I Bruno was
forced to take a job with the New York Globe to keep from starving;
aviation couldn't provide adequate income for a pilot in those days.
His journalistic enterprises lead to an offer to become a publicity
man for Manufacturers Aircraft Association.
The MAA's goal was to keep aviation before the public in an effort to
stop the American aviation industry from collapsing. This assignment
brought Bruno into contact with numerous aviation personalities and
pioneers. He soon embarked on a private enterprise which would handel
the press and publicity of aviation products, people, and events.
Here Bruno writes from the prospective of having rubbed elbows with
the movers-and-shakers of aviation for decades, a series of
predictions of the state of aviation as it might be in 1952. Many of
his predictions have become commonplace, and many remain yet to be
perfected. Much of his sentiment still rings true today. But, 10,000
horsepower electric motors powered by electromagnetic waves
transmitted from the ground? We're still waiting.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NEXT TEN YEARS
The gods of aviation have one rule which all must obey: always look
forward. I have in the previous chapters written only of what is now
the past, talked of over three decades of aviation as it was. But in
aviation it is always tomorrow's picture that looms largest on the
horizon. In aviation, frontiers keep falling, man's race against time
and space grows increasingly faster. And in September 1942, as I
write these lines, the story of tomorrow is, as in 1910, still the
most exciting aviation story I can tell. Today the world is seething
with an epic struggle between the forces of progress and reaction. If
the United Nations triumph, aviation will then lead the march of world
progress as it has never been led before.
Look ten years ahead to a post-war world in which the defeated Axis
gangs are a thing of the past, and you see one of the most powerful
reasons for each and every one of us to buckle down and do our utmost
to guarantee this victory. Thanks to aviation, this is one of the
most glorious ages in world history.
Not long ago, Raymond Clapper toured the world for his newspaper
syndicate. His trip to all of the leading United Nations fronts and
capitals was made entirely by air, within a period of six months. On
his return, he began to think of his experience-six months to travel
around the universe, to study the problems of many nations, to speak
to hundreds of citizens in a score of nations. It did not take him
long to realize that at last the airplane had arrived as an instrument
of progress, that it had not only changed world journalism, but also
made journalism a more powerful thing. In the post-war world, Clapper
realized, there would be no foreign correspondents-American reporters
stationed in Washington, in New York, in Chicago, in Los Angeles would
dash off to Europe, Asia, and Africa regularly in planes that got them
to far off news spots in less than twenty-four hours. Washington
correspondents would, as part of their assignments, make annual world
tours to gain a world perspective of their problems. Chicago would be
part of the regular "beat" of a London commentator; Chunking would be
one of the news sources a San Francisco feature writer would visit
regularly in the course of a month's work. In this, Clapper saw a
world of greater understanding, diminishing race and national hatreds,
and a universal rather than a national approach to all major
problems.
But more than journalism would be broadened. In the post war world,
aviation will become the greatest single instrument of progressive
education in history. Shepherds will fly from the crags of Tibet to
universities in Vladivostok, and fly back to their native villages as
doctors. Half-naked natives from the forests of Malay will fly to
universities in California or Australia and fly back to their native
villages as agronomists and physicists. Plane loads of professors
will take off from Madrid to train South American Indians in new
universities established near new airfields in Colombia, in Venezuela,
in Peru.
Until the beginning of the war, many American schools ran annual
excursions of students to Washington. In the post-war world, schools
everywhere will transport plane loads of students to far countries
regularly. California high school youngsters will spend two weeks
study-vacations in a China reached after a fast hop in a plane or a
huge dirigible. The graduating classes of Hudson's Bay Eskimo
elementary schools will fly to New York or Chicago for supervised
study-visits. The whole world will become the oyster of any American
with a two weeks' vacation-and the low cost of airplane and airship
travel will make a most enlightening vacation in Norway or India a
reality for the Detroit mechanic or the Boston librarian. All
this-and more-can be accomplished with the planes and airships that
exist today. But the world of tomorrow will fly greater, faster, more
economical flying machines and airships than now exist.
The big planes of the next decade will glide through the stratosphere
at speeds of 6oo miles an hour and more. They will enable a man to
breakfast in New York and have dinner in Paris on the same day.
Citizens of Detroit and Denver will be able to do exactly the same,
even though their planes will fly non-stop from their home towns to
Europe and South America.
Their planes will not be patterned after the huge flying boats that
now cross the oceans. The new planes of 1952 will be huge
stratosphere land planes, whose sealed, oxygen-equipped cabins will
carry more than two hundred passengers in all the luxury and comfort
travelers enjoyed on luxury steamships like the Queen Mary and the
Normandie. They will be powered by banks of gasoline burning engines
Of 5,000 horsepower each. But the use of gasoline, in aviation, will
some day be as obsolete as the era of steam in automobiles. Electric
engines of 10,000 horsepower, receiving their impulses through rays
transmitted from ground stations, will supplant gasoline engines
within two decades of the end of the war.
Passengers with more time, out for a more economical ocean crossing,
will ride in the comfortable helium filled dirigibles of the new
world. These giant cargo and passenger airships will cross the
Atlantic in about thirty-six hours, carrying fast freight and about
twice as many passengers as the fast planes.
Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the last shot is
fired in World War 11. The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as well
known as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the
horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation.
Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter. With
these remarkable machines, the family will take off from the backyard
or the roof hangar, climb straight to the level authorized by
government regulation, fly on to their destination, and land on earth,
on a roof top, or on water-as fancy dictates. Instead of wheels, the
craft is mounted on rubber floats-inasmuch as it rises and descends
like an elevator anywhere, wheels are not needed. These 'copters will
be so safe and will cost so little to produce that small models will
be made for 'teenage youngsters. These tiny 'copters, when school
lets out, will fill the skies as the bicycles of our youth filled the
pre-war roads.
The great sport of our youth will be motorless flight. Glider meets
will be held all over the country, much like the sailing meets of
other years. But gliders will not only be used for amusement. Powerful
cargo-carrying sky trucks will tow trains of cargo carrying
gliders-since all but the bulkiest slow freight will be carried by
airplane or glider-towing, cargo-carrying dirigibles. The glider will
also become the great transportation medium of commuting.
Glider trains, towed by a lead passenger-carrying plane that will fly
hundreds of miles, will drop gliders carrying local passengers at
airports all along the route. Thus, a trip from New York to Albany,
for instance, would be made in a glider attached to the New
York-Buffalo sky train. Passengers would board the train at the
overhead station of Rockefeller Center. The sky-train, which started
from LaGuardia field, would pick up the Albany glider at Rockefeller
Center (and pick it up in flight, too) and continue on towards
Buffalo. Over Albany, the conductor-pilot of the Albany glider will
cut his craft loose from the train and glide to earth. By the time
the lead plane reached Buffalo, he will have dropped all of his
gliders along the route.
All aircraft will have television weather survey sets, enabling them
to see and hear weather conditions along the routes that lie ahead.
In this manner, they will be able to fly above or around storm areas
and add to the comfort of each flight. All airplane factories will be
entirely underground, air-conditioned and deep enough so that no
aerial bomb can ever hurt them. Airports will also go underground and
what will appear to be an empty field will suddenly become active when
a plane lands on it. A quick taxi to a designed spot, and down will
go the underground hangar as the surface sinks under the operation of
a large elevator. An international aerial police force, armed with
the newest type of air weapon, will have no trouble maintaining order
and understanding.
A new army of inventors, designers, and pilots-worthy successors to
the Wrights, Curtiss, Martin, Douglas, Sikorsky, and Seversky and the
many other great pioneers who built American aviation-will rise to
carry on air progress still further. Nor must we forget the role of
women in the aviation of the future. Some of the newest and best
designed planes will come from the drawing boards of women engineers.
In the future, they will take a place equal to the men in the entire
aviation picture.
So here it is a preview of things to come in the air-predictions that
are a lot more conservative than the flat prediction, in 1900, that
before the century was over man would build a machine that would
really fly. If anything, most of my friends-men like Igor Sikorsky
and C. M. Keys, who read this chapter, for instance-mark the
predictions down as being too earthbound, too conservative. And this
should tell you that most of you will live to see them all come true.
After more than, three decades in aviation, I can only look forward to
seeing greater advances in the skies. As I write these lines, there
is abundant proof that most of the things I predicted are being worked
out already. Within the past few days, for instance, the U. S. Air
Transport Command revealed that one single cargo plane made ten fights
in six days between Brazil and Africa, carrying not only gasoline and
supplies but also military personnel. Cargo planes hauled 900,000
pounds of freight in one week between two even wider points. Truly a
mild revolution in transportation is happening before our very eyes.
Going back to December 7, 1941, when the U. S. was forced into the
World War II, it should be remembered that this was only thirty-eight
years after the Wrights first flew for a few fleeting minutes at Kitty
Hawk And yet, on that date, the one word that was on everyone's lips
was "Air-power." The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was carried out
by bomber and fighter planes: the chief objectives of the Axis bombers
were the American air bases in the Pacific. When we lost control of
the air over the Philippines, even the genius of Douglas MacArthur on
the ground could only delay rather than avert the loss of the islands
to the aggressors. When we retained control of the air over Midway
and the Hawaiian Islands, the Japanese lost.
As we went to war, the Army Air Forces were headed by
Lieutenant-General Henry H. Arnold; the Navy's by Rear Admiral John H.
Towers, Major-General Lewis H. Brereton defended the Pacific outposts
first, then went to take over the American air army in the Middle
East. And in these three men, you get an idea of the extreme youth of
aviation: Arnold and Brereton learned to fly from Orville Wright
himself long before World War 1; Towers learned to fly from Glenn
Curtiss in 1911.
In July, 1942, when the United States prepared to launch the European
second front Hitler had dreaded since the Red Armies of Soviet Russia
threw his timetables out of order, the man chosen Commander in Chief
of the United States Army Air Forces in Europe was Major General Carl
Spaatz. A World War I hero, Spaatz 'was one of the army flying
officers who had the sense and the moral courage to testify for Billy
Mitchell at the court-martial in 1925. Taking the stand as a qualified
expert, Spaatz backed Mitchell's claims that American military planes
of the period were faulty, and that command of the air was vital to
national survival. A few years later, in i 1929, Spaatz piloted the
Army plane, Question Mark, to a new endurance record of 150 hours and
40 minutes.
Orville Wright himself was still very much alive in Dayton, Ohio-not
exactly proud of the devastating destructive powers military airplanes
had developed but excited as a child about the speed and the range of
the peaceful passenger and private planes of the day. Glenn Martin,
who entered the field in 1909, was turning out thousands of military
and civil planes in his big plants at Baltimore. Pioneers like Frank
Coffyn, Lansing Callan, Beckwith Havens, and others flying as
barnstormers before 1914, were still active in flying, helping their
government's air defenses in many ways. And while these pioneer
airmen did their share, the number-one tenant of the White House was
the same Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, as Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, had established the first Bureau of Naval Aeronautics.
I mention these names to show how young aviation really is-and to
reassure those of you who feel that world air leadership might have
been lost by America. Aviation might have been neglected in America
after the first world war, but the active aviation brains of the
earliest days were never idle.
Looking back, I can only be amazed at the speed with which people
progressed in aviation. My own favorite story along these lines
starts in 1911, when, as a youngster, I was haunting aviation meets.
It was after Bernie Mahon and I had flown our Brumah planes, and after
I had promised my father to keep out of planes until I was twenty-one.
In September 1911, I went to the Belmont Park Aviation meet. There I
walked around the planes on the ground until I came to an abrupt halt
before a huge Farman biplane. I was utterly fascinated, walking
around it a dozen times, patted its wings, peeped into the pilot's
seat.
Then I saw Clifford B. Harmon strolling toward me, and recognized him
at once from his pictures in the aviation magazines. An enormously
successful real estate man, Harmon was one of the earliest fliers and
promoters of aviation. After taking up flying as a sport, he had made
its development a religion. Most of the big meets that brought public
attention to aviation in those days found him among their heaviest
backers. Harmon smiled at me and asked me how I liked his plane. For
a moment, I was speechless. Then I somehow got up enough courage to
tell him how much I liked it. "And please, Mr. Harmon," I said, a bit
uncertainly, "could-could I sit in your plane for just a minute?"
"Why?" Harmon asked.
I stood there for a moment, wondering if I should tell him what was on
my chest. Then I saw the friendly gleam in his eyes, and I started to
talk. Once I started, I flung thousands of words at him-about Bernie
and myself, and the two Brurnahs, and all my dreams of some day
becoming a good pilot. When I was done, Harmon let me sit in the
cockpit, and after I climbed in, he explained to me how each of the
controls functioned. "I'm sorry I can't offer you a flight today," he
said. "But I'm not going up until tomorrow and then in competition."
"Oh that's all right, Mr. Harmon," I said.
He knew I was lying and my disappointment stood out all over my face.
"No it isn't," he said, softly. "But if you'll come back, I'll see
that someone takes you up."
And then, to make the day all the more glorious for a sky-struck kid,
Harmon took me around the field and introduced me to flyers like
Santos-Dumont, Claude Grahame-White, Bud Mars, and Hubert Latham-great
names in aviation still.
"Now don't forget," he said as I prepared to leave. "Come back
tomorrow and you'll fly."
I went home excited and happy to make the mistake of telling my father
all about the encounter, and Harmon's promise.
"I'll go out with you," my father said, "and we'll see."
When we got to Belmont Park the next day, Latham was giving a stunting
exhibition in his Antoinette monoplane.
"That's the plane I'd like to fly in," I said.
"You're not going to risk your life in that darning needle," my father
declared. "This nonsense stops right here."
And it did.
In 1925, I was made chairman of the awards committee for the annual
Harmon trophy given for outstanding achievement in aviation. As
Harmon and I drank a toast together to celebrate the appointment, I
reminded him of the incident in 1911.
"I don't suppose anyone could blame your father," he sighed.
"Airplanes were flimsy kites in 1911"
"Yes," I said. "But think of it-six years after that I was soloing in
an RFC Curtiss JN biplane with an OX motor, and ten years after
Belmont Park I was flying a six place Acromarine flying boat from New
York to Chicago."
In its own minor way, this story illustrates the pattern of American
aviation from the beginning: things happened so quickly to both the
men and the planes that a man became an old-timer after five years in
the field; a plane became obsolete in a year. And this, I feel, will
remain the pattern for a long time to come.
Not for all the treasures in the strong boxes of the worlds potentates
would I swap the thirty-two years I have spent in aviation. They have
been beautiful years....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Echo Mike
was silly. Aviation fit into the matrix well enough. Rich school kids junket
to Paris easily, though poor people do not fly off to American universities to
become doctors -- except as such events took place in the days of sailing ships.
The sealed cabins of hundreds of passengers came to pass, but we are still
waiting for microwave beams of power for the engines.
All in all, very interesting and not half bad.
Larry Dighera
>thanks! that was almost clearheaded... Much of it was pretty accurate and much
>was silly. Aviation fit into the matrix well enough. Rich school kids junket
>to Paris easily, though poor people do not fly off to American universities to
>become doctors -- except as such events took place in the days of sailing ships.
>
>The sealed cabins of hundreds of passengers came to pass,
Bruno didn't even mention the speed of sound, rockets, space travel,
... But, he got a lot of it right.
> but we are still waiting for microwave beams of power for the engines.
I think the concept is flawed. If you aim a concentrated beam of
microwave energy at an aircraft, wouldn't it cause damage to any other
aircraft that might fly through the beam? If you don't beam the
energy, as a percentage, how much energy would be waisted due to its
not hitting the airborne antenna? 99%?
There is no question that Nicola Tesla possessed towering genius, but
he was never successful in the practical transmission of useful power
via radio waves to my knowledge. He did produce 135' lightning bolts
and ball lightning, lit lamps, and burned-out the generator in the
Colorado Springs power utility, however.
It took Dr. Paul MacCready to successfully construct practical
electrically powered aircraft that carries no on board fuel supply:
http://www.aerovironment.com/news/news-index.html
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/Helios/index.html
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/Centurion/index.html
Keith Willshaw
"Larry Dighera" <LDig...@socal.rr.com> wrote in message
news:rnvl7.35256$_l1.7...@typhoon.we.rr.com...
> On 5 Sep 2001 06:54:18 -0700, Mike Echo Mike <mer...@well.com> wrote:
>
> >thanks! that was almost clearheaded... Much of it was pretty accurate
and much
> >was silly. Aviation fit into the matrix well enough. Rich school kids
junket
> >to Paris easily, though poor people do not fly off to American
universities to
> >become doctors -- except as such events took place in the days of sailing
ships.
> >
> >The sealed cabins of hundreds of passengers came to pass,
>
> Bruno didn't even mention the speed of sound, rockets, space travel,
> ... But, he got a lot of it right.
>
> > but we are still waiting for microwave beams of power for the engines.
>
> I think the concept is flawed. If you aim a concentrated beam of
> microwave energy at an aircraft, wouldn't it cause damage to any other
> aircraft that might fly through the beam?
I seem to recall that microwaves heat up water molecules rather
well. There is a lot of water in the atmosphere, and the human body.
Keith
Larry Dighera
They heat up fat/oil even better, but the passengers could be
protected by placing screens over the aircraft windows just like on
your microwave oven. However, Bruno was talking about 10,000
horsepower electric engines. These would require 7-1/2 million watts
of power each. A microwave beam that powerful would likely melt
anything in its path IMHO.
John S. Shinal
> Aviation's Future as Predicted by Harry Bruno in 1942
>The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as well
>known as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the
>horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation.
>Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter.
Yikes. A herd of R-22's each flown by a careless commuter
yapping on a cell phone - no thanks. You'd never get one through the
McDonald's drive through, either.
>All aircraft will have television weather survey sets, enabling them
>to see and hear weather conditions along the routes that lie ahead.
>In this manner, they will be able to fly above or around storm areas
>and add to the comfort of each flight.
Fascinating that he got weather radar largely correct, and
before Mickey and H2S were well known.
> Airports will also go underground and
>what will appear to be an empty field will suddenly become active when
>a plane lands on it. A quick taxi to a designed spot, and down will
>go the underground hangar as the surface sinks under the operation of
>a large elevator.
I really don't see what he was thinking was good about this ?
In the tremendous amount of free space in the USA of the era, what
advantage is there to this scheme ?
> An international aerial police force, armed with
>the newest type of air weapon, will have no trouble maintaining order
>and understanding.
Nice Black Helicopter reference.
Interesting stuff, thanks for posting it.
Keith Willshaw
The reason I mentioned water vapor is I suspect that the energy
dissipation in the atmosphere would be enormous
Keith
Larry Dighera
Shinal) wrote:
>Larry Dighera wrote:
>
>> Aviation's Future as Predicted by Harry Bruno in 1942
>
>>The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as well
>>known as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the
>>horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation.
>>Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter.
>
> Yikes. A herd of R-22's each flown by a careless commuter
>yapping on a cell phone - no thanks. You'd never get one through the
>McDonald's drive through, either.
Actually, Robinson does pitch a home-top pad in this blurb on the
R-44: <http://www.robinsonheli.com/R44comfort.htm>. But, I know what
you mean about the "big sky" shrinking. I fly in the congested Los
Angeles basin.
>> Airports will also go underground and
>>what will appear to be an empty field will suddenly become active when
>>a plane lands on it. A quick taxi to a designed spot, and down will
>>go the underground hangar as the surface sinks under the operation of
>>a large elevator.
>
> I really don't see what he was thinking was good about this?
>In the tremendous amount of free space in the USA of the era, what
>advantage is there to this scheme ?
In 1942, hidden airfields made good sense; our nation had just joined
in what FDR said was the greatest epoch of free achievement by free
men, that the world has ever known: The Allied effort in WW-II, both
at home and in battle. Subterranean airports could still make sense.
On the seacoasts the amount of open land is limited by the ocean.
How do you feel about parallel upper and lower runways. Double-decker
airports might ease the airport real estate shortage. :-)
>> An international aerial police force, armed with
>>the newest type of air weapon, will have no trouble maintaining order
>>and understanding.
>
> Nice Black Helicopter reference.
Or, was he referring to F-16s and F-117s with laser guided smart
ordnance?
> Interesting stuff, thanks for posting it.
It is food for thought, and illustrates the rapid development of early
aviation. I wonder if we could do as well at predicting what aviation
will be like in ten years from now, 2011?
UAVs will be ubiquitous.
NASA will still be toying with the mach-7 skip jet.
SATS/AGATE/Free Flight Will still be just over the horizon.
Due to the increased use of jet fuel as a result of more GA
aircraft equipped with turbo-fan and diesel engines, the
environmental impact of 19,431,000,000* gallons of Jet A
burned in the stratosphere annually will finally be addressed.
A to switch to fuel-cell based electrical motive power will be
seen as a clean solution to kerosene exhaust emissions, but
nuclear based Stirling Cycle technology will save the day.
GA will be financially out of reach for more people of common
means as a result of the imposition of ATC and other user fees
created as revenue streams by congress due to airline
lobbying.
Ultralight personal aircraft, based on vectored lift
technology, will provide nearly the utility of a rocket-belt
for future yuppies. Mcdonald's will inaugurate fly-through
service. :-)
Corporate and personal bizjets will dominate airport
operations.
Fewer business travelers will use air carriers do to internet
conferencing.
Passengers of long airline flights will be stacked in births
and placed in suspended animation (sedated) during the flight
to overcome deep tissue thrombosis, air rage, and terminal
boredom.
Military restricted areas, military operations areas, and
military training routes will continue to increase in size and
number despite the attempt to reduce the number of aircraft in
the military fleet.
...
:-)
David E. Powell
satellite beam to earth theory. Or the Tesla free energy theory.
DEP
Larry Dighera
Powell) wrote:
I recall back in the '70s there was an area near Barstow, California
that was charted as a hazardous area due to high power microwave
transmission. Perhaps that was what it was about.