Aircraft Of The 1930S

Aircraft Of The 1930S - VP-10 Non-Stop Formation Flight, 10-11 January 1934. View taken of the squadron's P2Y-1 (consolidated) patrol planes, over Diamond Head, near Honolulu, Hawaii, en route to Pearl Harbor. (Courtesy of Mrs. Laurence van Fleet, 1974, NH 81663)

Higher! Faster! A decade of full throttle flying. The transition to metal planes enabled aircraft to push past the limitations that had remained mostly set in stone since the advent of flight. The first commercial flight in 1914 hovered at a cruising altitude of just 5 feet in the air.

Aircraft Of The 1930S

In the 1930s, planes began to hit the 200 mph mark, and settled into a cruising altitude of about 13,000 feet. While mankind's foray into flying began in the early 20th century, the modern air travel industry as we know it didn't truly grow its roots until the 1930s.

As metal planes returned home from post-war posturing, a boom in passenger interest and sufficient technology to reach a slew of international destinations made the 1930s the start of something big. But like any major technology, commercial flight didn't come without growing pains.

If you think you have a lot to complain about now when it comes to air travel, take a look at what it was like to fly in the 30s. Not for the faint of heart.

British Airways Empire Class planes in the 1930s were equipped with three state-of-the-art flying lavatories, but it was widely understood that their actual usage was to be avoided at nearly all costs. Just because we as humans suddenly could fly at 13,000 feet didn't mean that we had necessarily worked out all of the kinks just yet.

According to Gizmodo, planes would regularly drop hundreds of feet mid-air with no warning. Today's gentle alerts from the cabin to return to your seat and buckle up as the plane may experience some coming turbulence were born out of the horror of this era's actually turbulent flights.

21 July 1930—Capt. Arthur H. Page Jr., USMC, from a sealed hooded cockpit of an O2U Corsair completed an instrument flight of about 1,000 miles from Omaha, Nebraska, to NAS Anacostia, D.C., via Chicago, Illinois, and Cleveland, Ohio — the longest blind

flight to date. First Lt. Vernon M. Guymon, USMC, acted as safety pilot and took over the controls only for the landings after Page brought the plane over the fields at 200 feet. Three new aircraft carriers joined the fleet and with them carrier aviation became a truly integrated element of naval power.

Serious setbacks occurred in the lighter-than-air forces with the crashes of airships Akron (ZRS-4) and Macon (ZRS-5), ending the Navy's rigid airship program. By association, nonrigid airships—blimps—almost followed them into oblivion. Men of the Naval Reserve Air Squadron based at Floyd Bennett Field, New York, and regular Navy station keepers ready to fly to Cleveland, Ohio, to take part in the air races, 1932. Fourth from left in the back row is the Base Commander

Lieutenant Edwin Francis Conway, USN. Front row second from right is Lieutenant Fred Priestman, Base Executive Officer. Fourth from right in the back row is Loyd C. Reckner, Aviation Machinist Mate Second Class, USN. (NH 72652)

Pack a book to read (Or maybe just write one of your own). Our great-grandparents would be embarrassed at our tendency to bemoan the hardships of a 15 hour, non-stop flight. Today's 12-hour flight from London to Singapore would have taken 8 days in 1934, with 22 separate layovers to refuel in exotic locales like Athens, Gaza, Baghdad, Sharjah, Calcutta and Bangkok.

While we may cringe at that sort of time-intensive itinerary today, it sure beats the then month-long trek by boat that was really the only alternative. 4 August 1939—Enterprise (CV-6) and Yorktown (CV-5) launched SBC-3 Helldivers and O3U-3 Corsairs from flight deck and hangar deck catapults in the first practical demonstration of launching planes from carriers by means of hydraulic flush-

deck catapults. The event also marked the first demonstrations of catapulting aircraft from hangar decks. All roads lead to Cairo. While London Heathrow, Dubai and Atlanta hog the limelight when it comes to major hubs here in the present, in the 1930s it was all about Cairo.

Uniquely positioned as a nexus between Europe, Africa and Asia, you would have been hard-pressed to travel anywhere between the three without touching down in Cairo along the way. 10 January 1934—A group of six P2Y-1 flying boats, Lt.

Cmdr. Knefler McGinnis of VP-10F commanding, made a nonstop formation flight from San Francisco, California, to FAB Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, into the next day, in 24 hours and 35 minutes. Their accomplishment bettered the best previous time for the crossing, exceeded the distance of previous mass flights, and broke a nine-day-old Class C seaplane world record for distance in a straight line with a new mark of 2,399 miles.

The act gave a lot of authority to the Secretary of Commerce, who then had a role in the development of air navigation systems, air routes, the licensing of pilots and aircraft, and investigations surrounding accidents.

14 September 1938—A radio-controlled N2C-2 target drone engaged in a simulated dive-bombing attack against mobile target/gunnery training ship Utah (AG-16) during test firing of her antiaircraft batteries. Observers viewed this as the first demonstration of air-to-surface missiles, and proponents of guided missile development subsequently cited the test as an example of the weapon's efficacy.

The Navy installed hydraulic arresting gear and catapults on board aircraft carriers and developed better recovery procedures for battleships and cruiser observation planes. Pioneers demonstrated the feasibility of instrument flight ashore and at sea. Dependable radio-controlled planes were put to practical use as targets for antiaircraft guns.

Engineers and designers learned more about the value of a streamlined, clean design. Entire squadrons had begun to turn in the record performances once accomplished by individual pilots. Tactical innovations of the 1920s became fleet doctrine.

Extreme temperature fluctuations were also an unfortunate fact of flying at the time. Air conditioning and heating wouldn't alleviate these discomforts until the end of the decade. We have blankets on flights today because of the absolute necessity for them in the 1930s.

It costs an arm and a leg (or half a car). A round trip ticket from coast to coast costs about $260 in the 1930's. Some context: the average automobile at the time cost just double that.

Flying was an exciting new thrill, but only for the few who could afford it. As the decade drew to a close the ominous rumblings of war from across the seas grew louder. The Navy expanded its pilot training program and designed and laid down new ships, and increasingly modern and capable aircraft came off the drawing boards.

The United States proclaimed neutrality as World War II erupted, but the fleet patrolled the seas under conditions that approached war. The transition from wood to metal planes changes the world. In the aftermath of World War I, the victorious nations found themselves with quite a significant number of planes — both fighters and support vehicles — on hand.

And just like that, the commercial air travel industry, ahem, took off. New, metallic planes weren't just more durable during wartime; they also withstood the dramatic changes in climate that a vehicle might experience when traveling between, say, Boston and the Caribbean.

Metal-bodied planes didn't just enable longer routes, they enabled air travel along longitudinal lines, where climates change from arctic to temperate to tropical to arid, and then back again. Not if, but when you get sick.

While experiments with oxygen enrichment of cabin air date back to the early 1920s, widespread adoption of standardized cabin pressurization didn't hit the airline industry until the 1940s, according to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

This meant that oxygen tank-assisted breathing was a regular occurrence on flights in the 30s, and air sickness bowls could be found under each seat. 20 December 1939—The Navy issued a contract to Consolidated Aircraft for 200 PBY Catalina-type aircraft to support an increase in patrol plane squadrons that resulted from Neutrality Patrol requirements.

The contract comprised the largest single U.S. order for naval aircraft since the end of World War I. In spite of the hardships the fleet made gains in aviation technology. As engineers and aircraft manufacturers produced more reliable products and aviation equipment, aircraft performance rose.

Better and smaller radios, more accurate bombsights, forced-induction power plants, controllable-pitch propellers, efficient retractable landing gear, and folding wings all improved aircraft performance, making the airplanes better weapons. The birth of a global sensation. Just 6,000 Americans traveled commercially by airplane in all of 1930, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Only four years later, that number would multiply by 75 times — 450,000 passengers flew in 1934, a number that would be dwarfed once more in another four years, when 1.2 Million Americans traveled by air. The 1930s were truly the decade that commercial air travel became a worldwide sensation.

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