The Pittsburgh Press (February 8, 1946)
Maj. Williams: Jet speed coming
By Maj. Al Williams
The spectacular dash of the Army Air Corps’ jet plane across the United States in four hours and 13 minutes is a milestone. It settles the question as to the range of jet-propelled planes.
Six hundred miles an hour cross country is rather startling at first glance, but, after all, it is just as easy to fly fast in a properly designed plane as it is to travel in a slower plane – and much more comfortable.
A pilot’s conception of speed is relatively fast. From an altitude of 5000 or 10,000 feet a distant mountain range, a bay, an inlet, or a city can take a mighty long time to disappear under a wing even if you are making 300 miles an hour. On the other hand, 150 miles an hour at tree-top level seems far faster.
Our yardstick for measuring travel in miles per hour is all wrong. Man never will achieve an air speed which will satisfy him. He always will be reaching for more because he will never catch up with what his eves see ahead of him.
How fast can we go?
The natural question stemming from the performance of the Army jet plane is when will the airlines use such planes and make such speeds? I’ll hazard a conservative guess that the earliest date before we see our first standard airline jet plane is about five years distant. There is a long road ahead in the refinement of air transport design before we can utilize the full efficiency of jet propulsion. Radically different aircraft first must be designed and tested.
The mere addition of more power is the least economical way to gain speed.
For instance, in a plane that is designed for a top speed of 250 miles per hour, the doubling of the horsepower might result in only 25 to 40 miles an hour increase in speed. Between now and the eventual jet transport with its 400 or 600 miles an hour, there is an unbelievable amount of work to be done.
We are entering the era of big transports. “Big air transports” has a nice ring to it, but it means a lot of headaches and still unsolved problems for airline operators.
Problems to consider
Take the new airline giant – the C-54 – a four-engine job carrying 54 passengers. Every minute on the ground at intermediate or turn-around airports while passengers, baggage, and mail are being loaded and unloaded means many miles of fight travel lost on schedules. How many minutes do you think it will take to get 54 passengers off and 54 new passengers aboard? If we assume 30 seconds as an average per-passenger change, the “ground time” would be 27 minutes. In terms of cruising speed each minute means three and a half miles. This gives you an idea as to what “ground time” means to the revenue-earning capacity of a C-54.
Assume bad weather grounds four C-54s at some medium-sized city. This means taxicab accommodations for 216 passengers at a clip, plus hotel accommodations on a few minutes notice. The ordinary airline limousine carries about 11 people. One C-54 necessitates five standard air limousines.
Can one hostess or steward serve 54 meals, allow the passengers ample time to enjoy the repast, gather all the trays, and get the ship in order again on a flight of less than 300 miles?
If there is any hesitancy about accepting the measure of travel in units of time rather than in miles per hour, all we need to do is to think over some of these operations – all of which must be measured in time.