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Aviation History
1936
1936 - 2293.PDF
210 FLIGHT. AUGUST 20, 1936. DIESEL-ENGINED AIRCRAFT at CROYDON The Junkers G.38 Does London-Berlin Non-stop ON Monday evening the Deutsche Lufthansa A.G. gave an enjoyable little party at Croydon to a number of important people, including members of the German Embassy in London and the heads of the various travel agencies. The centre of interest was the D.L.H. flagship, the Junkers Ju./G.38, a gigantic aero plane with a wing span of 146ft., a total weight fully loaded of approximately 53,000 lb., and a cruising speed of around 131 m.p.h. This most impressive aero plane, the General Field Marshal von Hindenburg, has engine rooms and passenger seating actually in the thick ness of the wings. Stand below it and you look up to what seems to be the prow of a ship made of shining metal. I know no aeroplane which gives quite the same impression, though some of our Empire flying ; .'*_ boats may, as they certainly should, have a more nautical air about them. The machine is by no means new, being about the same age as the Heracles type, but its present interest lies in the fact that it was formerly petrol-driven, whereas now its four huge four-bladed wooden propellers are driven by four Junkers 750 h.p. Jumo IV engines burning heavy oil. This is at once apparent as you watch the machine take off, for it leaves four trails of thick smoke behind such as would cause engineers acute uneasi ness in a petrol-driven craft. There is also a mysterious smell about the machine, reminding most middle-aged people of youthful loitering on railway stations near the porters' lamp room about dusk. To fly in the big aeroplane is unlike anything else if you sit anywhere above the great wing, which tapers away like a fairly big section of an arterial road, and, it must be confessed, obscures most of the view except from favoured seats. The cabins are com fortable, but internal decoration is plain to the point of severity, and the An interesting visitor to Croydon early this week was the huge Junkers G.38, shown in front view at the top of the page. The machine originally had petrol engines but has now been fitted with four Junkers diesels. The neat cowling of these large engines is shown in the picture on the right. Flight photographs.) m size of the whole fuselage is made apparently greater by the number of odd cabins, to most of which one seems to walk either up or down stairs. The same is observable rambling old coaching inns. It has not been found possible to ascertain the extent, if any, to which pay load has had to be reduced to make up for the heavy diesel engines. An effort is being made to take advantage of them by flying Berlin-London non-stop.
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