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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 1148.PDF
•54° FLIGHT MAY 28TH, 1942 FLIGHTS OF FANCY motion. He did not land on the moon but passed close enough to observe landscapes, rivers, forests, mountains and valjj^s, and also the population, strange creatures who ap peared to move without legs or feet, but crawled like snails and carried a sort of shield on their backs like the shell of a tortoise. When there is any danger these moon creatures appear to hide within their shells, a con venient arrangement which makes houses or any other kind of shelter unnecessary for them. With an air fleet of 40 or 50 "Fly ing Ships," built after his original model, the stratosphere traveller said, it would be easy to direct an attack against the moon and take possession of it. Obviously, the ingenious in ventor counted on getting a big^frder from some hyper-imperialistically minded government for a score or so of flying ships, and hoped to get away with a fat cash advance on it. No government was credulous enough to enter upon his little game, but the air ship voyage to the moon was believed and hotly discussed by a great many people. '' Caklogallinia '' was the title of another fantastic moon story by Samuel Brunt, published in England in 1727. It was erroneously attributed to Jonathan Swift, being the account of,a voyage written somewhat in the vein of "Gulliver's Travels." The traveller, after sundry adventures, finds himself among a^eople of intelli gent fowls, grown to the size of human beings. The cocks and hens of Caklogallinia are agriculturists and their state is as civilised and organised as that of men, down to the detail that money is scarce. Fowl Air Transport The novel, written soon after the greatest financial debacle of all times] the Law swindle, projects the condi tions of Europe in that day to the fowl country of Caklogallinia. The clever cocks and hens, however, carry their human friend up to the moon, where gold is to be found in plenty. The wise fowls are strong enough to bring plenty of it back to earth and with its help straighten out the finances of their country. ThiSf is put ting stratospheric flight to a practical use, indeed. Among the British patents granted in the year 1841 there is one concerning an '' air machine'' shot up from the earth like a sky-rocket, an invention of a man called Charles Golighty. The description of this patent has never been published. Something must KITTYHAWK'S TALONS have transpired about it, though, for many caricatures of a sky-rocket flight have been printed in the newspapers. Possibly it was this invention that inspired Jules Verne, the prolific French novelist, who, in his stories that are still beloved by young people in all countries, so wonderfully blended science with imagina<non. In this '' Voyage to the Moon " the jour ney is accomplished with the help of a huge sky-rocket very like Golighty's. H. G. Wells' "First Men in the Moon '' got there by discovering a substance which resists the gravita tional power of the earth and by this means makes it possible to get axa>y from this globe on which we are prisoners, although the bounds of our prison have, in the last 30 years, been stretched to the boundaries of terres trial atmosphere. Men like Piccard have broken away even from these bonds. What men have been dream ing of during 4,000 years—or longer, for augjrt we know—may become true vrtijUfR our lifetime. *A voyage to the moan is no longer beyond human possibility. The trouble is that by the time we get there Science has shown lis that it is not worth the trouble. . . . There is nothing in the moon worth crying for, so why worry? _ SO The six wing-guns of a Curtiss Kittyhawk being tested at the stop butts., of-a snow-covered airfieW, ia^merica. The Kitty- hawk is the third in the Curtiss Hawk series. The Mohawk was tbe-first, then came the Tomahawj^nd now the Kittyhawk itself is superseded-'^'the Warhawk.
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