Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 209, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1918 — WILL FLY ACROSS the ATLANTIC [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WILL FLY ACROSS the ATLANTIC

Italian Aviator Believes Feat Can be Accomplished Easilu With the Caproni Plane

1 f T L |IEUT. LEOPOLD BELLONI .I I lof the Royal Italian flying corps, now in . this country, says positively that the transatlantic. airplane flight will be -made. While he does not set a definite time for the start, he says that a Capronl airplane will turn the trick. This western ocean flight has been talked of rfnfl dreamed of for many years. Three things are essential for it. They are faith, skill and organization. With these Lieutenant Belloni believes success is sure. Italy has the faith, she has the skill in the trained aviators of her army but she does not possess the organization, says a writer in New York Sun. He believes that this is at hand in America and that Italy and the Capronis would desire nothing more than that the United States should furnish the organization and share in the laurels which will fall to those who first fly over the Atlantic. At the same time the lieutenant admits that America is well supplied with skill, too. As he puts it: “The flying youth of Italy and America would be proud to make the flight.” The organization, he says, should consist of ships stationed at Intervals along the line of flight to wireless the course to the pilots of the transatlantic machine and for precautionary measures. Other work necessary would be the gathering together of weather reports and data vital to the men who will rise in the air in one hemisphere and land in another. As to the type of airplane for the trip, Lieutenant Belloni favors a regulation Italian army Capronl. He has no preference for a triplane over a biplane, but he does believe that the machine should be speedy and should carry a small crew, Instead of a heavy and slower air cruiser capable of carrying several men. Would Like Liberty Motors. For engines he says emphatically that there is nothing that would suit the Capronl brothers better than that a plane of their making equipped with Liberty motors' should make the attempt, guided by an Italian-American crew. "Capronl would have it so,” said Lieutenant Belloni. “He loves America. He patterned himself after your famous Wright brothers,. and I know that there is nothing would give him greater pleasure than to have America share in the honors of an ocean flight.” Had Gianni Capronl, father of Italy’s huge bombing and fighting machines, which have given a good account of themselves on the Italian and French fronts, been asked if the flight across the sea were probable this year it is safe to say that he would have replied: “We will do it.” Capronl, who is just thirty-two, was born in the Trentlno, of Italian parents who hajl lived the greater part of their fives in the mountain hamlet of Masone, which numbered about 500 souls, under the yoke of Austrian rule. Despite the fact that they were forced-, to bow to the will, of the Hapsburg government, they remained Italians at heart and Instilled the love of the mother country into their younger son, who is now serving Italy so well. The home ties of the Capronl family held them under the despotism of a hated rulercsnnd they lived and dreamed of a day of repatriation. It was in this atmosphere that young

Capron! received his early training. His elementary schooling was acquired in the small*and isolated institutions of the Trentlno. Even in these schools the boy’s love for mathematics was indicated aad appreciated, and when he had finished the courses presented his aged father and mother packed his few belongings, bestowed upon him their blessings and sent him north away from the Trentlno to the engineering college at Munich, Bavaria. Was Graduated When of Age. On his twenty-first birthday he was graduated from that Institution with the degree of civil engineer. It was about this time that the Wright brothers began to demonstrate to a skeptical world that man could fly In.a heav-ler-than-air machine. Their successes so fired the young Italian engineer with the dream of becoming a creator that he decided upon aviation as his life work. • Despite his racial impetuosity, he realized that a theoretical groundwork would be necessary, and Instead of joining the ranks of the exhibition fliers who Immediately sprang up in Europe he con-, tinued the business of prying truths from textbooks. * It was a hard pull, for the expense of a higher education along proper lines was far from small and the sums offered for exhibition flights were large. But young Capron! stuck it out, and traveling still further north and away from the Trentlno, he went to Liege and entered the Miraflori institute in that city. He applied himself to the more difficult courses in its curriculum; among them being that of electro-technics. This he Mastered, and immediately broadened the scope of his pilgrimage for knowledge to include Faris and the flying fields of the continent. e He was always an Irrepressible enthusiast on the future possibilities of the aii-plane, but usually tempered his advanced, and what In those days were radical, views with solid facts gleaned from his long preparation. In the earlier days of the French demonstration flying the young man from the Trentlno spent a great deal of his time talking with the men who were making exhibition flights and improving on the theories of the Wright brothers. He was always ready to discuss the future of the airplane and was frequently considered quite mad , when he talked of time and distance ■ annihilating machines capable of carrying as many as ten and twenty men. Not Daunted by Skepticism. But the skepticism of the earlier fliers, and many of them were painfully frank in their characterization of Caproni’s dream, did little to crush the spirit of the man who has since become the producer of heavier-than-atr machines which are larger and can do more than those he pictured in his own mind In the earlier days. When he had drawn a great mass of opinions, practical experiences and beliefs from the earlier birdmen of Europe he returned to the Trentlno, where he spent some time digesting them. Finally Capronl was ready to build his first machine. He enlisted the aid of ordinary Italian carpenters, and in a small shed not far from Arco began the construction of a machine. It grew under his direction, but it did not grow as fast as the suspicions of the Austrian police authorities. Capronl was watched and hindered in every possible manner. The police did not limit their aggression to the inventor, but extended it to his brother.

This, of-course, could not continue, and Capronl* again packed up his belongings, again received the parental blessing and crossed the Austro-Italian frontier. He went to Milan, Italy, and applied to the military authorities there for permission to erect a hangar and experimental laboratories on the cavalry exercise field near Somma Lombardo. , Has Designed Nineteen Good Types. Here at last he was given the opportunity to build and test his first airplane, and it is to the credit of Capron! that this first machine was rolled from the hangar and flew on Its first trial. Others were turned out and still others,, arid to date nineteen types have been designed and built by this man, and in each instance have flown as soon as finished. ' The worth of these Capronl ma-' chines is proved by their adoption as standard bombing planes J>y the French government, the letting of contracts' to the Capronls by the United States government and the purchase of several of the big triplanes by the British government. Since the outbreak of the world war Caproni airplanes have taken all of the aviation records in Italy and have smashed many of the international figures. The Inventor has not confined his activities to any one, type, but has diversified his output. It is no uncommon sight on a Caproni field to see a gossamer winged monoplane roll out of a hangar door and under the lower plane of a giant Caproni triplane which has carried more than fifty men as passengers in a long nonstop flight. At the same time the honor of the first* tank airplane must go to Capronl. Some weeks ago news dispatches from the western front announced the use of the first aerial tank by Germany. The Caproni tank airplane had flown long beford that-announcement. The biggest of the Capronl machines recently completed in Italy carried more than fifty men. It so far eclipses any other effort along similar lines that approximate dimensions are of more than passing interest.

Carrie* Seven Gun*. This leviathan of the air has an approximate wing spread of 155 feet from tip to tip. is about 65 feet long and 33 feet high, is armed with seven guns and develops 2,100 horse power with three motors. This machine, of course, can carry an enormous freight of high explosives and drop them behind the enemy lines, and Italy would build many of them if she could. At present only one of these battle cruisers of the air, has been constructed. Italy cannot spare more raw material for the construction of others. But Italy is depending on- the United States for that raw material, and believes that she will get it. Caproni is no self-advertiser. In this he resembles his countrymen. When something has had to be done in a military way Italian military chiefs have done it without talking. When it was necessary for new and vital things to be done in the air over the Italian front Capronl- has done them. The words of a young Italian officer when asked why it was that Italy was not letting the world know what she was doing sum the situation up well. “Italy does not want to talk,” he said. “She wants to fight and to do.” And if the past performance of Gianni Caproni means anything, the Statement by his representative In this country that the continent to continent flight will be made may be accepted at face value.