Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 December 1942 — Page 10

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Instrument Proves Effectiveness in Plane’s - Mercy Flight Over Mediterranean; Surpasses | Man's Blind Flying.

By CHARLES T. LUCEY Times Special Writer As Flight Lieutenant Girardet of the R. A. F. tells the story now, only a few weeks later, it must have been about as devilish a night as a man ever spent in an airplane. He was far out over the Mediterranean and headed for Malta, with medical supplies, concentrated foods and high

military personnel, when the

big plane's electrical system,

generators and all, quit dead on him. There were only the navigator and himself to handle the ship on this long, tough flight that ordinarily demands

a full crew, but there couldn’t be all that personnel and the _ critical supplies, too—and the - beleaguered island needed needed these things desperately. They were flying on instruments, but how can you fly a plane up there in the middle of a black no- ~ where if you can’t see the instruments? There was a flashlight, but it meant seeing ! only one spot at . a time on the big : panel, and three things might go Ef haywire while § one was being corrected. There was only one thing to do— hand the job to . Mr.Lucey 1. automatic gyropilot and pray. The amazing Elmer Sperry’s invention had accuracy no pilot could have in that

blackness.

And the gyropilot took them through. They missed Malta by a hair, picked up their position over Sicily, shook off a vicious barrage

of Italian anti-aircraft shrapnel.

Down they came at last in a flarepath lighting a bomb - battered Malta flying field, grueling hours after what might have been disaster. ; Known as ‘Elmer’

They call the automatic pilot “Cieorge” in the R. A. F. To young Americans pushing their bombers out over the Pacific the gyropilot is Elmer. ‘The automatic pilots are being turned out in huge numbers today in the big Sperry Corp. plants in Brooklyn, where a vigilant government draws the black shades on complex precision instruments of incredible accuracy that are helping

~ Americans to outsmart Hitler.

Much of the vital job this concern does today to help fight a war grows out of the almost unbelievable versatility of the elder Sperry, a man who held 380 patenfs in his

and upon whom learned societies bestowed trophies and honors. Sperry engineers, under President R. E. Gillmor and Engineering Chief Preston Bassett, carry on in the same tradition today, and their mark is on thousands of imple‘ments of war on land, sea and in - the air. Sperry makes bombsights, but in wartime that’s about all that can It's making 800,000,000-candlepower searchlights which reach four or five miles into the sky to pick out a target. Here, too, are being produced anti-aircraft gun-control directors —mechanical computers: which prediet the future position of an airplane target and make ballistics corrections for firing. From Sperry also come thousands of directional gyros and bank-and-climb indicators for planes. Together these are chief parts of the automatic pilot, but thousands of planes which don’t have the gyropilot still have the directional gyros . and indicators.

Instrument ‘Almost’ Thinks

It’s typical of the job being done by America’s whole fink instrument industry—by concerns like Eastman . Kodak, Westinghouse, General Electric and others. Their costly research and development of past Jor are of inestimable war value

The automatic pilot doesn’t do a - pilot's thinking for him, but it comes close to it. It is first set to course by ordinary magnetic compass and « then, save for slight corrections perhaps three times an hour, it can be given its head for hundreds of miles. It takes the indications of bank-and-climb and direction instruments and constantly _ keeps

correcting plane movements up or down or off-course to right or left. If the right wing dips, the instruments set up & signal applying the hydraulic control to move the right aileron down, and when the aileron goes down the wing comes up to the level position needed to keep the plane on even flight. The gyropilot follows through to be certain there's no ‘“over-controlling”—just as an auto driver straightens his wheel after turning a corner rather than leaving it hard-over to keep the car turning. The same correction of controls goes on if the nose of the plane dips or rises, or if the plane starts “to right or left. The directional gyro will hold the plane to course within one-half degree of perfect, closer than the best pilot will do unless he keeps his eyes glued constantly to his instruments.

Intricate Assembly

It doesn’t respond fast enough for the lightning maneuvering of air combat, but it can take over a plane and let the pilot rest or study his flight going out to combat, or give him time to pick his way back to a flight-deck in the middle of an

ocean once his combat mission is performed.

In factory production of the intricate—and to the layman, often incomprehensible — Sperry instruments, you can’t have the kind of assembly lines you see in automobile plants. Manufacture is less a matter of movement of parts from one place in a factory to another than it is of delicate work, as in watchmaking, by deft hands at a bench. doesn’t lend itself to conveyor lines.

But under pressure of war Sperry has been able to find innumerable ways to short-cut production in order to keep pace with plane output aimed at the enormous goal of 185,000 planes this year and next. Where before a single department might work on many operations, now quantity output has broken the manufacture down among many highly specialized departments which can work faster. One may work on directional ‘gyro rotors, another on gears, another on machining outer cases.

NAVY ENLISTMENT DEADLINE EXTENDED

The navy recruiting service announced today that the deadline for completion of pending enlistments has been extended 24 hours to 11:59 p. m. Tuesday. This applies to applications made prior to Dec. 5. Enlistments for men 17 and those 38 to 50 years old will continue to be accepted.

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