Science: Boost for the Flying Wing

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A sensational advance in industrial technique was revealed last week and immediately opened the way for major advances in the aviation industry. The new technique: arc-welding of magnesium. Result: the further development of the so-called flying wing—a weird, batlike plane with no tail, no fuselage and an extraordinary efficiency (TIME, Oct. 27). Some other results:

> Magnesium—one-third lighter than aluminum—can now become a primary aeronautical material, rivaling aluminum and competing with stainless steel (TIME, June 22), instead of remaining a secondary metal used only in engine parts, wheels, accessories.

> Construction of planes, especially their wings, can be much simplified and cheapened.

> Magnesium arc-welding—and perhaps the flying wing—will remain monopolies of the U.S. and its allies. Reason: arc-welding magnesium requires helium, which is found in useful quantities only in the U.S.

Until last week, arc-welding magnesium was almost as impossible as welding paper, and for the same reason: this most inflammable metal* would ignite from the heat of the welder's electric arc just as it does in magnesium incendiary bombs. But after two years of research, engineers of Northrop Aircraft Inc. discovered that magnesium can safely be arc-welded if the hot metal is blanketed with helium to exclude atmospheric oxygen. The helium also cools the molten metal, acts as a metal-cleaning flux.

The advantage of welded magnesium on the wing surfaces of planes is that it can be used in thicker sheets than steel and aluminum. This increased thickness has two effects: 1) it lessens surface vibrations which in time will weaken the wing; 2) it simplifies the maze of ribs and spars now built into wings to stiffen them.

Doing away with much of this clutter of ribs and spars is a major step in development of the flying wing, for this bodiless plane must have clear wing interiors to make room for passengers, cargo, bombs, Northrop Aircraft built a two-engined flying wing with a 38-ft. span, flew it so successfully last fall that the U.S. Army popped the queer plane out of sight for further development. Reason: some engineers estimate that the plane, lacking a tail, has 40% less head resistance than a conventional plane, and every square inch of its body contributes to lift. Hence designers believe the flying wing can either

1) get the same speed with perhaps half the horsepower of a normal plane or

2) get 25-30% more speed with the same horsepower.