home Credit Airplane steam locomotive. American locomotives in the Great Patriotic War

Airplane steam locomotive. American locomotives in the Great Patriotic War

November 11th, 2013

But did you know that the first official Paris-Rouen auto race in history was won on July 22, 1894 by the De Dion-Bouton car with a steam engine. This is not surprising, because at that time steam was the most common source of energy in the world. Machine tools and pumps were powered by steam; steam was used to railway in industry, everyday life and even in entertainment. And of course, they tried to make the locomotives fly. Sometimes it even worked

In fact, the first steamboat successfully took off only in 1933, but the number of attempts to launch a steam engine into the air is simply incalculable.

The inventor of the password is the English engineer William Samuel Henson (1812-1888). A brilliant machine operator and inventor, Henson received his first serious patent at the age of 23 - for a machine for the mechanized production of braid. And in 1838, he unexpectedly became interested in aviation, which then, let’s be honest, simply did not exist. Naturally, there were no internal combustion engines, much less jet engines, and the only way to make a heavy winged machine take to the air was to install a steam engine: it powered the massive wings of the aircraft. Henson put a lot of effort into making it as light and compact as possible. power unit and in 1841 he patented it. And a year and a half later, together with his friend and companion John Stringfellow, he received a patent for a real aircraft with a steam engine. The vehicle was called the “Aerial Steam Carriage”, or “Ariel” for short.

The theme of passwords is widespread among artists and 3D modellers working in the spirit of steampunk, especially “anime artists”. For example, the given work is called “Imperial Password” and was created in 2008 by illustrator Nick Pl under the influence of the novels of Jules Verne (in fact, this is not just a drawing, but a 3D model). Almost all fantastic passwords from movies and cartoons are incredibly beautiful, but completely technically impossible. However, this is not required of them.

According to the drawings, the vehicle had a wingspan of 48 m ( total area- 420 m2) and weighed 1400 kg. According to Henson and Stringfellow's calculations, Ariel could carry ten passengers and accelerate to 75 km/h with a flight range of 1600 km.

Of course, their calculations were incorrect - mainly due to the complete lack of world experience in aircraft construction. They took their first timid steps - all data was obtained only experimentally.

In 1843, Henson and a number of partners organized the world's first airline, which was called the Aerial Transit Company. The goal was to raise the necessary amount to build an airplane, but all the reduced models of the machine built between 1844 and 1847 were unsuccessful: not a single one took off. The plane, even in its small version, was too heavy. In the end, Stringfellow still built current model, which flew about 20 m (and was driven by propellers, not by flapping wings), but by that time Henson had already become completely disillusioned with the unpromising project. He got married, emigrated to the USA and left aviation. In the world industry he is known primarily as the inventor of the safety razor.

The model Stringfellow made was capable of flight. The real Ariel was never completed, so nothing can be said about its flight properties.

Mozhaisky's failure

To some extent, the “cult” plane of Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaisky (1825-1890), so beloved by artists and philatelists, was also powered by steam. More precisely, it should have been given.

Captain 1st Rank Mozhaisky began working on the aircraft project when he was already an elderly man, in the 1870s, upon his dismissal from active army. Subsequently, Mozhaisky received the rank of major general and even rear admiral, but that was later, and Alexander Fedorovich built his wonderful aircraft in 1882.

First of all, Mozhaisky’s design was unique in that it had two steam engines (20 and 10 hp, respectively). It is characteristic that almost all inventors of the 19th century assumed a very low flight speed in their calculations (in the case of Mozhaisky - 40 km/h), which forced them to make wings original forms and with a very large surface area. Huge rectangular wings, a complex system of supporting cables, three propellers - no one before Mozhaisky had tried to make an airplane of this size. Actually, Mozhaisky derived the shape of the wings from his numerous experiments with kites, which he conducted since 1873. In 1876, he built a large half-glider, half-snake, on which he took off (although the glider was pulled by a horse; the device could not fly on its own).

Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaisky, like Clement Ader later, relied in the development of the aerodynamics of his aircraft on the flying properties of kites, which he designed and flew for several years. In addition, Mozhaisky assumed that a heavy and slow aircraft should have a large wing plane. The picture shows the first modification of Mozhaisky's aircraft: the propellers are located “inside” the wings. For the second launch attempt, the designer moved the propellers back, closer to the tail. Mozhaisky worked by trial and error and, of course, made a number of mistakes that are visible to the naked eye today: it is enough to make an airplane out of paper in order to understand what wing shape would be optimal

In the summer of 1882 the plane was ready. Steam engines were imported from England. On July 20, Mozhaisky demonstrated a titanic design for those times to members of the commission on military affairs - mainly in order to “knock out” additional grants for improving the password. But the tests were unsuccessful. Mozhaisky - again due to a complete lack of world experience in aircraft construction - did not equip his machine with devices against lateral rolls: no one could have imagined that they were needed. The plane, without even having time to rise into the air, fell on its side, and its huge wing “folded.”

Six months later, Mozhaisky presented a new, improved aircraft design to the aeronautical department of the Russian Technical Society. Two years passed in Alexander Fedorovich’s bureaucratic exile from one department to another, and only in the summer of 1885 were repeated tests carried out with representatives of the army and the Russian Technical Society. The tests went exactly the same as the first ones: the plane fell on its side.

The second failure seriously crippled the inventor. He continued to fine-tune the design, bought more powerful steam engines, wrote to the ministries, but died on March 21, 1890. After Mozhaisky's death, the plane was grounded for some time. open air, was then disassembled and stored in a barn, and a few years later completely burned down in a fire. Mozhaisky’s drawings have not survived: all models of his aircraft were made from drawings and text descriptions.

On October 9, 1890, the Aeolus steamboat, designed by Clement Ader, took off and covered about 50 m. It is from this date that history begins modern aviation

Bats of Adera

French engineer Clement Ader (1841-1925) is considered one of the founders of modern aviation, as well as many other branches of industry. It was he who organized the first telephone connection in France in 1880, becoming, one might say, the French Bell. He also organized the world's first telephone broadcast of a concert (from the Paris Opera) and designed the world's first eight-cylinder V-twin racing engine.

Ader was of the opinion that the plane should look like a bird or bat- they fly after all. In 1886, he began building a password, which he named "Eole". First of all, the Aeolus was revolutionary in that its steam engine rotated a propeller, and not wings, like Henson's steamboat. Over the course of 40 years, steam engines had become “lighter”, the propeller was a very successful innovation, and on October 9, 1890, ten years before the Wright brothers’ flight, the Aeolus plane took off and flew 50 m at an altitude of about 20 cm above the ground near the French city Bree.

The wingspan of the car was 14 m, and the weight was about 300 kg. Ader's main problem, like Henson's, was the extremely poor power-to-weight ratio of the steam engine. Being extremely heavy, the unit could barely lift itself, not to mention any “attachments” like an elevator or tail section. However, a year later, in September 1891, “Aeolus” flew again - at the same altitude, this time covering as much as 100 m.

In 1990, a full-size replica of the Aeolus was built, but it crashed on its first flight, seriously injuring the pilot. Despite this, October 9, 1890 is officially considered the date of the first flight of a winged aircraft in the history of aviation.

In 1892, Ader built his second aircraft, the Avyon II. The inventor claimed that in August 1892 he made a short flight on the Avion II, but there is not a single witness to the appearance of this aircraft outside Ader’s laboratory. Most likely, Ader did not finish the construction of the second machine at all, devoting all his efforts to the third, more advanced one.

Also in 1892, Ader began building the Avion III. Construction lasted five years, and on October 14, 1897, at a military base in Satori near Versailles, the car took off on its first flight. True, it was short-lived: barely having risen into the air, Avion III collapsed and crashed. Military representatives who observed the tests stopped funding the project.

Bessler Brothers Password

One single attempt to lift a steam-powered car into the air was successful.

On April 12, 1933, American inventors brothers George and William Bessler, together with engineer Nathan Price, demonstrated to the general public a quite ordinary-looking aircraft called Airspeed 2000. Although the aircraft was simply a converted classic model of the Travel Air 2000 biplane, its “filling” was very unusual, because the propeller was driven by a steam engine.

The two-cylinder V-shaped steam engine produced 150 hp. Ten gallons of water was enough for about 600 km of flight. The plane had a huge number of advantages over cars with internal combustion engines. Firstly, the engine power did not depend on the flight altitude and the degree of rarefaction of the air - this was an eternal problem with gasoline or diesel engines. If at a low altitude the steam engine was inferior in power to the internal combustion engine, then at an altitude of over 2000 m it gave the latter a considerable head start. Secondly, the plane was completely silent - only the whistle of the propeller. This was an invaluable advantage in terms of the aircraft's stealth during combat operations. All the newspapers of that time flashed the phrase that when a pilot talks to a passenger, their conversation can be heard on the ground!

And also - simplicity of design, no need for expensive fuel and oils, efficiency, great resource... In addition, oddly enough, the steam engine had even less mass than its liquid fuel counterparts (80 kg). True, there was also the mass of the boiler - 220 kg.

The aircraft's ability to reverse and quickly decelerate was especially noted. When the Airspeed 2000 landed, the pilot engaged the reverse - and the propeller, spinning in reverse side, almost instantly and softly, in contrast to the brakes on the chassis, stopped the car. Aircraft with internal combustion engines at that time were not capable of such “tricks”.

The Airspeed 2000 was used quite successfully (in the service of the US Postal Department), but the idea was not continued.

The Bessler plane flew until 1936, after which traces of it were lost. Nathan Price subsequently proposed his ideas for steam aircraft engines to Lockheed, but was rejected.

I don’t know about the reader, but I’m sorry that passwords don’t ply the celestial oceans. They have some amazing steampunk spirit, almost lost in our age digital technologies and skyscrapers made of plexiglass. Sometimes, when I see a streak left by a jet plane in the sky, I imagine that somewhere there is actually a steam-powered winged engine flying, and behind it a trail of steam is spreading across the sky...

Felix du Temple's attempt

Felix du Temple de La Croix (1823–1890) was a naval officer first and an inventor second. His army career did not interfere with his free time engage in engineering, and in 1857 du Temple received a patent for a steam-powered aircraft, the Canot planeur.

Du Temple built several miniature models of the glider - first with a clock mechanism as an engine, and then with a tiny steam plant. The models flew successfully.

Du Temple struggled with the engine for the large glider. He tried to install Lenoir’s newly invented internal combustion engine on the glider, but the usual “steam engine” turned out to be more powerful and efficient, although noticeably heavier.

In 1874, du Temple built his parole with a wingspan of 13 m and a weight of only... 80 kg! Tests have shown that the aircraft quite successfully takes off using a catapult and can stay in the air for some time. In 1876, du Temple was miserably thrown out of the army for his ultra-royalist views, and he devoted himself entirely to the password. Du Temple developed the ultra-compact steam engine independently.

The pinnacle of du Temple's design history was the 1878 World Industrial Exhibition in Paris. The password was successfully demonstrated there. The army became interested in it, but a number of problems arose: the political views of du Temple, who demanded the restoration of the monarchy, and the fact that the glider could not take off on its own. The steam engine played practically no role in flight: the distance that the steamboat could cover, it could also cover perfectly well while hovering, simply by the principle of a glider. The project stalled.

Du Temple's compact engine was subsequently used in various designs, working on steam.

And here was also this airplane:

The Bristol 37 Tramp transport aircraft became further development Bristol 24 Braemar / 26 Pullman aircraft. In 1919, Frank Barnwell proposed to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company an alternative to delivering mail by transatlantic aircraft. This idea was supported by the postal company, but they made a counter proposal - to make the aircraft’s power plant based on a steam turbine. It was decided to install two Lungstrom-type turbines on the aircraft, allowing the engine to develop 1,500 hp on the shaft. each. From the beginning of the design of the aircraft, serious difficulties began to arise, the first of which was the excessive power of the power plant (3000 hp) for the fuselage of an aircraft designed for 1600 hp. (four 400-horsepower Liberty L-12 engines). And the main problem was the design of a reliable and at the same time lightweight steam boiler.

...By the way, the first official Paris-Rouen auto race in history was won on July 22, 1894 by the De Dion-Bouton car with a steam engine. This is not surprising, because at that time steam was the most common source of energy in the world. Machine tools and pumps were powered by steam; steam was used on the railway and in industry, in everyday life and even in entertainment. And of course, they tried to make the locomotives fly. Sometimes it was even possible.

Tim Skorenko

In fact, the first steamboat successfully took off only in 1933, but the number of attempts to launch a steam engine into the air is simply incalculable.

The inventor of the password is the English engineer William Samuel Henson (1812−1888). A brilliant machine operator and inventor, Henson received his first serious patent at the age of 23 - for a machine for the mechanized production of braid. And in 1838, he unexpectedly became interested in aviation, which then, let’s be honest, simply did not exist. Naturally, there were no internal combustion engines, much less jet engines, and the only way to make a heavy winged machine take to the air was to install a steam engine: it powered the massive wings of the aircraft. Henson devoted a lot of effort to creating the lightest and most compact power unit possible and patented it in 1841. And a year and a half later, together with his friend and companion John Stringfellow, he received a patent for a real aircraft with a steam engine. The vehicle was called the “Aerial Steam Carriage”, or “Ariel” for short.

On October 9, 1890, the Aeolus aircraft, designed by Clement Ader, took off and covered about 50 m. The history of modern aviation dates back to this date.

According to the drawings, the car had a wingspan of 48 m (total area - 420 m2) and weighed 1400 kg. According to Henson and Stringfellow's calculations, Ariel could carry ten passengers and accelerate to 75 km/h with a flight range of 1600 km.

There were a number of modifications to Henson's car. In the model shown we see something like a keel; in a full-scale vehicle, the place of the keel was to be taken by a passenger gondola.

In 1843, Henson and a number of partners organized the world's first airline, which was called the Aerial Transit Company. The goal was to raise the necessary amount to build an airplane, but all the reduced models of the machine built between 1844 and 1847 were unsuccessful: not a single one took off. The plane, even in its small version, was too heavy. As a result, Stringfellow nevertheless built a working model, which flew about 20 m (and was driven by propellers, and not by flapping wings), but by that time Henson had already become completely disillusioned with the unpromising project. He got married, emigrated to the USA and left aviation. In the world industry he is known primarily as the inventor of the safety razor.

The model Stringfellow made was capable of flight. The real Ariel was never completed, so nothing can be said about its flight properties.

Mozhaisky's failure

To some extent, the “cult” plane of Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaisky (1825−1890), so beloved by artists and philatelists, was also powered by steam. More precisely, it should have been given.

Captain 1st Rank Mozhaisky began working on the aircraft project as an elderly man, in the 1870s, after leaving the active army. Subsequently, Mozhaisky received the rank of major general and even rear admiral, but that was later, and Alexander Fedorovich built his wonderful aircraft in 1882.

First of all, Mozhaisky’s design was unique in that it had two steam engines (20 and 10 hp, respectively). It is characteristic that almost all inventors of the 19th century assumed a very low flight speed in their calculations (in the case of Mozhaisky - 40 km/h), which forced them to make wings of original shapes and with a very large surface area. Huge rectangular wings, a complex system of supporting cables, three propellers - no one before Mozhaisky had tried to make an airplane of this size. Actually, Mozhaisky derived the shape of the wings from his numerous experiments with kites, which he conducted since 1873. In 1876, he built a large half-glider, half-snake, on which he took off (although the glider was pulled by a horse; the device could not fly on its own).

The second failure seriously crippled the inventor. He continued to fine-tune the design, bought more powerful steam engines, wrote to the ministries, but died on March 21, 1890. After Mozhaisky’s death, the plane stood in the open air for some time, then was dismantled and stored in a barn, and a few years later it completely burned down in a fire. Mozhaisky’s drawings have not survived: all models of his aircraft were made from drawings and text descriptions.

Il-18P, “Flying Steam Locomotive”, is the world’s first and so far the last experimental steam-powered aircraft.

IL-18P. Permanently parked.

At the end of the 50s of the last century Soviet Union led the secret development of an ultra-economical multi-purpose aircraft. The designers were faced with the task of making an aircraft that could fly on any fuel, refuel in any conditions, with a flight range of at least 10,000 kilometers and the ability to land on very short strips, as well as on water and swamps.

The first condition - omnivorousness while at the same time observing the principle of ideological legibility - dictated the idea of using a steam generator power plant to the brilliant Soviet designers. The basis for the future password was the glider of the ultra-modern (the best in the world!) Il-18 aircraft at that time.

The power plant used was one developed at the Gas Dynamics Research Institute named after. Stechkina steam turbine installation with direct-flow steam heating is unique in its technical and ideological characteristics. Steam heated in steam heaters, accelerating in the nozzles of the expansion-vestibular apparatus, rotated steam turbine, from the shaft of which a generator of alternating-constant 4-phase (according to the number of generators) current was driven. The aircraft's propellers were driven by four electric motors powered by a generator, which during operation were excited and simultaneously cooled (the so-called principle of double steam-electric expansion) by the exhaust steam of the gas turbine unit.

First flight of the Il-18P with the steam afterburner turned on.

Technical solutions

Modification of the Il-18P with two bunkers for peat and one coal tender, equipped with an automatic fuel supply and centering system AKCHG-TsP, which made it possible to significantly reduce the number of replaceable stokers.

When creating the aircraft, many unique technical solutions, many of which were decades ahead of their time. Many of these solutions flowed directly from revolutionary steam turbine technology.

For example, an afterburner system was developed, when during takeoff and landing, steam from the boiler came out through a special nozzle and created powerful jet thrust. This made it possible to reduce the take-off run from 1000 to 120 meters, and the run length from 800 to 60 meters.

Subsequently, the system was modified, additional maneuverable nozzles were added, with the help of which the aircraft could instantly turn in the air almost at a right angle to the course.

IL-18P performs an instant course change maneuver.

The plane was indeed all-fuel. Literally during the shift, the bunker for solid fuel (sawdust, firewood, coal) was replaced with a tank with liquid fuel (alcohol, gasoline, oil and even vegetable oil). It was even possible to use enemy uniforms crushed in a special way (according to the method of the famous Russian scientist, professor, academician Barbaris Ivanovich Tolchak-Melcheny) as fuel (the use of fur flight jackets from the American Air Force was found to be especially effective - during the tests it was crushed without a trace and a batch of 1000 pieces of fur flight jackets specially purchased for this purpose through third countries was processed.The effectiveness of the experiment was confirmed by 1000 signatures of those participating in the tests especially responsible persons, to whom the jackets were handed over immediately before the start of the event - not one of them later returned the jacket, which just indicates complete and maximum combustion in the furnaces of the steam generator plant).

To perform non-stop flights, a system was developed to refuel the aircraft with activated carbon, briquetted into cylindrical modules with a diameter of 633 millimeters and a length of 5684 millimeters. The briquettes were dropped from the bomb bay of the Tu-14 Torpedo Bomber and received into the loading compartment of the Il-18P when the speeds of the tanker and the refueled were equalized and the doors of the fuel receiving compartment on the upper surface of the Il-18P fuselage were opened.

The AOS-K-1, an anti-icing system using boiling water, was tested on the Il-18P. Part of the boiling water from the boiler was diverted into the main pipeline, from which it was distributed over the load-bearing aerodynamic surfaces of the aircraft. According to calculations by NIIVP (Research Institute of Water and Steam), the introduction of AOS-K-1 on all aircraft of the air fleet could allow the USSR to save up to 100 thousand liters of alcohol per year. Unfortunately, this system was not put into production because some official from the ministry said: “Why? What are we going to do with this amount of alcohol? People are already drinking themselves to death!”

P.S. Fun fact: the above-described system at the development stage suffered from a “childhood disease” in the sense of insufficient tightness, therefore, on a prototype aircraft equipped with this system, there was constant leakage from the rear of the fuselage hot water Because of this, the mechanics servicing the system said that the plane was “peeing boiling water.” Thus, this expression then forever took root in the Russian language.

Specifications parameter Il-18 (kerosene prototype) Il-18P (basic modification)
Wingspan, m 37.42 37.42
Aircraft length, m 35.90 35.90
Aircraft height, m 10.17 10.17
Wing area, m² 140.0 140.0
Circle area, m² pR² PR²
Empty aircraft weight, kg 35,000 38,000
Maximum take-off, kg 64,000 82,000
Type of fuel, tons aviation kerosene (grades T-1, TS-1, T-2, RT) gasoline, alcohol, oil, coal, sawdust, shredded enemy uniforms
Fuel weight max., t 30 tons 34 tons
Engines 4 TVD, gas turbine 1 steam generator PGD, 4 EPD, electric
Power, hp 4 x 4 252 1 x 32 000, 4 x 7 120
Maximum speed, km/h 685 - 1,020
Cruising speed, km/h 625 - 890
Practical range, km 3,700 - 12,000
Range, km
Practical ceiling, m 10,000 - 12,500
Crew, persons 5 4-80
Payload 120 passengers or 13,500 kg of cargo 121 passengers or 23,000 kg of cargo
Accepted for trial operation in 1957-1959.

Application

First of all, the IL-18P had not a civilian, but a military purpose. At that time, everyone was preparing for a nuclear war; an exchange of nuclear strikes put the supply of petroleum products to aviation under great question. The Il-18P was an all-fuel bomber and anti-aircraft aircraft; in addition, its ability to operate as a universal combined heat and power plant/wind power plant for external load ensured the fastest deployment of energy-intensive equipment (radars) on captured bridgeheads, facilitating the restoration of the national economy immediately after the war...

The developers thought not only about air transportation, but, anticipating man-made disasters in the northern regions of the country, equipped production airliners with a system for supplying steam from the aircraft installation to external consumers. This opportunity was supposed to be used in case of accidents at thermal power plants in northern cities and towns: if it is impossible to quickly restore equipment in locality the IL-18P was sent (thanks to its unique flight qualities - range and unpretentiousness to the length and coverage of the runway - landing could be carried out in any clearing over 120 meters long), connected to the local heating plant and supplied residents with heat. There were no problems with fuel, since it was possible to heat with any available and pasture material - diesel fuel, coal, peat, dung, the corpses of fallen animals and deceased prisoners, of which the northern territories of the country never experienced a shortage.
When testing a prototype in the northern village of Ulden-Balden, local residents nicknamed the plane that heated their building all winter “Fire Bird,” and the soft drinks that were distributed to everyone by the two flight attendants who arrived with the crew. - "Fire water". The flight attendants, by the way, were nicknamed “Fire Baba.”

Cabin Il-18P. At high resolution, specific control devices are visible.

Stories

During its operation, the aircraft successfully operated on all types of fuel, except alcohol. When refueling aircraft With alcohol, the crews refused to turn on the power plant, even if it was a matter of failure to comply with an order and a military crime. There are documents that record the civilian PIC’s answer to the investigator’s question “But why?” - “But how is it possible!”, and the response of the military pilot before the tribunal: “I couldn’t do it. After all, I’m a Russian officer!”

Termination of development

The Soviet government had already prepared a decree to launch the Il-18P into mass production, when suddenly an emergency occurred. On May 14, 1962, during an experimental flight on the Urengoy-Odessa route through the North Pole, an Il-18P with 28 passengers on board and 5 crew members crashed. During takeoff, the plane's main boiler exploded. Cubic meters of steam instantly filled the entire cabin. Many passengers were scalded by hot steam. The pilots managed to land the plane in a swamp not far from the Urengoy airfield. Miraculously, there were no casualties.

But despite the fact that the entire crew survived and for 30 hours fought for the survivability of the aircraft, and despite the abundance of high-quality peat around, this aircraft not only could no longer take off on its own, but could not even stay afloat, and left into the swamp up to the keel.

General designer at the scene of the Il-18P accident.

This accident allowed the opponents of steam to gain the upper hand. They posed the question to the developers: why all this, why new technologies, why an economical steam propulsion engine, if after the explosion and destruction of the boiler, nothing works anyway and even collecting first-class firewood is pointless? The designers, who brilliantly coped with specific problems, did not have a timely objection, and the project was suspended and shelved.

As the investigation into the Urengoy incident showed, the cause of the plane's crash was the quality of the firewood, which was delivered by trailer an hour and a half before departure and did not undergo the proper drying and activation procedure. Of course, checking the quality of logs before departure does not fall within the competence of the General Designer, but competitors took advantage of the opportunity to do everything to discredit his ideas. Things got to the point that he was even expelled from the ranks of the CPSU...

The promising Il-18P fell victim to the intrigues of the oil mafia. They managed to convince the then party leadership that the steam generator engine had no prospects. Although the reserve for improvement - reducing weight, increasing range and speed, shrinking and settling steam - was far from exhausted.

Foreign analogues

At the same time, attempts were also made in the USA to create a similar aircraft, but things did not go beyond the sketches of an unknown designer. The main task of the American government was not to create an aircraft, but to prevent the air superiority of the USSR. After intelligence was received that the USSR did not succeed, the American project was also curtailed.

Sketch of a flying boat powered by a steam engine by an unknown American designer. It is obvious that, despite the modernist external design, the technical and steam part is hopelessly behind the developments of domestic designers.