72

UNITED STATES NAVAL AVIATION 1910-1995

1929-Contin ued

Navy for extraordinary achievement in aerial flight

during March 1928 in which he studied the action of

aircraft in violent maneuvers and inverted flight, and

developed and applied principles of operation which

contributed directly to safety in flight and the develop-

ment of more accurate methods of testing the perfor-

mance capabilities of aircraft.

25 May The race for the Curtiss Marine Trophy, held

at NAS Anacostia, D.C., was won by Lieutenant

William G. Tomlinson in an XF7C-1 with a speed of

162.52 mph.

4 June Lieutenant Apollo Soucek, in a Wright

Apache equipped with a Pratt & Whitney Wasp

engine, set the new world altitude mark for Class C

seaplanes at 38,560 feet.

11 June General standards for shielding aircraft

engine ignition, essential to long range radio recep-

tion, were established at a conference held at the

Bureau of Standards. Navy representatives included

Lieutenant Commander Allen I. Price from the Bureau

of Aeronautics and C. B. Mirick and L. A. Hyland from

the Naval Research Laboratory. Basic techniques for

shielding airborne radio from ignition interference had

been developed by a naval radio group at the Bureau

of Standards at the close of World War I and had per-

Soucek in his

Apache dur-

ing the alti-

tude record

f7ight #80-G-

416204

mitted some rather remarkable radio reception.

Although some use of ignition shielding had been

made throughout the 1920s, the results generally indif-

ferent in that adequate shielding had brought with it

undue cost in terms of aircraft maintenance or degra-

dation of aircraft performance. At the June 1929 con-

ference, spokesmen for aircraft, engine and radio

fields and for magneto, sparkplug and cable specialties

considered each other's problems sympathetically in

order to develop practical shielding standards. Within

the next year or so ignition shielding was generally

applied to naval aircraft and a requirement for ignition

shielding was included in the 1932 edition of the

"General Specification for the Design and Construction

of Airplanes for the United States Navy."

9 August The ZMC-2, a metal clad 200,000-cubic

foot airship built by Aircraft Development Corporation,

made its first flight at Grosse Ile (Detroit) Airport, Mich.

This airship, subsequently delivered to NAS Lakehurst,

N.J., was utilized several years for training purposes.

20 August Lieutenant Aldolphus W. Gorton, flying a

specially equipped UO-1, made several successful

hook-ons to the trapeze of Los Angeles (ZR-3) over

NAS Lakehurst, N.J. Earlier attempts by the same pilot

on 3 July were foiled when the hook failed to operate

after making contact with the trapeze.