Word: cockpit
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Near Cumberland, Md., Captain Tappe received an unusual order: he and Co-pilot Robert S. Hurley were to wait in the cockpit after landing at Pittsburgh until the senior agent knocked at the door. There was no explanation. Capital had alerted Dr. Allison J. Berlin to meet the plane at Pittsburgh, and he had already conferred by phone with Virus Expert Jonas Salk, who was at a meeting in New York City. Salk's advice: give each member of the crew, and the baggage smashers in Baltimore and Washington, a double dose of gamma globulin and a dose...
...last week's Chicago meeting of the Aero Medical Association, the Navy and Douglas Aircraft Co. described their solution to the high-speed bail-out problem: a detachable cockpit. It would form the whole nose of the airplane and would contain all the expensive instruments and electronic gadgets, which are nice to salvage along with the pilot. It would also be standardized, so that the same cockpit would fit the bodies of many different airplanes...
When a bail-out is indicated, the pilot throws a switch, and the capsule cockpit separates neatly from the rest of the airplane. Since the pilot is still behind a streamlined windbreak, he does not get the full impact of deceleration. A small parachute opens and keeps the capsule headed into the wind. When it has slowed down enough, a big parachute opens and lowers it to the ground...
Preliminary experiments performed by Douglas have been encouraging, and the capsule cockpit is now approaching the practical testing stage. Besides saving pilots' lives, it has other advantages. It can be used as a training device, and dress rehearsals for combat missions can be performed with formations of pilots sitting safe in grounded cockpits and going through the motions...
...Navy does not expect to have its cockpit perfected before 1958, and it does not expect it to solve all problems, such as an enemy hit on the cockpit itself. "In many cases, however," says Douglas Engineer Albert Mayo, "it will enable the pilot to survive. It will not guarantee him a comfortable bailout, and if the jet is headed earthward at Mach 2 and 6,000 ft. off the deck, nothing can save...