Word: suiza
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Typical of France's oversea air condition is the 40-ton French sesquiplane, Lieutenant de Vaisseau Paris, built in 1934 and now an old-fashioned monster. She has six 12-cylinder, 890 h.p., water-cooled Hispano-Suiza engines, has 161-ft. wing spread-wider than any U. S. air-plane-but she cruises at only 142 m.p.h. Two years ago, she was anchored in Pensacola Bay while her crew was ashore, capsized during a squall, was salvaged with difficulty, flown home in chagrin...
...Hispano-Suiza motcur canon (TIME, Jan. 11 and March 8) which taxed the credulity of one of your correspondents, is no novelty in air warfare. Precisely such a weapon, of 37 mm. calibre, was mounted in the shaft of the 300 h.p. Spad supplied to leading French pursuit pilots, back in September, 1918. De Turenne, my escadrille commander, had one. So did foremost French ace Fonck, who on one occasion had fired the canon, was easing away in a power dive to shake off some Fokkers behind him when one of the empty 37 mm. shell cases jammed his stick...
While deeply impressed by the renowned name of Hispano-Suiza, I take leave, nevertheless, to raise an eyebrow at TIME'S Jan. 11 resume of Spain's current dilemma. Granted tongue-in-cheek journalism applied to stories such as Mussolini's Jew-baiting in the same issue is more effective than open condemnation. However, applied in the wrong place, as TIME did very obviously in its yarn on the use of "moteur canon" (i.e., hollow propeller shafts hurling machine gun bullets or small calibre shells) in aerial warfare, it is little more than an exhibition of Munchausen...
...then, again, in view of Hispano-Suiza and the fashionable aviator who flies this, "the swankiest instrument of death"; not to mention the source of this amazing news-item-usually well-posted TIME, it seems almost a sacrilege to suggest that TIME had its leg pulled by an overenthusiastic newshawk, or fell victim to the ways...
Reader Schrankel, accustomed to the ordinary type of aircraft engine in which the propeller shaft is also the crankshaft, has not realized that in the Hispano-Suiza moteur canon the crankshaft drives through gears an entirely separate propeller shaft. This straight shaft is hollow. The superiority of the new moteur canon lies precisely in that it does not have to be "synchronized" to fire between the spinning propeller blades, as in the old-fashioned arrangement with which Reader Schrankel is familiar, but sends a stream of shells straight out through the hollow axis of the propeller...