Word: turbo
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Lockheed P-38 (Lightning). A two-engine (liquid-cooled) pursuit plane, the P-38 has so far had only limited tests in action, notably in the Aleutians. Its performance has been brilliant. Turbo-supercharged, it has excellent high-altitude performance. At its best altitude it is one of the world's fastest fighting aircraft. Constant improvements are being made...
Boeing B-17 (Flying Fortress). A tried and thoroughly tested model with an unequaled combat record (four-engine air-cooled, turbo-supercharged), the B-17 has indicated by its work in the Pacific, and over Europe as well, that it can carry out high-altitude day-bombing missions under the protection of its own guns and without fighter escort...
Thus, literally out of thin air, the turbosupercharger emerged last week as a menace to Hitler's power. It emerged, too, from 22 years of dusty neglect as a belated triumph for its inventor, Dr. Sanford Alexander Moss, 68, who developed the turbo long ago to help beat the Kaiser. As flyers in World War I reached for higher & higher altitudes, they found their engines losing power dangerously. Reason: atmospheric oxygen is as vital an aviation fuel as gasoline. At 20,000 feet, air is only half as dense as at sea level, at 35,000 feet one-fourth...
When Moss turned up at Dayton's McCook Field with his turbo in 1918, he met the traditional experience of all inventors: the "glassy eye," as he recalls, of skeptical industrialists and Army brass hats. He took them to the top of Pike's Peak, where a 350-h.p. Liberty motor gave only 230 h.p. in the thin air at 14,000 feet. When Moss cut in his supercharger, the motor roared away...
...geared supercharger became standard equipment on planes, and in 1938, aged 65, Dr. Moss sadly retired from General Electric. But World War II set flyers again to striving for altitudes incredible in 1917, brought the turbosupercharger and its inventor off the shelf. Today Moss is further improving the turbo (details are military secrets). Last week G.E. was completing a windowless, $5,000,000 supercharger plant at Everett, Mass., and announced plans for a similar $20,000,000 plant at Fort Wayne, Ind. Even if a turbo fell intact into the Nazis' hands today, Dr. Moss thinks it would take...