Word: pilotless
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Five years ago at Bikini, bombs had been detonated underwater and dropped from planes. This time, all the charges-and the AEC would not give the number -were fired from steel towers that vaporized in the fierce heat of the explosions. Radio-guided, pilotless planes flew in & around the blast areas, carrying sensitive instruments to register a wide variety of effects. On the ground, close by the tall towers, other devices responded to events that took place in less than a millionth of a second, transmitted their observations to remote recorders before vanishing in the swirling turbulence. Pigs, dogs...
Things picked up a little last year as the Navy began ordering land-based patrol planes, pilotless aircraft and other equipment. (Martin's current backlog of military orders: about $75 million.) To help get the company squarely back on its feet, aging (64) President Glenn Martin moved himself up as chairman and brought in 43-year-old C. C. (for Chester Charles) Pearson, a onetime executive of Douglas Aircraft and a vice president of Curtiss-Wright, as his successor. With a sharp eye on overhead, Pearson sold off Martin's sidelines and managed...
Last week the Navy announced that its gunners would soon have a target worthy of their fire: the Martin KDM-1, a pilotless plane powered with a ramjet engine, designed to fly close to the speed of sound. The little drone is carried into the air under the wing of a larger airplane and flown fast enough to start its ramjet. Then it is released and flies thenceforth under remote control, while the Navy gunners try to shoot it down. When its fuel is gone, the drone zooms high in the air. A parachute opens and it floats down...
...request for a 3,000-mile range was proof that the missile men had some hope of solving problems that were regarded a few years ago as Buck Rogerish dreams. A guided missile is no mere pilotless bomber shepherded by a nearby mother plane. According to M.I.T.'s Dr. Karl T. Compton, new chairman of the Research and Development Board, a missile must fly near its target unaccompanied and have some sort of "seeing eye" to recognize the target and steer toward it. Admittedly, this is a large order...
Gable has one strong scene in which he "talks down" a navigator who is trying to land a pilotless bomber. Significantly, this is the movie's one big outdoor sequence. Back inside headquarters, where drama depends on the reading of lines, Cinemactor Gable cannot always hold the center of the stage...