Test Pilot

1.  What is the difference between a dirigible and an airship?
2. True or false? Cessna built a Seneca before Piper did, and Piper built a Skyhawk before Cessna did.
3. From reader John Schmidt: The first U.S. city to be bombed from the air wasA. El Paso, Texas.B. San Francisco, California.C. Tulsa, Oklahoma.D. Yuma, Arizona.
4. A pilot departs the Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport in Detroit, Michigan, and heads due south on a long-distance flight. What is the first foreign country over which he will fly?
5. Why did the carrier-based Mitsubishi A6M3-22 Zero have such small folding wing tips while U.S. Navy fighters had much more of their wings fold up or aft to accommodate more aircraft on the cramped deck of a carrier?
6. What aerobatic maneuver did the Rutan Model 76 Voyager perform during its historic, nonstop, unrefueled 1986 flight around the world?
7. From reader Bruce Curtis: True or false? During World War II, Nazi Germany built and flew a four-engine, turbojet-powered bomber with fixed landing gear and wheel pants.
8. The first commercial jetliner to be intentionally flown faster than Mach 1.0, the speed of sound, was aA. Boeing 707.B. Convair 990.C. Douglas DC–8.D. No commercial jetliner ever did this.

Test Pilot Answers

1. There is no difference. Airships (and blimps) were originally called dirigible balloons or dirigibles. “Dirigible” originated from the French, diriger, which means “directable” or “steerable.” The first airship was built and flown by Frenchman Henri Giffard in 1852. It was a 143-foot-long, cigar-shaped, gas-filled bag powered by a 3-horsepower steam engine that cruised at 5 mph.
2. True with respect to the Seneca and false with respect to the Skyhawk. The Cessna Seneca was the military version of Cessna’s CH–1B helicopter. The civilian version was called the Skyhook.
3. C. It was widely reported that during the Tulsa Race Massacre of May 31 and June 1, 1921, white pilots flying Curtiss JN-4 Jennys dropped explosives and/or incendiary devices on the residents of the Greenwood District of Tulsa, one of the then-most prominent concentrations of African American businesses in the United States.
4. Canada.
5. For the Japanese, saving space was not as important as keeping the Zero light and nimble. An airplane with large folding wings pays the price by requiring additional structure, weight, and complexity.
6. An outside loop of global proportion. (Think about it.)
7. True. At least one Junkers Ju.287 was test flown with others under construction near war’s end. It was fast enough to avoid interception by Allied fighters, and its unusual wings had significant forward sweep.
8. C. A Douglas DC–8-43 reached Mach 1.012 while in a controlled dive through 41,000 feet maintaining supersonic flight for 16 seconds during a test flight over Edwards AFB on August 21, 1961.