The Annual Meeting of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences

WILL ROGERS, the great American humorist used to say, ‘All I know is what I read in the papers’. It would not be true to say that the daily press will tell us all that the Institute Meeting brings forth in science and technology, but news‐papermen have a flair for the significant. Accordingly, when the New York Times devoted a half‐column editorial to the luncheon speech of Admiral Luis de Florez, it was because this engineer, with so many war‐time training devices and methods to his credit, had once again evolved a valuable idea, a Synthetic Aircraft to serve in the development and testing of new aeroplanes. During the war the Navy developed and used Synthetic Aircraft for training men in gunnery, bombing, radio work, meteorology, the handling of rockets and torpedoes. Moreover, with the aid of complex electronic devices, computers, electric analysers, it was possible to subject young pilots, in almost uncanny fashion, to simulated emergency conditions, the cutting out of an engine, combat damage. The Navy spent S100,000,000 on its synthetic trainers and saved millions of hours of training time and billions of dollars. In pioneer days, to build a new plane cost a few thousand dollars and in the test flight only one man risked his life. Today the first flight hazards millions of dollars and the lives of several men. Admiral De Florez suggested that the building of synthetic aircraft to reproduce the flight characteristics of a new machine in operating form rather than to rely on calculations, however learned they might be. Let us quote his own words: