Diner on Route 40.
Near New Castle, Delaware. 1939
Photo by Arthur Rothstein
Just 25 years after the Wright brothers launched modern aviation, Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 trans-Atlantic flight caused a world-wide sensation. It also sparked formation of more than 50 U.S. aircraft manufacturers in 1928 alone, but many of these “Lindbergh boom” companies folded during the 1930s Depression. One was General Airplane Corporation of Buffalo, NY that formed in 1928, but had downsized by 1930 into a single hanger at Roosevelt Field on Long Island (coincidentally, the departure-point for Lindberg’s New York-to-Paris flight).
Northern Delaware was an early aircraft industry hotbed. This diner was near Bellanca Field, home of the innovative Bellanca Aircraft Corporation, a 1922 start-up. Hundreds of its planes remain in service today. The aircraft (minus engine) lodged in this diner as a marketing ploy was the very last of the 43 “Aristocrat” planes manufactured by General Airplane in New York. General’s “Aristocrat” copied several features of a successful Bellanca airplane built in Delaware, so perhaps this simulated crash was Bellanca’s sly dig at their failed competitor.
This photo from 1979 shows a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employee opening the world’s heaviest hinged door, which is eight feet thick, nearly twelve feet wide, and weighs 97,000 pounds.
A special bearing in the hinge allows a single person to open or close the concrete-filled door, which was used to shield the Rotating Target Neutron Source-II (RTNS-II) -- the world’s most intense source of continuous fusion neutrons.
Newly built F4U Corsair and F6F Hellcats being prepared to be shipped to the Pacific theatre, USA, 1944. On October 1, 1940, the XF4U was the first single-engine US fighter to exceed 400 mph. Not only was she fast in a straight line but also in a dive too, attaining speeds of up to 550 mph.
