in the operation of amphibians, and he put the wheels down as we
approached the river. When we hit the water the airplane went over on
its back and sunk to the bottom. It came up to the surface again, and
we all climbed out onto the keel, and waited for rescue. A police boat
came over and took us to the dock. The police sent us to the hospital
and then went back and towed the airplane over to the shipyard next door
to Solvay. While we were at the hospital, the crane man hooked onto the
Towle and lifted it out of the water and gently set it down on the dock.
He was only trying to help, but he inadvertently set it down on its back
instead of its wheels. That was the end of the Adams airline. The
Packard Company took back their engines. I helped remove them the next
day. We dismantled the airplane and trucked it back to the airport where
it sat in a state of neglect for some time. The pilot was fired, I lost
my job, and Towle lost his airplane.

Analysis

Advantages

A Packard diesel advertisement which appeared in _Aero Digest_ for June
1930 stated that this engine had three major advantages over its
gasoline rivals: Greater reliability because of extreme simplicity of
design; greater economy because of lower fuel cost plus lower fuel
consumption, permitting greater payloads with longer range of flight;
and greater safety because of removal of the fire hazard through the use
of fire-safe fuel and absence of electrical ignition equipment.

These were the engine's principal advantages. Others are analyzed here
by the author in order of their importance. At low altitudes the diesel
uses an excess of air to eliminate a smoking exhaust; consequently at
high altitudes, where the air is less dense, the diesel is still able to
maintain much of its power. In contrast, the carburetored gasoline
engine is sensitive to the fuel-air ratio and thus has no surplus air
available at higher altitudes. A malfunctioning carburetor could cause a
gasoline engine to cease operating, but an inoperative fuel injector
would cause the Packard diesel to lose one ninth of its power, since
each cylinder had its own independently operating injector. In practice,
however, because of the excessive vibration, the engine was generally
shut off immediately after a cylinder cut out.[27] Shielding was
unnecessary because the diesel had no electrical ignition system.
Carburetor icing was an impossibility because there was no carburetor.

Any exc