Autopilot reducing the pilot's workload. Lawrence Sperry (the son of famous inventor Elmer Sperry) demonstrated it in 1914 at an aviation safety contest held in Paris. At the contest, Sperry demonstrated the credibility of the invention by flying the aircraft with his hands away from the controls and visible to onlookers of the contest. Elmer Sperry Jr., the son of Lawrence Sperry, and Capt Shiras continued work after the war on the same autopilot, and in 1930 they tested a more compact and reliable autopilot which kept a US Army Air Corps aircraft on a true heading and altitude for three
Flight of the Intruder (novel) Flight of the Intruder (novel) Flight of the Intruder is a novel written by Stephen Coonts in 1986 telling the stories of United States Navy aviators flying the A-6 Intruder – a two-man, all-weather, aircraft carrier based strike aircraft on missions during the Vietnam War. The main character is Jake "Cool Hand" Grafton, a naval aviator who appears in a series of sequels. The book, which was made into a movie of the same name and adapted into a video game, marked the beginning of Stephen Coonts' career as a best-selling novelist. "Flight of the Intruder" begins with a night