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Aviation History
1928
1928 - 0253.PDF
APRIL 5, 1928 THE BEARDMORE "INFLEXIBLE Three Rolls-Royce " Condor " Engines IT is an undoubted fact that size as such exerts a pecuiiarfascination on the majority of people. We experience it in nature, in buildings, in ships, and in aircraft. The magnitudeof mountain and ocean, the towering of the skyscraper, the colossal bulk of the ocean liner, all have an appeal whichcan be traced back to size. Even in aircraft we do not Atlantic. (We are writing now, of course, of the days whenthe possibility of doing so was rather remote.) How that view came to gain ground is not very easy to imagine, exceptthat the appeal of size was in all probability at work. A fundamental law, which we cannot escape, decrees thatif we take any small aeroplane and build an enlarged version THE BEARDMORE " INFLEXIBLE " : With a wing span of 158 ft., and a total loaded weight of about 15tons, this machine is an interesting experiment in beating the scale law. Three-quarter front and three- quarter rear views. escape it. We may have our doubts as to the efficiency of a very large aeroplane, but in spite of ourselves we are impressed. Probably without putting the thought into definite form we are impressed by the feat of getting so many tons of inert matter into the air. And in the earlier days of aviation it was quite a common view that if one only built a machine large enough, it could fly across the of it, geometrically similar in every way, the area of thelarge machine will vary as the square of a linear dimension, while the weight will vary as the cube. Thus fundamentallythe large aeroplane is fighting against a natural limitation. No aircraft designer denies this law, but there are thosewho maintain that, as we do not make our large machine geometrically similar to the smaller one, the law does not The Beard more " Inflexible " : A view of the three Rolls-Royce " Condor " en- gines. The man standing in front gives a good idea of the size of the machine. Note particularly the large Dunlop wheels. X t X x x x x x x X X X X t t •:• 225
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