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Aviation History
1935
1935 - 1177.PDF
AIRCRAFT ENGINEER AND AIRSHIPS uounded in 1909 FIRST AERONAUTICAL^WEEKLY IN THE^WORLD OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE ROYAL AERO CLUB No. 1378. Vol. XXVII. MAY 23, 1935 Thursdays, Price bd. By Post, 7id. Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices: DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON S.E.I Telegrams Troditur, Sedist, London. Telephone : Hip 3333 <,53 lines.. HERTFORD 8T., COVENTRY. Telegrams: Autocar, Coventry. Telephone: Coventry 5210. GUILDHALL BUILDINGS. N A VIOLATION' ST., BIRMINGHAM. 2. Telegrams; Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone : Midland 2971. SUBSCRIPTION RATES : Home and Canada Other Countries : Year, £1 13 0. Year, SI 16 0. 2«0, DEANSGATE. MANCHESTER, 3. Telegrams: Ilifle, Manchester. Telephone: Blaektriars 4412. 6 months. 16s. 01. ti months, 17s. Ui 56B, RENFIELD ST. GLASGOW, 0.2. Telegrams: rifle, Glasgow. Telephone: Central 4S57. 3 months, 8s. 3d. 3 mouths, 8s. 9J. I rogress I SSUED with Flight this week is a pictorial supple ment which illustrates a wide variety of types of modern British aircraft, civil and military. Many of these types, incidentally, will be seen at aero dromes next Saturday, Empire Air Day, at the R.A.F. and S.B.A.C. Displays at Hendon in June, and at the Royal Jubilee Fly-past at Duxford in July. In order to give newer readers a glimpse of the earliest British aeroplanes, and to refresh the memory of those who do recall the early flying days, we also pub lish this week special illustrated articles dealing with some of the early aeroplanes and engines which '' made history," and from which the wonderful modern British types may be said to have developed. In this way readers will be the better able to form their own opinions of the progress since a Wright biplane made the first flight in 1903. They will, we think, be filled with admiration for the courage of the pioneers who first ven tured into the air on their crude contraptions, the be haviour of which could not be foreseen and the strength of which was problematic. (Cynics may take the view that it was a case of ignorance being bliss!) To attempt to evaluate the progress which has been made from, let us say, 1908-09—when real flying began —to the present time would be outside the scope of the brief surveys we are able to publish this week. The increase of speed from about 40 m.p.h. to more than 440 m.p.h. looks, superficially, like tremendous progress. On the other hand, there are, we know, those who are prepared to argue that no real aerodynamic progress has been made. They say that if one were to take, for example, a modern militarv biplane, retain its external form but reduce its weight to approximately that of the early machines, and put in an engine of 40-50 h.p., the speed would not be very greatly superior to that attained by the old aeroplanes. While this argument is not altogether sound, it con tains a modicum of truth. Of some of the old aero planes, whose designers were necessarily a little hazy on stress calculations, it used to be jokingly said that if they saw a space anywhere large enough for a bird to fly through, they would add another bracing wire. This was referred to as "passing the thrust test." Re dundant bracing was certainly to be seen side by side with imperfect bracing in the same machine, but of structural breakages there were, on the whole, very few. The materials we use nowadays are a great deal more " refined," and we have learned a little more about the stresses likely to be set up in structural members. On the other hand, considerations of usefulness demand that we throw away as little weight as possible, and so we are probably working the better materials closer to their limits than did the pioneers their '' stick-and- string" constructions. Controllability On the aerodynamic side it is probably true to say that the greatest advance has been made in the direction of controllability. An enormous amount of research work has been directed towards this particular subject, and the controls of the modern aeroplane are vastly more effective. Yet they are fundamentally the same, if one excepts the substitution of ailerons for wing-warping. Aeroplanes still stall; some of them spin. "Loss of flying speed" was the expression used in the old days, but the result was the same " Getting into a spiral nose dive" was how we used to describe the evolution now called a spin, but that did not make it any more nor any less dangerous. What can be claimed is that the speed range of the modern aeroplane is much greater than was that of the earliest machines. With their low-
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