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Aviation History
1935
1935 - 1186.PDF
554 FLIGHT. MAY 23, 1935. Mr. C. R. Fairey (left) was first connected with the construction of the Dunne automatically-stable machines, and later joined Short Brothers, and finally formed his own company. Capt. G. de Havilland began to design aeroplanes in 1910 ; he is seen above with Mr. F. Handley Page, at the first demonstration of the H.P. slot. On the right is Mr. H. J. Thomas, now a director of the Bristol company and chairman of the S.B.A.C, who learned to fly in 1910. (Flight photographs.) These, as we now know, were not very efficient with their fiat bottoms and no steps, but the light wing-loadings used in those days, and the low alighting speeds, made it possible to make quite good use of them. From the early war period Shorts became closely associated with marine aircraft, an association which has lasted and is continuing at the present time. Yet another British pioneer designer and constructor is Mr. Roo^rt Blackburn. His early machines were of the monoplane type, with cable-braced wings and a fuselage of triangular section, a four-wheel undercarriage, and long skids. In spite of many failures and disappointments at the beginning, Blackburn persevered, and to-day his firm is one of the best known in the British aircraft industry. Exhibition flights on Blackburn monoplanes were made in many parts of Great Britain in the early days of flying. While most of the early designers were preoccupied mainly with getting their machines into the air and making them controllable when once in the air, there were a few who looked farther ahead than that, and who aimed at inherent or automatic stability. Among them was Mr. F. Handley Page, whose early monoplanes were charac terised by crescent-shaped wings, tapering in thickness and chord and having back-swept tips, lhese Handley Page monoplanes did achieve a considerable degree of stability, but it is to be feared that pilots accustomed to the more sensitive and less stable aeroplanes of that time attempted to control the Handley Page monoplanes too much, with the result that piloting could at times be quite hard work. Had the pilots been content to leave the machines to right themselves, all would have been well, but the real merits of the designs were probably not fully realised. It is, however, worth placing on record the fact that even in the earliest days the inventor of the slot was concerned with safe flying. Another stability aircraft, which was to be " re discovered " many years later, was the Dunne "tailless," in which flaps at the wing tips acted both as elevators "•—»ii~/ifc « —rtHsffl Four early commercial aeroplanes ! (1) The Armstrong Whitworth " Argosy " ; (2) the Handley Page W.8 ; (3; a converted D.H.4, with which commercial aviation was begun shortly after the war ; (4) a D.H-34, which came into use a few years later. Flight photographs.)
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