FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1941
1941 - 2108.PDF
FLIGHT SEPTEMBE'R IITH, 1941. Topics of the Day . . . ... OR TOPICS OF TO-MORROW ? rp, "Indicator" Enlarges on His "Back to Front" Theme : The Possibilities of Jet-propulsion \HE trouble with a war is that nobody can possibly I spare the time and energy to follow up really new -*• lines of development—unless these show signs of immediate success. It is necessary, as I've said before, to concentrate mainly on obviously productive things; in other words, on improvements to present designs rather than on brand-new ideas. A week or two ago I talked a lot of nonsense and a certain amount of sense about such things. I know in my bones that there will eventually be some quite staggering changes in our ideas about aircraft development. Whether this change will be in the airframe (to use the official word covering all the bits other than the motive power) or through a sudden leap forward in power unit design, nobody has any means of knowing. One will vitally affect the other. Quite obviously, the change in the first named must come when aeroplane speeds approach the speed of sound. As I tried to explain in vaguely humorous terms, the present shapes of fuselages (dear me, what a. dated word!) and wings must necessarily then be altered out of all recog- nition. The conventional streamline shape will no longer get along at all because it will be trying to push a great mass of air in front of it—and air can be immensely im- movable and vicious at high speeds. The Shape of Things The wretched aeroplane will, as I said, need to change its shape altogether, in the air and at a critical moment, if an enormous amount of power is not to be wasted in pushing the " below-700-m.p.h." shape through the air until it is ready to fit into the " above-700-m.p.h." universe—a totally different and peculiar universe where fronts have to be sharply pointed in order to cleave the solid mass of air. The same will apply to wing sections, too, so the difficulties are nothing if not tremendous. Maybe we shall have to give the whole thing up when such speeds are reached. In any case, there will be con- siderable loss of lile and material during the initial ex- periments. A conventional aeroplane, for instance, might be expected to develop the most extensive structural faults as the critical speed is reached, and the devices developed for dealilng with the change-over will certainly not be reliable or perfect at the first attempts. It has never seemed to me that the prime-mover to be used for such speeds presented any outstandingly great difficulties. Instead of a complicated mechanism driving a fan affair to push the air behind (and consequently the aircraft forward) you have our dear old friend rocket- propulsion—but rocket-propulsion on a new and most scientific scale. It is most wasteful to produce a tangled piece of machinery full of bangs and forces in order to do the very simple job of pushing air about. Why not use the bangs and forces a little more directly? At '' sound-speeds'' an airscrew will be beyond con- sideration, and in any case the drag of the necessary fittings (even if the engine is buried in the aircraft) will be much too great and complicated. Whenever one thinks of rocket-propulsion it is difficult not to visualise an erratic and highly dangerous departure in a mass of sparks and a great volume of noxious smoke. One moment R.i is sitting on its rails (shades of Hiram Maxim), ready to go, and a split-second later everybody is coughing and spluttering, the aerodrome buildings are on fire, and the once beautiful R.i is strangely missing. Of course, it has crashed in the next field. The port rocket failed to ignite at the correct moment, so that the outfit has made a sharp dash to port, through some trees, and has now set a cornfield alight. The inventor and his crew didn't know much about it. They were all killed by the acceleration, anyway. Sparks, bangs, a big tubular affair with little wings, and a long-haired, wild-eyed in- ventor making a short statement to the Press (who will later print it all wrong) before climbing into his expensive and shiny coffin. . That sort of thing. Somebody ought to remove the word '' rocket-propul- sion " from our consciousness. "Jet-propulsion" is so- much happier. There isn't really much difference between a jet-projected spate of air and an airscrew-pushed slip- stream—except that the former stands a reasonable chance of being straightforward, while the latter twists all over the place and causes people to have headaches while designing tail surfaces. Jets are good things. They can be at the back of the machine, and there is no reason why ' they shouldn't be moved about through a few degrees in any direction. That might be an advantage in providing directional control. Organised Explosions Now, for pushing air (or whatever) down long, narrow passages there are more efficient things than fans—and why have a separate prime-mover anyway ? Why not organise a series of explosions down the tube so that the velocity ' of the gas is gradually and remorselessly increased up to a maximum of a thousand miles an hour as it leaves the end of the tube? The initial push is given by some kind of motor-driven blower—if such an initial push is neces- sary. During the take-off, only a few "servo-bangs" are used, more coming in as the aeroplane gathers speed. There will be nothing peculiar or cranky about my jet- propelled aircraft—nothing, that is, except the whole thing, which will have to be designed from zero. A thou- sand propulsive experts will first settle down to the produc- tion of an " explosion drive " in its lightest, most compact and simplest form ; absolutely standardised and with *io odd bits of tube or insulation tape about the thing. Then, when it is perfect, these experts will be taken smartly away and prevented from further meddling, while another thou- sand aircraft designers will be brought in to build an aero- plane round the completed jet motor. A special aeroplane for the purpose—none of this absurd business of saving money by fitting half-baked, semi-developed jet motors into a standard aircraft. The whole affair must be original from the word '' Go,'' and all the experts must go first to psycho- analysts and mesmerists to have their pre-conceived notions forcibly removed—leaving only their experience in heat- motor and aerodynamic development. The Wherewithal Capital? It will cost about as much as three days of this war, and it will need to be a national concern, not a private affair with a couple of million shareholders squawk- ing for results and dividends. Such squawking would panic the managers and designers into premature attempt to produce something out of their Number Nine hats. "Indicator," having started the work, would take part of the capital, buy a fair-sized cutter or sloop, and dis- appear towards the South Seas—returning every few years to see how the thing was progressing—and always suppos- ing that the Japanese have left the South Seas in the same shape. In all probability these S.S. would be a mass of loose mines and all the inhabitants of, every island would be. found to possess Mark TV respirators and tin hats. That being the case I should return forthwith by armed mer- chantman and take the greatest pleasure in making th* first and fatal flight in the device. Or, alternatively, arrange secretly to have it redesigned to take me to some other planet where conditions are a little more humane aiand rational. "INDICATOR.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
