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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 1025.PDF
MAY 14TH, 1942 FLIGHT ATI engines, and the Antoinette mono planes. Some time during 1909 Levavasseur had a disagreement with the managing director and left in a huff. Early in 1910, however, he came back, the firm was reorganised, and work was begun on more powerful engines and on the Antoinette mono plane designed for the French Army competition. Two features of this machine leap to the eye in the photographs of the machine: the wings were without ex ternal bracing and the undercarriage was of the type which, a great many years later, we came to call the "trousered" type. In those days it was always argued, by the majority of British designers at any rate, that the thick cantilever wing offered as j^feat a drag as the externally" braced thin wing, and that, in addition, the cantilever wing was necessarily much heavier per square foot of wing area. As the flange stresses increase at the rate of something like the fourth power of the spar depth, that was a logical argument, and at the speeds obtainable with the low engine powers available in those days, the argument about drag was probably also justified. At that time we had not " discovered " interference drag and such like; we merely took the drag of individual items and added them together. Early Streamlining Levavasseur must have had an inkling that two plus two did not necessarily make four so far as drag was con cerned. He set to work to streamline his new monoplane (although the term was unknown then), and there is little doubt that he succeeded, although I have no figures to prove my belief. He made his wings pure cantilevers, and I believe that he used a multi-spar type of construction. Undercarriages were great drag producers in those days. Usually there were skids as well as wheels, sometimes a single skid and sometimes (more often) two skids side by side. Levavasseur made his undercarriage as well as his wing cantilever, and enclosed it in "trousers." Not only so, but to assist in preventing the machine from nosing over, always a preoccupation of early designers, he placed a small wheel in the front corner of each trouser leg. The trousered undercarriage was revived by German glider designers after the war 1914-18, and was then commonly thought to be original. For the French Army competition a new and more ^8W#erful (100 h.p.) Antoinette engine was designed. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it was evolved from the old type, since the main change was in The rudder, of aspect ratio less than 1, cannot have been very efficient, and the machine was probably unstable directionally. the number of cylinders. The early engine was an eight- cylinder vee, whereas the new was a twelve. Even in the engine M. Levavasseur was original. He carried but a small quantity of cooling water, and allowed it to evaporate in the cylinder jackets. The steam was then condensed in large coolers lying flat against the sides of the fuselage. The engine had two valves per cylinder, a mechanically operated exhaust valve and an automatic inlet valve. There was no carburettor; instead two fuel pumps delivered petrol to the inlet valve chambers. The stroke of the pumps was varied by an eccentric. Ignition was by battery and coil. Flight recorded, on September 30th, 1911, that the Antoinette cantilever monoplane had flown, but it did not enter the competition, and in fact it never figured in our columns again. Perhaps the reason is not hard to guess. Lateral control was invariably by warping the wings of monoplanes; ailerons were introduced by Farman on bi planes, and did not come into general use for monoplanes for a good many years. It seems obvious that the canti lever wings of the Antoinette could not be warped, and I do not think it had ailerons, so one is forced to the con clusion that it was a two-control monoplane, and that the dihedral angle was relied upon for lateral stability. The picture of the machine shows a small fin and rudder, and in view of the large fin area of the "trousers," one would expect a very large tail fin and rudder to be neces sary. This points to the machine being directionally unstable, and this would in itself be sufficient to account for the complete disappearance of the type. I feel that it probably suffered from what Dr. F. W. Lanchester, in the early days, called "catastrophic instability." C. M. P. NURSES' GIFT TO R.A.F. Second Fund Buys Two Spitfires O N Tuesday, May 12th, the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, the nurses of Great Britain formally presented to the country a cheque for £10,000 to purchase two more night-fighters "to defend the hospitals of Britain." They are to be Spitfires. One of these night-fighters is to replace Nightingale, the original Defiant subscribed for by the nurses last year, which later crashed in action against night raiders. The second one will be named Night Duty. The presentation was made by Miss Charters, the Matron of the- Wadsley Mental and Wharncliffe Emergency Hos pital, Sheffield, the hospital which contributed nearly £1,400, the largest individual subscription to the Fund. It was received on behalf of the R.A.F. "by a recently decorated night-fighter pilot, to whom Miss Charters said, when she presented the cheque : — These two aircraft the Nurses of Great Britain proudly dedicate to the service of their country, in memory of one gallant pilot, who, in a great company of others, gave his life in defence of the hospitals and homes of Britain. To day the nurses remember him, and them, and as far as we are able, we repay." With their latest gift, the nurses of Great Britain have brought their total subscriptions to the two Funds organ ised by the Nursing Mirror, the weekly nursing paper, up to just on £20,000. The first Fund, which raised over £8,000, bought 14 motor ambulances for the R.A.F., as well as the night-fighter aircraft, and the present Fund, besides buying the two Spitfires, has in addition over £i;ooo to present to the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund, in memory of the pilot of the original Nightingale who lost his life. As before, nurses from every part of Great Britain sub scribed to the Fund, in sums ranging from 6d. to well over £1,000 (combined hospital subscription).
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