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Aviation History
1943
1943 - 1376.PDF
556 FLIGHT MAY 27TH, 1943 A DUNNE BIPLANE OF 1913 : The panels between the wing tips were fins only and were not used as rudders, all controlling being done by the trailing-edge flaps. The castor oil smoke from the 50 h.p. Gnome engine brings back early Hendon memories. The undercarriage was by way of being a " tricycle." Tailless Trials Tribute to a British Pioneer : The Dunne Biplanes and M.onoplanes By CM. POULSEN TO the modern generation Col. J. W. Dunne is known as the author of books such as "An Experiment with Time" and "Nothing Dies," which out-Einsteined Einstein. Only the old-timers realise that he was one of our earliest aircraft pioneers. These notes may help to show how far he was ahead of his time/ aeronautically speaking. Wing span - - 36ft.Wing chord (root) 6ft. 3'n. Wing chord (tipj 5ft. oin.Wing area - 230 sq. ft. Area of flaps (2) 18 sq. ft GREAT interest has been aroused by the article pub-lished in our issue of May 13th, 1943, in which,under the title "Turbines and the Flying Wing," Mr. G. Geoffrey Smith, our Manag- ing Editor, suggested the logical combination of the tailless type of aircraft and power plants of the turbine-compressor type. Briefly, the suggestion was that instead of trying to adapt orthodox mono- planes to the new type of power plant, the aircraft might be de- signed around the power plant. Many are the attempts that have been made to produce really prac- tical tailless flying machines. Refer- ence has been made to several of them in our pages in the past few months. Names such as Junkers, Dunne, Hill, Lippisch, Handley Page and Northrop, recall interest- ing designs. In view of the revival of interest in the tailless and its large-scale version, the "all-wing" type, it has appeared to us not only fitting that a very.sincere tri- bute should be paid to the "father" of all tailless aircraft. Col. J W. Dunne, but desirable that the results of his early work should again be made available to the aircraft community. It fell to Flight to record, from 1910 to 1913 or so, the trials and triumphs of Col. (then Lieut.) J. W. Dunne, but that was before many present readers took any interest in flying Plan view of a Dunnemonoplane of 1911. The engine was a 50h.p. Green four - cyl. water-cooled. The wing-tip flaps were rudders and elevators as well as ailerons. It is nothing short of amazing, especially in view of the relatively small progress made since, that as early as 1905 Dunne had designed his tailless monoplane wing. In the following year he showed it to Col. Capper, of the Army Balloon Sec- tion (from which later grew the R.F.C., R.N.A.S., and R.A.F.). Col. Capper, however, asked for a biplane, and a biplane version was designed and built at Blair Atholl. To appreciate to the full the fore- sight and insight of J. W. Dunne it is necessary to recall that at that time aerodynamic knowledge was almost non-existent, and what little there was had not been assimilated by the majority of aircraft experi- menters. Lanchester understood, from theoretical considerations, the mechanism of lift and drag, but few of those who did the practical ex- periments were able to follow his reasoning, in detail at any. rate. '' Box Kites'' were the order of the day, and speeds were so low that the problem of reducing drag scarcely entered into the picture. In this connection one may, per- haps, recall as an example of the way in which experimenters were more concerned with structural strength than with aerodynamic re- finement, the famous "thrush test." It was a common saying that if, in a biplane structure, there was room for a thrush to fly be- tween the bracing wires, another
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