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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 1582.PDF
n6 FLIGHT AUGUST 3RD, 1944 Two Bells The Bell Aircraft Corporation's Unorthodox Jet-propelled Aircraft and Helicopters : No Combination of the Two —Yet FROM the time he first founded the Bell Aircraft Cor poration, Mr. Laurance Bell has never been afraid of giving the unorthodox a trial. The Bell Airacuda and Airacobra were cases in point. The former had pusher engines and gun positions in the noses of the two nacelles, while the latter, as our readers will well remember, has the single engine mounted in the middle of the fuselage and driving the airscrew through a transmission shaft. More recently the Bell Aircraft Corporation has been mentioned as being the designers and constructors of the airframe produced in America to take the Whittle jet- propulsion power plant originally sent to America from this country in 1941 and there handed over to the General Electric Company for manufacture and development. Jn addition, and again with an obvious eye on the future, the Bell Aircraft Corporation has entered the field of heli copter design. All of which is evidence of an adventurous spirit all too rare in the aircraft industry. The nearest parallel in Great Britain is, perhaps, to be found in West- land Aircraft of Yeovil. After starting, during the first world war, by building aircraft to other people's designs, Westlands began original design, and many are the unor thodox types which saw the light of day. It is only neces sary to recall here the Woyewodsky and the Hill Ptero dactyls, a le Pere Autogiro, and some other strange birds of which little has been heard. Curiously enough, it was the Westland firm which was the first to introduce the engine behind the pilot and the long airscrew transmission An artist's impression, reproduced from our Chicago contemporary Air Tech., with full acknowledgement, of the Bell jet-propelled aircraft witl« two Whittle-G.E.C power plants. The Bell helicopter is said to have a stabilising device inter posed between the rotor hub and the supporting structure. The rotor is of the two-bladed type with wooden blades. * shaft. This was in a single-seater biplane fighter with Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine. «— However, all this is by the way, but it serves to provide a background for the latest American Bell developments. Not only keenness but the ability to 'get on with the job" was displayed by the Bell Aircraft Corporation when, on September 8th, 1941, it was notified of the proposal that it should design the airframe for the new power plant. Within a fortnight the Bell designers had submitted general-arrangement drawings of the proposed aircraft. The drawings were accepted immediately by the U.S Army Air Forces, and one year and three weeks later, on Octo ber 1st, 1942, the first test flight was made by the prototype aircraft. The pilot was Bell's chief test pilot, Robert M. Stanley, and on the following day Brigadier-General Lawrence C. Craigiu. of the Army Air Forces, flew the machine, thus becoming the first U.S. Army Air Force officer to pilot a jet- propelled aircraft. The first flight of the Gloster jet-propelled aircraft pro totype was made, it will be remem bered, by the late Fit. Lt. P. E. G.
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