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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 0175.PDF
JANUARY 25TH, 1945 FLIGHT HAWKER HANDIWORK : The rearfuselage of. the Typhoon. This was the first monocoque to be pro-duced by this well-known firm The Hurricane snitable for really high speeds, but, it was also realised that a monocoque fuselage would necessitate a large amount of reorganising. This would take time, and the farsighted knew there was no such time to spare. was thus born with a tubular fuselage, and workers familiar with existing forms of constructions had no new process to learn, and no time was wasted on preparing special jigs and tools for monocoque construction. > As a result, when the Battle of Britain was fqufght in 1940, enough Hurricanes were available to give us that all-important victory. Meanwhile, in 1937, work had begun on a new fighter to specification F18/37. Hawkers again seemingly realised the consequences of a complete change over, and so the rear part only of the Typhoon's fuselage was designed as a stressed skin, this portion having none of the complications of a centre fuselage. This rear fuselage is built in halves, the break, just forward of the fin, being known as the "transport joint" which facilitates packing should the need arise for the aircraft to be shipped abroad. / The front portion is built up on 11 formers, which ape notched to clear the continuous stringers, numbering 22. These are of lipped top-hat channel section, while the formers, bar two, are of deep Z-section. The first and third formers are built-up box sections, and the forward one is cross-braced with dural tubes. To this is attached the '' integrating'' structure which takes the loads from the stressed skin of the monocoque and transmits them to the tubes of the centre fuselage at four joints. A point of interest is that the stressed-skin construction ends at the front formers, and the skin forward of this is simply a fairing and carries only small air loads. Planking or skin covering is laid on in twelve longitudinal strakes. Each strake has a strifiger down its centre and edges, which lap adjacent strakes ; the joints are completed by a single row of rivets \ The tail unit is separate from the front monocoque and is joined to it at the transport joint mentioned above. The stringers are not continuous over the joint, but are joggled over the formers and secured by two rivets, as shown in the illustration. The joint is made by means of a butt-strap . riveted round the inside of the skin and completed by numerous small external fishplates, which in effect tend to continue the stringers across the joint. Avro York The fuselage of the Avro York is such a fine ertcnnple of good aeronautical engineering that it is difficult to believe that when it was designed Avro's were not allowed to have anyone working on it officially! In spite of this handicap, it is easy to see that the York fuselage was designed as a first-class production job right from the start. In fact, the fuselage is so easy to build that the York may be considered as the Hurricane of the big fellows. The fuselage is divided into five main por- tions : Nose, mam-front, centre-section, main-rear, and tail. These are largely made of prefabricated sub-assemblies, afltf"*" this form of construction is a great factor towards the sim- plicity of the construction. The stringers are of "inverted" lipped top-hat section and are continuous in each separate portion of the fuselage. Most of the formers are lipped channel sections and are bolted on top of the flanges of the stringers. Where neces- sary, the formers are strengthened by placing two ordinary formers back to back except at the '' production'' or "transport" joints, where they are replaced by angle- shaped extrusions. The stringers are attached to these extrusions by means of two neat'' cropped'' angle brackets. To pr^ide the necessary torsional stiffness, four I-section members extend along the bottom of the fuselage. Joints in the skin plating are plain horizontal laps, with no joggling, and are adjacent to, but do not pick up with, the stringers. The stringers are secured by means of a single row of rivets. • The fuselage is very effectively soundproofed and this must contribute largely to the joy of travelling in a York. Stuck directly to the inside of BRISTOL-BUILT:Interior of the Bristol "BritainFirst." This con- struction is indica-tive of the robust- ness of Bristolmonocoques.
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