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Aviation History
1949
1949 - 0669.PDF
If* 453 Fairey Gyrodyne Design Survey of the World's Fastest Helicopter WHEN one examines those delightful old prints whichso enchantingly, and sometimes extravagantly,portray the earliest ideas of man-carrying flying machines, it is notable that, among the aerodynes, the division is about equal between fixed-wing and rotating- wing types. It was, perhaps, quite fortuitous that man's attempts to fly were first attended with success on a fixed-wing type. Very nearly 20 years elapsed, in fact, before the first successful flight occurred with a rotating-wing aircraft: this was made on January 9th, 1923, when Juan de la Cierva first flew the type of aircraft which later became familiar as the Autogiro. The history of rotating-wing flight is a his- tory of dogged struggle in the face of official lethargy and lack of financial support. Had one-thousandth of the money expended on the development of fixed-wing aircraft been made available for development of rotating- wing types, the progress made in the latter field would have been enormous. As it is, although the advance has certainly been con- siderable, it has been relatively slow. Never- theless, a certain parity exists with fixed-wing conditions in that by far the greatest measure of development progress has been made within the last 15 years. The uninitiated viewer of the rotating-wing field may well be forgiven the erroneous im- pression that the first and biggest and best helicopters were, and are, American. Whilst in no way wishing to denigrate the valuable rotating-wing work done in the United States, we think it only fair to point out that, whereas Igor Sikorsky, who can be regarded as the father of American helicopter develop- ment, did not make his first controllable free flight until May, 1940, a British helicopter—the Weir W. 5, designed by G. and J. Weir, Limited, and flown by Mr. R. A. Pullin—achieved free controllable flight on June 7th, 1938. As in other instances, the war held up helicopter progress in this country, but owing to its size, wealth and relative remoteness, the United States was not hampered in develop- ment work to anything like the same extent. These comments are made in no captious spirit born of envy. On the contrary, in the achievement of real pro- 71K, generously fenestrated and comfortable, cockpit is admirably laid out with fully duplicated primary controls consisting merely of columns, pedals and throttle levers.
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