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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 0940.PDF
18 May 1951 587 EARLY GLIDING DAYS Recollections of the Itford Hill Meeting of 1922: Surprising Pioneer Performances By GEOFFREY DORMAN, A.R.Ae.S. A FTER the end of the 1914-18 war the Germans were /% forbidden by the treaty of Versailles to build power- driven aircraft, so they turned their attention to sail- planes. The sport of gliding may be said to have been sired by the Treaty of Versailles out of Germany. In the summer of 1921 we began to hear stories of gliding flights of twenty or thirty miles, made at the since-famous Wassekuppe, near Frankfort-am-Main; so in August, 1922, the Daily Mail announced that it would give a prize of £1,000 for a glide of the longest duration made during a gliding meeting in Britain. Itford Hill, Sussex, was the venue chosen, and it was announced that the event, organized by the Fop 1 Aero Club, would be held in October of that year. This allowed only three months for the design- ing and building of gliders, for there was none then in England; yet ultimately there were 36 entries, 16 of which came to Itford Hill and 13 of which flew. Some of the entries were purely frivolous and could never have flown; one, for instance, entered by "J- J- O'Freddy," was solemnly announced in the programme as a biplane on which power was provided by the pilot paddling. During the meeting a telegram was received saying that the pilot would shortly be arriving from Sheerness by air. Presum- ably he was some sort of practical joker, for no more was heard of him. No German entries were received, though one Klemperer monoplane was brought by a young man named John Jeyes, but owing to lack of any flying experience he crashed it at his first attempt. r There were three French entries, two of which arrived, and one of which, A. ManeyroFs Peyret tandem-wing mono- plane, won with a glide of 3 hr 21 min. Two Dutch entries were from Anthony Fokker, who flew one himself and engaged Gordon Oley to fly the other. As designers then had no gliding experience, nearly all the control surfaces of the British craft were too small, as the lack of airscrew slipstream effect had not been foreseen. It was possible to see how many flights some gliders had made by the number of additional pieces of surface that had been added to the rudder. The only British aircraft construc- tional firm to enter was the newly formed de Havilland Aircraft Co., who had two gliders, one flown by Hubert Broad and the other by E. D. C. ("Buller") Herne, an airline pilot with Daimler Airways, Ltd. Some trouble had been experienced with the lack of aileron control of these craft, "Flight photograph en—the wings ofOne of the most remarkable flying pictures ever Herne's glider folding-up in mid-air. The pilot so one evening the de Havilland engineers decided to lock the ailerons and give lateral control by wing-warping. The next day Buller Herne made the first test of the wing-warping from a gentle slope of Itford Hill. As soon as he became airborne his wings began to warp of their own accord, and eventually began to fold up; then broke right off at a height of 20 feet or so. The glider fell on soft ground, without injury to Herne. The photographs show two phases of the occurrence. When assistance arrived Herne was already out of the cockpit surveying the damage and saying (with a loud sniff which always accompanied his words), "Now I suppose we shall go back to ailerons." Hubert Broad made some good glides on the other craft. George Handasyde, of the famous Martinsyde firm which had been closed down a year or so earlier, built a glider for F. P. Raynham. Neither "Handy" nor Raynham had expected glides of more than a few minutes at most, so, in order to save time in building, the aileron control wire was passed straight through the cockpit and was not attached to the control column; the length within the cockpit was bound with insulating tape and the pilot gripped it with his hand and moved it from side to side. On his second flight Raynham actually soared for 1 hr 53 min, which was the longest glide made until the final after- noon of the competition, when he was beaten by Maneyrol. For that flight Raynham was awarded the Britannia Trophy. On the last afternoon there was a strong north-east wind in which almost anything could have soared. Maneyrol brought out his tandem monoplane which he had not yet tested; no one Very differential ailerons: the wing-warping system—introduced after the ailerons had been found somewhat ineffective, owing to too much flexibility in the wing structure—beginning to take charge. The complete collapse shown above followed a few seconds later.
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