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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 1381.PDF
The great Anglo-American designer-pilot. Colonel S. F. Cody, poses for "Flight's" cameraman aboard his massive Cathedral biplane. FIFTY YEARS OF FLYING . . . to try and persuade the Wright Brothers to continue their experiments in this country, but the Treasury refused to provide the necessary finance, and so the Wrights stayed in America. As a result, the Factory was obliged to use home- produced talent, and several names that were later to become famous entered the story at this stage, including S. F. Cody, Lt. J. W. Dunne, and the town of Farnborough, to which the Balloon Factory and Balloon Section of the Royal Engineers moved in 1905. From the start Farnborough was a centre of British aeronautical research, its first experimental and training work covering such things as spherical and elongated balloons, aircraft engines, kites, aerial photography and signalling devices. The Man-lifting Kite Section had been formed in 1894 under Capt. B. F. S. Baden-Powell, but it did not come into prominence until 1906, when "Colonel" S. F. Cody was appointed Chief Instructor in Kiting. Until his death in an aircraft accident seven years later, this colourful figure with the goatee beard, and long hair sprouting from under an enormous Stetson hat, remained a dominant figure in British aviation, combining rare skill and courage with a flair for showmanship that was displayed not only in his personal appearance but in stunts such as crossing the Channel in a small boat towed by several of his kites. Although unrelated, he traded on the publicity value of his famous namesake and fellow-American, Col. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, and was to be seen astride a richly-saddled white horse almost as often as on the pilot's seat of an aircraft. Dunne was an entirely different character—a brilliant metaphysicist (and, later, author) who decided that the proper way to build an aircraft was on the swept-wing, tailless formula—not with an eye to future compressibility worries (!) but because tests with paper models had shown that such a layout offered inherent stability, at a time when "balance" was the would-be aviator's biggest headache. His story, too, has a touch of Dick Barton, for, realizing the potential military value of an inherently stable aircraft, the War Office decided to hide Dunne's experiments under a veil of official secrecy. As a result, one day in 1907 a party of men from the Farnborough Balloon and Kite Section were put into civilian clothes and packed off to the Duke of 72 FLIGHT AtholTs estate at Glen Tilt, Blair Atholl, complete with Dunne's first full-size aircraft, the D.i, fitted with two 12 h.p. Buchet engines. As the Duke was by tradition allowed to maintain a private army, there were no fears of unwanted observers. « The D.i proved the soundness of Dunne's ideas and ww followed by further machines on the same principle; the D.3 was constructed at Farnborough and later ones built privately at Eastchurch. In addition, both seaplane and flying-boat versions of the Dunne biplane were built in America by the Burgess Company. But it gradually became apparent that inherent stability was not so essential for a military aircraft as good manoeuvrability and the Dunne formula was virtually forgotten until a few years ago, when a new breed of swept-wing, tailless aircraft came into being for rather different reasons. While Dunne was busy at Blair Atholl, Cody, too, was making progress. As a start he helped Col. Capper complete one of the 1904 airships—the Nulli Secundus—as the first British military airship. It flew successfully in September, 1907, marking the start of a seven-year period of airship development at Farnborough. But Cody was more interested in aeroplanes and before long had fitted a 12 h.p. Buchet engine to one of his kites, and had flown it successfully, minus pilot. The next step was, obviously, to build a full-size piloted version of the same thing. Cody was allowed to power this with a 50 h.p. Antoinette engine originally intended for the unsuccessful Nulli Secundus II, and he arranged it to drive two pusher propellers; the result looked something like the Wright biplane. It was in this aircraft that Cody made his first hops in May, 1908, on Laffan's Plain. On October 5th of the same year he made the first official flight in a piloted aeroplane in Great Britain—a measured distance of 496 yards at a height of 50-60 ft. Six months later the War Office decided to abandon all work on aeroplanes as the cost—a total of £2,500 to that time —was considered to be too great. By comparison, in that same year of 1909, Germany allotted a total of something like £400,000 to military aircraft development and production. Fortunately, British aeroplane development did not come to a full stop, as "private enterprise" had come into the picture by then. In one sense, of course, it had been there for some time past: every year saw its quota of weird and wonderful flying machines, built by enthusiasts whose normal trades ranged from making pianos to basket-weaving. The results often appeared to incorporate a selection of the maker's stock parts and few of them achieved even a pilotless hop; but from the multiplicity of inventors there did emerge a few who were to win a place in British aeronautical history. Such a man was Henry Farman, whose circular flight of more than one kilometre on January 13th, 1908, to win the Deutsch-Archdeacon prize of £2,000 marked the start of practical flying in Europe, some two years after Santos- Dumont had made the first flight in a powered aircraft on this side of the Atlantic. Aviators were still being ridiculed in Britain at that time, and a prominent member of the Aero Club, J. T. C. Moore- Brabazon, advised his fellow enthusiasts to follow Farman's example and transfer their activities to France. He took his One of the series of Dunne tailless, back-swept biplanes, built at East- church and possessing a very high degree of natural stability. The first aerial post in the United Kingdom : a cover carried by Gustav Hamel on the famous London-Windsor flight (September 9th, 1911)
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