Using Lilienthal's glider research, the Wright brothers achieved controlled flight. The French reacted with renewed effort and Bleriot crossed the English Channel. Each airplane had its own personality and a pilot flew by his wits, instinct and luck.
Aviators separated into two groups: the airplane designer/builders and those who tried to master the art of flying. While French pilot Pegoud thrilled crowds by performing aerial loops, new airplanes pushed the bounds of speed and distance.
WW1 gave the airplane a job, soon the battlefields were full of unarmed aircraft, peering down at the trenches, then carrying news of an impending attack. With a machine gun mounted on the cowling of a Morane-Saulnier Bullet, the fighter plane was born.
After the war, seasoned pilots who had once dueled with an enemy over the trenches, now performed aerobatics for spectators. Aviators as barnstormers quickly became an endearing folk hero; and also businessman carrying mail and passengers.
After WWI, aircraft manufacturers began directing their attention towards passenger travel. Huge flying boats offered luxurious travel to global destinations, taking advantage of waterways at a time of few runways. The DC-3 combined safety, speed, and comfort with lower operating cost, making passenger travel economically viable.
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan began to redefine the arts of aerial warfare with their revolutionary aircraft designs. As the storm clouds gathered for the Second World War, the rest of the world slowly began to rise to their challenge.
The German Luftwaffe was the most modern air force of its time, led by its Messerschmitt 109. The British Spitfire was developed in time for the Battle of Britain. U.S. entry into the war quickly brought a range of aircraft, including the P-38 Lightening, a flying machine that pushed the technology of the time, introducing new problems as well as new capabilities.
Over the years leading up to the invasion of France, the allies developed their aircraft and strategies. The P-51 Mustang helped change the course of the air war, allowing fighters to switch from close bomber defense to offense. The P-47 Thunderbolt found a new role in coordinated air-ground attack, clearing military obstacles for foot soldiers and tanks.
The Japanese Zero was a light, maneuverable, long-distance flying machine, constructed quickly and cheaply to be replaceable. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. responded with the Grumman Hellcat, a bulky airplane with big engines and armor plating – but twice the horsepower of the Zero, making it faster and more maneuverable. The Corsair, arriving late in the war, was sleek, temperamental, but very maneuverable – an ideal dogfighter and interceptor of kamikaze attacks.
The British Lancaster flew bombing missions at night under cover of darkness to evade enemy fire. Americans added armor plating and 13 machine guns to the B-17 to defend itself from the enemy, decreasing its payload but gaining the precision of daylight bombing.
Both Germany and England conceived their first successful jet-engine fighter in 1940 and both delivered their concepts four years later. The British Meteor was weak at high altitudes, but adept at low level aerobatics – making it a valuable interceptor for Germany’s V-1 flying bombs. Germany’s Messerschmitt 262 had superb handling, but an engine with an average life of only five hours. The American Shooting Star had an alarming accident rate in its early days, but paired with the British Goblin engine it became a success.
A hundred years before the Wright brothers, the hot air balloon had already lifted humans to the sky. It grew in size, and culminated in the huge pre-war dirigibles that still hold the record for the largest aircraft ever built.
Like the jet, the turboprop is a gas turbine engine, but instead of using the jet exhaust to push the aircraft, the turboprop engine drives propellers. With all that power available at low speeds, turboprops can make short take off and landings. Though they have been used for passenger transportation ever since their beginnings, turboprops found their most important functions in long range air cargo and military transport.
The development of helicopters is chronicled from Da Vinci’s drawings, through Cierva and Pitcairn’s autogyros, to Sikorsky, Bell, and others whose post war helicopters vied for the civilian market. As a crop duster during an agricultural crisis, and in the Korean War, the helicopter proved its worth as a practical flying machine.
After World War II, jet aircraft technology used for bombing and military transport was quickly applied to large passenger aircraft. Spared the wartime devastation of the aviation industry in Europe, Americans soon dominated the skies.
Born of a fear of communism and a vision to keep the peace with massive nuclear deterrence, the American Strategic Air Command possessed the largest, fastest piston engine bombers of the period. While designers and engineers struggled with structural challenges, pilots and crews struggled with the increasing complexity of flying these gigantic machines.
The U.S. and Russia channeled massive funding into the development of fighters with fantastic speeds and high tech weapons, in which computers became crucial flying aids. Fighters were developed without guns, since they would be firing guided missiles beyond visual range. But before long a new generation of highly maneuverable dog-fighting jets was needed.
Flying for sport, business, agriculture and photographic survey, a fleet of mostly single engine light aircraft comprised a fast growing segment of aviation. The technological inventions in general aviation are usually not state of the art, but rather clever ways of using existing technology to make affordable aircraft for private owners.
At the height of the cold war in the 1960s, the U.S. and Soviet Union raced to build huge supersonic bombers capable of delivering nuclear payloads. High costs and the accuracy of high speed cruise missiles changed priorities, and the U.S. bombers developed in the 1980s were subsonic: the low-flying, radar evading B-1B and the B-2 Stealth Bomber.
Already proven effective in transport and rescue, the helicopter took on an offensive role in Vietnam. Modern helicopter gunships are equipped with high-tech systems including night vision and anti-tank weapons.
During the 1960s, the general population embraced air travel and larger aircraft were needed for the growing airlines. While jumbo jets ruled long-haul passenger transport, a whole spectrum of narrow body jets competed for the smaller routes.
Space age materials and modern aerodynamic designs come together in aircraft for those who find exhilaration flying low and slow – whether powered by small engines or sailing on air currents alone.
When a fighter or bomber strikes ground forces, it is acting as an attack aircraft. Many fighters can play this role, but recent wars have shown the value of dedicated attack aircraft, designed to hit hard and survive extensive battle damage.
From the earliest days of flight the military used aircraft to look behind enemy lines. After the top secret U-2 was shot down over Russia, Lockheed developed the SR-71. Flying at Mach 3 near the edge of space, it could outfly missiles.
Chuck Yeager’s flight through the “sound barrier” in the X-1 set the stage for the U.S. experimental X-program, a systematic exploration of new ideas and obstacles in aviation. Pilots flew at the edge of technical knowledge in untried, untested aircraft.
In the 1920s, aircraft designers began searching for ways to incorporate the powerful propulsion of rockets into their flying machines. Efforts to harness and control rocket propulsion resulted in many failures but also some dramatic successes.
From Cierva's breakthrough in autogyro design, to the state-of-the-art BK-117, the heart of the helicopter story has been the rotorhead. Early helicopters were complex, dangerous flying machines, prone to failure. For the men and women who took the controls, concentration and daring were essential.
By the 1930s, flying boats – massive, airborne ocean liners – opened up global routes for passenger service, while the floatplanes entering the Schneider Trophy races were the fastest, most innovative flying machines in existence.
Conventional airplanes need large runways for takeoff and landing, a limitation that concerned defense planners. As turbine engines became lighter, a new type of aircraft became possible — one that could take off and land vertically, yet fly with the speed of jets.
When the small tail surface wings which enable an airplane to go up or down are moved to the front, they are called canards. It is a technology as old as manned flight — the Wrights used canards on their early airplanes. Canards were rarely used after the first World War until computer technology provided the control needed to make the technology feasible.
Many times in aviation history the ultimate test of aircraft and pilot was to fly around the world. Competition and showmanship always played a part, but in the end it was the mental and physical endurance of the men and women who climbed into the cockpit that made success possible.
In the early days of flying, instrumentation was crude. A weighted silk stocking tied to a strut could help the pilot gauge his airspeed. Wartime challenged pilots to learn the techniques of blind flying. Today, pilots use orbiting satellites to pinpoint their position, and complex autopilots enable an aircraft to fly itself.
In their quest for flight efficiency, some designers thought the ideal shape would be just a wing, nothing else, flying through the air. Though successful development of flying wings has often proved illusive, Northrop's designs proved feasibility, and the B-2 Stealth Bomber brought the configuration into production.
Two years after the first manned flight, the Wrights mastered control sufficiently to fly the first circle – a major aviation advance that went almost unnoticed. By World War II, the first hydraulically boosted controls were invented, enabling pilots to fly aircraft weighing more than 100,000 pounds without the muscles of a co pilot. Once digital signals succeeded in maneuvering spacecraft, computerized fly-by-wire technology for aircraft was not far behind.
During WWII, the Germans introduced the Messerschmitt 262, and the British the Gloster Meteor. With these first operational jet fighters, a new era in aerial combat had begun. As jet met jet in the skies over Korea, the MiG-15 proved Russia to be a major power in jet aircraft development.
Airmail pioneers demonstrated to a public already infatuated with flying, that airplanes had a bright commercial future. They led the way for the great commercial ventures that would one day span the globe. The variety of aircraft was dazzling, but conditions were harsh and pilots had to be hardy and brave to risk flying the mail.
In the 1920s when just about anyone could afford a car, interest grew in a safe, inexpensive airplane that anyone could fly. Convenience went a step further in roadable aircraft – vehicles that could travel the highways, then convert to an airplane for the rest of the journey. The airplane has never attained the practicality of the automobile for family travel, but modern aviation offers exciting opportunities for the amateur flyer.
From the early years of flight until the late 1930s, air racing was the single most important testing ground for engineering advancements. It provided a breathtaking combination of daredevil risk taking and technological innovation.
The Wright brothers realized that a propeller was a rotating wing – giving it a twist made it practical. By the mid 1930s, variable pitch and NACA research revolutionized propeller design. With the coming of the jet age, propellers fell out of favor for large aircraft. But designers soon realized that a fast turboprop with an advanced propeller could be more efficient than the best jetliners.