by Dan Hampton
This fascination for all things flying was greatly magnified by the romantic, but somewhat misplaced, notions surrounding combat aviation during the Great War. American boys like Charles Lindbergh and Jimmy Stewart thrilled to stories, real or exaggerated, about Mick Mannock, the Red Baron, and Eddie Rickenbacker.* In four years the war had transformed aviation from a fad, a sporting curiosity, to a serious, tactical weapon. This led to more powerful engines and better designs, and prolific innovations in all other aspects of aerial warfare raced forward as both sides continuously designed their way out of combat shortcomings.
Tough and accurate machine guns such as the Spandau and Vickers were manufactured; synchronization gear was perfected that permitted continuous machine gun firing through a propeller; hermetically sealed Aldis gunsights were standard equipment in British fighters by mid-1916; metal linked ammunition belts replaced canvas types that expanded when wet and often jammed the gun; and magnesium or phosphorus was added to a round’s hollow base that, when ignited, left a visible trail and produced a “tracer” by which pilots could correct their aim.
Through combat necessity, engine technology had rapidly advanced to the point where there was now excess thrust, and true acceleration was a reality. This allowed comparatively high rates of climb and increased a plane’s turning ability, which made dogfighting possible and opened the door to the development and weaponizing of aircraft. The puny 12-horsepower Balzer-Wright engine of 1903 had given way to the Benz Bz.IIIb and the Hispano-Suiza 8BA, each producing 195 to 220 horsepower, respectively. Top speeds of single-seat fighters like the SPAD S.XIII were up around 130 miles per hour, an unimaginable speed just fifteen years earlier.
Most early engines were the rotary type; that is, the entire engine and the propeller spins around the crankshaft, which generated very little vibration and provided an extremely stable gun platform. Rotary engines are air-cooled, and much lighter than their liquid-cooled counterparts, so they weighed less, thereby producing more excess thrust for maneuvering. But as they are spinning about in the airstream, rotaries generate drag—and a lot of it. This was a problem in the quest for higher performance, since gaining more power meant adding additional cylinders, or increasing the size of those available. Bigger cylinders would displace more pressurized air for combustion, but such an increase in size also drastically increased the engine’s frontal area, and therefore the drag. This also equated to a higher fuel consumption, sometimes 25 to 30 percent more, above other types of engines. Given these limitations, the maximum available from a rotary engine was about 300 horsepower.
To overcome this limitation, the development of stationary engines that remain fixed while the crankshaft spins took precedence after 1916. With this arrangement, more cylinders can be added in various configurations rather than merely making bigger cylinders. Inline designs placed them along the crankshaft, while a radial engine arranged the cylinders in a star shape. The 1918 Liberty was an outstanding example of a “V” configuration where cylinders were angled up and away from the shaft. Weighing in at 845 pounds (dry), the obvious drawback was weight, as stationary engines were liquid cooled, and a comparable rotary engine like the German Oberursel UR.II would weigh about 150 pounds. But the trade-off in power was well worth it; a Liberty produced nearly 450 horsepower against 135 horses from the Oberursel.
But even the best engine possible is still dependent on two crucial components: fuel and the propeller. Piston engines produce power from the internal combustion of fuel and air that is metered by a carburetor, injected into the cylinder, and compressed by a piston. This “packed” fuel is then ignited by a spark plug; it explodes, and the resulting exhaust drives the piston up and down. This linear motion is converted to a spinning motion, either by the engine itself or by its connection to a crankshaft, and this drives the propeller. One problem has always been maximizing the efficiency of the engine; that is, compressing and converting every bit of available fuel to generate the most power. It was discovered that by adding chemicals, beginning with lead, fuel could be compressed further before combustion, and this greater compression resulted in more powerful explosions.* This produced more available thrust, which, all things being equal, gave a fighter greater potential maneuverability and better options in combat.
Yet improvements in fuel and engines would be obviated without parallel advances in the propeller. The tip of the spear, as it were, the prop converts all the energy produced by the engine into the forward motion that creates airflow over the wings, which, in turn, produces the lift required to fly. Though understood to be an airfoil itself, refinements in propeller design tended to lag, and it became quickly apparent that at about 1,500 revolutions the engine was operating faster than the prop could spin. Reduction gears, which transmitted the engine’s energy but not its speed, were the answer and entered widespread use after the war.
With the transition of the airplane into a weapon came a corresponding requirement for greater control to maximize its maneuverability. For a fighter, control was critical because without the capability to accurately employ weapons, the whole aircraft was simply an aerobatic machine. Larger rudders were designed, as were elevators and wing flaps, though the latter were used sporadically during the Great War. Wing warping, which the Wrights had patented and jealously guarded, was definitely now of marginal utility due to the increased speeds available. With warping the pilot had to physically manipulate the wing to turn the aircraft, and there is a limit to human strength. All early forms of control depended on the pilot’s muscles, but twisting/warping a wingtip would not work in aerial combat and was a much less effective type of lateral control than the “little wing,” or aileron.
This was a movable, rectangular surface flush-mounted near the tips and aligned with a wing’s trailing edge. It was hinged and could be operated from the cockpit via cables attached to a yoke, or control column. When the ailerons are moved, airflow over the wing is disrupted and a lift imbalance created. As one aileron raises, the pressure over that wingtip dissipates so lift decreases, and that wingtip naturally drops. Simultaneously, the other aileron deflects downward, which creates higher pressure under that wingtip; therefore, lift increases and that wing rises.
British scientist Matthew Piers Watt Boulton is credited with the first patent (No. 392) for a workable aileron in 1868. Grandson of Matthew Boulton, who, with James Watt, manufactured the hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines that industrialized England in the late eighteenth century, the younger Bolton was an amiable recluse by nature and quite wealthy.* He had no desire for public acclaim, and his revolutionary innovation was ignored to the point where it could be “discovered” thirty-six years later by French engineer Robert Esnault-Pelterie. The Frenchman considered the wing warping dangerous and reinvented the aileron for use on his 1904 glider, which flew successfully. He also patented the control column, or joystick, which provided a simple, single control point much less cumbersome than a wheel or yoke. However, Esnault-Pelterie was not the first to envision tandem control as Wilbur Wright had used a movable rudder in conjunction with his wing-warping system. However, the Frenchman’s beautiful little R.E.P 1 monoplane was the first to employ a control stick when it took to the air on October 10, 1907.
French aviation pioneer Henri Farman had seen a Wright flying demonstration in 1908 and also came away convinced that ailerons were much better than wing warping for lateral control. His 1909 Farman III was the first powered, manned aircraft to use trailing-edge ailerons in the modern sense. An ungainly dragonfly of an aircraft, the Farman had a forward elevator with the propeller mounted “pusher” fashion behind the pilot. Though Wilbur and Orville Wright had unquestionably been first to succeed in manned, powered, and controlled flight, their real gift lay in adapting and/or improving existing technology: Lilienthal’s airfoil, Langley’s internal combustion engine, and Cayley’s conception of a biplane with vertical and horizontal control surfaces. It was in this last area that the Wrights absolutely shone: control. Th
ey were the first to successfully design and implement, albeit awkwardly, a three-axis control system that permitted true flight.
Nevertheless, it was in Europe that aviation technology surged ahead for the next fifteen years, and blame for that stems from two primary sources: the Great War and with the Wrights themselves. The brothers were obsessed with secrecy; they did not even inform the press of their successful 1903 flight, and the first eyewitness mention in print was an obscure article in an equally obscure 1905 publication of Amos Root’s Gleanings in Bee Culture. For this reason the French, and specifically Alberto Santos-Dumont, believed Europe conquered the air before America. Santos-Dumont was the son of a wealthy Brazilian coffee planter who spent most of his adult life in France free to pursue his passion: aviation. In 1901 he circled the Eiffel Tower in a hydrogen-filled airship powered by a four-cylinder Buchet engine, winning the 100,000-franc Deutsch de la Meurthe prize.* Then, on October 23, 1906, he lifted off from the Château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne under his own power, holding a sixteen-foot altitude for a lateral distance of 197 feet.
Most of the world, except the few witnesses to the Wrights’ 1903 flight, was certain the honor of man’s first powered, controlled airplane flight belonged to Santos-Dumont and to France. Even after the Brazilian set the first Federation Aéronautique Internationale world record in November 1906, the Wrights still dismissed him as a fraud.* It didn’t help that the Wrights had hangared their aircraft for three years, refusing to display it for fear the design would be stolen before they could sell it to the U.S. War Department. They also tried to license their craft for $25,000 a copy to France, Britain, and Germany but had little success except with the French, who, after recognizing that the brothers had indeed succeeded in 1903, initially agreed to buy manufacturing rights.
Other than greed, perhaps the most disconcerting trait the Wrights displayed was their refusal to recognize that others might also be capable of innovations better than their own, and they obstinately insisted that their wing-warping patent covered all types of lateral control. The brothers expected a royalty on every aircraft produced; in effect, they felt entitled to a monopoly on aviation, and their litigiousness hurt North American aviation development considerably. As Wilbur wrote, “It is our view that morally the world owes its almost universal system of lateral control entirely to us. It is also our opinion that legally it owes it to us.”
Such an attitude was hardly conducive to the free exchange of ideas, nor was it good business. Alberto Santos-Dumont purposely never patented his own designs as he believed aviation would cultivate closer international relations and promote world peace. The brothers could have used their head start to become the elder statesmen of aviation—at a reasonable price for their efforts—but they did not. They also eschewed public flying demonstrations and aviation competitions because, as they stated in 1906, “We would have to expose our machine more or less, and that might interfere with the sale of our secrets.” Fanatically litigious, Orville bluntly stated that “We did not intend to give permission to use the patented features of our machines for exhibitions, or in a commercial way.”
Nor did they.
Some designers like Glenn Curtiss simply continued independent work and forced the Wrights to keep taking him back to court. In the summer of 1908 Curtiss sold an aircraft for $5,000, one-fifth of the price for a Wright aircraft, to the newly formed Aerial Experiment Association (AEA). This aircraft, named the June Bug, won the 1908 Scientific American Trophy, worth $2,500, and featured triangular ailerons on the wingtips.* These were connected to a shoulder yoke worn by the pilot so when he leaned in the direction of turn, the wires running from the yoke would move the ailerons. The Wrights were positively apoplectic. Lateral control in any form, they insisted, was their sole proprietary invention.
Glenn Curtiss maintained that movable surfaces on the back of a wing that altered its aerodynamic qualities was not wing warping, but a wholly new type of control. In 1909 a long, bitter court fight ensued and, in the meantime, Curtiss went right on improving and marketing his aircraft. Recognizing the value of public relations and competitions, he was quick to win the 1909 Bennett Trophy with a 47 mph speed record. During the 1909 Rheims Air Meet, every one of the Wrights’ altitude and speed records was broken, and Louis Blériot flew his Type XI monoplane from Calais to Dover in thirty-six minutes, thirty seconds.*
Curtiss took note of all this. He had a knack for cherry-picking good ideas and discarding the bad, then ingeniously incorporating these improvements into his own designs. As a result, he quickly surpassed the Wrights, and by 1914 the Curtiss Aeroplane Company was the largest manufacturer of aircraft in the United States. In the end, the brothers spent so much time fighting in court that they were left behind in the very field they had pioneered. Avarice, it seemed, had triumphed over aerodynamics and innovation. As Wilbur himself rather blatantly confessed, “I want the business built up so as to get the greatest amount of money with as little work.”
Meanwhile the AEA, under the leadership of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell himself, set out to advance aviation interest and development through a “cooperative association” between like-minded men and ideas. By virtue of his status as a flyer, businessman, and inventor, Curtiss was also asked to join and Augustus Post, one of America’s least-known but more-intriguing figures, served as a representative from the Automobile Club of America. Scion of a wealthy banking family, Post could best be described as a gentleman adventurer and bon vivant. A graduate of Amherst and Harvard, he was a talented bass and sang with the New York Symphony Chorus. Also an avid balloon and auto enthusiast, he owned the first automobile in New York City, built the original parking garage, and was the founder of the American Automobile Association (AAA).*
Post saw the tremendous potential of aviation and penned a 1914 article that stated, “A man is now living who will be the first human being to cross the Atlantic Ocean through the air. He will cross while he is still a young man. All at once, Europe will move two days nearer; instead of five days away.” He was quite correct; Charles Lindbergh was twelve years old when the article appeared in the North American Review. In fact, it was Post who suggested to Raymond Orteig that $25,000 be offered for the first aviator to cross between New York and Paris. The hotelier agreed and publicized the Orteig Prize in 1919: Post wrote the rules.* A true visionary, Augustus was a fierce advocate for the science of aviation and believed in the importance of laboratories and experimentation. He would be among the first to realize the importance of specially designed aviation fuel that would increase performance and make way for powerful engines like the jet. Post could also see a time when rockets would send men beyond Earth’s atmosphere, and he described a futuristic Interplanetary Society very much like NASA.*
So while the Wrights sued everyone with competing interests, the Europeans rapidly advanced through the assistance of government-sponsored organizations like the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough. In 1904, renowned German engineer Ludwig Prandtl published “Fluid Flow in Very Little Friction,” which accurately described the concept of boundary layer separation and the consequences of it. France had long been at the forefront of aviation, and since the late nineteenth century aviators of all sorts conducted various experiments at Chalais-Meudon, just north of the city.
By 1906, as Gustav Eiffel concluded his air resistance experiments from the second level of the tower bearing his name, the French Central Establishment for Military Aeronautics had been created. Clearly the Europeans realized the significance, both civil and military, of the aircraft. “In an age of intense nationalism,” Michael Gorn perceptively writes in Expanding the Envelope, “on a continent where states lay in close proximity, every advanced government sought to guide and nurture this powerful but unknown technology.”
Meanwhile, due to infighting, politics, and general official disinterest, the development of American aviation lagged considerably. Finally, after years of failure
s and finally awake to the looming danger of war in Europe, the Smithsonian Board of Regents reopened Langley’s laboratory. In early 1915 the Main Committee of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was formed to coordinate, oversee, and generally consolidate the efforts of several diverse aviation departments. By spring it had changed its name to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics; the NACA was born, and with it came the possibility of a national research center to rival the Europeans.
Though often plagued by bureaucratic competition or official indifference, the new organization was appropriated $85,000 and immediately began making a difference. The nasty patent dispute between Wright-Martin and Curtiss Aeroplane was settled by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which incidentally upheld the Wrights’ claim. Curtiss shrugged, paid the fine, continued what he was doing, and eventually acquired the Wright Company (later Wright-Martin) after Orville sold out in 1915.* The NACA hired top-notch professional engineers, technicians, and draftsmen; began detailed experiments with propeller design; and, perhaps most significantly, mediated an agreement between automobile manufacturers like Packard, Lincoln, Cadillac, and others to produce an aircraft engine.*
It was through this merging of available technology during the Great War that aviation shot forward into its next great era. There truly were no limits once engineering and aerodynamic knowledge caught up with man’s ingenuity, and this ushered in a “Golden Age.” It was during this time, from the final days of the Great War through the beginning of the Roaring Twenties, that the men who would relentlessly chase the demon were born. A volatile, unsettling time, the 1920s were also filled with promise, excitement, and imagination. It was, in this author’s opinion, the formative decade of the last one hundred years and set in motion events that still shape our world today. A perfect storm of economic and societal causes incubated the German national socialism, Italian fascism, and Japanese imperialism that led to the Second World War. Europe’s woes, and by default those of the rest of the world, and the failure to recognize the dire consequences those woes would inflict, can be traced to this decade. There were those in America who could see the war coming, but they were largely ignored.