The History & Fascination of Flight
From the earliest times on Earth, mankind has gazed upon the sky and heavens with both wonder and awe. The sun, moon and stars were naturally of great interest. However it was the birds of flight floating freely on unseen air, dipping, diving, climbing and turning as no man could ever do that captured the most interest for many.
The ancient Greeks were so enamored with the ability to fly that they immortalized it within their Greek mythology. Consider Daedalus and his son Icarus. Wanting to escape imprisonment, they both had wings fashioned with feathers and held together with wax. While Daedalus’ flight was conservative, Icarus’ was not. Exhilarated by the thrill of flight, Icarus flew too high and too close to the sun god, Helios. The wax on his wings melted and he fell into the sea.
The Chinese were also fascinated with flight, inventing the flying kite. In 1282 Marco Polo supposedly witnessed the flying of a manned kite in the city of Weifang. He later brought back to Italy a Chinese kite. Soon kites became popular throughout Europe.
Leonardo da Vinci, although more well known for his artistic masterpieces also had a deep fascination with flight. He produced over 500 sketches dealing with flying machines and the flight of birds. In 1506 he produced the Codicesul volo degli uccelli (Codex on the Flight of Birds). His drawings and notes would find a place in the development of aircraft, centuries later.
There have been many individuals who have, through an advancement of some technical skill or through sheer inspiration, progressed the science of flight.
Four hundred years before the Wright brothers, Leonardo had studied the flight of birds, the movements of air, and he had designed several flying machines. His drawings of birds include notes on lift, thrust, equilibrium, steering and stability. Though never to fly himself, nor to create a workable flying machine, Da Vinci sensed the science behind flight. He wrote, “A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium.”2 Leonardo Da Vinci obviously felt that man could reproduce the mechanics of flight by imitating the birds. That he was wrong, and in fact constructed models that could never fly, misses the point. His inquisitive mind and probing spirit acted as a catalyst for others who would follow. That those who followed Da Vinci refined his ideas only serves to illustrate that invention is very often an evolutionary process.
Probably the first aerial voyage of any kind that man attempted successfully was in a balloon. In 1783, Monsieur Rozier and Marquis d’Arlandes, using the technology applied by two brothers, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, set sail in a balloon for a very brief trip across Paris. The technology behind this balloon trip was based on Archimedes’ principle (Greek mathematician and physicist, 285—212 B.C.) “that a body wholly or partially immersed in a fluid experiences an upthrust equal to the weight of the fluid displaced.” As the weight of the air varies with the temperature, the height and relative humidity, the rising force of the balloon and consequently its lifting force, varies with the atmospheric conditions. The trip lasted twenty five minutes and covered a distance of five miles. For the first time man had left the ground for an appreciable time.
In England, in the early 1800’s, Sir George Cayley was laying the groundwork for modern aircraft. He was the first to recognize that future airplanes would be propelled by engines (explosion motors) and controlled by man. He foresaw that the wings, the lifting surfaces, should be separated from the engine propulsion system. His “late designs had rigid wings, rudder, and elevator to control the yaw and pitch axes, and often some mode of propulsion. It is no accident that Sir George Cayley is universally regarded as the founder of modern aviation. As Wilbur Wright said in 1909, ‘About 100 years ago an Englishman, Sir George Cayley, carried the science to a point which it had never reached before and which it scarcely reached again during the last century.’ ”
The Wright brothers considered Otto Lilienthal’s hang glider research crucial to their experiments. His cambered wings, being curved on top, gave his gliders greatly increased lift. He achieved greater stability in his gliders by rolling his body from right to left. Had he not died as a result of one of his gliding experiments in 1896 (at the age of 48), and had powered-engines reached a stage of greater horsepower and better reliability, it is not inconceivable that Lilienthal may have enjoyed center stage in the Smithsonian rather than the Wright brothers.
Another great influence upon the Wrights was Octave Chanute. Chanute, a successful engineer, was very interested in gliders and powered flight. His knowledge of previous aerodynamic experiments and his encouragement acted as a strong motivator to Orville and Wilbur. His text Progress in Flying Machines in 1894 contained progressive biplane designs that influenced the Wright brothers’ work significantly. Shortly thereafter, letters of correspondence were exchanged and Chanute became a close friend and confidante. It was as a result of these letters that Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was chosen to conduct experiments with a man-carrying glider, a suggestion made by Octave Chanute.
Finally, Samuel Langley’s accomplishments caught the attention of the Wright brothers. In 1896, the Langley Aerodrome Model No. 5 demonstrated the possibility of flight. This model was powered by a small steam engine. This unmanned model made the first significant flight of any engine-driven, heavier-than-air craft. Professor Langley’s later attempts at manned flight in a full-sized version of the Aerodrome were unsuccessful. Also launched from a houseboat anchored in the Potomac, the larger craft hit the water almost immediately after launch in October, 1903. A second attempt on December 8th ended in similar fashion.
By 1899, the Wrights’ interest in flying had peaked. They sought out everything that had been written on the subject. After reading a text on ornithology, they decided to try gliding themselves. “We could not understand that there was anything about a bird that would enable it to fly that could not be built on a larger scale and used by man. At this time our thought pertained more particularly to gliding flight and soaring. If the bird’s wings could sustain it in the air without the use of any muscular effort, we did not see why man could not be sustained by the same means. The Wrights reasoned that the failure of early experimenters was due primarily to their inability to properly balance their gliders in flight.
Aircraft played a pivotal role for all sides in World War 1, Early aircraft were typically just used for reconnaissance missions, until personal weapons were added. From there the machine gun was fixed to the aircraft to create the “Fighter” aircraft. As the situation on the battlefields became more of a trench war, the planes in the sky would provide a breakthrough and ultimately force air superiority over the enemy.
As well as improvement through war, airplanes have seen alteration due to the media and social ideas. These historical factors had the most influence on two different developments between the World Wars. First of which would be distance of flight. After World War One, the world was engulfed by the dream to cross the Atlantic by plane. After accomplishment in 1919 by two British aviators, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown became heroes in the media. With imminent fame aviators and airplane producers looked to be apart of the next feat, a solo transatlantic flight.
On May 21, 1927 Charles Lindbergh and his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis, a Ryan monoplane, flew nonstop New York to Paris, a flight of 3,600 miles (7). His ambition to tackle this great adventure started when a businessman posted a prize for $25,000, worth just over $320,000 in today’s money, to the first man to single-handedly cross the Atlantic. He then oversaw his team in the construction of his plane. To conserve weight, that would be needed to store 451 gallons of gas, his plane was built without essential things like a radio to call in coordinates or in case of emergency. He embarked on his thirty-three and a half hour flight with only four sandwiches and two cantinas of water. When landing in Paris 100,000 people ran to greet the new celebrity. Due to the recognition of iconic pilots, such as Charles Lindbergh, the common civilian became more trusting of air travel. Because of the increased demand for air travel, airplanes must grow larger to accommodate. Social acceptance pushed airplanes from a small 12 passenger DC-1 plane, the first self-equitable passenger plane, in 1933, to the 50 passengers Douglas C-54 Skymaster in 1945. Because the acceptance and astonishment of the common masses, planes flying distance and size both grew.
While specific figures in history have brought innovation with the airplane’s mechanics and use, the development of new technology has also quickly advanced the airplane in this time period. One of the greatest improvements that took place between the two World Wars, and maybe the greatest innovation since the development of the airplane itself was the creation of the jet powered engine. During the mid 1930s both Frank Whittle, a British engineer, and Hans von Ohain, a German engineer, were both working on the jet engine. Ironically the engineers were not collaborating and had never met, but their designs ended up being very similar.
In 1937 Ohain succeeded in being the first person to develop an airplane that successfully used a jet engine, the Heinkle HE 178. Whittle first developed the idea of a turbine or jet engine much earlier than Ohain, but the Royal Air Ministry denied him a patent since they were not concerned with building up their military force after the war to end all wars. Because of the government of Great Britain’s inability to foresee a chance of a second world war, Whittle did not receive funding and therefore lost valuable ground. To understand the great innovation of the jet engine one must know the basics of how the engine works. A jet engine can be broken up in to four major sections. From front to back, these sections are the fans, the compressor, the combustion chamber, and lastly the turbine. Air is first sucked in through the large front opening of the engine. The large fan blades spin at high rates of speed to get enough air through the engine to mix with fuel inside. The air will then move into the compressor. The compressor builds pressure and heat by to sets of blades; rotors, rotating blades, and stators, stationary blades. The hot, compressed air then moves into the combustion chamber. Here jet fuel is added. Because of the high temperatures and high pressure the fuel ignites and a continuous burn is held within the engine. The now quickly and immensely expanded gas is pushed into the last section of the engine, the turbine. The turbine works much like a windmill. The hot expanding gasses from the combustion chamber rocket threw the blades of the turbine. This spins the turbine, which is attached to the fans and blades in the compressor. The rotation of these front parts of the engine sucks in more air starting the process over again (12). With Whittle and Ohain’s ingenious to craft these engines, as pasted described, the speeds at which planes flew saw a great jump. The Messerschmitt Me 262, the first production military plane to use a jet engine, flew at 541mph, a speed almost 100 mph faster than the piston engine P-51D Mustang, flying 445mph. An astonishing twelve years later the jet engine went from a military prototype to a common commercial airline plane. The technology of this time period has forever changed the outlook of the airplane.
The Korean War marked the watershed between piston and jet production. In 1950 more than half of production was piston; in 1953 this was reversed. By the end of the war, the aerospace industry had built 10,000 jets for the Air Force, 3,500 for the Navy, and 2,000 for export. Lockheed alone had built 5,000.
The reequipment of the Navy with jets as a result of the Korean War was the most conspicuous conquest by jet propulsion in the early fifties. As early as the spring of 1951, there were no Air Force or Navy development contracts for a piston aircraft. The Air Force, having already accepted the jet for fighters and short- and medium-range bombers, did not appear to reequip so broadly. Yet marked progress in jet engine efficiency and the introduction of thrust augmentation, or afterburning, meant major changes that virtually eliminated an expected competitor in engines, the propjet. The main aerodynamic problems of high-speed flight had been resolved. The intercontinental jet bomber and supersonic fighters became feasible, and the Air Force started development of propjet transports, the last stand of this engine. With jet trainers developed from the F-80, it was moving rapidly towards an all-jet force.
British development of the first jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet, which began service in 1952, forced the hand of American aerospace manufacturers. The success of the Comet weakened the reluctance of the conservative American airlines to use jets and caused manufacturers to fear a loss of exports. Consequently, the aerospace industry began a race for the jet airliner market, and by the early sixties the jets, primarily the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 families but also the turboprop Lockheed Electra, dominated the American airliner scene.
The jet's great advance over the piston in its power-to-weight ratio enabled aircraft to grow in size and weight, and this capability was accompanied by the parallel technological explosion in avionics for navigation, weapons control, and electronic warfare measures. Aircraft empty weights increased drastically, as can be seen in Table II-1.
Empty weights are given in the table because they best show the effects on design and manufacturing, but it should be noted that the impact of the jet's efficiency is sometimes even more dramatically evident from gross weights. For example, the gross weights for the B-50 and B-52 were 175,000 and 480,000 pounds, respectively.
The increased size and weight plus the need for strength in highspeed flight changed the production systems of the manufacturers. Instead of being primarily sheet metal processors, they became great machine shops and thus were even more capital-intensive than before. After the Korean War, especially in 1957, the government tried to reduce as much as possible its financing of the aerospace industry's plant, equipment, and inventories, and this forced the industry to further increase its own investment and, therefore, its financial risks.
Appalled during the Korean War by fast-rising costs, some manufacturers made efforts to reverse the trend by emphasizing light, simple aircraft. Only three such attempts succeeded. The Douglas A-4 attack plane, weighing 9,559 pounds, has been one of the most important and highly regarded naval aircraft since the war; it was in continuous production from 1954 into the seventies. The other two, the F-104 and the F-5, weighing 15,000 and 7,596 pounds, did not please the USAF, which has traditionally favored heavily equipped aircraft; but they found wide markets abroad and some limited adoption by the U.S. forces.
The Lockheed JetStar was the first dedicated business jet to enter service. It was also one of the largest aircraft in the class for many years, seating ten plus two crew. It is distinguishable from other small jets by its four engines, mounted on the rear of the fuselage, and the "slipper"-style fuel tanks fixed to the wings.
The first prototype flew on 7 November 1976, with French airworthiness certification on 27 February 1979, followed by U.S. Federal Aviation Administration certification on 7 March 1979. Dassault developed a maritime surveillance and environmental protection version as the Gardian 50.
In the mid seventies a tri jet was manufactured to be used as a business aircraft, known as the Falcon 50. The Falcon 50 was later updated as the Falcon 50EX, the first of which flew in 1996, and the last of which was delivered in 2008. The Falcon 50EX features improved engines and other enhancements to give further range improvements to an already long-legged jet. The Falcon 50EX designation applies to serial numbers 253–352, which marks the end of the production line for the Falcon 50/50EX.
The 1980s only saw the introduction of derivatives and no major new designs.
In the nineties, the clean-sheet Learjet 45 took off on 7 October 1995. The 21,500 pounds (9.8 t) was powered by two 3,500 pounds-force (16 kN) TFE731. Hundreds have been made since. The founder of Learjet, Bill Lear’s resting place is also here at Spruce Creek Airport, Tyrus Wings Aviations US HQ.
As I side note Bill Lear also invented the 8 track cartridge, which I am sure many of us remember.
Anyway back to aviation, powered by two 2,300 pounds-force (10 kN) Williams FJ44, the 12,500 pounds (5.7 t) Beechcraft Premier I light jet made its first flight on December 22, 1998. Nearly 300 had been made before the production stopped in 2013.
In the opposite way of Bombardier, Embraer derived the Legacy 600 from the ERJ regional jet family. Powered by two 8,800 pounds-force (39.2 kN) Rolls-Royce AE 3007, the 50,000 pounds (22.5 t) plane took off first on March 31, 2001.
On 14 August 2001, the Bombardier Challenger 300 made its first flight. The 38,850 pounds (17.62 t) aircraft is powered by two 6,825 pounds-force (30.36 kN) HTF7000.
The first very light jet, the 5,950 pounds (2.70 t) MTOW Eclipse 500, took off on August 26, 2002, powered by two 900 pounds-force (4.0 kN) Pratt & Whitney Canada PW600.
It has been followed by the 8,645 pounds (3.921 t) MTOW Cessna Citation Mustang on 23 April 2005, powered by two 1,460 pounds-force (6.5 kN) Pratt & Whitney Canada PW600 .
Then the Embraer Phenom 100 made its maiden flight on 26 July 2007. The 10,500 pounds (4.75 t) MTOW airplane is powered by two 1,600 pounds-force (7.2 kN) Pratt & Whitney Canada PW600.
In mid 2017, there were 22,368 business jets in the worldwide fleet, of which 11.2% were for sale. 5-year old aircraft residual value level is at a 55% of the list price. About 70% of the fleet was in North America at the end of 2011. The European market is the next largest, with growing activity in the Middle East, Asia, and Central America. In 2015 the total airplane billing amounted to US$21.9 billion, and 718 business jets were delivered to customers across the globe : 199 (27.7%) by Bombardier Aerospace, 166 (23.1%) by Cessna, 154 (21.4%) by Gulfstream Aerospace, 120 (16.7%) by Embraer and 55 (7.7%) by Dassault Falcon.
For the decade starting in 2017, Aviation Week predicts 11,346 deliveries of business aircraft (jets or not) valued at $250.1 billion, with a fleet growing from 31,864 aircraft to 36,702 aircraft (64% in North America): 4,838 more at an average annual growth rate of 1.6%, with 5,835 retirements. For the coming five-year period, Textron Aviation should lead the market with a 22.8% market share, followed by Bombardier with 20.4%, Embraer with 16.6%, Gulfstream with 15%, Dassault with 8.4% then the rest of manufacturers with 16.9%. There should be 22,190 Engine deliveries, led by the Honeywell HTF7000, Williams FJ44, Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A Medium, Pratt & Whitney Canada PW300 and the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A Large. The average utilization should be 365 flight hours per aircraft per year.
A 2010 study by the National Business Aviation Association found that small and midsize companies that use private jets produce a 219% higher earnings growth rate than those that strictly fly commercial.
Finally, for the amazement of us all soon supersonic commercial and private aircraft will be back in the skies above us, and soon after hypersonic, and a new era will begin with the fascination of flight.
When you are walking the dog next, look up in the sky and remember…..
”Once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return”
Leonardo da Vinci
We at Tyrus Wings Aviation hope you have enjoyed this brief outline of the fascination and history of flight.
If you have an idea for an article please let us know
Regards
Geoffrey R. Andrews
Managing Partner
TYRUS WINGS AVIATION / TYRUS WINGS, INC.
PORT ORANGE OFFICE (USA)
Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6)
Port Orange, FL 32128-6756, USA.
Office: +1 386-872-5014 Extension 11
Direct: +1 407-965-2110
Cell: +1 386-213-0476
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Website: https://www.tyruswingsaviation.com
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