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If you wished to study aerodynamics, you would only need to look at the very early aircraft designs, such as the Bleriot XI. There are no high bypass ratio turbofans, nor upper deck lounges, nor international positioning systems. Instead, the aircraft is a sheer expression of the design solutions necessitated to get over the four forces of flight: lift, weight, thrust, and drag. One of these “studies” may be made at Cole Palen’s Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York. The culmination of ten former configurations built by Louis Bleriot, who had reinvested 60,000 French francs amassed for the duration of an automobile lamp fabricating venture to create a technologically successful airplane in a race with such names as the Wright Brothers, Henri Farman, Santos Dumont, and Glenn Curtiss, the Bleriot XI itself had become the world’s introductory practical monoplane. The Bleriot VII, supplying it is primary foundation, had appeared with a partially enclosed fuselage to house it is single pilot; wings braced to a tubular cabane framework over the cockpit; a four-bladed, 50-hp Antoinette engine; a large, dual-elevon horizontal tail; a little rudder; and swivelable, independently-sprung wheels. Although it crashed on December 18, 1907, it had nevertheless provided the foundation for a later, definitive design. The Bleriot VIII, quickly following, had held the low-wing configuration, but had featured pivoting, wing tip ailerons and a tricycle undercarriage, each comprised of single wheels. Although the Bleriot IX had been a larger variant of the VIII, and the Bleriot X had introduced a pusher-propeller arrangement with triple canard rudders, these intermediate steps had offered little to the uttermost design and consequently had been speedily discarded. That extreme design had taken the form of the Bleriot XI. Its long, gradually-tapering fuselage, formed by ash longerons, spruce uprights, and crossbeams held together by wire trusses, had been light, yet strong, and provided the mutual attachment point for it is aerodynamic surfaces and engine. Only half covered by fabric, it appeared primitive and unfinished, but functional. Fabric-covered, rib-formed wings, with rounded tips, featured a 28.2-foot span and 151 square-foot area and were joint-attached to the fuselage at an angle, supplying significant dihedral. Their upper surface camber and sharply drooped leading edge were themselves expressions of aerodynamics. Closely guided by their upper surfaces, airflow sloped downward and beyond their trailing edges, reducing upper surface pressure, increasing the airflow’s speed, and causing the airfoil to “react” in the principle of lift. Neither high-lift devices, such as slats and flaps, nor even ailerons, had been included. Instead, lateral control had been provided by the Wright Brothers’-designed wing warping method, an inverted pylon attached beneath the fuselage providing wire attachment for warping actuators. Differentially twisting the entire wing, they transformed it into a huge aileron, increasing it is angle of incidence and inducing inflight bank. A rectangular-shaped, 16-square-foot stabilizer, mounted beneath the tapered structure toward the end, provided deflection for pitch axis control, while a 4.5-square-foot, all-moving rudder, seeming minuscule for the aircraft, provided yaw control at the extreme end of the fuselage. A three-cylinder, air-cooled, inverted-Y, 35-hp Anzani engine, replacing the design’s original, 30-hp REP powerplant and attached to a forward, ash frame, drove a mahogany, scitmar-shaped, 6.87-foot-diameter propeller at 1,350 rpm. Because of the then inadequate power capability of existent engines, the Bleriot XI, like all early designs, had wrestled with power-to-weight ratios, their designers forced to counteractively use strong, but light wood for structures and fabric for aerodynamic surfaces. The smooth, finely sanded, intricately shaped propeller itself had been a combining work-of-art carving and aerodynamic expression. Essentially a tiny wing, rotating perpendicular to the path of flight, it developed thrust the same way a wing invented lift, the relative wind striking it at it is plane of rotation. Because it had been set at an angle of attack, and because it had a camber-shaped airfoil, it invented lift in a forward direction, redefined here as “thrust,” the propeller’s “twisting” enabling it to retain the same angle-of-attack along it is radius with it is pitch angle high near it is hub, but low near it is rim. The forward, ash frame had evenly provided the attachment point for two of the aircraft’s three finely spoked, swivelable, rubber tired wheels, whose periodic tape wrappings ensured adhesion amidst the tire and the rim. The undercarriage’s unique, swivel capability, tracing it is origins to the Bleriot VII, more adequately enabled the aircraft to operate for the duration of crosswind field conditions, since the tiny rudder had offered insufficient area to counteract these to any appreciable degree and the assemblage had been other than as supposed or expected too frail to structurally withstand side loads. As a result, it had been competent to track throughout the ground at an angle. The cockpit, formed by a wooden frame and rubber fabric on it is sides, featured the Bleriot-designed control system in which a small, circular, non-turning wheel had been mounted atop a vertical post which had been based by a round, metal, half-dome “cloche,” or “bell” in French, to which the two forward and back elevon-actuating and two side wing-warping cables had been attached. Surfaces had been moved by pitching the stick forward, backward, or to either side. Cockpit “sophistication” had been finished with an engine throttle on the right side and two instruments: a compass and a fuel amount indicator. A small, barrel-like fuel tank had been horizontally installed amidst the engine and the cockpit. The Bleriot XI, as powered by the 35-hp Anzani engine, had featured a 661-ppund gross weight and could attain 47-mph speeds. First flying on March 15, 1909, with the earlier REP powerplant, it had only hopped an 8,200-foot distance, but this ominous beginning had hardly been indicatory of the design’s performance and success, since only four months later, on July 25, it had made the record-breaking, 25-mile, basi cross-channel flight from Calais, France, to Dover, England, winning the Daily Mail’s 1,000 British pound prize for the feat. The historical event, generating global attention, sparked an influx of orders for the type. The Bleriot XI’s design, low horsepower, and minimally effective surfaces dictate it is operation. The brake-devoid aircraft, for example, may only be directionally controlled by it is tiny rudder on the ground. Take off, because of the wing’s high angle-of-incidence, is optimally achieved with a full cloche, or throttle, advancement, which raises the tail to a ground-parallel position and places all of the aircraft’s weight on it is main wheels, while wind-induced tracking angles may be partially or to the full or entire extent counteracted by rudder deflections, depending upon their degree, and it is swivelable undercarriage further augments this. So profiled, the aircraft is induced into a shoal climb. The wing’s camber and area, coupled with ground effect, temporarily aids this, but it still has abrupt stalling characteristics. The step-climb profile, dictated not by air traffic control restrictions, but rather by speed requirements, generates lift at each “plateau.” Despite full throttle setting needs to retain greatest or most complete or best possible flow over the engine in order to meet it is “air-cooled” requirements, the slow, frail design is susceptible to wind gusts, and banks ought to be shoal and gentle. Power is not sufficiently available with which to counteract the 30-degree-and-above turns which exponential increase wing loading and inevitably lead to stalls. Lateral, wing-warping control is minimal and sluggish. Full-power, nose-down descents are ideally arrested with throttle reductions just before the wheels touch the ground. Earlier power reductions are, because of the inadequacy of engine power, unarrestable, and pre-landing overflaring will strength the airframe onto it is tailskid. The Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome Bleriot XI, of construction #56, is the oldest still-flying airframe in the US, overshadowed only by the Shuttleworth Collection’s Bleriot, which bears construction #14. Having crashed for the duration of a 1910 air meet in Sauguss, Massachusetts, the Rhinebeck example had subsequently been acquired by Professor H. H. Caburn, who had passed it on a each day basis while cycling to work and who had stored it, until it had been given to Bill Champlin of Laconia, New Hampshire. Onwardly donated to Cole Palen in 1952, it had been devoid of it is engine and aerodynamic surfaces, but it is front and rear third had been other than as supposed or expected complete. Newly constructed wings, a horizontal stabilizer, and a rudder had been fitted at Stormville Airport two years later, in October. Because of the aircraft’s fragility, it is restricted to “short hops” from Old Rhinebeck’s rolling grass field for the duration of Saturday “History of Flight” air shows, having only attained a greatest or most complete or best possible altitude of 60 feet. Nevertheless, this short hop of an elegantly simple expression of aerodynamics traces it is origin to, and hence represents, the then “long distance” throughout the English Channel which the basi Bleriot XI had made a century ago as the world’s primary practical monoplane and predecessor to each modern aircraft which now routinely links the globe. Most helpful customer reviews 56 of 56 people found the following review helpful. Half A Wing, Three Engines And A Prayer by Brian D. O’Neill, is an amazing book. Through apparently exhaustive research and cross-referencing of records, and veteran recollections, Mr. O’Neill has given us an experience of actually flying daylight bombing raids over Europe that is unparalleled in depth and in its’ multi-dimensional nature, conveying the spatial relationships of activity within the bomber combat formations. While following one particular crew through a 25 mission (late ’43-early ’44) tour, with the 303rd Bomb Group, “Hell’s Angels”, he visits other crews, corroborating combat events from differing points of view in the bomber formation. While one man, in one plane, in one position in the formation might’ve been looking up and to his left, when he saw a particular bomber explode in the midst of a formation; the same explosion was seen by a tail-gunner in another plane, looking down and right. Yet another airman, a co-pilot, watched the same plane disappear in a blinding explosion right off his right wing. With this type of spatial cross-referencing and “story-triangulation”, the complex flight formations suddenly become three-dimensional. Fully-fleshed out and given personality in the non-flying moments of the book, the pilots, crews and even the individual aircraft, are then glimpsed, from all sides, as they go about their grim task.
I have spent the majority of my life, reading books on this one subject. I have, long since, had an organizational understanding of how “elements” are comprised of planes, “squadrons” are comprised of elements, “groups” are comprised of squadrons, “wings” are comprised of groups, and so on. For the first time, a book has given me some physical understanding of the movement of these huge numbers of combat aircraft through the European skies; as well as numerous harrowing, hair-raising, tragic and sometimes even humorous tales of the men manning those planes. From take-off, and assembly, over the IP (Initial Point) and target and through the agonizing, clock-dragging return home, this is one of the very best books ever written on this subject. Buy it. 27 of 27 people found the following review helpful. 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Half A Wing Three Engines And A Prayer Image Half A Wing Three Engines And A Prayer Pic Half A Wing Three Engines And A Prayer Image Half A Wing Three Engines And A Prayer Pic Half A Wing Three Engines And A Prayer Pic Half A Wing Three Engines And A Prayer Picture |
Understandable, Educational, Inspirational and Readable!
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