Category FLIGHT and M ОТІOIM

Many of the designers and engineers who designed and built their own air­planes in the early days of aviation went on to start aircraft manufacturing com­panies of their own. As soon as the Wright brothers had designed a success­ful airplane, they set up a company to sell the original model and later designs. Other designers did the same.

Many of these pioneering names have disappeared now. The companies went out of business or were taken over by rivals, but a few still exist. Famous

SKUNK WORKS

Skunk Works is a legendary name in aircraft design. It is a small team of designers who specialize in produc­ing very advanced aircraft. Part of the airplane manufacturer Lockheed Martin, Skunk Works produced the high-flying U-2 spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. The Blackbird holds the official world air speed record of 2,193 miles per hour (3,529 kilometers per hour)-nearly four times the speed of a Boeing 747. Most planes would actually melt if they tried to fly that fast. The Skunk Works also produced the F-117 Nighthawk, a military aircraft that is very hard for an enemy to detect. The F-117 is often wrongly referred to as the "stealth fighter," but it is not a fighter, because it was not designed for combat with other aircraft. The F-117 is a ground attack plane-a small bomber intended to attack heavily defended targets.

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aircraft designers and aeronautical engi­neers who started U. S. companies include Glenn Curtiss, Jack Northrop, Donald Douglas, and Igor Sikorsky. William Boeing started an aiplane manufacturing company in the United States in 1916. Today, Boeing is the world’s biggest aircraft manufacturer, employing more than 150,000 people.

In other countries, early aircraft designers include Hugo Junkers and Willy Messerschmitt in Germany; Geoffrey De Havilland in Britain; Louis Bleriot in France; and Pavel Sukhoi, Artem Mikoyan, and Mikhail Gurevich in Russia. (Mikoyan-Gurevich planes are better known as MiGs.)

О Reginald J. Mitchell’s prize-winning Supermarine aircraft design was the basis for the British Spitfire fighter plane of World War II. This Spitfire stands as a monument in the Battle of Britain Memorial Park in the United Kingdom.

The two made good time, aided by a tailwind that helped push them along. Nevertheless, they had many difficulties. The airplane flew in dense fog for most of the flight, making it impossible for Brown to use his navigational instru­ments to track their position or chart a course. Unable to see, Alcock had no idea where he was in relation to the water below. Once, they broke through the clouds to find themselves danger­ously close to the surface of the ocean, and Alcock had to climb quickly.

Storms posed a problem as well. Alcock and Brown flew through sleet that chilled them in their open cockpit.

The icy rain also froze the instrument that told the plane’s speed. Not knowing how fast they were going hampered Brown’s efforts to plot their position. Ice coated the sides of the plane for many hours. Some accounts of the flight say that Brown climbed out on the wings to clear off the ice, but he never claimed to have done so.

Communication became impossible during the flight. The radio they carried gave out soon after taking off. Later, the two phones they used to speak to each other over the roar of the engines also
stopped working. After that, they relied on hand signals and written notes.

About 15 hours after leaving the coast of Newfoundland behind them, Alcock and Brown believed they were nearing their destination in Ireland, but they could not be sure. Soon after, they spotted land. Seeing what appeared to be an open field, Alcock guided the air­plane down. The landing was gentle, but what they thought was a grassy field was really a bog (an area of wet, spongy ground). The front of the plane sank in and tipped forward, causing damage. Alcock and Brown were unhurt, however.

Alcock and Brown had landed near Clifden, Ireland. Remarkably, they were only about 60 miles (96 kilometers) from their intended landing spot. They had flown about 1,900 miles (3,060 kilometers) in approximately 17 hours. The historic first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by plane was complete.

Spaceflight has a good safety record, but there have been fatal accidents involv­ing astronauts. The first person to be killed during a mission was Soviet cos­monaut Vladimir Komarov in April 1967. Veteran of an earlier flight in the three-man Voskhod 1, Komarov was fly­ing alone in the new Soyuz craft in 1967. It seems the spacecraft began to spin while still in orbit and then over­heated when trying to reenter the atmosphere. Komarov was killed during reentry.

Three U. S. astronauts were trapped and killed in the Apollo 1 fire during ground tests in January 1967. They were Gus Grissom, Ed White (the first American to “walk” in space, in June 1965), and Roger Chaffee.

The worst fatalities to U. S. astronauts involved the Space Shuttle, first flown with astronauts on board in 1981. On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke up shortly after liftoff. All seven astronauts were killed. After modifications, the Space Shuttle returned to space, but tragedy struck again on February 1, 2003. This time it was Columbia, nearing completion of its twenty-eighth mission. During its descent, the spacecraft disintegrated high above Texas. Again, all seven astronauts on board died.

Astronauts do not appear to suffer any serious health consequences from short flights. Over time, however, the absence of gravity affects the human body. Astronauts find that their muscles

waste and bones weaken during flights lasting weeks or months. Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko returned to Earth in 1987 after 326 days in space, aboard the Soviet space station Mir. He found his calf muscles had shrunk 15 percent in spite of workouts on a treadmill and exercise bike.

During periods of prolonged weight­lessness, astronauts grow 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) taller because the bones in their spines spread apart. Back on Earth, the bones close up again, and the astronauts soon return to their normal height.

After World War I ended in 1918, there were a lot of ex-military planes for sale and plenty of veter­an pilots looking for jobs. Some of these pilots took up stunt flying and became barnstormers.

The most popular plane they flew was the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny, a wartime training airplane. Pilots could buy a Jenny and fly wherever they wanted to offer flying displays and rides.

Groups of pilots formed traveling shows, or flying circuses. Well-known groups included Jimmy Angel’s Flying Circus, the Five Blackbirds, the Flying Aces, and the Ivan Gates Flying Circus. Ivan Gates toured the United States and hired daring fliers such as Clyde “Upside-Down” Pangborn and Diavalo, “Supreme Daredevil of the Air.” Women barnstormers included Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman pilot; Gladys Ingle, who shot arrows from a bow while wing walking; and Mabel (or Mable) Cody, whose specialty was danc­ing on the wing. Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly the Atlantic solo, and Wiley Post, the first to fly around the world solo, both spent time flying as barnstorming pilots.

Barnstorming made some pilots wealthy, but it was a tough, dangerous life. Finding fuel and parts for airplanes was not easy in rural areas, and planes
were not always safe to fly. Pilots trav­eled long distances, often going without sleep for days at a time. There were fatal accidents. Bessie Coleman was killed while practicing for a show. Lincoln Beachey crashed into the San Francisco harbor, and Ormer Locklear was killed flying a stunt for a Hollywood movie.

In 1927, the federal government tightened aviation laws to stop danger­ous stunts and make sure that airplanes were properly maintained. The supply of cheap Jenny planes dried up, and the barnstorming era came to an end. Aerobatics and wing walking, however, can still be seen today at air shows.

SEE ALSO:

• Aerobatics • Coleman, Bessie

• Curtiss, Glenn • Lindbergh, Charles

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Bell X-1

Type: Rocket-powered research airplane.

Manufacturer: Bell Aircraft Corporation. First flights: January 19, 1946. (unpowered); December 9, 1946 (powered).

Primary use: Supersonic testing.

he Bell X-1 was the first piloted aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound in level flight. The flight took place on October 14, 1947.

Landing can be tricky, especially if a bird is aiming to perch on a twig or tele­phone wire. To slow down, a bird uses its tail as a brake, spreading the tail feath­ers to increase drag. Its body adopts an upright position, and the legs swing forward to absorb the shock of impact, just as an airliner lowers its landing gear. The bird beats its wings to main­tain control and uses backbeats (similar to an airline pilot using reverse thrust on a plane’s engines) to slow down. Its feet reach out to get a firm grip on the chosen landing place.

Bigger birds often take a step or two on landing to regain balance, folding their wings as they complete the land­ing. Water birds come down rather like seaplanes, using their feet as water skis as the water slows them down. Some birds, such as fulmars and albatrosses, spent most of their lives flying over the ocean-even sleeping on the wing-and come to land only to breed.

Hunting birds use a variety of differ­ent techniques to descend when they are hunting prey. A buzzard flies high in
circles before swooping down to attack. A peregrine falcon launches itself on its target in a high-speed dive while it folds in its wings to reduce wind resistance. Some birds, such as gannets and boo­bies, dive straight into the ocean to catch fish.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, air forces switched from propeller-driven bombers to jet bombers, such as the U. S. B-47 and British Canberra (built in the United States as the B-57). Both the

United States and the Soviet Union built fleets of very large strategic bombers, designed to carry atomic bombs as well as conventional high explosive bombs. The U. S. Air Force, now a separate arm of the military, set up Strategic Air Command (SAC) in 1946. By 1953, SAC had over 1,000 aircraft. These included the B-36, a giant with six propellers and four jet engines that gave it a speed of 439 miles per hour (706 kilometers per hour).

During the Cold War of the 1940s to the 1980s, Soviet and Western air forces competed in an arms race to build better, faster, and harder-to-catch bombers. Interesting planes from this era include the British Avro Vulcan— a large delta-wing airplane—and the Soviet Tu-95 Bwar, which was the last big bomber with pro­pellers. Some people argued that the age of the bomber was over and that guided missiles were the weapons of the future. Jet bombers flew twice as high and twice as fast as bombers in World War II, but they were still vulnerable to missiles—so why risk pilots’ lives when unmanned missiles could be used instead of bombers?

The success of the B-52 proved that the bomber was still a power­ful weapon. Originally planned as a turboprop bomber in 1948, the B-52 was fitted with jet engines. More than fifty years after it first

flew, it is still in service. In the Vietnam War, B-52s were used alongside smaller, faster airplanes such as the F-4 Phantom and the F-105 Thunderchief, which were able to carry a combination of bombs and missiles.

Building bombers is an expensive business, and many promising designs never get beyond a prototype. The delta­wing B-58 Hustler of 1960 was the first supersonic bomber, but only 116 of them
were built. Even fewer XB-70s were manufactured. First flown in 1964, and able to fly at three times the speed of sound, the XB-70 was canceled before it even got into production. It is unlikely any more big bombers will be built. The need in the twenty-first century is for multi-purpose airplanes that can perform a variety of tasks-dropping bombs is just one of them.

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SEE ALSO:

• Aircraft, Military • Airship

• Mitchell, Billy • World War I

• World War II

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When a plane is flying over an ocean far away from land, pilots used to endure the hissing, crackling noise of their HF radio constantly in case anyone tried to contact them. There is now a system that does the listening for the pilot. When controllers want to contact a pilot, they send a radio signal to the plane. Each aircraft has its own address code. Many airplanes may receive the signal, but the system in only one specific plane recog­nizes the address code and alerts the pilot. It sounds a chime and flashes a light in the cockpit. This tells the pilot that someone is trying to contact that particular plane.

Even when HF radio is being used for long-distance communication, an air­craft’s VHF radio is not switched off. Pilots leave it on and listen for messages from pilots in nearby aircraft. A pilot who suffers serious turbulence, for example, can warn other pilots so that they can find a way around it.

Commercial pilots also can send and receive short text messages. They use this for standard messages, such as weather reports. The messages appear on a screen and can be printed out on paper using the cockpit printer.

The amount of information sent and received by pilots and aircraft has increased over the years, and it will con­tinue to increase. In the future, aircraft may be able to use broadband links that can transmit live video from the cockpit and cabin, as well as giving the crew and passengers access to the Internet during a flight.

In the late twentieth century, with the development of ever smaller electronic systems, the military saw the potential of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as spy planes. A drone could be fitted with cameras and modern guidance systems to fly on missions over territory where it might be risky to send a piloted airplane. With a drone, there was no risk of a pilot being lost if the vehicle was shot down.

Drones do not have the same limita­tions as people-they do not get tired or hungry—so they can stay in the air for many hours. A solar-powered drone could, in theory, stay in the air for weeks. Modern drones are very small and some can fly low—sneaking around hills rather than flying over them, which makes them hard to spot on radar.

Whereas early drones were always controlled by a person on the ground, modern drones can fly on their own, using built-in control and guidance systems. In the future, drones may be capable of decision making, replacing the human pilot altogether, but this type of technology is still far off.

The turbojet is the simplest jet engine. Air entering the engine is compressed by spinning fans in what is called a com­pressor. The compressed air flows into the engine’s combustion chamber. Here, fuel is sprayed into the air and burned.

The hot gas produced by the burning expands and forces its way out through the back of the engine. On its way out, the jet of hot gas rushes through anoth­er set of fans, called a turbine, and makes them spin. The spinning turbine drives the compressor at the front of the engine. Turbojets are best suited to air­craft flying at about twice the speed of sound. They are also very noisy, so tur­bojets are not used much today.

Most of the jet engines that power airliners and military aircraft today are turbofans. A turbofan engine has a fan at the front. The fans at the front of the engines that power the biggest airliners are enormous. The fan works like a pro­peller with lots of blades. It is powered by a turbine inside the engine. Only a small fraction of the air that goes through the fan enters the engine. Most of the air from the fan is blown around the outside of the engine. This big mass of air moving slowly around the engine
provides most of the engine’s thrust. It also enables turbofans to be quieter than turbojets. Turbofans work best in air­craft flying at 250-1,300 miles per hour (402-2,092 kilometers per hour).

Turbine engines also power some slower planes with propellers. A turbine engine with a propeller is called a turbo­prop. A turbine inside the engine powers the propeller. Turboprops work best for aircraft flying at up to about 450 miles per hour (724 kilometers per hour).

All but the smallest helicopters are now powered by turbine engines. These engines are called turboshafts. A tur­boshaft engine uses the jet of gas from the engine to spin a shaft. The spinning shaft drives the helicopter’s rotors.

Fighter planes sometimes have to make extremely tight turns in combat. The acceleration forces caused by these tight turns are often called g-forces because they are measured by comparing them to the force of gravity at Earth’s sur­face. An acceleration force equal to Earth’s surface gravity is 1g. A force twice as strong as this is 2g, and so on up the g-force scale.

The human body can survive g-forces as high as about 40g, but only for a brief time. People who ride on the most extreme theme park rides normally experience acceleration forces of up to about 4g. Fighter pilots train to withstand g-forces up to about 9g.

Forces as strong as 9g pull blood from a pilot’s head down into the body and legs. Without any protective cloth­ing or training, the pilot would faint from lack of blood in the brain. This type of fainting is also called g-loc, which stands for g-induced loss of conscious­ness. Pilots get some warning of g-loc
because the shortage of blood in their head causes problems with their vision.

Fighter pilots protect themselves from g-loc by wearing an anti-g suit. In a tight turn, air is pumped into the suit’s body and legs. It squeezes the pilot’s body and legs to stop blood from drain­ing down out of his or her head. Pilots also tense the muscles in their bodies to push more blood up into their heads, but this straining maneuver is very tiring. Pilots can be helped by one more system: Oxygen-rich air is forced into their lungs through a facemask. Air also must be pumped into an inflatable vest, which presses the pilot’s chest with equal force.

Fighter pilots can experience nega­tive g-forces, the forces that act in the opposite direction to gravity. A negative g-force forces extra blood up into a pilot’s head. This causes an effect called red-out, because the pilot’s vision turns red. Pilots can only withstand negative g-forces of about -2g or -3g at most.

UNITS OF FORCE

The units used for measuring force include the newton and the pound force. The newton is the internation­al unit of force. It is the force needed to make a mass of 1 kilogram accel­erate at 1 meter per second squared (or per second per second). This force is roughly the same force as the weight of a 3.5-ounce (about 100- gram) object-a small apple, for exam­ple. The pound force is the weight of a mass of 1 pound (0.454 kilogram).

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SEE ALSO:

• Gravity • Jet and Jet Power

• Laws of Motion • Lift and Drag

• Thrust • Weight and Mass

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