Major Aircraft Designers

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.

О The SR-71 Blackbird is a Skunk Works product that holds the official world air speed record.

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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.