Abusing The Gull Wing
Reliant
In the 1930s, up in Syracuse, New York, there was a surgeon who learned to
fly at the age of well over 60. Eventually he bought himself a new gull-wing
Stinson Reliant.
In those days the Stinson company ran ads saying it was possible to have their
airplane "descend like a parachute" with its wing flaps fully
extended and its nose held high. The doctor was no chicken, so he decided to
try it out.
People at the airport saw him take off and climb to a reasonable altitude. Up
there the engine was throttled back, and the airplane began to descend toward
the field almost directly beneath, faster and faster, nose high, engine idling.
As the Stinson neared the ground, bystanders could see the doctor through
the Stinson's cabin window, wings level . .
yoke full back and staring straight ahead.
The airplane smashed into the ground, with its tires and tail wheel impacting
simultaneously.
The main wheels splayed outwards several feet, and the tires squashed till
their rims impacted. The wing tips bowed down, and the airplane bounced. But
everything held together and the airplane came to a stop within a few feet.
The doctor gunned the engine and wobbled to the hangar. As he stepped out, he
had a satisfied grin on his face. For now he knew with certainty, that he would
be able to get it down in one piece, whatever happened.
[ Holland Redfield : " The Airman's Sky Is Not Blue" ]
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Ryan ' Hands On ' Construction Methods
This is a story about a aircraft construction tuning method called "
fingertip aerodynamics," evolved by Hawley Bowlus in the early 1920s. At
the time, he was the shop superintendent
of Ryan
factory in San Diego. A widening of the fuselage was proposed. Enter fingertip aerodynamics.
One of
the shop workers described it like this :
" We rode in the cabin and put one hand out each of the side windows
until our fingertips reached the slipstream. That's the way we determined . .
how wide we could make the cabin."
As a result, the fuselage was widened about six inches. It was a success. The
passengers were happy, and Bowlus was surprised to find that the plane flew
faster.
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Navigating The Fences In Dense Fog
Airmail pilots of 1920 were a colorful lot.
Dean Smith, who was one of them, described their hazardous business in his
memoirs. The standard mail plane at the time was De Havilland DH- 4M, a
modified WW I bomber. One of the routes was New York to Chicago to Omaha to
Cheyenne to San Francisco. Not bad for the 1920's !
From North Platte to Cheyenne, endless miles of flat prairie provided safe
flying as compared with tight pattern hills and valleys in the Alleghenies. It
was along this stretch that Frank Yeager, while flying his regular run from
Omaha to Cheyenne, ran into dense fog, landed, and then taxied
for 35 miles in the fog. At each fence - which were usually at least two or three miles
apart - he would take a look, then do a 180 to taxi back far enough to take a
run at the fence . . pull back on the stick to hop the
fence, land in the fog on the other side, then continue taxiing along - jumping
fences - until he worked his way into an area having scud-running acceptable
visibility."
[ Dean C. Smith :" By the Seat of My Pants " ]
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Odd Occurrences With Many Mechanical Failures
Art "Steve" Stephenson took his friend, Al Stewart, on a ride in an
OX-5 engined Jenny to give him some dual instruction. They were flying
out over the Helena Valley when the elevator control under the rear seat came
came apart. Steve took over trying to finesse his way down by use of
the throttle by itself -- more power for nose up, less power for
nose down. He nearly made it.
Stalled it out at around 30 feet in the air and fell.
The Jenny hit so hard vertically , the crash left each of them both sitting
flat on the ground still in the wicker seats, surrounded by fabric and
splinters, but in exactly the same positions they'd been before they struck the
dirt.
Steve asked Al if he was all right. Al replied that he was. Just as their
comments ended, a brass cover from their propellor tip reached its apex and
dropped out of the sky, and hit Al on the head. But he recovered and went to
become a credible pilot.
[ Frank W. Wiley : Montana and the Sky ]
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Helpful Enemies
The Stockholm airport was a beehive of international activities during WW
II. German Lufthansa transports landed there regularly after trouble-free
flights in Germany-controlled airspace.
Allied military transports, disguised as civil airplanes, arrived in a
steady stream from Scotland and flew the hostile skies during moonless
nights. The standard airplane was a disguised Liberator C-87. They brought with
them VIPs, diplomats, vital machinery parts, film and photo-chemicals, books,
fresh newspapers.
On other moonless nights, the Allied aircraft left Bromma loaded up with
Norwegian resistance fighters, roller bearings, special steel products, and
whatever else was needed by the in the West.
This clandestine traffic was intensified during the last years of the war, and
it was organized by old polar bear explorer Bernt Balchen. And there at
Bromma airfield, German and American airplanes were mixed together in a
comic hodgepodge. And the sets of enemies watched each other carefully and with
suspicion.
One day, one of Balchen's Liberators cracked a cylinder head. They could have
sent for a spare cylinder from Scotland, but "
YESS ! Vee-Do-It " Balchen did it his way. He knew that the DC-3s
the Germans were operating between Berlin and Stockholm used the same engines,
so he asked a friend from a Swedish airline, to borrow a spare cylinder
from the Lufthansa representative at Bromma. The German replied that he didn't
have one on hand in Stockholm, however as a favor he could arrange for a
cylinder to be flown up from Berlin on the next plane. The following day
Lufthansa delivered a cylinder scavanged from an American B-24 which had
crashed in Germany.
Balchen installed it in his Liberator and flew back to Scotland, got a spare
cylinder and took it to Stockholm the next day to replace the one borrowed from
the Nazis. Everybody was happy.
[ Bernt Balchen : " Come North with Me " ]
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The 1934 Comet the eternal beauty, was specially designed and optimized for the
MacRobertson Race from England to Australia in 1934. With its two 230hp Gipsy
Six engines, it had a cruising speed of 220 mhp. Three large fuel tanks gave it
an ultimate range of nearly 3,000 miles.
As in all long-distance races, it was essential to be able to make take-offs in
an overloaded condition, which made variable-pitch propellers highly desirable.
The obvious choice was the American-made Hamiltons, but there were technical
problems which could not be overcome in the short time available.
Instead, they chose the French Ratier design, a two- position propeller
of simple and rather clever design.
Fine pitch was achieved on the ground with the help of compressed air.
When the plane was airborne and had reached 150 mph, a disc on the spinner was
forced back to release the internal air pressure, and there
was an automatic change into coarse pitch. This implied an obvious
disadvantage. Once the coarse pitch had been selected, it was not possible
to change this state of things without landing. Thus
was it nearly impossible to make a go-around.
One no-go-around landing, That was it. Until a cockpit device was
rigged to make delivery of the compressed air necessary to switch the prop to
fine pitch : the co-pilot pumped away with a
second hand bicycle tyre pump.
[ A. J. Jackson : De Havilland Aircraft since 1909 ]
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Poor Learner
One of the first Swedish military pilots was Count Henrik David Hamilton.
He really shouldn't have
been one.
Somehow, he had succeeded in getting a pilot's license down in France around
1910 by paying someone enought franc. When he returned home, he somehow swapped
it for Swedish license #2. While he was based on Swedish military air
base named Malmen, his own name became infamous, as he crash landed each
time he flew. One of his arrogant, well-known statements came after his crash
number 12 :
" If this continues, I will soon lose confidence in using this
airfield."
His superior, was determined to see Hamilton make at least one successful
flight. They planned it carefully. It would be a flight from Malmen to
Skenninge, some 30 miles away.
He took Hamilton with him in a car to visually checkout the field at
Skenninge, and they walked it over the airfield, examining it in every way.
Hamilton commented that there were several potholes and a lot of small stones
in the field. So his superior ordered a contingent of soldiers to collect the
stones from the field's surface and pile them in a far corner of the field,
then fill in each the holes making the airfield completely smooth.
When soldiers had finished, the airfield was as flat as a dance floor.
Count Hamilton's flight took place on a perfect day. The wind was dead calm,
the sun was shining brightly,with visibility unlimited. Hamilton took off for
the reconditioned airfield in a new Blériot.
He had no difficulty locating the field, made his approach, then scooted over
the ' dance floor ' and wrecked his 13th airplane on the crest of his
stone pile.
[ Stig Kernell : Vingar over Vadstena