UP IN THE AIR I
(/ LOOK AT FLYING ... FROM THE GROUND) \
By WILBORNE HARRELL
My first airplane flight was made 11
in a barnstorming plane in 1922. 1
Back in those days, when aviation was 1
atill suffering from growing pains,;'
flying was really a more dangerous 1
and adventurous undertaking than it <
is today. I flew in an open cockpit 1
plane muffled in goggles and helmet,
and very inadequately protected from 1
the slipstream. It was a rugged ex- <
perience and gave me quite a rough t
initiation to the life of a birdman. <
■ln early flying, there existed a !
smaller margin of safety than in to
day’s almost fool-proof planes. My ;
first flight proved uneventful, but the ,
same plane crashed a few days later, ;
killing the pilot —an incident which <
should have dampened for all time my ,
budding enthusiasm for aviation. But j
this first hop sold me on flying, and I
have been sold ever since
* From the dawn of time man has ,
been intrigued b ythe possibility of j
1 ' flight, and has stubbornly and per
sistently trfed to emulate the denizens
o fthe upper air. The acve man no ]
doubt gazed up at the soaring eagle ■
and dully wondered by what force or •
magic the eagle remained in the air ,
and did not fall. Down through the j
ages man has unsuccessfully and di
sasterously attempted to fit himself (
with a pair of wings. It has only been ,
within the present century that man
has broken down and invaded the last (
frontier which was left to him; the
upper reaches o fthe wild blue yonder.
Man’s ships had conquered and sailed
on all sails; his adventures and ex
plorers had penetrated hostile jungles,
impenetrable ice fields, made great
advances in science and medicine, and
achieved much in the social better
ment o mafnkind. And now, at last,
man had conquered the air.
Has this achievement been for bet- 1
ter or worse? Would the world have
been better off if the airplane had
never been invented? That is a
question man must decide for himself. 1
Unquestionably, the airplane has 1
brought much good into the world; *
and it has brought much evil. The
airplane is used to drop death from
the skies; and it is used in emergen- :
cies to remove patients from remote,
inaccessible regions to hospitals. The 1
airplane is used to alleviate distress *
in flood or fire devastated areas; and ]
is used to plot the course of disaster
ous storms, ;hus saving many lives ’
and much valuable property. Final- 1
ly, the plane is the lethal conveyor of i
atomic destruction. 1
It is a debatable question whether :
•the invention of the airplane has been 1
a curse or a boon to the world.
Mythology and history, down
through the ages, is filled with leg
ends and accounts of man’s nostalgic
yearning for flight. We have stories
of flying gods, magic flying carpets,
flying horses, and even a flying coat,
which when donned enabled the wear
er to fly. Roger Bacon, in the 13th.
century, prophesied (that “one day an
instrument may be made to fly withal
if one sit in the midst of an instru
ment and doo turne an engine by
which the wings, being artificially
composed, may beate the ayre after
the manner of a flying bird.” The
Bible says that man “shall mount up
with wings as eagles.”
Leonardo da Vinci, the versatile
Florentine of the 15th. century, was
the first to bring to the study of fly
ing the dignity of a scientific ap
proach. Besides being a painter, a
writer, and a sculptor, Leonardo was
a first-class mechanic, an architect,
and an engineer. He was also an in
ventor and had several inventions,
mostly war machines, tp his credit. He
made an exhaustive study of birds in
flight, made numerous sketches, and
worked out, roughly, the theory of
aerodynamics. But he was stopped by
the lack of power, or (the means to
propel his wing surface through the
air fast enough to achieve flight. He
was ahead of his times —the gasoline
motor was yet to be invented. Leo
nardo was also given credit for in
venting the parachute.
It was developed of power as em
bodied in the motor that eventually
made flight possible.
The early history of lying is filled
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'with fantastic attempts to pattern
flight after the literal motions of
birds: the cumbersome flapping of
wings fastened to the body and con
trolled by the arms and egs. What
'delfeats this method of man’s attempt
to fly is that the ratib between his
strength and his weight of the wings
he must handle with his hands is not
equivalent to that of the bird. In
short, a man is not strong enough to
control with his arms and legs, wings
large enough to enable him to fly.
Borelli, another pioneer in aviation,
in his experiments found that, con
sidering his weight, man would never
fly by his unaided physical efforts
This turned the attention of experi
menters in the direction of inventing
some sort of mechanical aid or fly
ing machine.
Next in order of sequence of man’s
attempt to harness the clouds came
the lighter-than-air- baloon. There
were many experimenters in this field,
but it was not until 1780, a French
man named Rozier made the first bal
loon ascension by a human being.
The development of the heavier-lthan
air machine was somewhat retarded
by the interest in balloons, but in
1796 Sir George Cayley, the “father
of British aeronautics,” invented a
working model of the helicopter. He
was the first inventor to use the prin
ciple of camber in wing construction,
which is retained in all planes to the
present day.
Otto Lilienthal, a Duthcman, in
1871 and 1895 conducted glider ex
periments that have contributed much
to the furtherance of aviation, particu
larly in wing construction and the be
havior of wings in the air.
'Sir Hiram Maxim, a contemporary
of Lilienthal’B, probably made the
greatest single stride that had been
made up to that time. He conducted
his experiments with a view to ap
plying power to the machine. Al
though his machine failed to fly, it
demonstrated the possibility of a
plane lifting itself by its own power.
■From then on the race to be the
first to conquer the air was between
Professor Samuel P. Langley, another
experimenter and inventor in flying,
and the Wright Brothers. The Wrights
won, and their epic experiments at
Kitty Hawk is known to everyone. It
was from the sands of the North
Carolina coastal region thfbt on the 1
morning of December 17, 1903 was
made the first accredited, sustained
flight of a man-carrying, engine driv
en, 1 eavier-than-air- flying machine.
It caused little comment at the time,
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but it proved to be an epochal event. <
It is unfortunate that the contro- t
versy with Professor Langley, as to «
who flew first, he or the Wrights, de- {
layed for some time the proper recog- J
nition of this history-amaking fact, 1
and exiled, in 'the Kensington Mu- ■<
seum, England, the original ainplane 1
from its native land, where it right
fully belonged. But that dispute has '
happily been settled, and the historic i
plane now rests, among other notables 1
of aviation, in the Smithsonian In- 1
stitute, in Washington D C. I
The motor—or the power—is the ■
heartbeat of the airplane. At first, J
the Wrighits had trouble finding an
automobile manufacturer who would 1
attempt to build a motor for an air- '
plane—so the Wrights built the motor
themselves. That is the way they 1
solved all their problems; if there was 1
no way to do a thing, they invented a ;
way. The Wright Brothers were also 1
the inventors, and first to use, a wind ■
tunnel, with which they learned much
about the action of a wing surface in '
the air. They also invented ailerons, 1
which supplanted the cumbersome and 5
awkward wing-warping. Ailerons were 1
flaps on the trailing edge of the wing
tip which enables a plane to make a '
turn in the air and maneuver in any
direction the pilot wishes. These 1
three things: the motor, the wind :
tunnel, and the aileron, combined with
the genius of the Wrights, made the
modern aiprlane a possibility and not
a wistful dream.
cc Glenn Curtiss is another illustri
ous name in aviation who followed
closely after the Wrights. In 1910 he ,
made the first non-stop, and then
record-breaking flights of 143 miles,
from Albany, New York. Curtiss re
peated his flight in 1930, in celebra
tion of his 1910 flight. It was just •
a hop in 1930.
Louis Bleriot, in 1909, made the
first over-water flight when he flew
the English Channel, from Baroques
to Dover, in a mono-plane, a distance
of 32 miles. From the standpoint of
courage and dependability of planes,
Bleriot’s feat equalled Lindbergh’s
daring flight across the Atlantic years
later.
The rash of transatlantic flights be
gan in 1919, when Commander Read,
piloting the Navy’s NC-4, flew the
Atlantic in stages, from Newfound
land to (the Azores, and then to Eur-
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ape. This was the first crossing of
the Atlantic Ocean by an airplane.
John Alcook and A. W. (Brown, En
glishmen, made the fir3t non-stop
flight in the same year. Amelia Ear
hart was the first woman to fly the
Atlantic, buit she was accompanied on
the flight by a navigator and a pilot
It was not until the incomparable
Charles A. Lindbergh appeared on the
scene, in 1927, was the first non-stop
flight made across the Atlantic Ocean.
He made the “hop” from New York
to Paris, a distance of 3,610 miles in
33% hours, in a Ryan single-engined
monoplane, the “Spirit of St. Louis.”
The “Spirit” now hangs in the Smith
sonian Institute, beside the immortal
original Wright plane.
The history of aviation is replete
with notable names and achievements
too numerous to mention in a short
article such as this. It have done no
more than merely sketch the high
lights.
World War One was the factor that
advanced aviation farther than it
would have reached under normal
peacetime conditions. Tte . urgency
of war gave the necessary impetus to
inventors, experimenters, and design
ers. And what I believe the most im
portant thing, men were learning
about planes and flying from actual
flying. Many a new design or inno
vation in construction was the result
(Continued on Page Ten)
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CENTER HILL CLUB MEETS
The Center Hill Home Demonstra
tion clubs met Thursday afternoon,
March 2, at 2:30 with Mrs. J. A. By
rum.'
The meeting was called to order
by the president, Mrs. E. R. Belch.
Roll was called and minutes read and
approved.
A committee ofr social service was
appointed with Mrs. B. P. Monds,
chairman, Mrs. Elton and Mrs. Gar
land Spruill.
The pallyanna game will end March
24th at 8 o’clock with a party at the
home of Mrs. E. R. Belch.
Miss Rebecca Colwell led in dis
cussing spring styles,materials, color, .
and fitness, points to be taken into
for our best dresses.
During the social hour Mrs. Lola
Lemons led in an interesting name
game and refreshments were-served
b ythe hostess, Mrs. J. A. Byrum.
The April meeting will be held at
the home of Mrs. Elton Jordan.
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