JF Ptak Science Books

Aircraft Cross Sections, WWII

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2781

I'm sharing some of the collection here of the published work of George.H. Davis (1881-1963), the prolific and vastly accomplished artist for The Illustrated London News. His work with that magazine for the forty or so years that I am familiar with is superb, and his great strengths can be found in rendering technical cross sections and infographics.  He had a great sense of design and a very fine hand, and so far as I can tell he displayed an excellent control of his subject, thousands and thousands of times (2,500 times, according to Mr. Davis).

Here are some fabulous examples of technological cross sections of WWII aircraft by Davis--the drawings are just superb, and you can easily get lost in them, following the geography of engineering detail from one logical place to the next.

Blohm u. Voss BV141 

Surprise!  My first cross section isn't one--I just couldn't resist posting it, though. This aircraft is the Blohm u. Voss "BV 141"a very unusual-looking aircraft as it appeared in The Illustrated London News for 23 May 1942--it gives an excellent view of what the editors called "a lop-sided freak".  Perhaps the editors of the ILN wanted to educate its readers on the plane since it was supposed to be widely employed on the Russian Front, though it looks like only 38 were ever built (and none survive today). Actually, the plane, designed by Dr. Richard Vogt (1894-1979),  was a high-flying three-seater  surveillance aircraft capable of 220 mph at 17,000 feet, powered by a single 1000 hp Bramo Fafnir 9-cylinder radial engine.  The idea for the design was to give the pilot and co-pilot a very wide field of view--and by this, I'm guessing that the field of view most affected and aided by this would be straight down. The rear gunner also had an enormous field of view. 

As it turns out Vogt survived the war and spent his Golden Years in the U.S., seven of them (1960-1966) with Boeing to evaluate hydrofoils and vertical liftoff systems:  he had built other odd planes during his career, and carried them with them into near-retirement, making this sort of design his metier.

"The Mustang--Fastest Army Co-operation in the World", appearing in The Illustrated London News for 12 December 1942.  

 

 The Spitfire (perhaps the most beautiful-sounding aircraft of WWII):

 

The Early Airplane in Popular Culture: Sheet Music (1897-1911)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2780

I'm posting these following sheet music covers because of their lovely airplane covers. They are located at the wonderful (and highly available and useful) Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection at Johns Hopkins University.  

"I Could Live in An Airplane", by James O'Dea, with music by Edward Buffington, 1909. [Image source: http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/catalog/levy:060.048]

 

"Sixty Miles an Hour. March and Two-Step',  Frederick W. Hager, 1910.  [Image source: http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/catalog/levy:059.065]

"The Aeronautical World"--a Great Advertisement from 1903.

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Here's a clearer picture, which is from the front cover of the magazine, and which identifies the fliers--as you can see the middle flyer that looks like a Wright plane was Octave Chanute, and which was moved over to the left in a new design to accommodate the title of the journal in the ad. Chanute was really very helpful to the Wrights and gave them support at nearly all times during their experiments...but I think it was his interest in them early on that was most beneficial, as the Wrights were just starting out and Chanute was a recognized world-wide authority who actually traveled to Dayton to meet them.  Anyway, that's his flyer, though not Chanute himself, who I'm pretty sure never flew one of his own inventions--the Wrights on the other hand insisted upon that, saying it was of the most supreme importance for understanding motion in the air and controlling the aircraft. As the Wrights realized at the outset, it wasn't getting into the air that was the problem--it was staying there. And in order to stay there you had to be able to move the aircraft, and so move different parts of the aircraft. Everything else flowed from that. 

It was in volume 1 issue 7 that Chanute was quoted saying that the Wrights "flew like a vulture" which was a high compliment, given the ability of vultures, and that with them "soaring flight was almost an accomplished fact". (p. 147). See Internet Archives for the magazine: https://archive.org/details/aeronauti111118021903glen/page/148

Fantasia of the Air--Cops, Booze, Marriage, and a Monkey. (1890)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2776

Well, not quite a fantasia, but more like a "fanciful/fantastical/imaginary" collection of  "flying objects" ("objets volants de fantaisie"), a whimsical look at the very near future (or so) of airship flight in 1890. This future seems to make room for everyone in the air, and celebrated by a collection of worldwide nationalities on the ground. There really isn't a title for it,  and the print is indexed according to the posters/signs adorning the floating businesses and municipal pleasantries.  According to the excellent French library  site "Galica" the print is catalogued as "Sanatoir aérien du docteur Farceur, bureau volant de mariage, police aérienne [objets volants de fantaisie]", which is entirely unpoetic and slightly galling given the subject matter, and merely describes some of the objects in the print. The only part of the title that hints at the delightful subject matter is the "police aerienne", which would in spite of its clumsiness at least raise an eyebrow of just about any overworked research mole:

[Image source: Galica https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53024091c/f1.item]

What vision of the future of aviation doesn't include two flying doggies and a monkey? This one does. At top right we have part of the title, a marquee for a floating sanitarium run by "Dr. Farceur", which is probably some very light wordplay implicating a medical jester. There's the police station, marriage chapel, a hook-up joint (sounding better as a "ballon de rendez-vous"), and a bar/cafe/restaurant. The law is there directing traffic and making an arrest; there are two ships, one a warship with a skull-and-bones and the other probably not; there's a pamphleteer literally dropping his suggestions, some ladies with attaches, and a long-shoe Flaneur. Belting it all together is some sort of chorus line, though these ladies aren't attached to any flying thing save for the wings on their backs. All in all, this is a fine and pleasing work, full of action, and probably not so impressed with the actual future of human flight.  

Pioneering Effort on a Circular-Winged Aircraft (1909)

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Claude Auguste Joseph Givaudan's  handiwork was presented in the June 5, 1909 issue of Scientific American as part of a longer article on the history of human heavier-than-air motorized flight. The image is, well, engrossing.  It is both pretty and then not so much in a double-ended sausagey kind of way, wanting to look the role of a new age aircraft but winding up looking clunky and breakable and heavily unflyable. The "Vermorel" was a step towards flight, but a step in the not-right direction, though it does seem to be among the first circular wing planes attempted. Sometimes you don't know something is wrong until you know it, and then the information can be useful in the History of Wrong Things. Givaudin (1872-1945) was an excellent candidate for this sort of pioneering work, having an expertise in chemical engineering and machine work in general, working across many fields, not the least of which was making motorized bicycles (motorcycles) at the turn of the century. He just didn't have the proper insight for flying, evidently, though people would return to his circular wing numerous times over the decades.

The barrels fore and aft were fitted with wings that were supposed to catch the wind produced by the 7.8' propeller (which is barely visible up front) and lift the plane into the air. The (air)craft had no rudders and was going to depend on the movable front barrel for control, but at first glance nothing seems to have come of it except for showing others what was not successful. But it seems that there was something that developed: Givaudan seems to have developed among the first (air-cooled) V-8 engines in a plane, which he evidently developed as much as a decade earlier. 

It also seems that there is no published record of an attempted flight of this aircraft.  He did continue in his aeronautical/aviation work, and was heavily involved with the development of the machine and the science for forty+ years until his death n 1945 (in October, long enough to see the end of WWII).

Here's another version of this image, this one clearer and sharper, from a French photographic postcard of the time. The engine is more distinct here:

[Image source: http://www.cpa-bastille91.com/histoire-de-laviation-en-1909-le-givaudan/]

The Wright Brothers at the Bottom of the Pile? (1909)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2774

Here's a busy title page of an interesting fairly early aviation work published in 1909 by John Grand-Carterett  and Leo Delteil, La conquête de l'air vue par l'image (1495-1909) : ascensions célèbres, … The funny thing about all of the flying machines on the cover is that the Wright machine is way down on the bottom, and small.

The other thing about the Wright flyer: it fits in very comfortably with the only birds that are depicted o the cover. The brothers figured out that it was easy to get into the air; the hard part was staying there. And what kept you in the air was maneuvering the wings to control your flight—that was a mega-important realization, the inspiration for which came from watching birds in flight for some years on end. Anyway the French establishment in general was antagonistic to the Wrights, many people not believing that the Wrights had actually flown, and considered them fakers.

The French in general were leading the field in flight in Europe, but in the year that this publication appeared, they still were nowhere near where the Wrights had been in 1902/3. The Wrights worked mostly privately with only a couple of skilled hands, accepting money from no one, financing everything from their bike shop. (In the end the brothers spent just slightly under $1000 to finance their entire undertaking, from theory to powered flight, including shipping and travel, to the end of 1903. Their counterparts in France for the most part were of some sort of money, and did not have to work a demanding job to finance their pursuit. Ion any event when the brothers were turned down again by the U.S. Army for a sale of their aircraft, they left in 1908 to pursue sales on the continent.

Perhaps it was their secrecy which led to the French discontent, perhaps it was the relative nothingness that greeted their enormous accomplishment in the U.S. And perhaps that is why in 1909 their flyer is depicted as a smallish thing at the bottom of a page.

The thing is that it was in 1908 that the Wrights became truly famous, finally showing their flyer before large crowds, and showing absolutely that their work was far superior to others in the field, that their aircraft was more maneuverable, and more dependable, and their flying skills were unsurpassed. Wilbur famously performed at Le Mans in France to help secure European contracts, and Orville at Ft. Myer for a performance for the U.S. Army. (Orville's flight was successful enough, though one resulted in a crash that killed his passenger and severely injured him.) So this in hand in 1908, why are the Wrights featured in such a lowly position? Perhaps the cover design was contracted and completed before all of the 1908 successes? I don't know—its just annoying that they are down there at the bottom of the page, when in fact they delivered a working Magna Carter to aviation.

 

The Wright Stuff in Alabama, 1910

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2772

In the times that I've had to research the Wright Brothers (they do deserve that capital “B” if they are not named separately) I've never seen a reference for their 1910 flight school in Montgomery, Alabama. The school came to be as part of an effort to educate a team of fliers who could then go out and educate the general public in the art of flying.

This was a solidly-grounded idea much in the same tradition as any of the concerted and considered efforts by the Wright Brothers. (It is remarkable how competent and exploratory they were in their pursuit of flight. Right from the time that Wilbur was laid up in bed recovering from typhoid fever in 1896, he was doing some clear and excellent thinking on the matter, beautifully concluding that getting into the air in an aeroplane was not so much the case as it was staying in the air; and that depended upon control of the aircraft, and for that he gave very considerable time to the study of how birds control their flight. This realized, flight was not long to follow—five years from sickbed and near-death to 1000 glides, seven to powered flight, all paid for by the brothers, and mostly funded by their bike shop. And by the way, according to David McCullough in his biography of the Wrights the whole flying exercise--including materials, books, machinery, travel, food, and so on--from 1900 to 1903, cost the brothers under $1000. )

Seven years after Kill Devil Hills and the great success, the Wrights came to establish their first flight instruction school in a parcel of land that had been a cotton field, a wide piece of flat land outside of Montgomery, Alabama. There was nothing there except for the flatness, and so to attract the school local businesses worked to clear the land and construct a building that would serve many purposes, which explains the advertisements for those who contributed to the project:

[Photo source: Alabama Pioneers,  https://www.alabamapioneers.com/airplane-montgomery/]

Wilbur had made the first flight in Alabama in March 1910, and the school followed soon after. After a relatively short period of instruction, the first graduate of the place, Walter Brookins (1889-1953), would become one of the celebrated Wright Exhibition Team, and set records that same year for highest and longest flights in the U.S. Another early graduate was Henry Arnold, “Hap” Army, General of the Army and only USAF five-star general, who was among other things a barnstormer before his military career.

In any event, I just wanted to share this picture, as I like it so much.

With a fair dose of poetry sprinkled on it, that cotton field is now covered by Maxwell Air Force Base.

Notes:

1. There's a ton of other stuff, too, that I've not seen concerning them, but in this instance the photo of the hangar/school is so charming and the story so compelling that I think I just missed something that is probably a piece of highly visible popular culture.

 

An Outstanding Display of Air Power (1932)

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Here's an unexpected bit that turned up in a 1932 issue of Popular Mechanics: a remarkable illustration showing formations of aircraft of the U.S. Army Air Corps. (And, just a short note before the money shot: it was the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1926-1941, the U.S. Army Air Force from 1941-1947 (during which in 1944 the USAAF was composed of 80,000 aircraft and 2.4 million airmen), and the U.S. Air Force (since September 1947). 

 

Invading England with 50,000 Planes (1908)

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2764

Some of the most striking things in my collection/store/accumulation are the hundreds of images that portray data for display purposes--even more so, those that use a vernacular setting to put some anthropomorphic breath into a statistic.

The print that we're looking at here appeared in the 19 December 1908  issue of The Illustrated London News and is entitled "The Futility of Herr Rudolf Martin's¹ Plan of Invasion by Aeroplane", and reports on a possible German invasion scenario of Great Britain that was delivered in Berlin on 2 October 1908. This fantastic piece of  artwork by Hermanus Willem Koekkoek (1867-1929) graphically depicts what the author maintained was the impossibility of a German force to invade England by landing 50,000 flying machines and 100,000 men on the Kentish coast of England--undoable because "of the impossibility of finding landing-room (for the planes) and cover for an army on aeroplanes. The artist depicts a small town and what I guesstimate to be 60 planes in the air and 75 or so on the ground, leaving it to the imagination of the reader where the other 49,875 might go. He DOES make a point, and very vividly. 

"Nothing could show better the futility of Government Councillor Rudolf Martin's idea that Germany could construct 50,000 flying machines for 50-million pounds...and land 100,000 men on the Kentish coast from Calais within half an hour." I would imagine that this illustration drove the point home to the folks who didn't actually bother to read anything about the Martin defense plan. (It was in a similar way that Thomas Nast was able to control public opinion and sway political refuge and protection away from Boss Tweed. Tweed famously boasted that he didn't care what the newspapers said about him because his power base didn't read--he might've been and probably was correct here, so Nast took after Tweed via the political cartoon, and big too, and frequently; and the cartoons, even if the people looking at them couldn't read, told the whole story graphically, and it was this that brought an end to Tweed more than anything else.)

In 1908 Martin gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which he outlined another plan by which he felt Germany could launch 3,500 "specially design" airships (I'm guessing dirigibles) and land 350,000 (!) men in England in a half-hour. This evidently whipped itself into a frothy aeroplanitis in 1909, despite such efforts as this graphical reasoning by the ILN to dispense with the unreasonable fears.

The airplane flown by the Wrights (the first powered heavier-than-air flight) occurred barely six years prior to these frantic events.  Their invention was still fresh (and basically "foreign", as the Brits lagged well behind the other major powers in flight until WWI) and understandable in a way that the fears were not understandable, not really, because of the newness and exotic aspect of the possibly-threatening invention. Also it should be noted that the first heavier-than-air airplane crossing of the Channel didn't take place until the next year, by Louis Bleriot, who claimed a 1000-pound prize for being the first to do so. The first passenger wasn't taken across until 1910, and the first airship didn't make a flight across until 1915. So no doubt Martin was looking into a far off future, except that the planes were still mostly of Wright design. 

• For a tour of the chronological history of the graphical representation of quantitative data as well as innovations in statistical and representational cartography, please have a look at Michael Friendly's fantastic work at York University https://datavis.ca/milestones/index.php?group=1900%2B--it is an historical site the way it should be done, complete with all the trimmings, as well as the usually-absent but very important citations to the original articles used in the chronology. 

Notes:

1. I don't know much about Mr. Martin at all except that in Richard P. Hallion's Taking Flight, Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity to the First.... (pg 298) we find Martin being mentioned among other "popular authors" as Verne, Wells, Kipling, and Fawcett as being somewhat responsible for forming the perception of future flight. Martin was also the president of the German Airship League and author of The Coming War in the Air.

 

Bad Places to Be (continued)

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I used to think that the belly gunner (in a ball turret) in a B-17 (or B-25, or PB4Y-1) was about the most dangerous/wrenching position to be in an aircraft. Here's another, slightly earlier version of that, s cringeworthy effort without the protection that went along for the gunners in those other aircraft: 

[Source: http://www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/technical/modernmechanix/ModernMechanix1932-09.jpg.html]

This is from Modern Mechanix for October, 1932--that's a date I needed to check out because the position of this gunner looked so treacherous and exposed.

In the same vein is this stone-cold illustration found in the January 1917 issue of Popular Mechanics. This was just a bad place to be: in a 14'-long bomb-like aluminum casing, hanging from a 3000' 3/8" cable suspended from a Zeppelin, trying to relay the positions of whatever you could find, and with people shooting at you. At least, though, the observer had a woolen mattress on which to lie (so says the caption).

Thayer's "New Navigable War Balloon" and Mutually Assured Destruction, (1885)

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Here's a rather Jules Verne-y concept for a military balloon, presented to by General Russell Thayer, and published in the Scientific American Supplement in 1885.  In this iteration the aircraft is labeled a "war-balloon" but looks benign and observational; in the second image, see a month later in Harper's Weekly, the balloon is definitely a war machine, having just bombed something with what looks like an enormous explosive. The scene here illustrates an airship in flight over a very industrialized section of a city, perhaps to drive home a propaganda point that bombing was accurate enough to be strategic and also that targets were industries and not general populations. 

(The first aerial bombing seems to have been during the first Italian War of Independence and used by the Austrians from a  balloon against Venice in 1849; while this 1916 bombing occurred a few years after the first bomb was dropped from a heavier-than-air aircraft during the Italo-Turkish War on 1 November 1911, the Italians this time delivering the blow in Tripoli.)  

The idea of aerial bombardment was an enormous threat, imagining death coming from above,  huge airships dropping untold numbers of bombs upon a city--I imagine that the idea came as much a blow to someone at the end of the 19th c as the threat of nuclear devastation came to those in the mid-20th c.  As a matter of fact S.L. Koter and J.E. Gessler quote an unnamed "distinguished officer in the U.S. Navy" implying much the same thinking as would be later heard as nuclear-weapons-inspired Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): "War will become impossible because it will signify not merely great loss of life and property, but annihilation". (Ballooning, a History; 1782-1900, p. 268.)

It is particularly interesting to note here that Thayer, proposes to use a propulsion system that is not dependent on a propeller but rather "compressed air".  “In the independent balloon the motor is a high pressure air compressor coupled directly to a newly devised carbonic acid gas engine and a reservoir for storing the air until sufficient pressure is obtained. The construction of the dependent balloon is similar to that of the independent ship except as regards the motive power which is here electricity...”

Tri-Triplane Monster Plane (1921)

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A short article (with a smaller photo illustration)  on a very big topic appeared in Illustrated World in June 1921. The photo showed a remarkable plane constructed by aeronautical engineer Giovanni Caproni (1886-1957)--three planes, really. Three triplanes were attached to a floating Pullman-like fuselage, making this the largest/heaviest aircraft ever built at that time. It was 32' high, 66' long, and 130' wide, and was made to seat 100 and make a transatlantic voyage. This was the "Noviplano" (the Caproni Ca. 6c, and translated in the article as "Nine-plannen"), and presented itself in an impressive if not complicated manner--it was a prototype, though, and was crashed and finished on its second flight.  

One Word, Three Un-hyphenated (?!) F's in a Row!

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2746

 

I just came upon this fine word, which for a moment challenged my probably under-corrected vision, and saw that it contained three consecutive f consonants! On a Saturday, cranky with a fever and stiff(f) neck, this was a superb BLAST! Or “blast”. Or “b”. Anyway the word is Luftschifffahrft and it occurs in the title of a pamphlet by Wenzel Kotzauer, Die Luftschifffahrt und ihre Zukunft, printed in Vienna in 1895.

The forty-page pamphlet is about the future of air flight and as fixed-winged aircraft rather than airships, noting in particular the 1894 Hiram Maxim “aeroplane¹”. The Maxim machine was prodigious, and was mainly built for testing purposes—it weighed 3 to 4 tons, carried two steam engines that generated 180hp (!) and had pushing props that were 17.5' in diameter, making the thing a beast-and-a-half. It was fixed to a very wide two-track system to keep it from lifting off the ground when the engines were running—or to keep it from careening around out of control. In any event, Maxim's dream machine didn't make it very far and was dismantled after a few years. (He also attempted an unsuccessful return to heavier-than-air flight in 1910.)

But back to the three Fs. “Luftschifffahrt”, which translates basically to “airplane” or perhaps “aeroplane”, and thus the title is about Airplane/ship/aeroplane Travel in the Future. Or thereabouts. It is a technical work, with much on the actual “aeroplane”, which in its first use were the wings, and here there is much discussion on their size and shape.

What most interests me though are the repetitive consonants. They just don't seem to happen in English, naturally, without being hyphenated. (Using the word “un-hyphenated” again I just want to point out its terrific irony!) The word appears with fewer letters as “Schifffahrt”, which is simply "shipping”.

The most obvious hyphenated candidate for me is “cross-section”, which I use often in this blog, though I can't kill the hyphen and pulling the two words together as it makes it look like overstuffed snake-sausage: crosssection. As smaller snake is the person who sees a seer is not a seeer, and Scrabble-challenged words like “zzz” and “brrr^etc” definitely do not count, noooo sir.

Anyway: fff.

Notes:

1.  In general at this time "aeroplane" referred to the wings/airfoils of a plane, not so much as an aircraft itself.  Mostly, it seems. The Oxford English Dictionary says that the first use of the word in this sense occurs in 1866, with a useful explanation of it found two years later:

All of the following come from the Oxford English Dictionary:

“Aeroplane”

1868   3rd Ann. Rep. Aëronaut. Soc. 36   He had turned his attention to the wing and to the sustainer, or what he might call the aëroplane.

1894   O. Chanute Progress in Flying Machines 237   This main aeroplane..is trussed and stiffened in every direction by wire stays.

1905   G. Bacon Balloons 111   What are called ‘aeroplanes’—large flat surfaces, light but rigid inclined at a suitable angle to the horizon.

Aeroplane=aircraft/airplane (as a noun) comes at about the same time:

1868   Eng. Mechanic 24 Apr. 91/2   We have yet to see the ‘aëroplane’ with buoyancy sufficient to sustain 150 lb., or with apparatus sufficiently light and portable to make headway on an ‘air plane’... Supposing an aëroplane to have raised itself, if it reared out of equilibium it and the occupant would come to grief.

1873   D. S. Brown in 8th Ann. Rep. Aëronaut. Soc. 17   I think this [sc. impetus] will be more requisite with respect to the aëroplane than any other vehicle.

1873   Ann. Rep. Aëronaut. Soc. 20   Mr. Bennett introduced an Aëroplane invented by a Frenchman, to be worked by a screw by motive power derived from elastic springs.

Finally, "airplane" as a noun comes into existence, or nearly so, in the early part of this past century:

1906   Sci. Amer. 29 Dec. 487/1   Air-plane is a much better word than aeroplane. It is as good etymologically, and much better when it is spoken.

1907   Westm. Gaz. 19 July 4/2   It is this ease of going against the current, with no motive force in evidence, that is..the despair of the aeronauts with their air-planes.

1917   N.A.C.A. (U.S.) Rep. Nomencl. Aeronaut. 31   Airplane..This term is commonly used in a more restricted sense to refer to airplanes fitted with landing gear suited to operation from the land. If the landing gear is suited to operation from the water, the term ‘Seaplane’ is used.

 

A History of Big: Massive Aircraft, 1936

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In the history of aircraft, there's big, really big, and then Hughes H-4 ("Spruce Goose") big.  Then there's the ocean-going aircraft below, found on p. 529 in the 1936 volume of Popular Mechanics. The nameless aircraft would be more than 375' long and have a wingspan of 550'.  By comparison, an aircraft called the "Stratolaunch" now under construction and designed by Burt Rutan, would have a wingspan of 385'. The "Spruce Goose" was 319' wide and 216' long; the 747-8 was 249'wide and 242' long; and the Airbus A 380-800 stands 262' wide and 236' long. In short, of planes having flown, this fabulous thing with the 550' wings would be twice their size.  

That said, this giant aircraft was limited not by imagination but by flight of technological fancy. It was supposed to require a crew of 100, fly at only 12k feet at 300mph, and make it across the Atlantic in 11 hours. So, the size was certainly awesome by today's standards; the tech business end of it, not so much. In any event, the image is quite striking:

 

 

How to Fly a Farman Biplane (1910)

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I couldn't resist sharing this because, well, I don't often see a one-sheet explanation on how to fly a plane.  This is from the Illustrated London News, May 7, 1910, and concerns the Farman biplane: