Airplane Stories and Histories: Volume 1

By Norman Currey

Airplane Stories and Histories chronicles two hundred years of aviation highlights including the exploits of pioneers such as Sir George Cayley, the Wright brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Wiley Post, Amelia Earheart, R. J. Mitchell, Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, Alland Loughead, Frank Whittle, and Kelly Johnson. Notable events and developments are discussed, such as the first flight, first transatlantic flight, first around-the-world flight, the jet engine, Spitfire, Mustang, Mosquito, Comet, Concorde, Boeing 747, C-5 Galaxy, Avro Arrow, C-130 Hercules, and the advent of unmanned vehicles (drones). An extensive bibliography is provided for those who wish to explore subjects at greater depth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524573706

Norman Currey

NORMAN CURREY was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1926. He graduated as an aeronautical engineer in 1948 and was astress engineer on the de Havilland Comet. He went to Canada and helped design the Jetliner and Arrow. He spent 30 years at Lockheed, working in the C-130 JetStar, C-5 and special projects. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Roya Aeronautical Society, and has lectured in the U.S. and abroad. He is also the author of Aircraft Landing Gear Design:Principles and Practices, AIAA1988.

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Copyright © 2017 by Norman Currey. 724314

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5245-7369-0

   EBook      978-1-5245-7370-6

   Hardcover   978-1-5245-7368-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/24/2017

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Contents

Chapter 1 SIR GEORGE AND THE WRIGHTS

Chapter 2 OVERVIEW

Chapter 3 TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT

Chapter 4 POST & EARHART

Chapter 5 MARVELOUS MOSSIE

Chapter 6 THE SPITFIRE/MUSTANG STORY

Chapter 7 LOCKHEED & THE SKUNK WORKS

PICTURE CREDITS VOLUME 1

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

My file A was always chock-a-block full until I reorganized it into sections such as aerodynamics, design, history, materials, structures, and so on. The contents of this book are taken from my general file – a collection of interesting, and sometimes unusual accounts/events in aviation.

My own career in aviation began in June 1941 when I joined the local squadron of the newly-formed Air Training Corps, and on the 29th of that month I made my first flight – in a Vickers Wellington bomber from Driffield (Yorkshire) aerodrome. This occurred while our squadron was attending one week of training with the Royal Air Force (RAF). During a similar week the following year we were bombed while there! The following year I made my second flight – this time in an Airspeed Oxford twin-engine trainer. By this time (mid-1943) I had decided to follow a career in aeronautical engineering.

After leaving high school I was accepted by the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School at Hatfield, just north of London. This provided a four-year college-level course in aircraft design, maintenance and production engineering. I concentrated on design engineering which entailed passing examinations in mathematics, materials, theory of structures, aerodynamics, and an all-encompassing subject called design that included subjects such as hydraulics, landing gear, and controls and so on. I mention this because it is different from the way this subject is taught today. For example, we took some of the examinations at the Imperial College in London, and in addition to the classroom work we had to spend 20 to 30 hours per week working in various departments of the de Havilland Aircraft Company in order to become thoroughly familiar with the production and testing of aircraft. Prior to this we spent several months in the school’s workshops – operating machines of various types, sheet metal work, engines and drawing office. During our time in the factory we spent several months in each department such as foundry, drop hammers, press shop, production line, flight test, instrument lab, aerodynamics and stress office. Including workshops and classroom we worked about 10 hours per day for 5 ½ days per week, and only had two weeks summer vacation. I have read that this school was considered to be the best of its type anywhere, and I must admit that I have never seen one to equal it! A few years after I graduated it became part of Hertfordshire University.

In today’s aircraft industry it is not at all unusual to work on only two or three aircraft in a lifetime. During the 1940s the war spurred development and demand so quickly that we worked on several aircraft types within only a few years. In the six years at de Havilland I worked on the DH Mosquito fighter-bomber (manufacturing and flight testing), DH Vampire twin-boom fighter (aerodynamics), DH 103 Hornet fighter (manufacturing), DH Dove small airliner (manufacturing) and the DH Comet airliner (structural analysis). I also obtained my pilot’s license in a DH Tiger Moth.

After leaving de Havilland, I joined Avro Canada located at the side of Toronto airport. For the next ten years I helped design the CF-100 fighter, the Jetliner and the CF-105 Arrow fighter. In my spare time I was part of a very small design team that designed a single-engine bush plane, the Found Brothers FBA-2.

When Avro Canada closed down in 1959 I joined Lockheed in Marietta, Georgia, where I worked for 30 years. I spent most of my time in Preliminary/Advanced Design where I worked on the C-130, Jetstar, C-141, C-5, and on many studies as well as Research & Development. Some studies included C-103s that were stretched considerably to carry passengers. We explored a variety of medium-size airliners (some at the request of Howard Hughes), some VTOL aircraft, a ground-attack aircraft, and an airplane that we called the NASA STOL (Questol). It was a competition from NASA to design an airplane that would be used to study many aspects of short take-off and landing, and it was a particularly interesting program to work on. We won the competition and were ready to start detail design when the program was cancelled due to budget cuts. We examined versions of the C-130 to operate from aircraft carriers (and one did!). It was piloted by Lt. James H. Flatley when he repeatedly landed and took-off again from the U.S.S. Forestal in moderate-to-rough seas in a KC-130F in 1963. Regular carrier operation requires a high sink-rate landing gear and we did extensive studies on modifying the C-130 gear to accomplish this.

During my time at Lockheed I had the opportunity to present several lectures in the U.S. and abroad, had written a large number of technical articles and papers, and one engineering text-book. Since then I did some consulting work – and became a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. So that summarizes my credentials and I hope that you’ll enjoy reading the contents of File A.

CHAPTER 1

SIR GEORGE AND THE WRIGHTS

Sir George Cayley (1773 – 1817) has been called The Father of Aerial Navigation, Father of Aviation and The true inventor of the aeroplane…. However, he did not make the first flight in an airplane that was powered and able to land on ground that was equal to or more than the height from which it took off – that honor went to the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903 – 86 years after after Cayley died. He did provide the concepts and fundamental principles though, including control of pitch, roll and yaw, but in the mid-1880s the internal combustion engine was not yet available, so he didn’t have the means to put his ideas into practice.

Sir George was a Yorkshireman, born in Scarborough on Yorkshire’s North Sea coast. He lived in Brompton (four miles from where I lived for the first 17 years of my life), a village some eight miles inland from Scarborough on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors. His mother, Isabella Cayley was a very astute observer of nature and was aware of her son’s peculiar talents. She encouraged him to observe the natural world and to document his findings – particularly relating to birds. When he was a teenager she sent him to be tutored in Nottingham where he met the daughter of the Rev. George Walker – one of his tutors who was a mathematician and mechanic, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. The daughter was a beautiful red-head – and was noted for her bad temper tantrums. Notwithstanding that, he fell in love with her and they married. It turned out to be a very successful marriage and the villagers were somewhat amused (and some dismayed) to see her riding horseback with legs astride the saddle and smoking a pipe!

Sir George proceeded to study bird flight in considerable detail and to document his work – their dimensions, wing area, weight, speed, heart-beat, and flaps per minute. He conducted and documented many experiments to define and elucidate the effects of various wing sections and other aspects of flight, including the movement of the center of pressure as it relates to wing angle and wing shape. Just as Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin were born musicians, Captain James Cook, Marco Polo and Leif Erikson were born explorers, and Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington and George Patton were born to lead armies, Sir George Cayley was a born inventor. Not only did he prepare the groundwork for powered flight but in his spare time he invented the caterpillar tractor, used on the tanks that were invented for World War 1; designed, made and tested missiles with cruciform fins (similar to today’s mssiles). He fired these into the bay at Scarborough and demonstrated how the cannon-ball’s range could be substantially increased by changing to a streamlined shape. He was also the first landowner to provide the laborers on his estate with an acre of land to cultivate for their own use. He did considerable work on the safety of trains – replacing the simple bumper at the front with compressed air shock absorbers, and also having automatic braking at the instant of impact. In yet another area, he became well known for his expertise in land drainage – in one area, for example, he converted a large area that was essentially a swamp into one that grew crops of grain. In addition, he designed and made an artificial hand for one