'The Children of the Wind' - A History of the New Aviation 1971-1996 - Ch II, Pt 3

[Larry Dighera, Moderator]

'The Children of the Wind' - A History of the New Aviation 1971-1996

Here is a serialized account taken from Brian Miltion's magnum
opus, 'The Children of the Wind' - A History of the New Aviation
1971-1996, soon to be published by Endeavour Press, a
London-based epublisher. These first few chapters
chronicling the beginnings of man's quest to fly and how the
forefathers of aviation have influenced contemporary ultralight
aviation have kindly been made available to newsgroup
readers. They will be posted here over the next few months.
This first post is the Table of Contents.

You can learn more about TV presenter, lecturer,
journalist, award winning around-the-world microlight pilot,
author of seven books, and born adventurer, Brian Milton on
his web site <http://www.brian-milton.com/>;. You can also
purchase autographed copies of Brian's literary works there too:
<http://www.brian-milton.com/book>. And don't miss the
extensive collection of aviation videos, including Brian's Around
the World by Microlight flight for which he was awarded the
Britannia Trophy, joining a very distinguished list of aviators
who have won that award including Sir John Alcock, Bert Hinkler
and Sir Alan Cobham. Brian was also awarded the Segrave Trophy,
an award presented to great sportsmen; past recipients include Sir
Malcolm Campbell, Amy Johnson and Jackie Stewart:
<http://www.brian-milton.com/video/>

Additional links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Milton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segrave_Trophy


� Copyright Brian Milton 2013, All Rights Reserved


============= Beginning of Chapter II, Part 3 ==============
mainstream of design in the 20th century, but lacked a sufficient
power source. Penaud was a vital link between Cayley and Lilienthal,
but had no fighting spirit. After becoming depressed at lack of
materials to build a full-scale model and criticism of some of his
ideas, he shot himself. He was not yet 30 years old.

All these are pioneers of aviation, of mainstream flight as much as
the New Aviation. But the last joint ancestor we have is the greatest
of them all, a German, Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896). He was the first
man truly to fly, to be seen to fly when he said he was going to, and
to be photographed flying. His achievement broke the psychological
barrier which, up to that time, had persuaded most of mankind that
human flight in heavier-than-air craft was impossible.

Otto was born in Anklam in Pomerania, north east of Berlin, in 1848.
With his younger brother Gustav, he began experiments in aviation as a
teenager. They built wings of birch and canvas and ran down hills,
flapping them, but failed to fly. Their uncle predicted disaster for
the pair, but their widowed mother encouraged them.

Both boys went on to higher education, Gustav to study architecture,
Otto to attend technical academies in Potsdam and Berlin. Otto had his
studies interrupted by the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, in which he
served as a 22 year-old soldier. His fellow-soldiers recalled that he
talked of nothing except the dream of flight. Gustav lost interest in
flying, but Otto persisted.

He began his career in engineering, and in 1880 opened his own factory
in Berlin, making small steam engines and marine foghorns. In his
spare time he studied bird-flight, convinced that the process of
learning to fly would be "one step at a time". This was in contrast to
others who experimented with flight, like the Anglo-American Sir Hiram
Maxim, inventor of the machine-gun, who built giant full-blown flying
machines and then devised powerful engines to try and get them into
the air. Though he never succeeded, Maxim was a persistent critic of
Lilienthal's approach.

Lilienthal re-examined Cayley's research done 40 years earlier, and
like Cayley, believed the "arched or vaulted wing includes the secret
of the art of flight". Cayley thought the arch (now called camber)
should be induced by air pressure, while Lilienthal felt it could be
built in to the wing (I remember an exactly similar argument on hang
gliding hills in 1977 between Len Gabriels of Skyhook Wings, who put
pre-shaped battens into his wings, and Steve Hunt of Hiway, who used
flexible battens and tried to sew the camber shape into the wings). In
1889 Lilienthal published the classic "Birdflight as the Basis of
Aviation", which included tables of lift provided by various cambers.

In 1891, Lilienthal began experiments in his garden in Berlin with
fabric-covered wings, leaping off a springboard and gliding to the
ground. He jumped from as high as 8 feet and flew across his garden
safely. The following year he built his own conical hill in Berlin in
a place called Gross Lichterfelde (the hill is still there), running
down it with wings and achieving flights of 50 metres. One witness was
the American Samuel Langley, experimenting at the time with
steam-powered aircraft. Langley was publicly disparaging about
Lilienthal's wings, calling them "heavy and clumsy", though he
conceded they performed handsomely in the air (Langley's own flying
machine, called the "Aerodrome", was useless).

Lilienthal believed that practicing flight was much better than
theorizing about it like Langley. He explored the Rhinower Hills near
Berlin in 1894, and every Sunday would go there to fly. Launching
himself from hills 50 metres high (150 feet) he achieved extraordinary
flights up to 380 metres. His control method was weight-shift, like a
hang-glider pilot, but much higher in the aircraft and therefore less
effective, his head through the top of the wing and his feet below. He
shifted his weight as much as he was able to, back and forward for
pitch, and from side to side to roll. But just because of his position
inside the wing, it had less control than behind the triangle control
bar that John Dickenson bequeathed to hang glider pilots 70 years
later.

Yet Lilienthal could fly! In all, he conducted 2,000 flights, and
achieved world-wide fame. Sometimes, inevitably, he had accidents, but
he constructed a device like a rebound bow (he called it a
"prellbugel") which absorbed the energy of heavy landings and saved
his life at least once. He did not fit one on August 9th, 1896, when
flying one of his standard machines in the Rhinower Hills. A gust of
wind tipped one wing up, he stalled, and fell to the ground.
Lilienthal died the following day of a broken spine. His last words,
in an age when everyone wanted to know them, were alleged to have been
"sacrifices must be made".

Without Lilienthal, the history of flight would have started later and
been, in consequence, completely different. The Wright Brothers began
their experiments in flight on the news of his death; had he not died,
Orville and Wilbur might not have even started. Bleriot might not have
been first across the Channel. The aeroplane might not have
contributed to World War One, nor Alcock and Brown flown the Atlantic,
and nor so much else. Lilienthal is central to the history of flight,
and the central link between mainstream flight and the New Aviation.

A contemporary of Lilienthal was a Kent-born Englishman, Percy Pilcher
who was taught to fly by the German pioneer. Pilcher was educated at
Glasgow University, where he became a lecturer in naval architecture
before taking up flying (and is wrongly labelled a Scot). He built
three different types of aircraft, the 'Beetle', the 'Gull' and the
'Hawk'. He was on the verge of adding a propeller and a 4HP gasoline
engine when on September 30, 1899, at the age of 32, he staged a
gliding exhibition at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire, estate of Lord
Braye. The machines were left out in damp weather, and though sodden
and heavy, Pilcher decided to fly. The waterlogged 'Hawk' climbed to
30 feet, and then a soggy bamboo rod in the tail gave way. He fell to
the ground, dying two days later without regaining consciousness.

The Australians had a pioneer, Lawrence Hargrave (1850-1915), who
lifted himself into the air by four box kites near Sydney in 1894. The
kites were towed by a train. In America, Octave Chanute, born in
France in 1832, went into aviation at the age of 59 in 1891, and built
a number of gliders, bi-plane, tri-planes, even one with four swinging
wings. Chanute was an adviser to the Wright Brothers, encouraging and
supporting them, and his ideas were vibrant enough that, seventy years
later, they had a key role to play in how hang gliding started.

Then came the Wright Brothers in the opening years of the twentieth
century. They broke through the barriers of flight and were taking to
the air for more than an hour while Europeans could stay in the air
only for seconds. The Brazilian, Alberto Santos Dumont, made the first
heavier-than-air flight in Europe, first for 2 feet over 7 yards, then
for 10 feet over 65 yards, finally winning a prize on October 23, 1906
for a flight of 240 yards in 20.2 seconds, reaching the magnificent
height of 20 feet. Wilbur Wright went to France in 1908 to face
widespread scepticism from the vociferous local flying community,
which he silenced by a series of brilliant flights, measuring in miles
where Santos Dumont had flown in yards.

Mainstream aviation has been well-chronicled, and I do not want to
follow others down the same path. But similar patterns are being
formed in the New Aviation which began, neatly, 75 years after
Lilienthal's death, so it is necessary to touch briefly on some
mainstream events.

Before World War One, the French made almost all the running, while
the Americans faded. Partially, this was because the French had such a
head of steam on, liberated by seeing Wilbur Wright fly, and they
virtually threw rule books out the window and tried everything. In the
US, by contrast, the Wrights went around threatening anybody who built
a flying machine with alleged patent infringement, as if flying itself
was something that could be patented! As a result, there cannot be one
American in a million who could name the first aviator to fly coast to
coast in the United States (Calbraith Rodgers, in 1911, flew for 50
days east-to-west on a Wright machine - wrecked so often you could
have built four new machines with the spare parts he used). The first
to fly the other way, Bob Fowler, took 113 days from Los Angeles to
Jacksonville; you could walk it faster. Despite the fact that almost
every journey coast-to-coast in the USA is now by air, these pioneers
were soon forgotten. It is hard to find common knowledge of any pilot
in American history between the Wrights in 1903, and Lindbergh in
1927; perhaps Eddie Rickenbacker, the First World War Ace, and General
Billy Mitchell, because he got into a lot of trouble.

In France the list of aviation heroes is long and revered; Louis
Bleriot (first across the English Channel), Hubert Latham (one of my
heroes, beaten by Bleriot across the Channel, first to install an
ashtray and smoke cigarettes in the air, killed in 1912 by a charging
buffalo he was facing down in Africa, dying anyway of cancer...a
stylist!), Roland Garros (first man to cross the Mediterranean, with 8
hours fuel, landing in Tunis after 7 hours and 55 minutes), Louis
Paulhans (who came to England in 1910 and snatched the �10,000 prize
for the first flight from London to Manchester, beating Claude
Grahame-White), George Chavez (first man to cross the Alps, killed on
landing when his aircraft collapsed just 30 feet from the ground).

Looking at a list of the first hundred people killed in aviation after
1903, it is significant to see where they came from. They include
passengers as well as pilots, and like hang gliding in its very early
days, it was often machine failure that caused the deaths. Eight of
those hundred killed were British, nine Italian, fifteen American,
sixteen were German. But the French had obviously thrown themselves
heart and soul into flight, for thirty-five of them died. This covers
a period between September, 1908, and November, 1911.

Before the First World War, almost all the records in the world were
held by Frenchmen. They were everywhere, racing hither and yon,
fighting off eagles, capturing the rich prizes on offer, landing in
every city in Europe and many in Africa and elsewhere. Other nations
caught up between 1914-18, but the French have retained to this day an
elan and commitment to aviation like no other nation.

The Great War changed things, produced faster and safer machines, and
the men to fly them. In 1919 the first international passenger service
was established, on a British initiative, between Paris and London.
Alcock and Brown flew the Atlantic. Ross Smith flew to Australia. In
1922 Jimmy Doolittle made the first coast to coast flight across the
USA in under 24 hours, Jacksonville, Florida to San Diego California
in 22h35m. McCready and Kelly crossed the US in 1923, coast-to-coast,
without stopping. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew non-stop, New York
to Paris. A year later, Charles Kingsford Smith crossed the Pacific
from the US to Australia, while solo flyer Bert Hinkler - "Hustlin'
Hinkler" - flew England to Australia in 16 days, then the longest solo
flight in history. His flying helmet caught the imagination of
designers and was turned into the cloche, that evocative fashion of
the 1920s. You could hardly pick up a newspaper without someone having
done a record flight, and it attracted those people excited by
risk....and glory. What else should a young man aim for? (this is not
a rhetorical question).

The heroic age of aviation continued into the 1930s with names like
Amy Johnson, Amelia Earhart, Alan Cobham, Jim Mollison, Wiley Post,
Jean Batten, Partmentier, Moll, Campbell Black, but they trickle off
as the second big war looms. Aircraft got bigger, faster, much more
expensive, as they must, but it is no longer really flying any more
and it becomes the primary means of transport. That means safety, belt
and braces, nothing left to chance, all the old values out the window.

The real end of the heroic age of mainstream aviation probably came
with Howard Hughes' flight around the world in July 1938 in a
specially built Lockheed. It had all the latest technology, and Hughes
completed the trip in 3 days, 19 hours and 8 minutes, New York to New
York. Afterwards, he conceded that almost any pilot could repeat the
journey, 14,791 miles through the Northern hemisphere following Wiley
Post's route.

"All you need is the right aircraft", he said.

And that is all you really did need. But you also needed dozens of
people to back up each pilot, hundreds to allow him to take off and
fly and land. It ceased to be an individual matter and became a team
effort. You did not any more need an Antoine de St Exupery, the poet
of flying, or a V.M.Yeates or Cecil Lewis. Just make sure you have a
clear knowledge of the regulations. The pilot could as easily be
flying a bus. Because the trend in the mainstream had to be bigger,
higher, faster, further, those inside such aircraft had to be
protected. Who could stick their head out to smell the air and
experience the clouds if they were whizzing by at 300 mph? Flying
became less an experience, more a matter of getting from one place to
another.

Cockpits were enclosed, dashboards packed with instruments, pilots
forgot the seat of their pants and relied totally on instruments. They
were insulated, as were passengers, from the air itself through which
they passed. What happened in the weather was only incidental, because
they soon flew above it and looked down at the earth from inside a
silver tube, breathing other people�s air; they emerged hours later,
in another country. The pilot, nowadays, might as well not be there at
all except as a reserve, because computers can do the flying for him.

For a short while after the Second World War there was still room for
heroes, for the "Right Stuff" of Chuck Yeagar, John Cunningham,
Neville Duke, Bill Bridgeman, Jacqueline Cochran, Peter Twiss. But
these test pilots were at the apex of a huge triangle of people who
made vital contributions to their flights, but did not themselves fly.
More and more, the most interesting of flying, discovering what
happens at the edges, was being done by proxy. Look through the
chronicles of aviation; individuals appear less and less, and shiny
fast aircraft more and more.

Even in small aviation, cockpits became fully enclosed, radios were
introduced, strict flying patterns, clubs to join, behaviour to be
regulated. You don't buy maps that show you the way a river flows, or
where a motorway crosses it, or which identifies a town or village.
Maps take you from one radio beacon to another and give you a bearing
to your airfield; you can even use a satellite Global Positioning
System (GPS) and hardly look out the window at all.

Looking at modern airliners it is hard to describe the experience in
them as being graced with the word "flying". One goes through the air
from one place to another, but it is not flying. This is an aesthetic
judgement, that by the end of the 1960s the soul had gone out of
flying. We were, unconsciously, betraying the sacrifice made by all
those people who wanted to achieve flight. Flying clubs were full of
people in blazers who were far more heroic around a table full of
drinks than actually in the air. They may have been heroes as young
men, but they were no longer young, and anyway, their values had
changed.

If the pioneers came back and saw that what they were reaching for,
the stars they dreamed of, had turned into a Jumbo jet or the average
club flyer, would they think it was worth the sacrifice?

It is significant that, even in his 70's, Chuck Yeagar, the hero and
defining figure of Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff�, and the first man to
fly through the sound barrier, took up hang gliding. He saw it for
what it was, the "flyingest flying there is".

There is a passage in a story by F Scott Fitzgerald, in a theatre in
Paris just before 1930. An expatriate himself, he looks around the
audience and sees it packed with American and other tourists. Where
once it was the wealthy and discriminating who came to Paris, people
of taste who created the atmosphere within which great painting and
literature can flourish, now it was anyone at all. A large, fat woman
in front of him sweated and fanned herself, and as the curtains opened
she said, "it's luverly, just luverly". At that moment, Fitzgerald
thought, the Jazz Age died.

This is not snobbery. Virtually unseen by anyone outside it, hang
gliding has opened up a whole new ethic in aviation, aesthetically
quite different, indeed reacting in revulsion against many values of
the old aviation. This accounts for the extraordinary reaction from
the public to those fourteen young men who jumped off sand-dunes in
Southern California over the weekend of May 23, 1971, significantly
the 123rd birthday of Otto Lilienthal. They knew where in aviation
history they had to go back to if they were to start again, even if
they did not know at the time they were starting again. They were,
indeed, aware of the deep loss of the real experience of flight, and
wanted to discover again what it was.

Those of us who joined them were not about to make the same mistakes
about where to take the New Aviation, now we had a second chance to
begin once more from where Otto Lilienthal left off.
=============== End of Chapter II, Part 3 ==============