Page 178 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

airplane 63

The German Zeppelin VII,
which crashed in June 1910.

tinely operated at more than 300 kilo-
meters per hour; below that speed a
fixed-pitch propeller performs well.
The effect of changing the propeller’s
pitch—the angle at which the blade
meets the air—is not unlike having
gears on a bicycle.
Researchers found that shrouding
the engine with a cowl would provide
both better cooling (most engines at
the time were air-cooled) and lower
drag. This last item translated into
higher efficiency and greater speed, and manufacturers ideal means to establish quick access to other parts of the
worldwide quickly adopted the cowling. world. Great Britain led the way, with its large fleet of sea-
In addition to ground-based weather stations set up to planes crisscrossing the globe, carrying passengers and
inform airborne traffic of conditions en route, new navi- mail to Africa, Asia, and South America.
gation instruments to assist pilots in finding their way in These and other developments came during a period
clouds became available in the 1930s. These included in which there was little widespread public support for
radio navigation, which allowed a pilot to follow a aviation: As often as not, aviation appeared more a sport
course without any visual references, and gyroscopes.The than a practical pursuit, and it was uncommonly dan-
ability to navigate without visual references outside the gerous. And ironically, many of the technological
aircraft was known as ”blind flying” or “instrument flight.” advances came during a worldwide economic depression.
In 1930 the Englishman Frank Whittle patented his Much of the push for these developments came from gov-
idea for an aircraft turbine engine. Not long after he ernments willing to support the fledgling technology for
received his patent, Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain, a its potential, even while the marketplace remained skep-
German aeronautical engineer, conceived and designed tical about its value. This support usually came in the
his own turbine engine, independent of Whittle’s efforts. form of military funding, which, in the United States, kept
Whittle was the first to operate a gas turbine aircraft several aircraft companies from failing.
engine, in 1937, but von Ohain’s design was the first to In World War II the airplane was used in much the
actually power an airplane, when it carried an HE 178 same way as it had been in World War I: as freighter,
into the air in 1939. Both British and German turbojet strategic and tactical bomber, long-distance fighter, obser-
aircraft saw military service during World War II, but they vation platform, and ground attack machine. One of the
came too late to prove effectual. few dramatic evolutions was in naval aviation: World War
While these technological developments increased the II introduced the airplane as a potent naval weapon fly-
reliability and practicality of airplanes, water remained ing from floating airports (aircraft carriers). And once
the preferred landing surface for most long-distance air- again, war led to accelerated technological developments,
craft.This was because land-based runways entailed con- including the adoption of autopilots, instrument landing
struction and upkeep costs, whereas water did not, and systems, turbo-supercharged intercooled engines of
seven-tenths of the earth’s surface is water, affording extraordinary power and complexity, and the first ejec-
almost limitless and free runways. Possessing numerous tion seats for aircraft. In spite of the similarities in the air-
colonies around the globe, European nations found the plane’s use during the two world wars (a sign of a matur-
airplane in general, and the seaplane in particular, the ing technology), there were notable differences, among