Aviation was new and exciting in the 1920's and '30's, and Fox Movietone News followed developments in the field pretty closely. Along the way, they covered stories of some unusual aircraft, some of which actually flew and others that never made it off the ground. The men behind them ranged from Jack Northrup, one of the great names in American aviation, to Roy Scroggs, a lone inventor in Eugene, Oregon.
Here is a summary and some background on the segments in this video:
00:19 Vincent Burnelli's RB-1: Vincent Burnelli's big idea was lifting-body aircraft: a wide, airfoil-shaped fuselage could provide a significant part of the lift required to fly. The RB-1 was his first design to embody this idea. Because of the size and placement of its control surfaces, it was difficult to fly.
01:40 Alois Sauter and "le Sauteral": There's not much information on M. Sauter online. One site describes him as "an artist." "Le Sauteral" is certainly a work of art, if not an actual flying machine.
02:35 Vincent Burnelli's RB-2: a larger version of his RB-1, seen here in its rebuilt configuration, identifiable by the rectangular openings in the nose. Like the RB-1, the RB-2 was difficult to fly. Mr. Burnelli, like many other inventors, was not a good businessman and spent much of his career wrestling with the airplane establishment. You can find some conspiracy-theory discussions of his work online, but the best account of his life and work is here:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.493.7125&rep=rep1&type=pdf
03:50 The Fernic T-9: Romanian designer and pilot George Fernic built his T-9 in 1929, intending to fly it from New York to Bucharest. However, he was killed in an accident in his T-10 prototype before he could make the flight.
05:55 Roy B. Scroggs and "The Last Laugh": Mr. Scrogg's design appears to have been inspired by paper airplanes. Its ability to fly was doubtful, but that didn't stop Mr. Scroggs from patenting it (US1848578A).
08:40 The Johnson Helicopter Airplane: Jesse C. Johnson's "Helicoplane" was a Hamilton-Metalplane H-18 with a large prop on the underside of each wing. His hope that the plane would have a near-vertical takeoff were not fulfilled; in fact, the extra propellers appear to cause the plane to lose lift.
12:00 John K. Northrop and his original flying wing: Jack Northrop of Northrop Aviaion is well remembered for his YB-35 flying wing and other plane designs. The X-216H (not the N-1M as shown in the title) seen here was his first experiment with this type of design.
15:35 Rolla V. Norris and his "Foolproof Airplane": California inventor Rolla Norris's "foolproof airplane" put a pivot between the fuselage and the wings. In this clip, you can hear the derisive comments of the cameramen as it fails to take off or even steer a straight course on the ground. This was apparently a development of his 1921 patent (US1440489).
17:50 The Nemeth Parasol: Steven P. Nemeth's circular-winged airplane was an extensively-rebuilt Argo Alliance biplane. It demonstrated some good flying characteristics, but was not followed up on.
20:55 Tupolev ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky": The Soviet Union built the giant ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky" for propaganda purposes. It had the wingspan of a 747 and eight radial engines. It crashed with significant loss of life in 1935. A replacement, the six-engined ANT-20bis, was built the following year.
22:30 The Hoffman Flying Wing: Hungarian-born designed Raoul Hoffman worked for Arup Manufacturing, which built a number of tailless aircraft. After moving to Florida, he built a similar plane for a Chicago businessman. In 1936, the plane caught fire and crashed, killing its pilot.
After the credits are some quick takes:
23:55 The Robertson Waterplane: Milton Robertson's outboard-motor-powered limited-height airplane. Alameda California, February 21, 1930.
24:25 "Autoplane," Detroit Michigan, April 19, 1934. As with all rear-wheel-steered vehicles, it appears to be difficult to control.
24:53 Stacked-propeller airplane, built by truck driver Charles L. Brown. Rushville, Missouri, October 26, 1934
25:07 Handley-Page H.P.45 G-AAXD "Horatius" Four-engine passenger biplane. Croydon Airport, December 6, 1934.
25:30 Biplane with folding wings, built by C. Edward Barnhart. California, August 9, 1921.
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Igor Sikorsky's quest for a practical helicopter began in
1938, when as the Engineering Manager of the Vought-Sikorsky Division of United Aircraft Corporation, he was able to convince the directors of United Aircraft that his years of study and research into rotary-wing flight problems would lead to a breakthrough. His
first experimental machine, the
VS-300, was test flown by Sikorsky on
14 September 1939,
tethered by cables. In developing the concept of rotary-wing flight, Sikorsky was the first to introduce a
single engine to power both the main and tail rotor systems.
The only previous successful attempt at a single-lift rotor helicopter, the Yuriev-Cheremukhin
TsAGI-1EA in 1931 in the Soviet Union, used a pair of uprated, Russian-built
Gnome Monosoupape rotary engines of 120 hp each for its power.
For later flights of his VS-300, Sikorsky also added a
vertical airfoil surface to the end of the tail to
assist anti-torque but this was
later removed when it proved to be ineffective.
The
cyclic control was found to be
difficult to perfect, and led to Sikorsky locking the cyclic and adding
two smaller vertical-axis lifting rotors to either side aft of the tailboom. By varying pitch of these rotors simultaneously, fore and aft control was provided. Roll control was provided by differential pitching of the blades. In this configuration, it was found that the VS-300 could not fly forward easily and Sikorsky joked about turning the pilot's seat around.
