DH89 Dragon Rapide

DH89 Dragon Rapide > .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZ6-isXw-8 .


Introduced in 1934, the de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide was one of the world's first completely 'streamlined' airliners. Designed as a short haul specialist between England and Europe (well, in reality, Scotland, Ireland and France), the plane was powered by two air-cooled inline-6 Gipsy Queen engines, each of them capable of 200 horsepower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZ6-isXw-8

De Havilland Dragon Rapide G-AIDL flight - pilots eye view
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaZ79yexR28

de Havilland airliners, biplanes and monoplanes
https://youtu.be/Q0zHZeNPCMc?t=2m48s

de Havilland airliner aircraft from the 1930s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZ6-isXw-8

De Havilland DH 84 Dragon pre flight maintenance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZLR1FQ-4UU

de Havilland Fox Moth, Dragon Rapide and Dragonfly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOdOTBAw3lA
DH-89B Dragon Rapide
https://youtu.be/MOdOTBAw3lA?t=1m53s
DH-90 Dragonfly
https://youtu.be/MOdOTBAw3lA?t=2m51s

DH 83 Fox Moth
https://youtu.be/Q0zHZeNPCMc?t=4m37s
https://youtu.be/0W1-y_6Qnfk?t=5m22s
https://youtu.be/MOdOTBAw3lA?t=35s

Underneath the sleek skinned exterior the Rapide is built mainly from lightweight plywood. Up to eight passengers had to be weighed alongside their luggage before they were allowed on.

Brilliantly combining form and function, every detail of this beautiful aircraft is streamlined, making it an iconic aerodynamic pioneer with a range of 578 miles (at a leisurely132 mph). Central London to central Paris took 3 hours and 40 minutes - easily the fastest way to go at the time.

What makes it great… the DH.89 set a new benchmark in streamlining, decades ahead of modern aerodynamics.

Time Warp… A one way ticket to France cost £4 back in the mid 1930s, which equates to around £350 today. So, a bit more than Easyjet, but what a way to travel!

Douglas DC-1, DC-2, DC-3

The Plane That Changed the World - C-47 Skytrain/ Dakota/ DC-3 > .

Inside The Cockpit - mah >> .

Planes That Changed the World - Douglas > .

1944 - DC-3 > .

Douglas DC-1, DC-2, DC-3
http://theageofaerospace.co.uk/boeing/watch/ep1/ch5

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Aircraft_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Wills_Douglas,_Sr.

Douglas DC1 DC2 and DC3

Handley Page HP-42

.Imperial Airways Handley Page H.P.45 flight operations at Croydon Airport (c1935) > .
Handley Page HP-42 > .

The Handley Page H.P.42 and H.P.45 were four-engine biplane airliners designed and manufactured by British aviation company Handley Page, based in Radlett, Hertfordshire. It held the distinction of being the largest airliner in regular use in the world upon the type's introduction in 1931.

Refuelling Hanno: Samakh, Tiberias, Oct '31.

The H.P.42/45 were designed in response to a specification issued during 1928 by British airline Imperial Airways; the two models share considerable similarities, the H.P.42 being optimised towards greater range at the expense of payload while the H.P.45 was optimised towards payload at the expense of range, allowing the H.P.45 to carry more passengers over shorter distances. Imperial Airways approved of Handley Page's proposals and ordered four aircraft of each of the two variants to serve as the new land-based long-distance flagships of its fleet.

On 14 November 1930, the prototype, named Hannibal, conducted its maiden flight. Following their introduction into Imperial Airways, they formed the backbone of the airliner's land-based fleet through most of the 1930s and, along with the company's numerous flying boats, have been considered to be icons of their era. A total of eight aircraft were built, four of each type; all were named, with names beginning with the letter "H". Three of the survivors were pressed into Royal Air Force (RAF) service at the outbreak of the WW2. By the end of 1940, all of the aircraft had been destroyed as a result of several accidents.

Handley Page HP-42 ..
Handley-Page Hampden ..
Imperial Airways ..

Imperial Airways & Flying Boats ..

Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior

.Pre-WW2 Covert Surveillance Spy Plane - Electra 12a Jnr > .

Lockheed Martin ..

Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior, more commonly known as the*Lockheed 12 or L-12*, is an eight-seat, six-passenger all-metal twin-engine transport aircraft of the late 1930s designed for use by small airlines, companies, and wealthy private individuals.

Two aircraft ordered by British Airways Ltd. were intended for covert military espionage. Sidney Cotton modified these aircraft for aerial photography and, while pretending to conduct ordinary civil flights, used them to overfly and photograph many German and Italian military installations during the months preceding World War 2.

The Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra, more commonly known as the Lockheed 14, was a civil passenger and cargo aircraft built by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation during the late 1930s. An outgrowth of the earlier Model 10 Electra, the Model 14 was also developed into larger, more capable civil and military versions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g56lCmzgkA .

Weird Aircraft, Auto-Giro, Gyrocopter

23-8-1 Hx Gyrocopters & Xina's Weird Hunting Eagle Strike Gyrocopter - T&P > .

Odd Ducks: Unusual Aircraft; Movietone Collection, 1921-1934 - Speed > .

How The Auto-Giro Works (1931) - British Pathé > .

How Gyroplanes Fly ? 3D Animation - Animechanics > .

Documentary history of Gyroplane/Autogiro - 1 > . 2>. 3>. 4>. 5>. 6>. 7>. 8>. 9>. 10>. ..

Sikorsky S-38 > .

Early Aircraft - Wings > .
Sikorsky Helicopter - 1940-5-24 > .

Picnic By Plane - 1946 - BrMo > .

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.

The final variant of the VS-300 was powered by a 150 hp Franklin engine. The VS-300 was one of the first helicopters capable of carrying cargo. The VS-300 was modified over a two-year period, including removal of the two vertical tail rotors, until 1941, when a new cyclic control system gave it much improved flight behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_Aircraft .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sikorsky .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought-Sikorsky_VS-300 .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_R-4 .