Stunting Aeroplanes

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1941, Page 18

Stunting Aeroplanes

EVERY person who has attended an aviation show in recent years has seen stunt planes— and in some instances big trimotored transports—put through "up-side-down" flights, loops, rolls, spins, precipitous dives, vertical climbs, and all manner of combinations of these manoeuvres, writes Wayne Thomas in the "Chicago Tribune."

We have become so accustomed to seeing aeroplanes in unusual positions that nothing astonishes the air show spectator in these days. More often than not such audiences are critical about the smoothness of the stunt performance—the superficial polishrather than interested in the manoeuvres themselves. Seldom is there astonishment over a new stunt, because virtually everything that can be done with an aeroplane has been done.

Behind the acrobatic exhibitions of today, however, is a long trail of enlarge a radius to keep within . the boundaries of the small field. ..-

"On the fourth trial, made on September 20, a complete .circle was made. In order to circle to the left we moved the cradle (hip cradle that controlled, the wing tip warping device and the aeroplane's rudder) slightly to the left, thus, turning the tail rudder slightly left. The same motion warped the tip of the right wing down and the tip of thef left wing up."

The result of \ this was to cause the left wing to dip and the right wing to rise and bank the plane to the left. Only a very little bank was required, roughly about 15 degrees maximum. Once the circle was started, the rudder was turned slightly to the right to hold the nose up, because the early biplanes had a tendency when banked to make an abrupt stalling turn in the direction of the bank,

Early troubles in turning were occasioned by lack of power, The machine tended to slq,w down in the turn, as it had only enough power for straight flight. The remedy was found to be to tilt the machine forward in a slight dive to maintain flying speed! through the turn.

These turns made the Wright machine into a practical aeroplane. It could take off, fly, and return to its point of departure. And their ability to make the turns gives' the Wrights the first claim to piloting skill.

For years—until 1912 and 1913—the gentlest bank was the only aeroplane manoeuvre. Eugene Ely, one of the Wrights' first students and leader of one of the Wright exhibition teams that barnstormed the whole country about 1912, is credited with making the next discovery in connection with manoeuvring. This was the discovery of the steep turn—with the wing banked beyond the 45-degree angle.

Ely practised in secret, learning from his own flying that such a turn could be safely made if the elevator control was used to tighten up the turn and keep the plane from losing too much speed. He .demonstrated it one day before Wilbur Wright and frightened that father of aviation badly. The steep or "pylon" turn became one of the climatic stunts of the early barnstormers.

Then came Lincoln Beachey and the sensational stunts that won him the title of foremost aviator of the world.

Beachey was the first to dive an aeroplane at a steep angle, the first American pilot to loop—and- probably one of the first flyers in the world to loop. He also perfected the roll—it was incidental to his efforts to attain inverted .flight. These experiments continued from 1911 until his death in 1915 when a stunt monoplane of a new type collapsed during a steep dive over San Francisco bay.

Beachey's flying was so far ahead of that of all other airmen. of his day that he became the idol of the crowds and his stunts were copied by barnstormers everywhere.

Beachey was an aeronaut, flying hotair balloons before he'learned to fly Curtiss aeroplanes at Hammondsport, New York, in 1909 and 1910. He had been a parachute jumper—dropping from hot-air balloons—and pilot of Captain. T. S. Baldwin's hot-air dirigibles as early as 1905. .

According to recollections, Beachey was not an apt pupil, • He had several crashes, and virtually destroyed three Curtiss pushers before becoming a competent airman. His first stunt that won him public acclaim was a flight in a Curtiss pusher down the Niagara River and under the upper steel bridge at the Falls. The opening through which he flew was 168 feet high and 100 feet wide. This brought him national attention.

The same year, at Chicago, Beachey began his sensational stunting. He electrified the crowd by a steep dive and by what now is considered "crazy" flying. In this he skimmed just above the ground, dipping down to dive at persons, carriages, and automobiles on Michigan Avenue, and finished by shooting across the Illinois Central yards, alternately dipping almost to the ground and shooting up over freight cars being loaded there.

The next year Beachey heard that a French, pilot, M. Pegoud, had looped the loop. The word was enough to send Beachey into the air in an attempt to equal the stunt. He succeeded and discovered how easy a manoeuvre is the loop. From the loops he advanced to the point where he was flying inverted and rolling out. Basically Beachey in his little Curtiss pusher with its 100 horse-power Gnome motor accomplished most of the stunts done today, f .