AVIATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15982, 16 July 1912, Page 7

AVIATION.

A ROYAL FLYING CORPS.' United Press Association —By Electric Televrapli—Copyright. LONDON, July 14

Lady Loraino, desiring to see the fulfilment of tho ideals of her late son (Captain Loraino, who was killed a few days ago), is urging tho immediate raising not only of a national but an Empire fund for a gift to the Crown to place, a royal flying corps on a permanently sound financial basis. A LONG FIGHT.

Tho Paris airship Conti made a sixteen hours’ flight. WINGED MOTOR-CAR.

A motor-car, driven by revolving wings, skimming the road and driven by a forty-horse-power engine, travelled from Paris to Lyons at a speed of sixtytwo miles per hour.

ANOTHER RECORD. (Received July IC, 12.15 a.m.) PARIS, July 15.

Vcdrincs, at Rheims, in a Dcperdussin monoplane, covered 125 miles in 1 hour 10 minutes 50 seconds, a record.

CAUSE OF ACCIDENTS.

TOP PRESSURE ON WINGS,

An important discovery was made recently by M. Bleriot, the famous French aviator. It was embodied in a brief and unassuming report, which, tor all its brevity, was of such a nature that it made the French War Department suspend for the time its activity in connection with aeroplanes. M. Bleriot looked back over a short list of fatalities which all had the same characteristics. In each case the aeroplanes had been proved to be of the accepted proper strength. In each case the aviator was commencing to descend. In each case the wings of his machino broke, and he was hurled to death. There were four such fatalities, and in some at least of them the spectators declared that they had noticed what overyone agreed was the extraordinary, and some said was the impossible feature, that the wings crumpled' downwards. This is, in the face of M. Bleriot’s explanation, only another of the remarkable cases of a simple matter overlooked. No doubt hundreds of flying theorists are kicking themselves for not thinking of the explanation before, and regretting that four lives had to be sacrificed to draw attention to a simple fact. The aeroplane is sustained in the air by upward pressure under its wings; and of course the wings are made strong enough, by means of spars and stays, to stand the strain. But Bleriot points out that in these cases the wings were broken by air-pressure from above, not having been built to answer such a force. Suppose a machine to be flying horizontally, forward, and the engine to be stopped, the machine will begin to fall, but its course will bo a curve, almost horizontal at first, and becoming steeper and steeper towards the earth. But the aeroplanist may make what the French descriptively call a “vol pique,” turning suddenly downwards at a fairly steep angle. That is, the front of his machine is lowered for a dive, but its impetus is directly forward, and the top surface of its wings is exposed for a little time to an enormous downward pressure. If the machine is tilted much, that pressure may even enormously exceed tho upward pressure which sustains the aeroplane in normal circumstances. That is the effect of Blcriot’s report, and ho concludes simply by pointing out that the remedy is to put guys on tho tops of the wings as well as underneath.