Part 1

# Aeolus; or, the future of the flying machine ### By Stewart, Oliver, Major

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Transcriber’s Note

In this transcription, italic text is denoted by _underscores_ while bold text is denoted by =equal signs=. Small capitals in the original text have been transcribed as ALL CAPITALS.

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See the end of this document for details of corrections and other changes.

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AEOLUS

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

_For the Contents of this Series see the end of the Book_

AEOLUS

OR

THE FUTURE OF THE FLYING MACHINE

BY

OLIVER STEWART

_Author of ‘The Strategy and Tactics of Air Fighting,’ etc._

LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Made and Printed in Great Britain by M. F. Robinson & Co., Ltd., at The Library Press, Lowestoft.

AEOLUS

THE FUTURE OF THE FLYING-MACHINE

INTRODUCTION

The aeroplane is an aerial sailing-ship, its wings are the sails, its source of power the wind. It can claim to be a direct descendant of the family of sailing ships whose father was AEOLUS, god of the winds and the inventor of sails.

Aeroplane, helicopter, ornithopter, rotorplane, and autogiro are sailing-ships because they all derive lift from sails or aerofoils. An aerofoil is a structure so shaped as to obtain a reaction from the wind—a sail is nothing more and nothing less. Whether the wind is natural or is artificially raised by an engine does not affect the function of aerofoil or sail.

The heavier-than-air flying-machine, either engineless glider or power-driven craft, is the true aerial sailing-ship. The prolate gasbag which is called an airship resembles only one kind of ship, a sinking ship, because it is totally immersed in the fluid which supports it. If a sea parallel to the airship is required, that parallel may justly be said to be the submarine, which is suspended in the water as the airship is suspended in the air.

Before I deal with the future of the aerial sailing-ship I must define three aeronautical terms. No excuse is needed for introducing these apparently elementary definitions since aeronautical terms are almost as well misunderstood by aviators as by laymen. The three terms are:

Wing Airscrew Propeller

The definitions I advance are supported by the Royal Aeronautical Society’s _Glossary of Aeronautical Terms_ and by the British Engineering Standards Association’s _Glossary of Aeronautical Terms_ although they are often departed from in official forms and in speech.

_Wing._ A few days ago I read in a newspaper of a “single-winged airplane”. Accustomed as I am to the aircraft which appear between the drapers’ advertisements in the daily newspapers, I was startled at the notion of a “single-winged airplane”. A bird has wings. A single-winged bird would be a queer creature and would be incapable of flying. A “single-winged airplane” would be equally queer and equally earth-bound.

The reporter, in trying to hack out an explanatory synonym for monoplane, docked the aeroplane of one of its wings.

_Airscrew and Propeller._ An aeroplane can have an airscrew yet no propeller. Most aeroplanes, in fact, are without propellers. In the interests of differentiation it is worth endeavouring to confine the word propeller to the thing that propels or pushes the machine, to use airscrew as a general term, and tractor airscrew when a precise definition is required for the thing that pulls the machine. The colloquialism “prop’” may perhaps be allowed to stand for both tractor airscrew and propeller.

In the following pages I make no attempt to hit upon any sudden invention which may revolutionize flight. I confine myself to developing lines of progress which have already given some proof of practicability. For determining the general trend of progress I rely upon a utilitarian review of the aeronautical situation. I have avoided leaping into the distant future. Readers will be disappointed to learn that things like inter-planetary voyaging are not dealt with in this

## booklet.

I am aware that scientists have demonstrated that some of the things I do mention are impossible. But scientists have demonstrated that the world is flat, that it is round, and that it is oblong. In the future they will demonstrate that it is rectangular. It was Mr W. N. Sullivan, I think, who said that “To judge from the history of science, the scientific method is excellent as a means of obtaining plausible conclusions which are always wrong, but hardly as a means of reaching the truth.” While a few generations can still witness wide variations of opinion among those who know, I incline to the Pyrrhonic doctrine. It is impossible to know with certainty what is impossible, and in attempting a forecast the best that can be done is to take the trend of contemporary thought and, with that, to build a future upon the principles of the present.

I deal with the future of three kinds of flying-machine, the civil, the service, and the lighter-than-air or airship. The type of machine I say will become popular for short distance air-transport may seem at first to be too unconventional. But I think the whole trend of advanced thought (slotted wings, wingflaps, anti-stall gears and differential ailerons are manifestations of it) is towards the result I suggest.

I

The future of the aerial sailing-ship or heavier-than-air flying-machine will be affected more by the attitude which the world adopts towards it than by technical achievement. In England the national attitude towards machinery is moulded by statesmen and financiers. Under the guise of preserving the liberty of the individual that attitude strangles the life out of the machine; it may be described in the words of the schoolboy who said that _Habeas Corpus_ was a phrase used during the great plague of London meaning ‘Bring out your dead’.

The statesman has helped to mould the national attitude towards the motor-car through the medium of laws and the manner of their enforcement by his servants the police, and the Courts. The history of the cause and effect of the national attitude towards the motor-car is being repeated with the flying-machine, and the parallel is close.

Having the safety of the public for its ostensible object, the Motor-Car Act limits the speed of motor-vehicles to twenty miles per hour, proclaims it an offence to drive to the common danger and to be drunk while in charge of a motor-car.

Of the last-mentioned provision I will say nothing beyond mentioning that there are motorists who are incapable of driving safely except when they are drunk. Of the other two, the 20 m.p.h. speed-limit for many years has been generally recognized as having no bearing on safety or danger, whereas for many years motorists have been condemning certain manoeuvres on the road as constituting, legally as well as in truth, driving to the common danger.

The English police, with the connivance of magistrates and Home Secretaries, have concentrated on enforcing the speed-limit and have ignored the dangerous manoeuvres.

This pass has been brought about by the statesman, who has no direct interest in motor-cars or other new-fangled machines (except when there is a general strike). As a consequence, the car built as a car for speed and control is becoming an object of general dislike. The continued insistence that speed of itself is dangerous and the pompous tyranny of the police (who find motorists tamer and more plastic than thieves) are gradually engendering in the public fear of and dislike for the machine-entity. Instead the wheeled furniture-shop is gaining in popularity. The doctrine of Safety First is threatening initiative and killing the spirit of adventure, while there is ignorance of how to attain safety. Road-racing, the only sure means of increasing car-safety, is prohibited because it is not safe. The result is the dismal, abysmal mess described as the modern British motor-car, which is chiefly remarkable for not containing a single original idea.

Now the result of statesmen moulding a similar attitude towards the flying-machine will be equally dismal. Yet they are already exerting their influence in that direction.

Instead of employing policemen and Courts to harry and hunt the herd of aeronauts, designers, and constructors, however, the statesman employs an army of air-officials. In the world of aeronautics these officials are all-mighty. The private person has no control over them and no reply to them. If he goes to Court against them he will lose. If he appeals against the decision of the Court he will lose again. If he appeals to public opinion he will lose for the third time. The official tells the airman what he may not do, warns the designer of the manner in which he may not design, and informs the constructor how he is forbidden to construct.

The result of this official attitude towards the flying-machine is already faintly visible.

At the time I write Britain holds no world’s air-records. For seven years she has made no great flight. She has three or four commercial air-lines against Germany’s forty-three. Her fastest aircraft is about 50 m.p.h., slower than the fastest foreign aircraft. Her highest climbing aircraft cannot attain within thousands of feet of the altitude attained by foreign aircraft. Her longest range aircraft can accomplish little more than half the distance covered by foreign aircraft. Her Air Force can put fewer effective war-machines in the air than any one of three other countries.

One of our pilots has succeeded in proving that, in an English aeroplane, you can go from London to anywhere else more slowly, and in more acute discomfort, than by boat and train.

In one thing only does England excel. She spends more on aviation than any other country in the world.

I am familiar with the excuses for England’s aeronautical failings. I know that the House of Commons has been told that there is no object in England attempting to obtain world’s air-records. I have heard the claim that the Royal Air Force flies more than any other air force, and I have heard the Air Ministry refuse to supply any figures in support of the claim. I know that the French are said to obtain their high speeds and great distances by cutting down the load-factor of their machines. I have been told about the theory that we _could_ gain world’s records, run air-lines, win air-races, and have an effective Air Force but that we do not want to do so. I am familiar with these excuses, and, having mentioned some of them, I think I can proceed to indicate a cure for the failings in British aviation. For some cure is the essential preliminary to any future for the flying-machine in England.

The cause of England’s aerial impotence is chiefly official interference leading to a wrong national attitude towards the aeroplane.

The cure is to give English aviation the freedom of the air.

If the official is given powers to make vehicular transport safe, he will, as we have seen in the motor-car analogy, infallibly not make vehicular transport safe and he will stop any mechanical development in the vehicle itself. Freedom, then, is the essential condition of aeronautical development.

I said at the beginning of this essay that the financier, as well as the statesman, helped to mould the public’s attitude towards the machine. I speak only of the pure financier or business-man who uses aeroplanes, motor-cars or tin cans with equal indifference as money-making tools; who has no direct interest in any material creation; who repeats that honesty is the best policy and hopes the other man will believe it.

All such business-men in England are humble imitators of American business men. In their advertisements, offices, talk, and indigestion they endeavour as closely as possible to copy the Americans. They therefore believe that, if English people are to produce cars or aeroplanes, they must produce them in the American way—that is cheaply and in mass. Standardization has, in their view, taken the place of craftsmanship and mass-production of hard work.

Already events have shown that the English are incapable of imitating the Americans well. The reason is that the American mechanic regards his work as an unpleasant necessity, to be got through as quickly as possible and to be paid for at as high a rate as possible in order that he may have time and money for the real purpose of life—doing nothing. The English mechanic, although the statesman is trying to knock such foolishness out of him, still expects to find something satisfying in his work. He still seeks a measure of contentment in the exercise of skill.

Mass-production fits in well with the American workman’s ideas: it does not fit in with the English workman’s ideas. The English do not and will not produce cheap motor-cars or cheap aeroplanes as quickly and as well as the Americans.

If English flying-machines are to be made capable of competing with American and others, the English, after being freed from official interference, must leave standardization and mass-production to people who are temperamentally suited to them, and instil into these flying-machines some of the idiosyncrasy of their race. Their flying-machines must be creations expressive of the characters of those who design and construct them.

The only English cars having any success in America (and elsewhere) are those few in which perfection of craftsmanship and idealism in design are notable. They are the kind of cars English designers and mechanics are temperamentally able to produce. The mass-produced cheap English car or flying-machine will remain a feeble imitation of the American. But the idealistic creation, the machine-entity of the English artist-scientist in car or flying-machine has a place to itself in the scheme of things. In its best form it is unique.

The financier’s influence in aviation is not yet so noticeable as in motoring, but it is becoming stronger. Should the aeroplane pass entirely into his hands, it will cease to progress as a flying-machine and will start progressing as a bank-note churn. With the future of such an instrument I am unable to deal, since I have no personal experience of either churns or bank-notes.

If it is to make headway as an individual creation the flying-machine must receive the freedom of the air. It must develop its own individuality as a machine-entity. Freedom of the air and the complementary institution of mechanical craftsmanship are the essential conditions for development of the flying-machine. Without those conditions I have nothing to write of its future. With those conditions the flying-machine presents possibilities of development in high-speed transport that will warrant future generations describing the present age as the static age.

But I must insist that, for the forecast I am now to make, I postulate the gagging and binding or otherwise bottling-up of the statesman and financier.

Only then will this machine-entity, the creation of the artist-scientist, grow. And that the machine-entity, the car or aeroplane as a real and living thing exists will be accepted by all who have spent much time in controlling and looking after high-performance aeroplanes or racing-cars. These machines, built with a single purpose, are sensitive to the treatment they receive as the stone is sensitive to the sculptor’s chisel or the violin-strings to the musician’s bow.

Turn for one moment from the standard cars, the wheeled furniture-shops “replete with every comfort including cigarette lighter and flower vase” which make hideous our streets to the other extreme and regard the finely-wrought, aesthetically satisfying racing-car which is to be seen in the American and Continental road-races and occasionally at Brooklands. I do not suggest that racing-cars should be used for transport even in these “most brisk and giddy paced times”; I merely refer to the racing-car as indicative of a certain attitude towards the machine. The makers of flying-machines should be free, if such is their desire, to aim at the fineness, craftsmanship, and originality in design exemplified in the racing-car.

II

The civil flying-machine, when it is examined in the light of contemporary aeronautical research-work, seems rich in possibilities.

Apart from electrical repulsion, there are five different ways of flying, of which only two are at present in general use, lighter-than-air flight and fixed-wing heavier-than-air flight. I think that a third method is about to be widely adopted, and that this third method will, in time, profoundly influence the whole future of aeronautics.

A comparison between the present system of artificial flight and natural flight will suggest what that third method is.

Let us go to Croydon, the airport of London, and examine a typical three-engined passenger-carrying aeroplane.

The three engines are running, for the machine is about to take off. The coffin-shaped thing whose sides flap in the wind from the airscrews is the fuselage. The machine shows signs of malnutrition, for its bones are prominent in the form of wires and struts. As the engines are run up, the tail shakes and sneezes and coughs until it seems that the fuselage will be ruptured. Now the machine taxis over the aerodrome, its engines open up with a roar, it labours over the ground, and then, looking a little fatigued, it rises into the air.

It passes overhead making a noise like a thunderstorm, shivering and quaking, barging its way along with a clumsy ineffectualness which gives it the appearance of flying through treacle.

When it is out of sight, go to Waterloo Bridge and watch the gulls.

A gull is a hopelessly uncommercial flying machine. It does not pay, it has no ground organization, it is not fitted with wireless, no control-tower informs it when it may land, no books are kept of its mileage or hours flown, no managers, assistant-managers, clerks, secretaries, typists, accountants, ministers, directors, officials, or meteorologists concern themselves in its safety. No offices, search-lights, flood-lights, neon-lights, leader-cables, or directional wireless stations are set aside for its control and supervision. No treatises are written about its future. A gull is not “a commercial proposition”. It is, however, a good machine for flying.

Neither the superficial nor the fundamental defects of the passenger-carrying aeroplane are present in the gull. The gull is a coherent, unified structure without exposed bracing-wires, struts, or engines. It gets off quickly, flies at a great pace (for its power-loading), is fairly silent and very manoeuvrable, can defeat fog, rain, hail, snow, and gale, and can alight anywhere.

As a flying-machine it owes its basic superiority over the aeroplane to a single, ingenious trick: a trick which looks easy, but which, for many years, the scientist found it impossible to reproduce in practical mechanics.

When flying was first thought about this trick engaged much attention. The mechanical difficulties in reproducing it, however, refused to be conquered, and about 1680, Borelli, having this trick in mind, wrote: “The Icarian invention is entirely mythical because impossible”, a view which, according to Mr J. E. Hodgson’s _History of Aeronautics_, was supported by Leibnitz. Afterwards and until just recently the trick has been almost entirely neglected. I think it probable that it will regain its old importance, and that it will become the pivot upon which the whole future of the heavier-than-air land-going flying-machine will turn.

What is this trick which for centuries baffled the mechanician, yet which the gull finds so simple? What is the one fundamental difference between the means employed by the gull for flying and the means employed by the aeroplane?—It is the difference between the fixed wing and the moving wing.

The gull has the trick of being able to move its wings relative to its body. The gull is a moving-wing flying-machine. The conventional aeroplane is a fixed-wing-flying-machine.

Almost every important advantage which the gull (and any other bird) has over the type of aeroplane which has so far been most popular may be traced to the gull’s ability to move its wings. For that reason alone it can get off without a long run, defeat fog and gale, and alight anywhere.

Since the time of the artificial “flying pigeon” of Archytas in the 5th. cent. B.C. the manner of whose flight seems obscure, attempts have been made to build machines which imitate the gull by flapping their wings. Several people, including Bladud, the legendary flying King of Britain, found out in an unpleasant manner that the muscles were not strong enough to actuate man-lifting wings. And in the construction of engine-driven ornithopters the mechanical difficulties invariably proved insuperable. The natural flapping wing has never been exactly imitated by mechanical means in a flying-machine, nor have the leg and foot been exactly imitated by mechanical means in a motor-car.

The motor-mechanician, in using the wheel in place of the leg and foot, imitated the principle employed by nature for land-locomotion but not the means. Will the aeroplane-mechanician imitate the principle employed by nature for flight but not the means?

The aeroplane-mechanician has already accomplished this feat in a rudimentary form in the Cierva Autogiro, which is commonly (and accurately) called the windmill aircraft.

The helicopter has never achieved much success and, for the present purpose, it may be classed with the ornithopter as obsolete. The autogiro, therefore, is the first practical moving-wing aircraft. It accomplishes that which generation after generation of mechanicians found it impossible to accomplish. It has seized on the bird-principle of flight and translated it into practical mechanics.

III

The existing autogiro, although it may not resemble the more developed types which will eventually appear, is the most successful moving-wing flying-machine yet produced. Señor de la Cierva’s work was described by an aeronautical engineer as being of secondary importance only to that of the Wright brothers. That first flush of enthusiasm may be over, but there seems little doubt that future generations will regard Señor de la Cierva as the inventor of moving-wing flight. And I believe that there will be a fierce battle, more prolonged and more vigorous than has ever been fought between two machines, the battle between moving-wing flight and fixed-wing flight. The struggle between reciprocating engine and turbine, broad gauge and narrow gauge, lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air, water-cooling and air-cooling will be as nothing compared with the imminent struggle between fixed-wing and moving-wing.

The autogiro obtains lift from a _free_, four-bladed windmill. Each blade of the windmill is a wing and is articulated at the root so that its tip can rise and fall. The autogiro is drawn forward by an ordinary aero-engine and airscrew which are entirely separated from the windmill. As the machine is drawn through the air the relative wind, blowing on the blades or wings, rotates the windmill and it lifts the machine. The wings rise and fall, and this beating motion gives the machine a measure of stability.

To exert lift a wing must move through the air.

The moving-wing aircraft derives lift from wings which can move through the air even though the body of the machine be stationary or nearly stationary. In the fixed-wing aeroplane both body and wings must move if the wings are to exert lift.

[Illustration:

Fig. 1.—Diagrammatic representation of moving-wing and fixed-wing flight. The wings of both machines have travelled equal distances AA and BB but the body of the moving wing machine has remained stationary relative to the ground. ]

The difference between moving-wing and fixed-wing aircraft is so important to this discussion that I shall venture to describe it again in different words. A fixed-wing aircraft is like a bird with its wings paralysed or in splints. A moving-wing aircraft is like a bird having the full use of all its faculties. (Fig. 1).

Perhaps the most important advantage which the moving-wing aircraft has over the fixed-wing aircraft is that it can virtually land on one spot. The conventional aeroplane must move forward in still air if it is to keep up; it must still move forward while landing, and afterwards allow its impetus to be dissipated during a run along the ground.