Read Online Marked for Death by James Hamilton-Paterson - Free Book Online
Authors: James Hamilton-Paterson
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training, though, it should be remembered that every light aircraft has a personality of its own: not just the different types but each individual machine. It can differ in ways no rigger or fitter or mechanic can account for, acquiring a reputation for docility or sluggishness, the engine not giving full revs in a steep turn or overheating, even occasionally making a mysterious faint whinnying sound like a pained horse. Some aircraft feel eager to fly as soon as the engine starts, others much less so. It can’t be explained. (Many drivers feel the same way about cars.) This was especially true in the First World War when so much production was farmed out to various factories, each of which had slightly differing work practices according to what they had been making before the Munitions of War Act obliged them to build aircraft. The machines they turned out may have looked identical – may have been identical in the sense of meeting specifications – but they seldom flew identically.
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In many ways it was the engine as much as a growing understanding of the basics of flight that determined the progress of early aviation. Weight was absolutely critical, and power-to-weight became a ratio that haunted every aircraft designer. Itcan be argued that an equal hero of the Wright brothers’ first controlled and powered flights was their mechanic, Charlie Taylor, who was asked to provide an engine for what was essentially one of the Wrights’ manned gliders. In the absence of any existing engine light enough to power an aircraft weighing only 604 lb, Taylor built a 12 h.p., four-cylinder inline engine whose block was cast aluminium. He did it from scratch in six weeks and the resulting engine weighed a mere 180 lb. For its time it was a masterpiece of off-the-cuff engineering.
On the other hand, it was weak. French aviation pioneers like the Voisin brothers were not satisfied with the Wrights’ top airspeed of 30 mph in 1904. This was, after all, the year Henry Ford set a new land speed record of 91 mph. They turned to the rotary engine. This was originally a French invention, although by the turn of the twentieth century it had been developed elsewhere, notably in the United States for use in cars. Now the three Voisin brothers set up a rotary aero-engine business called Gnome, which along with Le Rhône and Clerget was to become a major engine supplier to the Allies during the war. Many companies also made Gnome rotaries under licence, especially in Germany. Trade was trade, even in wartime.
Rotary engines look like radial engines in that both have their cylinders arranged as a ‘clock face’, but they function quite differently. A radial engine, like a car engine, is stationary and turns a crankshaft in the normal fashion, whereas the rotary’s crankshaft is fixed and the entire block of cylinders turns around it. If it is to be used in an aircraft, a propeller is simply bolted to the front of the rotating engine. By modern standards this may seem a bizarre arrangement but in the early days of aviation it offered important advantages over a conventional stationary engine, the main one being that it had an impressive power-to-weight ratio since it was very light. As the cylinders whirled around they cooled themselves in the air and there was therefore no need for a bulky system of radiators and water jackets. Secondly, a rotary engine ran very smoothly because the wholething acted as a flywheel. And thirdly, it was extremely compact, amounting to little more than the clock-face of cylinders with its circular sump in the middle, like a fat hub surrounded by spokes. This compactness was a useful feature, and in a fighter like the Sopwith Camel it meant that the first seven feet of airframe could accommodate the entire ‘works’: engine, fuel tank, guns and pilot. This design led directly to that fighter’s hair-trigger handling which was to gain it so many combat victories.
But back in the summer of 1914 it is
*
In many ways it was the engine as much as a growing understanding of the basics of flight that determined the progress of early aviation. Weight was absolutely critical, and power-to-weight became a ratio that haunted every aircraft designer. Itcan be argued that an equal hero of the Wright brothers’ first controlled and powered flights was their mechanic, Charlie Taylor, who was asked to provide an engine for what was essentially one of the Wrights’ manned gliders. In the absence of any existing engine light enough to power an aircraft weighing only 604 lb, Taylor built a 12 h.p., four-cylinder inline engine whose block was cast aluminium. He did it from scratch in six weeks and the resulting engine weighed a mere 180 lb. For its time it was a masterpiece of off-the-cuff engineering.
On the other hand, it was weak. French aviation pioneers like the Voisin brothers were not satisfied with the Wrights’ top airspeed of 30 mph in 1904. This was, after all, the year Henry Ford set a new land speed record of 91 mph. They turned to the rotary engine. This was originally a French invention, although by the turn of the twentieth century it had been developed elsewhere, notably in the United States for use in cars. Now the three Voisin brothers set up a rotary aero-engine business called Gnome, which along with Le Rhône and Clerget was to become a major engine supplier to the Allies during the war. Many companies also made Gnome rotaries under licence, especially in Germany. Trade was trade, even in wartime.
Rotary engines look like radial engines in that both have their cylinders arranged as a ‘clock face’, but they function quite differently. A radial engine, like a car engine, is stationary and turns a crankshaft in the normal fashion, whereas the rotary’s crankshaft is fixed and the entire block of cylinders turns around it. If it is to be used in an aircraft, a propeller is simply bolted to the front of the rotating engine. By modern standards this may seem a bizarre arrangement but in the early days of aviation it offered important advantages over a conventional stationary engine, the main one being that it had an impressive power-to-weight ratio since it was very light. As the cylinders whirled around they cooled themselves in the air and there was therefore no need for a bulky system of radiators and water jackets. Secondly, a rotary engine ran very smoothly because the wholething acted as a flywheel. And thirdly, it was extremely compact, amounting to little more than the clock-face of cylinders with its circular sump in the middle, like a fat hub surrounded by spokes. This compactness was a useful feature, and in a fighter like the Sopwith Camel it meant that the first seven feet of airframe could accommodate the entire ‘works’: engine, fuel tank, guns and pilot. This design led directly to that fighter’s hair-trigger handling which was to gain it so many combat victories.
But back in the summer of 1914 it is
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