History of Airplanes

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Louis Bleriot rose at 2:30 in the morning in July 25, 1909, and, found that the conditions were favorable for his flight that day. He ordered the torpedo boat destroyer Escopette, which had been placed at his disposal by the French Government, to start. Then he went to the garage at Sangatte and found that the motor of his Bleriot XI monoplane worked well.

He proposed to fly across the English Channel.

He made a trial flight around Calais, found all in working order, and waited for the sun to come up, a condition of the Daily Mail prize rules. At 4:30, daylight had come, but it was impossible to see the coast. A light breeze from the southwest was blowing the air clear, however; and everything was prepared.

He was dressed in a warm, wool-lined khaki jacket over tweed clothes and beneath his engineer’s suit of blue cotton overalls. A close-fitting cap was fastened over his head. He had neither eaten nor drunk anything since he rose. He thought only of the flight and his determination to accomplish it.

At 4:35, his friend Le Blance gives the “All Ready” signal, and in an instant Bleriot is in the air, the engine making 1,200 revolutions, almost its maximum, so that it may get over some telegraph wires along the edge of the cliff. Once over the cliff, he reduces speed and flies steadily toward the coast of England. After several minutes, he leaves sight of land. With nothing to guide him but the machine’s own direction, he continued on.

He was slightly swept off course, but soon caught sight of Dover Castle, rather than Goodwin Sands, as he had intended. 23 minutes after his take-off, he landed on English soil, in Northfall Meadow, a rather bumpy landing, breaking his propeller in the process. But he had stolen a march on his rivals and surprised the city of Dover, including the disappointed photographers who were unable to record the event.

It was only 21 miles across the Channel, but Bleriot’s flight was deemed “the most important event in the history of the aeroplane” by the NY Times editorial board, which noted that “If a man can fly over twenty-one miles of sea, he can fly over 3,000 miles. It all depends on the comparatively simple machinery of his flying machine. The crossing of the English Channel by Louis Bleriot is the most important event in the history of the aeroplane. … In a heavier-than-air flying machine, steerable and completely under the operator’s control, Bleriot has crossed the historic water between England and France, actually flying from one country to another. He has flown further than this twenty-one miles from Calais to Dover before. But flight over level plains within easy landing distance from the ground is a very different thing from crossing the ‘perilous narrow ocean which parts asunder’ France and Great Britain.”

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Louis Blériot was an early French aviator, who, in contrast to the scientific, methodical Wright Brothers, approached aircraft design with an evolutionary, trial-and-error approach.

He had the distinction of first constructing monoplanes and of putting the engine in the nose with a tractor propeller in front of it. He also designed the first fish-shaped, or streamlined, body, with the tail and elevator planes horizontally and the vertical rudder fixed at the rear end of the fuselage. This was the first successful tractor aeroplane with the propeller in front. In 1909 M. Bleriot came to the fore with his type XI machine, the prototype of all successful monoplanes. In this he followed the Wrights’ idea of wing-warping to give lateral control, and so produced the first monoplane to be controllable in all directions. With this type of airplane, equipped with a 28 horse-power three-cylinder Anzani air-cooled engine, M. Bleriot himself flew over the Channel on July 25, 1909. His type XI model, with a few structural details, was the first to loop the loop regularly in 1912. After 1909, when fitted with Gnome or Le Rhone rotary engines, the performance of the machine was greatly improved.

M. Bleriot also introduced the stick form of control, so that by moving the control stick forward or backward the nose of the machine moved down or up. Pushing the stick to the right forced the right wing down, moving it to the left pushed the left wing down. The rudder was worked by the feet as in the Voisin. Thus a natural movement was given to all the controls and a great step forward was made.

The Blériot XI, in which he crossed The Channel in 1909, was the culmination of several years of work and many aircraft designs:

Blériot V (1907)
After building several gliders and floatplanes with aviation pioneer Gabriel Voisin, Blériot ended his association with Voisin in 1906 and began to build and fly aircraft of his own design. He decided that the future lay with the monoplane. His first monoplane was the canard (tail-first) Blériot V, which flew briefly before it crashed.

Blériot placed the main wing at the rear of the craft and a smaller wing (the canard) at the front of the fuselage. But the design was not stable, while Blériot himself achieved his success with the Canard on April 5, 1907, it broke up two weeks later.

Blériot VI (1907)
The Libellule (“Dragonfly”) was another attempt to use the tandem wing design, where the tail is a wing as large as the main wing. In the Blériot VI, Blériot settled on a tractor position for the propeller. He built the tandem-wing Blériot VI Libellule, which made several short hops at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, during the summer of 1907—all at an altitude of less than 40 feet (12 meters).

The Libellule featured dihedral wings covered with paper, an Antoinette 24 h.p. engine and rudder at aft end of fuselage. With this he made flights between July 11-August 6 up to 150m. August 10-September 17: with a 50 h.p. Antoinette, flights were continued, the longest being 184m.

Blériot VII (1907)
The Blériot VII (1907), marked a milestone for flight performance and aerodynamics. Blériot reduced the size of the tail design. The rudder was much smaller. The low cantilever wings were an innovation on which Blériot would later capitalize. The two parts of the tail assembly could be moved jointly to act as elevators or independently to act as ailerons. The enclosed Antoinette engine drove a four-blade metal tractor propeller, which was directly connected to the crankshaft. The plane was tested in November and December 1907 at Issy, and made a total of six flights. In two flights, the plane covered more than 1,640 feet (500 meters) at a speed of about 50 miles per hour (80 kilometers per hour).

Blériot VIII (1908)
The fabric-covered Blériot VIII followed. It had an instrument layout, which Blériot patented, that is still the basic layout of the modern aircraft today. It was another tail-first type with a 50-hp Antoinette engine. In this model Blériot used the modern control system, in which the control stick is linked directly to the ailerons. Pulling back on the stick caused the plane to rise, pushing to the right caused it to bank right, and so on. On June 29 he won the second A.C.F. prize for 200m. in a flight of 700m. On July 4 he flew for 8:24 in the VIII-ter. On September 9-October 30, 1908, Blériot made more flights with VIII-ter at Issy, the longest being seven kilometers in 6:40 on October 21.

Blériot IX and Blériot X were unsuccessful.

Blériot XI (1909)
Single-seat, single-engine monoplane of conventional configuration. In this machine, he crossed the English Channel, a world-shaking event at the time.

Blériot XII (1909) In August, 1909, Bleriot took second place in the famous Reims Air Race. He flew a Bleriot XII, essentially a modified XI.

In the year following his famous Channel crossing, Bleriot sold 250 of his monoplanes, prices ranging from $3,100 to $5,100.

Louis Bleriot’s No. XI. type monoplane was very simple, and became extremely popular. Among the noted aviators who flew this type were Delagrange, Le Blon, Aubrun, Morane, Leblanc, de Lesseps, Balsan, and Guyot. Over 300 were manufactured and sold by M. Bleriot after September 1909.

Specifications from “Monoplanes and Biplanes,” by Grover Loening, 1911

The Frame

The frame consists essentially of a long central body upon which the planes and rudders are attached. This central framework is very lightly but very strongly built of wood, and is cross-braced with wires throughout.

The Main Wing

The main plane is situated near the front, and divided into two halves, each mounted on either side of the central frame by socket joints. The halves of the plane are easily detachable here, and when not in use are dismounted and placed in a vertical position along the frame, thus occupying little room. The surfaces consist of ribs covered both above and below by Continental rubber fabric. Their curvature is more pronounced than in most other types, and a sharp front edge is obtained by the use of aluminum sheeting. The two halves are at a slight dihedral angle. The dimensions of the plane are spread 28.2 feet, depth 6.5 feet, and surface area 151 square feet. The plane is braced above and below by wires from the central frame.

The Direction Rudder

The direction rudder consists of a small surface 4.5 square feet in area placed at the extreme rear. Wire cables leading to a foot lever controlled by the aviator govern the movement of this rudder. For turning to the right, for example, the aviator turns this lever by his feet to the right or left, depending on the disposition installed.

Elevators

The elevation rudder is divided into two halves, one mounted at each extremity of a fixed horizontal keel. The rudder is 16 square feet in area. It is operated by the front and back motion of a “bell crank” or cloche, as it is called. This latter device is a universally pivoted lever, in front of the aviator, and in a normal position is vertical. At the lower extremity is attached a bell-shaped piece of metal, affording a means of attachment for the wires, and at the same time covering them to avoid their entanglement in the aviator’s feet. etc. To ascend the aviator pulls this lever toward him, and to descend he pushes it away.

Roll Control

The lateral equilibrium is controlled by means of the warping of the main plane. The structure of this plane enables it to be warped, as in the Wright machine, but in this case about the base of each half, which is rigidly attached to the frame by the socket joints. The two halves are warped inversely by the side-to-side motion of the cloche. If the machine should tip up on the right, then the cloche is moved to the right. This increases the incidence of the lowered side and at the time decreases that on the raised side, thus righting the machine. The combination of this side-to-side motion of the bell-crank, with the movement of the foot lever controlling the direction rudder, is used in turning.

Keel

To preserve the longitudinal stability, a single fixed horizontal keel is placed at the rear. Its area is 17 square feet.

Propulsion

At the front of the central frame is placed the motor, originally a 3-cylinder Anzani, developing 23 horse-power. This motor drove direct at 1,350 r.p.m. a Chauviere wooden propeller, two-bladed, 6.87 feet in diameter and 2.7 feet pitch. Several of the more recent aeroplanes of this type have been fitted with Gnome 50 horse-power rotary engines, similarly placed, and driving 71/2 foot propellers. The Seat is in the frame back of the main plane. The Landing Gear consists of two large rubber-tired wheels at the front, mounted on an elastic chassis. The springs are made of thick rubber rope, and afford great elasticity and strength with small weight. There is also a small wheel at the rear.

Weight, Speed, Loading and Aspect Ratio

The total weight is from 650 to 720 pounds and the speed was at first 36 miles per hour; when a Gnome motor is used a speed of 48 miles per hour is attained; 14.4 pounds are lifted per horsepower and 4.5 pounds carried per square foot of surface. The aspect ratio is 4.35 to 1. The regular one-passenger type of this monoplane has further been altered to the new No. XI. bis. in which the sectional curvature of the planes is made very nearly flat on the underside. This change has been found to decrease the dynamic or drift resistance of the machine without seriously decreasing the lift. The speed has been increased to about 52 miles an hour. The spread is 28 1/2 feet and the area 160 square feet.

There are two new models of this machine which have been very successful. They are the No. XI. 2bis. a two or three-passenger machine, and the No. XI. racing model. The No. XI. racing model (type de course) is the machine upon which Leblanc recently established the speed record of the world by flying at almost 69 miles an hour, and with which Grahame-White won the 1910 Gordon-Bennett Cup Race. This machine has a very short body, flat planes, and a reinforced frame. The surface has been reduced to 129 square feet, and the machine is equipped with one of the new 14-cylinder 100 horse-power Gnome motors. The total weight is about 750 pounds. Only 7.5 pounds are carried per horse-power, and as much as 5.76 pounds are lifted per square foot of surface.