Speed and Comfort

The development in aircraft speed and comfort, that mainly came down to the role the aircraft was designed and built for.

People thought you would die over 20mph in the early trains an the 1800s. Then the speeds increased and no one died from Speed in a train. 

The first aircraft were open cockpit but speed increased, from the Wright Brothers to Louis Bleriot and onwards to the aircraft of the First World War. Converted military aircraft became eh model for passenger aircraft and the passenger and pilot accommodation improved with enclosed cockpist and cabins depending on the aircraft role. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Penultima episode on this history of aviation. This episode will cover the advances in speed of aircraft and the improvement in pilot and passenger comfort. These both led in turn to aircraft being designed for a particular role, be that military, leisure, passenger or cargo. This episode is entitled Speed and Comfort. When the steam train first made an appearance in the early 1800s, many people thought you would die if you went over twenty miles an hour as a passenger. Trains soon reached fifty miles an hour and faster, but no one died from the speed. Passengers were admittedly in open air carriages at first, but soon they were travelling in enclosed ones. The first aircraft were open cockpit, literally, especially when they were like the Wright Flyer, where the pilot was open to the elements. The speeds that the aircraft did at this time were marginally faster than the trains when they first appeared. People now had the worried fear about aircraft leaving the ground at speed, whereas a train was on the ground travelling on rails. That somehow seemed safer. First generations of aircraft never really had any more than a single or two seats, and the speeds increased immensely from the Wright brothers to the time of the First World War. Speeds were such that some aircraft even did aerobatics, which cannot be done at low speed. The first military aircraft were relatively fast and maneuverable, and had come a long way in such a short time. The pilot was now enclosed in the cockpit. His head was above the fuselage and had a fairly good view all round. Aircraft were becoming safer, even if it didn't seem so. As aircraft got faster, aerodynamic knowledge improved, and more aircraft had enclosed cockpits. This added to the structural strength of the airframe and helped increase the speed and efficiency of the airplane itself by cutting down on drag. Parachutes, although they had been invented in the 1800s, were not permitted in military aircraft during the First World War, as it was seen as cowardly to use them. This was the era of lack of moral fibre, the equivalent of PTSD today. Now thankfully far more sympathy and assistance is given to the condition. When this ruling changed, the pilot's parachute was added to his flying outfit, with the parachute itself becoming his seat. This made him far more comfortable while flying. Speed improved in both civilian and military flying. However, the military was seen as the more important to have money spent on. And no doubt, as had happened before, whatever was found or discovered with military flying, could be put to use use with civilian flying later on. Some aircraft by the time of the Second World War were up to 400 miles an hour with a propeller, from the nearly 50 miles an hour that the Wright brothers and Blairio were doing at the turn of the century. In just 40 years this was an amazing achievement. The jet engine, created by British RAF officer Frank Whittle in the 1930s, was by the end of the war, making 400 miles an hour a regular achievement for aircraft, without the risk of a propeller falling off, causing injury or death. The basic principle of the jet engine is to suck air in at the front, compress it in the centre, ignite it, and push it out the back. For 1930s technology, it worked very, very well. It's the most popular form of propulsion and is always being improved on. There was now a race to see who could go the fastest that anyone possibly could. Breaking the seemingly mythical sound barrier was the favourite target. This is a varying speed due to the density of air. At sea level, it's 760 miles an hour. At 30,000 feet, it's 678 miles an hour. Three countries were competing Britain, the US and Germany. The British aircraft company Miles were designing the M52 supersonic jack aircraft. After a visit to Germany, the British government said that the future was fix was straight-winged aircraft. They also didn't really want Britain continuing. However, they eventually made an agreement with the Americans to swap ideas. The Americans were working on the Bell X1. American scientists and people from Bell aircraft came over, saw the Mars M fifty two plans, and returned to the US. They reneged on their side of the deal and prevented anyone from outside the US from accessing their designs. The Bell X1 was having issues with its tail design in particular, and as soon as people from Bell returned home, the aircraft flew, but with design features that featured on the M 52. One such feature was the gestionable cockpit. Small detonating charges were placed around the airframe in the tubular structure connecting the cockpit to the fuselage. A parachute would slow its descent after air pressure would force the cockpit away from the f from the fuselage. The pilot would then bail out when able on a parachute of his own. The Labour government at the time cancelled funding for the project. They claimed financial constraints. Some argue political interference from the Americans. This has dogged many projects, especially within the British aerospace industry. In October 1947, Colonel Chuck Yeager was launched from the propeller powered B-29 Superfortress in the Bell X-1 and smashed the sound barrier. A year later, an unmanned model of the M 52 made a supersonic level flight. Unsurprisingly, the Americans dispute the British influence in the design of the X-1. We will now never know for sure. The British design of the jet engine became the standard around the world. In fact, during the Korean War, the Russian MiG-15 was powered by a Russian-made Rolls-Royce-Nean jet engine. This is the conflict where the only recorded incident of a piston-engineed aircraft shooting down a jet aircraft occurred, when a Royal Navy Hawker Sea Fury shot down a Russian MiG-15 in 1952. Military aircraft may have taken precedent over the design and manufacture, but passenger aircraft were soon coming along behind, and some were even used in the military for transport. In May 1952, the world's first jet-powered airliner, the De Havilland Comet, took to the air. It was over a hundred miles faster than the fastest propeller driven airliners. The world was now a smaller place. This aircraft carried only thirty six passengers on a flight to South Africa. It was not until 1958 that the Boeing 707 entered airline service, with three times the passenger capacity of the Comet. Both these aircraft entered their respective air forces as transports, but there were also variations. In Britain, the Comet became the Nimrod for maritime reconnaissance. In America the 707 became the KC 135 tanker transport and EC 135 for electronic countermeasures. The fastest military aircraft that would ever be designed and built was the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Its arrowhead and sleek body allowed it to fly at three times the speed of sound. It was a spire plane, so had to avoid enemy aircraft who could fly at least half that speed, but would have to leave before it to catch it. It was never caught. It flew at such heights as 70,000 feet. It was made of material that when it was on the ground it would leak fluid. When it was flying at speed, the heat caused by the friction on the skin expanded the surface, sealing the skin so nothing leaked. There were a number of attempts to build a passenger equivalent of the Blackbird, albeit at less speed. One was the Boeing SST, which never got off the ground, in fact never got beyond a non-flying prototype stage. The other was a Russian Tupelev T U-144 code named Charger. It first flew in 1968. Unfortunately, after a series of fatal accidents, the project was cancelled. Its most famous incident was at the Paris Air Show in 1974. There was a lot of espionage stories around due to it being in the height of the Cold War. It said that four people went up, but five bodies were found in the wreckage. The most successful supersonic passenger transport though was Concorde, a joint venture between Aerospatialo France and the British Aircraft Corporation. Prototype flew in March 1969. Passenger flying didn't start until 1976 with a trip to the USA. Concorde was so fast you took off from London and landed in New York before you'd taken off. The average flight time between London and New York was three hours by Concord. By conventional airliner it was seven and a half. Military aircraft and aviation was very important to the development of Concord. They helped work out the effects of high speed on the airframe. And even when they developed the engines for Concorde, they used military aircraft as test beds. An analogy would be, I suppose, Grand Prix Racing and modern day cars. You have paddle gear changes in a Formula One car, you now have them on a road car. Unfortunately, Concorde now is no longer. In July 2000, an Air France Concorde on a flight to New York crashed on takeoff after a piece of debris pierced the fuel tank. All on board died, and after making improvements to the tanks and surrounding areas on the twenty fourth of october two thousand three, Concorde flew for the very last time. It is now on show in museums around the world, including Barbados and on the USS Intrepid in New York Harbour. Many designs had been muted to replace Concorde, but nothing came to fruition at that time. There is now a number of companies competing in this area, and have learned a lot from Concorde's shortcomings, especially fuel efficiency and noise. Speed, it seems, is still a quest for some people. As with speed, comfort improved. After the First World War there was a surplus of aircraft, but my aircraft were transformed into passenger aircraft. An old Vickers Vimy was modified and flown from Canada to Ireland by Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whiton Brown nonstop in 1919. This would eventually lead to long distance passenger flights. Small airliners carried about eight passengers in wicker style suiting with leather cushions. Larger aircraft carried 24 passengers. These were primarily land planes. On some of the first airliners, the pilot was in an open cockpit while the passengers were enclosed. The first commercial passenger service was started in 1923 to and from the Channel Islands. Some of the services were flown using seaplanes or flying boats. Larger flying boats could fly down to South Africa and Australia. They could carry up to 25 passengers. Flights with mail between Australia and Europe took up to sixteen days. However, the comfort offered on board was more like a first class today, possibly but slightly more luxurious, breastwork styled tables for fine dining, bars for drinking, beds and separate washrooms for men and women. In the nineteen thirties, flying boats made it possible to have regular air transport between the US, Europe and opening up new travel routes to South America, Africa and Asia. In areas where there were no airfields for land-based aircraft, flying boats could stop at small islands, rivers, lakes, or coastal stations to refuel and resupply. The Pan American 314 clipper planes bought exotic destinations like the Far East within the reach of air travelers and came to represent the romance of flights. The luxury lasted up till the Second World War, then continued slightly afterwards. The aircraft, however, changed from flying boats to converted bombers, just like after the First World War. There was not so much space in these aircraft, but they flew for longer. Airlines were started in 1919 and some even merged to create other companies and fly on different routes. Competition was fierce, especially after the Second World War and the surplus of aircraft and airfields. As Concord was being designed, in the US, Boeing was working on a giant transport aircraft intended for the US. However, Pan Am came up with a deal and asked the first refusal. This aircraft, like Concord, became a legend. The largest passenger aircraft in the world at the time, the Boeing 747. The interiors were initially laid out like those of the old flying boats, luxury seating, bars for socializing and fine dining. This soon came to an end when airlines realized what money could be made in using aircraft to transport a lot of passengers. However, the luxury seating didn't disappear, it was just reduced. Four reclining seats have now been developed, and these were for first and business class passengers. Economy passengers are lucky if they have legroom, or no one immediately next to them. Their food is edible, but not to the standards it had been. The Boeing 747 can carry over 400 passengers and fly non-stop across the Atlantic between Los Angeles and London. It can fly with at least one stop from London to Australia, so it now takes about twenty four hours to get to Australia instead of sixteen days. The largest passenger aircraft in the world now is the Airbus A three hundred eighty, which can carry up to seven to eight hundred passengers depending on configuration. However, passenger aircraft size is now being reduced, due in part to fuel efficiency. Twin engineed aircraft can fly the same routes, with more efficient engines, and slightly fewer passengers. Whereas the early days of flying, and certainly on the flying boats, it was seen for the rich and famous. There's still a rich and famous element of flying today. The corporate jet. Developed in the 1950s, it's basically a small airliner fitted out to seat few people. The owner can determine how many seats and what type divan, sofa, single seat, and which ones recline. On most corporate jets, there's a flight attendant at least, to cater for your needs. But primarily there for safety pa for passenger safety, as all flight attendants on airliners are. Some airliners, where up to 200 passengers normally see, have been fitted out to seat less than fifty. This really harks back to the pre-war days of travel with space and where service is almost individual. Only the lucky few can experience this, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility. Thank you for listening. Next week what next? What does aviation have in store for us now? And in the future? Plus, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the hangaratgmail.com. Thank you.