Aviation Century Wings of Change

by Dick, Ron

• ISBN13: 9781550464283
• ISBN10: 1550464280
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-07-30
• Publisher: Firefly Books Ltd

Summary

The gripping story of a rapid-fire period of change in aviation.The fourth volume in the Aviation Century series is the dramatic story of the worldshrinking developments in commercial aviation through the end of the twentieth century, in which airliners grew from frail biplanes to huge Jumbo jets. In the process, advanced air travel brought with it worldwide political, economic and social change. In 2004 commercial airlines carried an estimated 1.6 billion passengers.Each new generation of transport aircraft has brought greater reliability, economy and safety, and increased global commerce through technological advances. Each day millions of shipments now travel by air between continents via sophisticated air cargo and air express systems.Other chapters in Winds of Change examine: the wider world of aeronautics private aircraft (personal planes as well as ultralights, sailplanes, hang gliders and parasails) lighter-than-air flight (Zeppelins, blimps, hot-air balloons) rotary wings (helicopters and related craft) the challenges of research and development (from sketch pad to computers; designers, builders and test pilots).

Author Biography

Ron Dick served with the Royal Air Force for 38 years, where his final assignment was as Defence Attach+¬ and Head of the British Defence Staff in the United States. During his career, he .ew 60 types of aircraft, accumulating over 5,000 hours of flight time. He now lectures and writes about aviation history. In addition to the landmark five-volume Aviation Century series, he has co-authored five other books with Dan Patterson. He lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Dan Patterson received the first annual Combs Award, presented by the National Aviation Hall of Fame and business aviation legend Harry Combs to honor a photographer's contribution to the photographic preservation of America's air and space heritage. Patterson's images have been featured in 20 books. He lives in Dayton, Ohio.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

The Safest Way to Fly Personal and Private Lighter than Air

The Wings Rotate At the Frontier

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Photographer's Preface Dan Patterson When Ron and I began this project, we started with an outline, lots of ideas, and a three-page typed list of all the locations in the world that we thought had the best options for research, artifacts and icons of aviation history. We decided that we should attempt to go wherever we could, and try to find original sources as well as researching through photo archives for those "treasures" that have rarely been seen or published. Of course, we had no money and the scale of the list was, to say the least, intimidating. We found support from Boston Mills Press and decided to just whack away at the list a piece at a time, because if you looked at it as a whole it seemed an insurmountable mountain to climb. That was in 1998, and now that we have crossed the mountain, the view from the other side is good. Most of the items on that list have been checked off. There are lots of penciled-in additions, which also eventually were crossed off, but for the most part we accomplished our goal. There are a few places we just didn't make it to. However, our intent is to not give up on those, as we have discovered that we have created an enormous library and resource of aviation history. Ron has written nearly 500,000 words, and the new photographs I have made for this project have become a collection that covers nine countries and well over 50,000 images. We're not going to stop accumulating materials or stories just because this part of our project is approaching a conclusion, with only one more volume to go. The Aviation Century project will continue. As we talked with the global aviation community, pilots, mechanics, historians, museum directors and staff, famous aviators and regular people simply fascinated by airplanes, I noticed a common thread that crossed over the entire spectrum. Nearly all have had some experience with model airplanes. Models that fly, models that sit on desks and bookshelves. Models that proved a theory in a wind tunnel, or sold a concept that became a full-size airplane that has become a part of this history. Small and not-so-small flying creations made from wood, plastic, foam, paper, metal and all of the combinations of those and other elements that the imagination can combine. This thread is unbroken, from Leonardo da Vinci to Orville and Wilbur Wright, to Francis Rogallo, to Neil Armstrong, and it continues to this day. I began early with a fascination for flying machines. Not long after that, I discovered the hobby shops, and since I couldn't actually get into a World War II airplane, I figured I could make models of them. The process was bumpy at first, as I discovered that the glue actually did melt the plastic if you put too much on, and the clear pieces for the canopies and windows would be sort of cloudy with the gluey fingerprints of a twelve-year-old boy. I also discovered, to my mother's dismay, what happened when you poured a whole bottle of black enamel paint into the porcelain toilet, and how long it took to scrape it all off with a single-edged razor blade. Something I had time for, since the models and the paints were off limits for a while after that. Eventually my plastic Air Force expanded beyond the available flat spaces in my room and I started to look upward and imagine my armada in the air. My friend Paul Perkins had suspended his models from a fishing-line web that offered the possibility of formations slowly turning in the air currents. I just had to have that. Our house on Harvard Boulevard, however, did not have moldings around the ceilings like Paul's did to tack the line into. I was crushed. My ever-innovative grandfather came to the rescue, and soon the plaster walls had several eye-bolts securely anchored into them and a triangle of 20-pound-test fishing line ran across the room just a few inches below the ceiling. Soon the B- 17s were in formation with their fighter escorts and fighting off