CHAPTER 5 PEACETIME AVIATION

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CHAPTER 5PEACETIME AVIATION

1. Peacetime Distance Flying
2. Airships
3. Barnstorming and Competing
4. Airlines and Airmail

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Section APeacetime Distance Flying

• Long distance flights demonstrated the
  capabilities of aircraft developed during the war
  as well as the skill and experience of pilots,
  navigators, and mechanics. Compared to prewar
  equipment, military aircraft at the end of the
  war were larger and stronger, engine more
  powerful and reliable, and instruments and radios
  more developed and more frequently installed in
  aircraft. Military aviation influenced the
  immediate postwar activities in civil as well as
  military aviation.

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Navy Flight Across the Atlantic

• Late in WWI
• The US Navy and the Curtiss Aeroplane Company
  designed a new military flying boast to bring the
  war to German submarines at sea.
• NC flying boats, for Navy/Curtiss, Nancy
• They were designed to fly across the Atlantic
  because wartime shipping space was scarce and the
  need for aircraft great.
• Curtis built 4 NCs in Garden City, Long Island,
  New York
• None of the NCs made it war.

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Navy Flight Across the Atlantic

• NC-1 (Nancy 1)
• Had three Liberty engines installed tractor mode
• Set the worlds record for number of passengers
  carried 51 people on 25 November 1918.
• Was under-powered, so the Navy installed four
  engines on the other three NCs.

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Navy Flight Across the Atlantic

• With the war over, the Navy decided to fly the
  NCs across the Atlantic anyway.
• To demonstrate their capabilities
• To win honor for the US by being the first to fly
  across the pond
• May 8 and May 31, 1919
• NC-1, NC-3, and NC-4 set off
• NC-4 commanded and navigated by A.C. Read and a
  crew of 5 flew the first flight across the
  Atlantic.
• Following a line of over 60 naval ships and
  hopping from stops to stops

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Navy Flight Across the Atlantic

• Meanwhile, while the NCs were crossing
• The C-5, a non-rigid, dirigible launched from
  Rockaway, NY for its own transatlantic.
• The C-5 reach Newfoundland just ahead of NC- 4,
  but high winds blew the C-5 from its mooring and
  blew it too sea and lost.

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Navy Flight Across the Atlantic

• Big problems for NC-1 and NC-3
• Both NC-1 and NC-3 ditched at sea.
• NC-1s crew rescued, but the flying boat sank
• NC-3 taxied 200 miles to Azores.
• Only NC-4 completed the trip eventually ending up
  in Plymouth, England

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Daily MailAgain?!?!

• The London Daily Mail again offered a prize for
  the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, now
  to be completed with 72 consecutive hours.
• British war veterans John Alcock and Arthur
  Brown flew a modified Vickers Vimy (WWI bomber)
  to victory on 14-15 June 1919.

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Alcock-Brown Crossing

• The Alcock team left Newfoundland on 14 June
  1919.
• Alcock was pilot
• Brown was Navigator
• Used celestial navigation
• And drift sights to determine position

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Airship Roundtrip

• After armistice, the British offered to loan its
  unneeded airships to the British Air Ministry to
  explore the commercial potential of airships.
• The British military determined their designs
  were too weak, and decided to design airships
  based on German technology.

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Airship Roundtrip

• The British built the R.34
• Lifted off from East Fortune on 2 July 1919
• Commanded by Edward M. Maitland and a crew of 30.
• Became the first lighter-than-air craft to cross
  the Atlantic and the first aircraft to do it east
  to west, against the prevailing winds.
• After its success, the R.34 became obsolete, due
  to airship being constructed by German design.

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Australian Flight

• Four Australians, led by brother Ross and Keith
  Smith, flew a Vickers Vimy from England to
  Australia over a 28-day period in
  November-December 1919.
• Flew over 11,000 miles
• Won a prize for the feat
• United distant parts of the British Empire by air.

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Other Long Distance Flights

• H.N. Wrigley and A.W. Murphy flew the first
  transcontinental flight across Australia late
  1919
• Pierre Van Rynekeld and C.J. Quintin Brand flew
  the first flight from England to South Africa in
  early 1920.
• Safe to say that Long-Distance flying began in
  1919.

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Research and Development

• Robert H. Goddard
• Published books on liquid-fueled rockets
• Started work in 1919, but finally successfully
  launched a rocket in 1926.

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End of Section A
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Section BAirships

• Postwar aviation included an enthusiasm for
  airships and activities such as prospecting or
  surveying air routes for possible airship lines.
  The airship proved itself during the war as a
  naval coastal patrol ship and in 1919 ad a
  long-distance aircraft. Prohibited from military
  aviation, Germany turns its postwar interest to
  commercial air travel by airship

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Zeppelins

• As soon as the war ended, the Zeppelin Co. built
  two new rigids for passenger service
• LZ 120, Bodensee (Lake Constance)
• LZ 121, Nordstern (North Star)
• Both were confiscated as restitution for German
  equipment destroyed after the war.
• LZ 120 went to Italy
• LZ 121 went to France renamed Mediterranee
• France also got the L 72 renamed Dixmude

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Zeppelins

• In 1923 France launched both the Mediterranee and
  Dixmude for flights between its African colonies.
  These were prospecting flights.
• Other zeppelins were dismantled and shipped to
  other countries. Britain benefited by finally
  getting their hand on the German technology

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R.38

• The Short Brothers began construction of the
  rigid R.38 at Cardington
• But the British govt. completed the work after
  nationalizing the Cardington plant into the Royal
  Airship Works.
• The test flight became the worst aerial disaster
  to date, when on 24 August 1921, the R.38 crashed
  during a high-speed turn and killed 44 men, with
  only 5 survivors.

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Roma

• The US Navy bought the Italian-made semi-rigid
  Roma and crashed it on 21 February 1922, with a
  loss of 34 men.
• The American response was to abandon flammable
  hydrogen to make the switch to helium.

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Shenandoah, ZR-1

• The first helium airship, also the first airship
  made in the U.S.
• Design based on captured German technology.
• Weighed 40 tons, could lift 62 tons
• Maiden flight 4 September 1923
• The Navy planned on sending it to the North
  Poleyet another first to be conquered.

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Shenandoah, ZR-1

• The Navy cancelled the polar flight and planned
  instead a transcontinental flight, it departed on
  7 October 1924.
• It never made it..
• September 1925, the Shenandoah was caught in a
  squall line, and crashed
• BUT, IT DID NOT CATCH FIRE!

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Los Angeles, LZ-126

• The German were not allowed the production of any
  military aircraft
• But the US requested an exception so that one
  last airship be built by Zeppelin before the
  plant was destroyed.
• Zeppelins former assistant, Hugo Eckener
  personally delivered the airship to the US Navy.
• Eckener saved the Zeppelin Co. by convincing the
  Allies that airships were not militarily viable
  in the age of fighter planes. He revived the
  German airship industry as a wholly civil
  enterprise.

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Germany

• Soon Allied restrictions on German airship
  production were lifted
• The Zeppelin Co. began making the LZ 127, a.k.a.
  the Graf Zeppelin.
• The LZ 127 was a commercial airliner specially
  designed for regular transatlantic service.

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End of Section B

• Time for a break!!!