The development of airplane stability and control technology

1. Preface T HEODORE von Karman was a giant who dominated the aeronautical and aerospace scene for half a century. He will be remembered for many accomplishments, any one of which would have made him famous. He was a great teacher. His many famous disciples and students attest to his profound influence on the young men who studied and worked with him. Wherever he went throughout the world he was surrounded by his students who obtained inspiration from him throughout his life. He was an amazingly productive scholar. His great output of original works include contributions to the fields of structures, aerodynamics, combustion, and propulsion. He was a productive scholar of great breadth and continued so up to the day of his death at the age of 83. He was also a great organizer. His aeronautical schools at Aachen and at the California Institute of Technology are monuments to his genius and continue today to operate in the environment of excellence that he instilled when he founded them. He will also be remembered for his military-scientific organizations on which he spent most of his time and energy in the last years of his life. The powerful U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and the NATO, Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development (AGARD) continue today to operate with his stamp on them. Only von Karman could have integrated the SAB at the very top level of the Air Force, and only von Karman could make AGARD the truly international organization that it remains today. I consider myself very fortunate to have worked with Dr. von Karman in several of his organizations, and I always have felt his great power and unique capability to do things impossible to others. One of these experiences was when I was asked to take over as Chairman of AGARD shortly after his death. We put U.S. Air Force Colonel G. Munroe into the Paris office as Acting Director—to size up the situation and find out where we stood. He called me in Princeton within several days saying that our problem could be simply stated. AGARD seemed to be illegal in the NATO structure and was also broke. Only von Karman could run a successful operation under such handicaps. Von Karman was an extraordinary person and all of us who worked with him and were influenced by him consider ourselves lucky indeed. It is a great pleasure and honor for me to participate in this lecture series erected in his memory. It is my purpose in this paper to look back at man's first struggle to fly and trace the development of the technology of stability and control. In putting this study together it became apparent that the subject is very difficult to compress into a paper of acceptable length. I have therefore chosen to concentrate on a few aspects of the subject that I consider to have been particularly important to the development of the technology. In my effort to highlight significant developments in the field of stability and control, I have chosen the following as of great importance: 1) the early experimentalists, Lilienthal and the Wright Brothers; 2) the applied mathematicians, Landhester, Bryan, Bairstow, and Jones; 3) the first wind-tunnel experimenters, Bairstow, Jones, and Hunsaker; 4) flight research—flying qualities, Warner to Gilruth; 5) compressibili ty phenomena, P-47 and the research airplanes; 6) aeroelastic phenomena, B-47 and the supersonic transport.