The Logan Republican. [volume] (Logan, Utah) 1902-1924, 1916-03-09
IMPROVEMENTS IN THE
DESIGN OF AEROPLANEo

To the designer of aeroplanes the
war has meant as much as TO tue
factory proprietor. The old stock
sporting models VIII not answer over
the battlefield. War has crystallized
the views OF strategists. The scien'
fist and his wind tunnel comman1
more respect now; he alone can
smooth out body lines inte'ligently'
reduce the area of wind resisting
struts and wires, and improve wing
shapes. When the war is over We
shall find that 1t has brought about
real progress.
Even now we have evidence of that
in the long distance flights undertake
en- by daring officers. Two months
before the war 1t was taken as
matter of course that half the num-
erous machines entered in German
overland endurance contest should
come to grief before reaching their
destination. Now hocks of forty ana
fifty aerop' anes fly for hours across
Alsace and Baden in order to bonn
bard Karlsruhe. Freiburg, or some
German stronghold and return sate-
" for the most part; the missing
have been brought down by carson
Or attacking machines, and not by
defective parts.
In the last Balkan war the hired
pilots of the beliigerents never dared
to attack each other, from which II
was concluded by military ofhcers
that flying was dangerous enough by
itself without frightening its terrors
by the aid of machine guns. Yet now
we read of daily encounters in the
air. Chavez met a CHASTITY death af'
ter crossing the Alps. Today a score
Of Austrian officers fly unconcernedly
over the Dolomites without the
slightest chance of making an emer-
gency landing. Aeroplanes must have
improved wonderfully II the ordinary
perils of flying can be SO blithely ig-
nored.
Still marked as the changes must
be in design. the aeroplane of 1916
is not mechanically different from the
aeroplane Of 1906.
The improvements made In mach
ines have been architectural rather
than mechanical in character. When
pilots found how to cope with swirl
ing eddies and swift streams they
realized what make shift contrivanc-
es the first machines were. The doL.
en- who died because their wings col
lapsed in a gust drove home the les
son of our tragic incompetence and
the men who have deliberately strain
ed their planes to the breaking point
by dropping a mile in vertical line
and Strengthening out their course at
the end of the drop exhibited the
weak points of early aeroplanes and
taught the scientific designer what
never could have been learned In ar
tificial tests.
The hazards OF flying, then, have
brought about important improve
ments but no radical departure from
the early Wright models. In actual
wing constructions significant ad'
vances have been made. The eff
feet on planes of certain cross sec
lions or profiles mas been painstak'
ingly studied In the laboratory, SO
that the builder of flying machines
may now select particular wing
section to meet definite require
ment. The old flying machines had
planes covered with fabby canvas
which were distorted under pressure
and which constituted dangerous, un
recognized defects. In modern mach
ines the wings are SO strong thai
they rarely break; their surface II
as smooth as glass and as tight a'
drumhead. Countless shapes ant
arrangements of wings have been pro