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The Engineering History of Human Flight
For more than a century, humans have soared through the skies here s how we did it.
By Walter J. Boyne and Alex Hollings May 23, 2021 Keith Ferris
When Orville and Wilbur Wright flew at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, they ignited the aeronautical equivalent of the Big Bang. Although it was not apparent at the time, their awkward-looking Flyer contained all of the elements of modern flight including the wings, the engine, the controls, and even the landing gear. The Airplane Origin Story
While the Wright Flyer might look indistinguishable from planes like the super-advanced F-35, a lot of the same principles the Wrights pioneered survived. But it was a long strange, journey to get from point A to point B, and every single piece of today s modern aircraft has an incredible story to tell.
It sounds like a modern military fiction story, but its what actually happened in the 1940s.
Here s What You Need To Remember: As military planners today contemplate ways to defend against the threat of today’s far more survivable, longer-range, and precise cruise missiles, the Allied experience in Operation Diver should offer both hope and a sobering warning.
London was under siege as it never had been before. Starting June 13, 1944 merely a week after the triumph of the D-Day landings V-1 cruise missiles launched from Nazi-occupied France began raining down upon the metropolis, their rapid-firing pulset jet motors emitting a horrid buzzing drone.
Although its performance was relatively inadequate, the transitional jet design helped improve all future naval aviation.
Despite the FJ-1 Fury’s limited production numbers and inadequate performance, the transitional jet design helped improve naval aviation.
Although piston-engine airplanes conducted the overwhelming majority of aerial combat during World War Two, the United States and indeed a number of other European countries realized the potential speed advantages offered by jet engine aircraft. Nazi Germany in particular made several forays into jet engine designs that were from a mechanical perspective not unsuccessful.
One of their designs, the Messerschmitt Me 262, holds the title of the first jet fighter, though the design came too late in the war to significantly turn the tide in Germany’s favor thanks in large part to mismanagement of epic proportions. The United Kingdom also introduced a jet fighter during the war, the Gloster Meteor, which was the Allies’ o