Page 39 - Studio International - October 1972

(Left to right) First Ilya Mouromets 1915, plan and elevation of Mouromets, Sopwith triplane being looped 1915

prevalent misunderstanding of aircraft design. Flying boats are especially rewarding to younger cousin, the Mosquito. Equally, the
Clearly, speed, power, lift, flight itself, are connoisseurs of aeronautical baroque, largely as Junkers Stuka and the Blohm and Voss 142
only means to ends. The primary function of a result of the contradictory demands made on were regularly found ugly, for all the rough
flying is not to fly, but to perform a variety of their fuselage by air and by water, where the analogy between their cranked wings and a
tasks each of which requires a diversity of lower fuselage becomes a hull. At rest in the seagull's. Insofar as aircraft configurations
capabilities. To take an obvious example, a light water, it must provide buoyancy and balance incline to aerodynamic economy, their forms are
aircraft used mainly to give its owner the longitudinally, while at take-off it must move relatively easily detached from all other
aesthetic pleasures of the joyride, wants to be fast enough for the wings to gradually take over considerations to lend themselves to a
very low powered to make it economical, and the aircraft's weight. But the ideal hydrodynamic minimalist sensibility. They remain hospitable
rather slow so as to permit an intimate shape would resemble an inverted wing, which to this mode of contemplation even when,
relationship with the landscape of which it can would have submarine tendencies, so the strictly speaking, other factors should rule it out.
then provide a bird's-eye view. Birds, after all, designer must break it by the 'steps' behind Thus such configurations as the tail-unit or
fly as a means of relating to the land, where they which air builds up, making lift-off possible. wing-root cross-section-and-dihedral can
seek worms or fish. The last two are sub-surface The flying-boat fuselage cross-section is also attract, and satisfy, a kind of consciousless
animals — just as aircraft created subterranean susceptible to contradictory hydro- and contemplation, and maintain it throughout their
air-raid shelters and are particularly suitable for aerodynamic demands, while the general shape relationship with one another, despite the
spotting submarines. The antithesis of the may be dominated by the need to lift airscrews presence of analysability, function, and all the
screaching jet is the glider, which flies without and tailplanes up on high out of the spray.2 A other hairs in the minimalist soup. The relative
power in a very important aesthetic alternative twenties airliner like the Handley Page Hannibal simplicity and blandness of aircraft structures
to post-futurist and pseudo-functionalist class may seem staid, even ungainly, with its and surfaces have much to do with it.
power-fetishism. built-in headwind, but one's initial response is More often, however, the pure visual tensions
Even such 'hard-edge' functional modified on learning that the eight aircraft of its of aircraft form are sufficiently complex to
specializations as fighter, bomber, patrol-boat, type, designed to a policy of slow but sure, flew exercise a full sculptural vocabulary. The
airliner, force the designer to balance various many million passenger miles, at about half the photograph of the Supermarine Southampton
desirable but often antithetical capacities : high speed of all their competitors, with never a displays the beautifully bowed hull (part fish,
maximum speed or high cruising speed or low fatality. And then its lines acquire a quality of part boomerang). Its biomorphic form contrasts
landing speed; manoeuvrability or stability; moral beauty, of motherliness, contrasting not with the open oblong box sketched by the wings,
range or payload; high performance or duration merely with the holocausts of the jumbo-jet era, and that, in turn, with the dihedral on the outer
and safety or structural strength or crew but also with the homicidal haste of motorists. lower wing, and the aerofoil cross-sections. The
comfort. A large wide wing confers lift but Surprisingly, perhaps, aesthetics are of great struts and braking wires induce a sense of
obstructs speed. Fuselage shapes ideal for cargo concern to the technically-minded aficionado of visible physics — the air pressures on the wings,
stowage impede speed. Speed at high altitude (in aircraft design. Thus William Green3 observes, the need for strengthening above the floats, and
thin air) favours lean, lengthened wings. Speed severely, 'the specifications issued in the late 20s the clustering connections between wings,
at low altitudes (in thick air) favours clipped and early ios by France's Service Technique de fuselages and engines. The engines, albeit the
wings. The helicopter (surely, since Vietnam, as l'Aeronautique for so-called Multiplaces de energy-centres of the whole construction, are
significant a symbol of our times as the jet) was Combat enabled French aircraft designers to visually isolated in the interior space of the
evolved to provide near-stationary speeds. A perpetrate more crimes against aesthetics than... flying network, upthrust on stalks like flowers,
requirement for all round visibility and good every other aircraft manufacturing nation and ensconced in the lower angles of the central
fields of fire for variously-placed machine guns combined'. The Fairey Fantôme and the strutting 'W'. These gestalt readings are
produced such remarkable shapes as the De Havilland Albatross were widely referred to complementary rather than mutually exclusive,
Handley Page Heyford. Aircraft functionalism as the most beautiful aircraft of the inter-war and the economy of aircraft form clarifies their
normally requires a network of non-extremist years. And only a long analysis, for which co-existence. Flying boats owe much of their
compromises, and their rationale must be aesthetics itself is not altogether prepared, could special fascination to their biomorphic hulls,
understood before the elegance (or otherwise) of begin to explain why the latter had the edge over particularly as their nearest equivalents, ships'
the solution can be enjoyed. its also beautiful stablemate, the Flamingo, or its keels, are normally hidden from view.

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