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THE U LT

For Mum and Dad

First published in the United States of America in 2016 by Chronicle Books LLC.
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Bantam Press under the title
The Big Book of Flight.
Copyright Project Cancelled Ltd 2013.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

White, Rowland.
Cleared for takeoff: the ultimate book of flight / by Rowland White.
pages cm
This compendium of the history of flight for young readers includes fascinating facts and trivia,
helpful diagrams, stories of aviations pioneers, and fascinating profiles of remarkable planes,
accompanied by stunning photographs and illustrations. First published in the United States of
America in 2016 by Chronicle Books LLC.
Audience: 10-12.
Audience: 4-6.
ISBN 978-1-4521-3550-2
1. AeronauticsHistoryJuvenile literature. 2.AeronauticsHistoryPictorial works.
3. Flying-machinesHistoryJuvenile literature. 4.Flying-machinesHistoryPictorial works.
I. Title.
TL515.W474 2016
629.13334dc23
2014044858

Manufactured in China.

Typeset in Century Schoolbook.

Designed by Bobby Birchall, Bobby & Co.
Additional design by Richard Shailer and Nick Avery.
Illustrations by Patrick Mulrey.
The illustrations in this book were rendered in paint.
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Prophecy
(From Locksley Hall, 1835)
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there raind a ghastly dew
From the nations airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbbd no longer, and the battle-flags were furld
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(180992)

CONTENTS
8

INTRODUCTION

10

DREAMS OF THE BIRDMEN: Icarus and His Successors

16

WHAT GOES UP: How an Airplane Flies

18

AIRPLANE: The Anatomy of an Aircraft

20

ITS ALL HOT AIR (PART ONE): The Story of Ballooning

26

IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED: Strange Shapes in the Sky (Part One)

28

HEAVIER THAN AIR: The Wright Brothers First Powered Flight

31

THE RED BARON: An Introduction to Manfred von Richthofen

34

AVIATION ORIGAMI: How to Make a Paper Helicopter

36

ON THE WING: Barnstormers and Flying Circuses

38

THE SPIN DOCTORS: Twelve Aerobatic Maneuvers

40

ACROSS THE POND: Who Was First to Fly across the Atlantic?

47

WHO WERE YOU? Insignia of Yesterdays Air Forces

50

ROMEO AND JULIETT: An Introduction to the Phonetic Alphabet

52

WAR MINUS THE SHOOTING: A History of Air Racing

58

CHICKEN OR BEEF? The Story of Airline Food

62

DEAD HEAT: The Zeppelin Race

68

HOW BIG? How the Sizes of Different Aircraft Compare

72

THE WIND BENEATH MY WINGS: The Story of Gliding

76

GREAT PLANES: Douglas DC-3

78

EYE IN THE SKY: The Story of Aerial Reconnaissance

86

PROJECT CANCELLED: Republic XF-12 Rainbow

88

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, OR MINERAL? A Few Things Aircraft

Have Been Named After

90

CORSAIRVILLE: The Rise and Fall of the Flying Boat

96

FROM CDG TO LAX VIA LHR: Some of the Better Airport

Three-letter Indentifiers

98

GREAT PLANES: Supermarine Spitfire

100

NEVER, IN THE FIELD OF HUMAN CONFLICT . . .: The Second

World War in the Air

108

DUCKS AND DRAKES AND BOUNCING BOMBS: How Skipping Stones Inspired
the Dam Busters

111

NEVER COMING HOME: RAF Losses since 1945

112

PROJECT CANCELLED: Vickers Valiant B2 Pathfinder

114

AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR: The Disappearance of Britains

Aircraft Manufacturers

116

PAPER AIRPLANE: The Perfect Paper Plane

118

A DIRTY DISTANT WAR: Eleven Significant Air Battles

120

GREAT PLANES: North American P-51 Mustang

122

EJECT! EJECT! EJECT! The Unsung Hero of the Ejection Seat

126

PROJECT CANCELLED: Martin-Baker MB5

128

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE: Fact or Fiction?

130

ALIENS AMONG US? The Peculiar Story of the Roswell Flying Saucer

132

THE RIGHT STUFF: Breaking the Sound Barrier

135

F. A. B. SCOTT: A Few Island Airbases

138

FREIGHT DOGS: The Story of Air Cargo

144

PIGS IN SPACE: Flying Animals

146

PUTTING OUT FIRE: The World of Aerial Firefighting

150

PROJECT CANCELLED: BAC TSR2 .

152

GREAT PLANES: English Electric Canberra

154

HOW MANY? A Few Notable Production Runs

156

GREAT PLANES: Lockheed C-130 Hercules

158

FLYING IN A MILK BOTTLE: The Story of Polar Aviation

164

MEATBOX, BUFF, AND SHAGBAT: 101 Aircraft Nicknames

166

ITS A BOAT! ITS A PLANE! ITS A HOVERCRAFT! The Hovercraft Story

170

ROCKET MAN: The Story of John Stapp

173

DONT TOUCH THAT BUTTON! The Aircraft Cockpit

174

IN SEARCH OF DAN DARE: British Rocketplanes

176

TALK TO ME, GOOSE . . .: Some Fictional Pilots

178

WHO ARE YOU? Insignia of Todays Air Forces

182

THE FIRST TIME I EVER SAW A JET I SHOT IT DOWN: Fighter Combat
During the Jet Age

188

IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME: A Different Sort of Nuclear

Bomber

190

PROJECT CANCELLED: Martin P6M Seamaster

192

GREAT PLANES: Bell UH-1 Iroquois

194

WHIRLYBIRDS: The Brief History of Helicopters

200

CHOPPER: The Anatomy of a Helicopter

202

BEATING THE AIR INTO SUBMISSION: How a Helicopter Flies

206

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES:

Fifteen Flying Films

208

GREAT PLANES: McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II

210

INDIAN OCEAN. PRESENT DAY.: How Aircraft Carriers Work

214

BATSMEN AND PADDLES: The Art of the Landing Deck Officer

216

PROJECT CANCELLED: Fairey Rotodyne

218

ALL AROUND THE WORLD: Which Countries Make Their Own Aircraft?

220

PROJECT CANCELLED: Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow

222

GREAT PLANES: Boeing 707

224

IM LEAVING ON A JET PLANE: Air Travel for Everyone

230

A HELL OF A PICK-ME-UP: The Story of the Fulton Skyhook

233

THE ART OF COMPROMISE: Four Different Wing Shapes

234

PROJECT CANCELLED: North American XB-70 Valkyrie

236

ITS ALL HOT AIR (PART TWO): Felix Baumgartner Raises the Bar

239

PUKIN DOGS AND JOLLY ROGERS: US Navy Fighter Squadrons

240

FLYING WITHOUT WINGS: The Lifting Body Story

242

GREAT PLANES: North American X-15

244

FAST, FASTER, FASTEST: Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Rocketplane

248

YOURE A RECORD-BREAKER! The World Air-speed Record

252

DONT STOP ME NOW: Some Songs about Flying

254

GREAT PLANES: Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

256

HIGH AS A KITE: How High Do Things Fly?

258

ONE OF OUR BOMBERS IS MISSING: The Birth of the Stealth Fighter

261

WHO WANTED CONCORDE? How the World Nearly Turned Supersonic

262

AURORA: The Secret Spyplane. Or Not.

264

PROJECT CANCELLED: Northrop YF-23

266

GREAT PLANES: Hawker Siddeley Harrier

268

THE CASPIAN SEA MONSTER: The Rise and Fall of the Ekranoplan

270

TACTICALLY SOUND: The Unrealized Dream of the Airborne Aircraft Carrier

273

TURBO DOG AND CRITTER: A Few Notable Airline Callsigns

274

THE RUNWAY CODE: How to Park an Airliner

276

GREAT PLANES: Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet

278

COME AND HAVE A GO IF YOU THINK YOURE HARD ENOUGH:

The Worlds Biggest Air Forces

280

THE WORLDS FAVORITE AIRLINE: Whos the Biggest?

282

ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME: A Few Airlines You May Not

Have Heard Of

286

GET OFF MY PLANE!: The Story of Air Force One

288

GREAT PLANES: Arospatiale-BAC Concorde

290

WHEELS WITH WINGS: The Dream of the Flying Car

292

THERE ONCE WAS AN UGLY DUCKLING: Strange Shapes in the Sky (Part Two)

294

THE REDS: Formations of the Red Arrows

296

IS IT A BIRD, IS IT A PLANE? A Guide to Superhero Flight

298

THE GIMLI GLIDER: When an Airliner Runs Out of Gas

301

THE FINAL FRONTIER: How High Do Spacemen Fly?

302

GREAT PLANES: Rockwell International Space Shuttle Orbiter

304

PROJECT CANCELLED: Buran

306

THE BRILLIANT BOTTLE ROCKET: How to Make a Water Rocket

308

YOULL BELIEVE A MAN CAN FLY: How to Levitate. Or Look Like

You Can. Sort Of.

310

BIRD IS THE WORD: Some Avian Superlatives

312

WORD ON A WING: A Few Books about Flying

315

THE RISE OF THE MACHINES: A Brief Introduction to Drones

320

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

ne way or another, we all want to fly. Whether its floating above

the ground through the power of dreams, or a yearning to strap into
the cockpit and zoom skyward on a pillar of jet thrust, were all in there
somewhere. From leaning into a corner on a Honda Fireblade motorcycle
to the three-dimensional sub-aqua ballet of scuba diving, it all, I think,
boils down to a desire to fly. Freedom and sensation . . . its an irresistible
combination, and it grabbed me early.
Growing up in England a little too late for the glory days of Eagle comic
and Look and Learn, I had the Ladybird Book of Flight, The How and Why
Wonder Book of Flight, and, perhaps most treasured of all, the St. Michael
Pictorial History of Aircraft. I thrived on a wholly un-PC diet of Warlord
and The Victor comics, and had an enduring fascination with Airfix models
(the catalogs of which I pored over, returning to the same dramatic images
of aircraft time and again). I begged to stay up late to watch TV programs
such as the Royal Flying Corps drama Wings, or the BBCs Squadron, in
retrospect, an unlikely ten-part series about the fictional adventures of 370
Rapid Deployment Squadron. Although unreal, and with sets even more
rickety than those on Crossroads, it had airplanes in it, and that was enough
for me. Alongside this required viewing, aviation authors Paul Brickhill,
Ralph Barker, and the brilliant Bill Gunston (at one point, I believe, the
most borrowed author in British libraries) wrote the books I wanted to read.
Keen as I was on Roy of the Rovers, Judge Dredd, Star Wars, and Adam
and the Ants, I could also hold forth about Douglas Bader, the Dam Busters,
and the maximum thrustwith full afterburnerof a J-79 turbojet engine.
Adolescence curbed my enthusiasm a little. Even I realized that there
was nothing the slightest bit cool about staying in to watch anything
featuring Raymond Baxter. But the lull was only temporary. Ultimately
flight and flying offered things that were much more valuable than cool:
namely, inspiration, wonder, and visceral excitement.
On holiday with my family a few years ago, we visited a bird sanctuary
in the hills. With our two childrenmy wife Lucy was heavily pregnant
with number threewe sat down on rows of tiered wooden benches for
a falconry display. As the handlers prepared for the show, a single large
raptor was released and climbed high into the clear skies until it had all
but vanished. While the demonstration continued, the bird was forgotten.

Introduction

But at the end of the show, we were invited to look up and soon we were
all tracking it. Suddenly, it tucked in its wings and began to dive toward
the ground. At first it was impossible to gain any appreciation of the
falcons speed, but it quickly became clear that she seemed to be moving
unnaturally fast. Her dive was carefully controlled with small, instinctive
movements of her tail and neatly folded wings, but it was unnerving to
see her plummet straight toward the ground with a terminal velocity way
beyond 100 mph. Just when she seemed too close to avoid smashing into
the midst of her slack-jawed audience, she swooped a couple of feet over
our headsso low that we could feel the disturbance in the still air as she
streaked past. She then followed the descending contours of the stadiumstyle seating toward her handler where, with perfect precision, she flared
and dropped gently on to the waiting leather gauntlet.
It was majestica sight so thrilling that I found myself blinking back
tears of joy, grateful for a pair of sunglasses to hide such an emotional
response to the awe-inspiring display Id just experienced. No wonder the
lure of flying has such a hold.
As long as human beings have lived alongside birds, weve wanted to
join them. Our efforts to do so have rarely been as elegant or as smooth,
but they have been dangerous, exciting, intriguing, clever, unexpected,
loud, spectacular, courageous, ambitious, unsuccessful, and brilliant. And
sometimes, on rare occasions, like that extraordinary diving falcon, theyve
moved us.
Cleared for Takeoff is a celebration of all those efforts. For me, the only
real criterion for including something was whether or not it was interesting,
so as a reference book, this volume is neither comprehensive nor necessarily
useful. In fact, its probably not useful at all because the choices Ive made
are determinedly personal ones. But usefulness was never the point.
I still cant help but look out of the window (at work) or run out of the
house (at home) if I hear the sound of an unfamiliar aircraft engine. And
the urgent, growing realization that this time its unusually close and low
gets my heart beating even faster. If what follows prompts a few people to
experience the same joy and excitement, then this books been better than
useful. I hope it will surprise, entertain, and fire peoples imagination in the
same way the books I grew up with captured mine.
RW
Cambridgeshire
December 2012
Introduction

DREAMS OF THE BIRDMEN

Icarus and His Successors

s a lame old man, Oliver of Malmesbury, an eleventh-century English

monk, was the first person to see a comet that was later said to have
been a warning of the Norman invasion. That, though, was not the reason why
centuries later a pub in Malmesbury was named in his honor. His limp had
more to do with it. In fact, he was lucky to reach a grand old age at all.
The pub was called the Flying Monk in honor of Olivers leap from an
abbey watchtower 150 feet high while clad in a pair of homemade cloth
wings. He was reported to have been in the air for nearly 15 seconds before
crashing to the ground and breaking both legsa failure he put down to
forgetting to use a tail. But in breaking his legs, Oliver was one of the
luckier birdmen.
For most of mankinds time on Earth, attempts to fly like a bird were
likely to end in death. That was what happened to Icarus. Legend has it
that he escaped from Crete with his father, Daedalus, on feather and wax
wings, but he flew too close to the sun, the wax melted and he fell to his
death. Then there was Bladud, a ninth-century b.c.e. king of the Britons,
reputedly the father of King Lear. Although no documentary evidence
exists, Bladud supposedly founded the city of Bath, using magic to create
the hot springs. And all this after curing himself of leprosy, contracted in
Athens, by covering himself in mud after observing that pigs didnt suffer
from the affliction. Wearing wings built with help from the spirits of the
dead, Bladud leapt from a London tower and killed himself.
Human beings have, it seems, never been content simply to let flight
remain the preserve of the birds. Throughout antiquity beasts such as
lions and lizardsand, in the case of Pegasus, a horsehave been given
wings and the power of flight and turned into griffins, dragons, and the like
(although it wasnt until the twentieth century that Walt Disney managed
to get an elephant aloft, in the animated film Dumbo). But when it came to
powered human flight, mans first recorded attempts fared no better than
those of their mythical predecessors.
This mans expression was typical of a
look found on the faces of most early aviators.

OPPOSITE:

10

Dreams of the Birdmen

Just after the turn of the first millennium c.e., a Turkish scholar by the
name of Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari climbed to the top of a mosque in
Nishabur with a pair of wooden wings strapped to his arms. From the roof,
he revved up the large crowd that had gathered to witness his achievement.
Oh, people! he shouted. No one has made this discovery before. Now I will
fly before your very eyes. The most important thing on earth is to fly to the
skies. That I will do now! He jumped, and then, just a few seconds later, he
slammed into the ground and died.
Unlike Oliver of Malmesbury, fifteenth-century polymath and genius
Leonardo da Vinci remembered to include a tail on his ornithopter design.
Yet despite Leonardos ground-breaking work in other areas, such as
human anatomy, his elegant design still depended on the assumption that
the human body was sufficiently strong to keep itself in the air. It would be
another 200 years before it became apparent that it was not.
This leads one to wonder quite what Robert Hooke, the respected curator
for scientific experiments at Londons Royal Society, was getting at when in
1674 he noted in his diary that hed told a fellow member that I could fly,
[but] not how. His claim remained unsubstantiated and also highly unlikely
because, around the same time, the Italian scientist Giovanni Borelli, taking
a break from inventing submarines and underwater breathing apparatus,
concluded that mens muscles were too weak for them to be able to fly
craftily by their own strength. He was right.
But still the birdmen kept jumping, and limbs kept snapping. A little
over twenty years after Leonardos death in 1519, a Portuguese man, Joo
Torto, launched himself from a cathedral equipped with calico-covered
wings and an eagle-shaped helmet. He was fatally wounded on landing.
A century after Leonardo designed his ornithopter, his compatriot Paolo
Guidotti crashed through a roof wearing wings of whalebone and feathers
and broke his thigh. Then, in 1742, a 62-year-old French aristocrat called
the Marquis de Bacqueville tried to fly across the Seine from a terrace at
the top of his riverside mansion. He smashed into a barge and broke his leg.
In 1770 French clergyman Pierre Desforges broke his arm after failing to
persuade anyone to test-fly his contraption from a church lookout tower on
his behalf.
Real progress toward controlled manned flight only really came about
once the idea took hold that flapping like a bird was not the best way to
stay airborne. The first person to grasp this was the British engineer Sir
George Cayley, 6th Baronet and owner of Brompton Hall near Scarborough
in Yorkshire. Inspired as a boy in 1783 by the Montgolfier brothers hot-air
12

Dreams of the Birdmen

Leonardo da Vinci called his flapping wing device an ornithopter, a word

derived from the Greek for bird (ornithos) and wing (pteron). Neither the
word nor the device caught on.

Dreams of the Birdmen

13

Glider King Otto Lilienthal takes to the air near Berlin in the early 1890s.

balloon flight over Paris, Cayley made it his lifes work to understand the
principles of flight.
Realizing that the steam engines of the day were too heavy for his
purposes, Cayley designed his own internal combustion engine using an
alternative fuel he called oil of tar (gasoline). This fuel, however, was
prohibitively expensive, and it would take nearly another century to
create a practical fossil fuelpowered aircraft engine. Nonetheless, Cayley
became part of the birdman business. After observing the flight of birds,
he designed an unmanned glider that first took to the air in 1804. He was
soon claiming that his work was contributing to a goal that will in time be
found of great importance to mankind. By 1853, four years before he died,
he had persuaded his coachman to fly across a shallow Yorkshire valley in

14

Dreams of the Birdmen

a larger glider. There were no broken limbs this time, yet Cayleys pilot was
reported to have said to his boss, I wish to give notice. I was hired to drive,
not to fly.
He was wise not to want to push his luck. Cayleys noble art of aerial
navigation was still in its infancy, as the next birdman to advance manned
flight found to his cost. German engineer Otto Lilienthal published his
seminal work Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation in 1889 at the age of 41. He
flew his first glider two years later. Over the next five years he made some
2,000 flights, accumulating just 5 flying hours. Still, the Glider King, as
he was dubbed, had flown longer and further than anyone else in history.
But on August 9, 1896, during his second flight of the day, his glider stalled.
He crashed to the ground and broke his back. Two days later, like so many
previous birdmen, he died from his injuries.
The Glider Kings influence, however, was immense, directly inspiring
aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. And unlike the birdmen who
had preceded him, Lilienthal had understood exactly what he was doing and
why it mattered. Just before slipping into unconsciousness for the last time,
36 hours after his crash, Lilienthal whispered to his brother, Sacrifices
have to be made. With those prescient last words, which sum up the story
of aviation, he laid claim to being the first person with the Right Stuff.
But its not what Lilienthal said on his deathbed that really captures
what this book is aboutalthough theres plenty of the Right Stuff to
comeso much as something he said when he was very much alive: To
invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is
everything. Thats what this book is about.
In the pages that follow there are some what-ifs, a few designs that never
made it, and theres a romance about them certainlybut only because we
can glimpse their potential and attach to them the feelings theyd provoke
if they were real. An airplane that makes it off the drawing board makes
the heart beat a little faster. But that moment when an aircrafts nose rises
from the runway . . . thats when it really starts to matter.

Dreams of the Birdmen

15

WHAT GOES UP
How an Airplane Flies

here are four forces at work on any airplane: lift, thrust, gravity, and
drag. Whether or not any aircraft will fly boils down to making sure
youve got the right balance between them.
Lift
Drag

Thrust

Lift

Gravity

Lift is generated by the effect of air moving over the wing when the aircraft
is traveling forward. (If youve any doubts about the force that can exert,
just consider a strong wind, which is nothing more than moving air.) The
reason that force lifts the aircraft rather than, say, slamming it into the
ground is the shape of the wing: flat on the underside and curved from front
(the leading edge) to back (the trailing edge) on top. As the wing travels
forward, it cuts the air in its path, separating what flows over the wing
from what passes beneath it. But because of the curve of the wing, the air
passing over the top is made to travel further. This makes it less dense than
the air traveling straight along the flat surface beneath. As a result, the
air pressure above the wing is reduced, while that below the wing stays the
same. High pressure beneath and low pressure above generates lift. The
faster the wing travels through the air, the more lift it generates.

Thrust
Forward thrust is a prerequisite for flight, even for a glider, which, towed
to altitude, then uses gravity to generate forward speed in the same way
as a cyclist freewheeling down a hill. But to climb to height without help,
an aircraft needs to provide its own forward thrust, and that requires an
16

What Goes Up

engine. More than aerodynamics, it was the lack of engine that held back early
attempts at powered flight. How wings generated lift was understood before
the technology to build a sufficiently light, powerful engine was mastered.

Gravity
If an aircraft loses power, gravity is both a friend and an enemy. Pointing
the nose down and going downward will ensure that drag doesnt slow you
so much that your wings are no longer able to generate lift. But at the same
time it is also bringing you inexorably toward the ground. Without more
power, you will come down.

Drag
Like a housefly, drag would appear to serve no useful purpose. Its the force
caused by the airframe itself as it tries to move forward through dense,
fluid air, so it is something that power and streamlining need to overcome
until you need to land, that is. At that point, drag or resistance to the air is
essential to help the aircraft slow down. When the airbrakes pop up from the
wings on your flight to the sun, just remember that.

Changing direction
When the Wright brothers filed their first patent, they didnt claim to have
invented the airplane, but rather a way of controlling it. An aircraft moves
through three dimensions, and the brothers invented a system to control all
three. The principle, and the effect of the controls, remains the same.
In the cockpit, there are two directional controls: the control column or
stick controls the ailerons (by moving it to the left, you lower the left
wing and raise the right; move the stick to the right and you achieve the
opposite); it also controls the elevators which affect pitch (push forward to
lower the nose, pull back to raise it). The rudder pedals control yaw (right
foot to swing the nose to the right, left foot to swing it left).
Rudder controls yaw
Ailerons control roll

Elevators control pitch

AIRPLANE
The Anatomy of an Aircraft

he illustration below shows a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. In choosing a

typical aircraft to illustrate all the bits and pieces, the little Cessna is
a good bet because more Skyhawks have been built than any other aircraft
in history. And theyre still making them today. But I could have chosen a
Boeing 747, or an F-4 jet fighter, or the Red Barons First World War Fokker
triplane. While all four aircraft certainly look very different, they all share
the same basic setup.
Lift is provided by the wings. Forward thrust comes from the
engine, whether propeller, jet, or even rocket. And control
in three axesroll, pitch, and yawcomes from the
elevators, ailerons, and rudder, which are
marked in blue.

Leading edge

Right aileron

Flap

Starboard wing

Cockpit

Propeller

Spinner

18

Airplane

Nose gear

Main gear

Boeing 747

Tail fin or
vertical
stabilizer

Rudder

F-4 jet fighter

Elevator

Fuselage

Horizontal
stabilizer

Flap

Left aileron

Fokker triplane

Port wing

Airplane

19

ITS ALL HOT AIR

(PART ONE)

The Story of Ballooning

t was early morning on March 21, 1999, when Bertrand Piccard and
Brian Jones touched down in the Egyptian desert. They had been
airborne for 19 days, 21 hours, and 55 minutes, during which time theyd
covered 25,361 miles. They had also become the first men to circumnavigate
the globe by balloon, powered by nothing more than high-altitude winds.
During the epic journey, Breitling Orbiter 3, their giant 180-foot-high
silver helium and hot-air balloon, had reached heights of 37,000 feet and
speeds of over 160 knots. Piccard and Jones were suspended underneath
in a gondola constructed from Kevlar and carbon fiber, which provided
good protection, but was far from comfortable. The red gondola was about
the size of a camper van and they were cooped up in this for nearly three
weeks. The two men, cold and cramped, slept in shifts and subsisted on dry
food, all the while chipping off the ice that kept forming around sensitive
electrics inside.
Their success shattered all previous ballooning records. But in doing
so, it also demonstrated, like every notable balloon flight that preceded it,
the balloons inherent problems as a flying machine. After all, Piccard and
Jones had not known when they were leaving Switzerland that they were
on their way to Egypt. And even supposing that had been their plan, going
around the world to get there was almost certainly not the best route.
It was in 1782, while watching the sparks rise from an open fire, that
Joseph Montgolfier wondered whether the same force might somehow be
harnessed to deliver soldiers behind the walls of an enemy fortress. This
thought led him to conduct experiments with a lightweight, box-like balloon
made of silk and thin wood, filled with hot air generated by burning paper.
Watching from the ground, he described its ascent into the air as one of the
most astonishing sights in the world. A month later, in December 1782,
he and his brother tienne flew a bigger (still unmanned) device across a
distance of over a mile.

OPPOSITE: Breitling

20

Its All Hot Air (Part One)

Orbiter 3.

There was no stopping them now. In June the following year the public
demonstration of a large, recognizably balloon-shaped craft made of sackcloth
and paper attracted the interest of King Louis XVI. He suggested sending
a pair of criminals up in a balloon (it was this sort of thing that would get
him and his wife, Marie Antoinette, guillotined a few years later) but wiser
heads prevailed: a sheep, a cockerel, and a duck were eventually selected for
a demonstration flight in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles.
With the menagerie returned safely to Earth, the Montgolfiers began
work on a balloon designed to carry people. The brothers built their new
75-foot-high balloon in collaboration with a wallpaper manufacturer. Thats
probably why it looks as if it could have been a giant lampshade from the
kings bedroom. It was decorated in blue, gold, and crimson with zodiac
signs, fleurs-de-lys, eagles, and stylized suns featuring the kings face. On
November 21, it was launched from the outskirts of Paris. On board were a
doctor, Jean-Franois Piltre de Rozier, and an infantry officer, the Marquis
dArlandes. Twenty-five minutes later they landed 5 miles away.
The effect of this first successful manned flight was electrifying. In flying
for the first time, the Montgolfier brothers and their passengers had made real
what had previously been the stuff of myth and dreams. For most, that alone
was enough. But not all were impressed. Benjamin Franklin, the American
polymath and statesman, then US ambassador to France, witnessed one of the
Montgolfiers contemporaries send an unmanned hydrogen balloon into the air.
Interesting, he heard a member of the crowd comment, but what use is it?
What use, Franklin responded, is a newborn baby?
In truth, though, the man whom Franklin so elegantly put down had a
point. Balloons had their limitations. A year after the first flight a pair of
aeronautsas balloon pilots were knowncrossed the English Channel.
Just. Flying from Dover, to reach France they had to throw overboard
everything that wasnt pinned down, including their brandy and even their
trousers. So aeronauts had some control over whether they went up or
down, but everything else was in the lap of the gods.
For another century, however, if you wanted to fly, there was no
alternative to the balloon. Pleasure flights for paying passengers
became popular. The military experimented with the use of balloons for
observation, and they were used for scientific purposes too.
James Glaisher liked clubs. A fellow of the Royal Society, he was also
president of the Royal Microscopical Society and the Photographic Society
of Great Britain. But it was the club he founded in 1850 that was closest to

22

Its All Hot Air (Part One)

his heart, and it was experiments on behalf of the Royal Meteorological

Society that made him famous. And nearly killed him.
In 1862, he and a fellow aeronaut, Henry Tracey Coxwell, took off from
Wolverhampton in a gas balloon to conduct research into atmospheric
temperature and pressure. On the way up, Glaisher passed out from oxygen
deprivation. Coxwell, suffering from frostbitten hands, was unable to operate
the gas valve to initiate their descent. The two men continued to climb until
Coxwell managed to use his teeth to release the gas and ensure their survival.
They had reached an altitude of 39,000 feetthats over 7 miles.
Glaisher and Coxwells research flight played to the balloons strengths.
The two Britons needed only to go up and down. It was not the same for
the Swedish engineer Salomon August Andre, who decided he was going
to ride a balloon to the North Pole from the Arctic island of Svalbard. With
the principal scientific aims of taking meteorological observations and
mapping the region using aerial photography, Andres first attempt in
1896 was scuppered when northerly winds confined his hydrogen balloon
rnen (Eagle) to the hangar. The following year the winds were more
favorable, and on July 11, 1897, Andre and his two-man crew launched
from Svalbard, full of hope and ambition.
It was 10 hours before the balloon first hit the ice, and 3 days until
it was permanently grounded on the frozen ocean, 170 miles from land.
Three months later, after trying in vain to trek back to safety across the
moving pack ice on a diet of seals, walruses, and polar bears, Andre and
his men were dead.

James Glaisher and Henry

Coxwell prepare to take off
from Wolverhampton gasworks
on their near-fatal flight to
an altitude of 39,000 feet.

Its All Hot Air (part one)

23

Although balloons remain of enormous value to meteorologists and

weather forecasters to this day, by the end of the nineteenth century it
had become clear that it was unnecessary for passengers to venture into
harms way in the name of science. It didnt mean there werent those who
were still good at it, though. In the 1950s and 1960s a record-breaking
series of balloon flights took men to the threshold of space.
By the summer of 1957 it was clear that outer space was where
mankind was heading, even though Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarins
first orbit was still a few years away. When the US military, using manned
balloons, began research into the effects of altitude and cosmic rays on
the human body, its pilots were the first men to see the curvature of
Earth. The records they set over the decade that followed still stand. In
1961, two US Navy officers, Commander Malcolm Ross and Lieutenant
Commander Victor Prather, flew to a height of 113,740 feet. A year earlier,
Captain Joe Kittinger of the US Air Force had jumped from a balloon at
an altitude of over 103,000 feet, which remains the longest freefall ever
undertaken. During the descent, he plunged toward Earth at close to the
speed of sound. He was wearing a version of the spacesuit NASA used
for its astronauts, but Kittingers jump gave it a much more severe test
than any spaceflight. When Alan Shepard, the first American to ride a
rocket into space, was asked if he would be prepared to attempt a reprise
of Kittingers jump, his response was unequivocal. Hell, no, he said,
absolutely not.
For all Kittinger and his contemporaries extraordinary achievements, the
shortcomings of balloons as flying machines meant the future lay with civilian
enthusiasts. The introduction of lightweight synthetic fabrics
and safe, reliable propane gas burners meant that from
the early 1960s onward ballooning became an increasingly
popular leisure activity. Colorful globes with wicker baskets
slung underneath have become a familiar sight floating low in
the sky at dawn and dusk.
Unused and ignored by the military and by commercial
aviationboth of whom needed to know where they were
traveling to and when they might get thereballoons
offered a few lucky twentieth-century adventurers a chance
to carve their names into the record books. In 1978, a
Captain Joe Kittinger leaves the capsule on his recordbreaking 1961 freefall parachute jump. That appears to be
tape holding together some of his equipment.

24

Its All Hot Air (Part One)

helium balloon called Double Eagle II became the first to cross the Atlantic.
Six years later, Captain Joe Kittinger became the first to do the same
journey solo. In 1981, two of the Double Eagle II crew conquered the Pacific
with a flight between Japan and California. Ten years after that, the
biggest hot-air balloon ever built, Virgin Pacific Flyer, carried the British
tycoon Richard Branson and Swedish balloonist Per Lindstrand from Japan
to northern Canada, a new distance record of 6,761 miles. Then American
businessman Steve Fossett crossed the Pacific on his own in 1995, four
years before Piccard and Jones flew their balloon around the world for
the first time in Breitling Orbiter 3and, in doing so, pulled off what was
described as the last great aviation challenge of the twentieth century.

CLUSTER BALLOONING
If one big balloon can do the job, why not lots of little
ones? In the brilliant 2009 Pixar animation Up, the
house of an old widower named Carl is carried aloft
by a cluster of brightly colored balloons and great
adventures follow. But thats just a movie, I hear you
say. Yes, lifting a house is ambitious, but the principle
is sound, as an American truck driver, Larry Walters,
discovered in 1982, when he tied over forty helium
balloons to his extremely comfortable garden chair.
He called this homemade flying machine Inspiration 1.
This unlikely aviation pioneer had packed sandwiches and beer for a flight he
expected to take him to a few hundred feet, but at 16,000 feet, after floating past
disbelieving airline pilots on their way into LA International Airport, he became concerned.
Fortunately, as well as his picnic, hed thought to pack an airgun. After drifting at altitude
for some hours, he finally plucked up the courage to start shooting balloons until he
began to descend.
On landing, Inspiration 1 took out power cables and Walters was led away in
cuffs. Ive fulfilled a twenty-year dream, he said after his remarkable flight. To which
the US Federal Aviation Administration responded, We know he broke some part of
the Federal Aviation Act and as soon as we decide which part that is, a charge will be
filed. Despite this warning, many have followed Walterss lead. What they do is called
cluster ballooning.

Its All Hot Air (Part One)

25

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Blackburn A. D. Scott
UK, 1915

Petroczy-Karman-Zurovek PKZ
Austro-Hungary, 1918

Bonney Gull
USA, 1928

Caproni Capronissimo
Italy, 1921

Flying Doughnut
USA, 1902

Breguet-Richet Gyroplane
France, 1907

Maxim Steam Flying Machine

UK, 1894

Phillips Multiplane
UK, 1907

Phillips Multiplane
UK, 1904

Santos-Dumont 14-bis
Brazil/France, 1906

HEAVIER THAN AIR

The Wright Brothers First Powered Flight

eturning home one evening in the autumn of 1878, Bishop Milton

Wright paused before opening the front door. He took a toy helicopter
made of bamboo, cork, and paper out of his pocket and twisted the rotor
blades in two different directions to tighten the rubber bands attached
to them. Entering the house, he kept the device hidden as he greeted his
sons, then threw it gently into the air. Instead of tumbling to the ground,
the spinning blades bit the air and carried it up until it nudged the ceiling.
Then, as the rubber bands relaxed, it descended slowly to the floor. The
boys, Wilbur, aged 11, and Orville, 7, were captivated by the toy, which they
christened the Bat. Although the fragile machine didnt last long, it had
long-lasting effects.
Wilbur and Orville tried to build their own bigger and better replicas of
the Bat, finding it curious that as their models increased in size, so their

ability to fly seemed to diminish. Theirs was a curiosity that would find
full expression in the years to come.
It was a fascination with the death of the German gliding pioneer Otto
Lilienthal in 1896 that rekindled the brothers interest in flight. They
tackled it with what they described as unquenchable enthusiasm. The
money they earned from a successful bicycle repair shop theyd opened
four years earlier allowed them to pursue it. Teetotal and entirely happy
in each others company, they devoured books on aeronautics by pioneers
such as Lilienthal, Sir George Cayley, and fellow American Octave
Chanute, which they borrowed from the Smithsonian Institution.
The real challenge lay in how to control aircraft. So far the most
successful glider designs, like those of Lilienthal, had been controlled by
the pilot shifting his weight to alter the center of gravity. The brothers
didnt believe this offered any realistic foundation for progress. Instead
they took inspiration from birds. Wilbur had observed how, in order to
change direction, soaring birds used the tips of their wings to alter the
flow of air, rather than shifting their weight. If he and Orville could

December 17, 1903. While his brother Wilbur runs alongside,

Orville Wright takes off to usher in a new era of powered flight.

somehow replicate that wing twisting, it might offer a solution to the

problem of controllability.
From the turn of the century onward they built a series of gliders to
test and refine their wing-warping technique. After checking with the US
Weather Bureau, the brothers decided that the Kill Devil Hills near Kitty
Hawk on the North Carolina coast offered the combination of topography
and strong winds they were after. In their third glider design, built with the
help of a basic, homemade wind tunnel, they made more than 1,000 flights
over the beaches of Kitty Hawk. In working out how to control an aircraft
in flight, Wilbur and Orville had invented the three-axis principle used by
every aircraft since, from the Spitfire to the Space Shuttle. Their scientific,
rigorous approach, application, and determination had already made
them the worlds most experienced fixed-wing pilots, but they had not yet
achieved powered flight.
To achieve that next goal they built their own 12-horsepower engine
and two propellers driven by bicycle chains. These they installed on a new,
slightly bigger machine, their fourth design, which they called the Flyer.
Built of ash, spruce, muslin, and piano wire, it combined lightness with
strength. And on December 14, 1903, they tossed a coin to see who would
fly her first. Wilbur won. Rising sharply after just 15 feet, he stalled and
crashed into the sand. Due to lack of experience, Wilbur said. Three days
later, after minor repairs, it was Orvilles turn.
At 10:35 a.m. on December 17, the Wright Flyer, with Orville lying prone
at the controls, began its takeoff run. After 40 feet it climbed into the wind,
flew under full control for 12 seconds, then landed safely on wooden skids
120 feet from where it had taken off.
There were three more flights before midday, the longest (flown by
Wilbur) of 59 seconds over 852 feet. That afternoon Orville sent a telegram
to their father, Bishop Wright, back in Dayton, Ohio. It read:
Success four flights Thursday morning all against twenty-one mile
wind started from level with engine power alone average speed
through air thirty-one miles longest fifty-nine seconds inform press
home Christmas
And with that the world was changed forever.

30

Heavier Than Air