Model Forum / General / Models / January 2008

That is a highly undesirable characteristic in a trainer*. Someone
should have spotted that in the wind tunnel test stage.

*Although it has a interesting Darwinian touch to it. This way you can
save money by weeding out the trainee pilots that aren't on their toes
early in training via attrition or simple pure terror as they pull out
of a stall-induced dive at ten feet off the ground... while at the same
time encouraging the rest of the trainees to get their wings as quickly
as possible, so they can move onto something safe, like a FA-18. :-)
Were you around in the old Buckeye days?
I've never had a chance to talk to a pilot of one of those, (oddly
enough, in North Dakota we don't get many Navy aircraft) how did they
handle?

Pat

Imagine in the days when they had to figure out the structural loads on
wooden aircraft frames... and had a situation where no two pieces of
wood used on the aircraft were ever going to be identical in physical
characteristics or mass-for-volume.
In his book "Giants Of The Sky", Bill Gunston has the strange story of
this behemoth:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Dice/2996/tarrant-tabor.jpg
The Tarrant Tabor, built by Mr.W.G. Tarrant of Byfleet, Surrey.
Up till this point, Mr. Tarrant had specialized in building large wooden
buildings (and it shows, doesn't it?).
When Mr. Tarrant wanted to get someone who could handle the structural
mathematics and stress loads for his giant wooden triplane bomber/flying
building, he knew right where to go - The Admiralty Air Department - and
they knew right who to send him: Letitia Chitty, who at 19 years old had
done her bit in The Big One for King and Country when dragged away from
Newnham College, Cambridge, by a RN press gang to design airplanes for
them and ended up working a year later on the largest aircraft ever built.
Ms. Chitty must have been aghast at what was being asked of her, but she
was the Bulldog Breed and went right to work on it.
Things were going okay on the Tabor project, until all the Grade A
Spruce ran out and they had to build it out of American White Wood.
Ms. Chitty knew there were problems here, as White Wood was only good
for 3,500 lbs per square inch, as opposed to the 5,500 lbs per square
inch of Grade A Spruce. So it was going to be _way_ overweight.
But they got the thing built, and in May of 1919 it went proudly rolling
down the runway, revved its engines up to full power, and as the thrust
line on the upper ones was above the center of  mass of the aircraft,
drove the aircraft's nose into the ground and hurling the pilot and
copilot to their deaths as the aircraft ended up sticking tail-first
into the air with its forward fuselage smashed clean up to the leading
edge of the wings.
Well, Ms. Chitty wasn't responsible for the aircraft's overall design,
just getting it stressed right.
And it did stay amazingly intact despite never getting airborne:
http://www.pigstompers.net/Triplane-Madness/Tarrant-Tabor_04.jpg
Mr. Tarrant quit the aircraft business, but Ms. Chitty went on to great
things:
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/centenary/timeline/1930.shtml

"1937 - Letitia Chitty (1897-1982)
During WWI, Letitia Chitty worked for the Air Ministry where she met
Pippard. Inspired by him she returned to Cambridge and changed course
from the mathematics to engineering, graduating with first class honours
in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos in 1921, the first woman to do so.
Her career was unusual for a woman at this period. Continuing at the Air
Ministry, she worked with Richard Southwell (Imperial College Rector
1942-1948) and Pippard and then joined Imperial as Research Assistant in
1934. She and Pippard worked on aircraft structures, she undertaking
much of the mathematical work and on stresses in arches of the voussoir
type particularly and loading of wheels. Later she undertook major work
on stresses of large dams in the middle east. WWII work included
research into submarine hulls under shell attack, stresses in extensible
cables and pulley blocks for barrage balloons, for the Director of
Scientific Research of the Admiralty and the Ministry of Supply.
Chitty became Lecturer in 1937. She retired in 1962 the 1st (of 2) Lady
Fellows of Royal Aeronautical Society, the 3rd Woman Corporate Member of
Institute of Civil Engineers and the 1st woman to be appointed to a
technical Committee of Institute of Civil Engineers 1958. She was
awarded 4 Telford Premiums for papers written in collaboration with
Pippard. Besides engineering and mathematical writing she produced a
book called An Alphabet of Flowers containing plant drawings and notes
on her holidays. In retirement she continued to attend College and
continued to work until she was over 80.
In her later years, she was even interviewed by Vogue magazine."

Yes, she was interviewed by Vogue Magazine; she also has a engineering
award at Cambridge named after her...The Bulldog Breed...backbone of the
nation!
And although many thought her "Alphabet of Flowers" was a bit odd in
that it had around a page of differential calculus regarding the
structural strength of each part of the flower in question, it
never-the-less was not without a peculiar charm in its presentation. :-D

Pat