Flights of Fantasy: From Leonardo da Vinci to HOTOL

The dream of flight, the chance to soar like a bird, to escape the ties and troubles of earthbound existence, is one of man’s most ancient and persistent fantasies. This book looks at some of the visionaries who have kept the dream of flight alive — the pioneers who made the first successful ascents above terra firma, the strategic airpower of World War I, daring aviators and world speed records, the tremendous technological advances in avionics, the Jumbo Jet and the emergence of ‘stealth’. The names and the achievements are legendary.

Flights of Fantasy covers the aeronautical speculations of Leonardo da Vinci five centuries ago — his best-known design was for the ornithopter, a man-powered machine with flapping wings — to the first powered flight in an airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright. This led to the development of the airship and the 1909 ‘stick and string’ monoplane of Louis Bleriot. He rose to fame after successfully crossing the English Channel — a feat made possible only when a sudden rainstorm cooled the badly overheated engine.

Design-wise, the air race for supremacy was in full swing at this time, and in great contrast to the monoplanes, Dr Hugo Junkers was planning a gigantic all-wing aircraft to be made of metal. In fact Junkers ideas were so advanced, he even took out a patent. Then, at the end of World War I in 1918, designs for both landplanes and flying boats were well advanced.

Count Gianni Caproni, a pioneer of successful large bombers during the war years also turned his attention to civil transport. His amazing, albeit controversial, nine-winged Noviplano did actually take off but it dived, nose-first into Lake Maggiore, moments later.

Frank Whittle’s design for the turbojet engine in 1929 was to revolutionize civil and military aviation, although at the time, lack of funding caused his patent to lapse. The end of World War II saw the design for the world’s first supersonic aircraft followed in the late 1960s by Boeing’s Jumbo Jet — the greatest people-mover of all time.

The fastest airplane is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird which first flew in 1964 and was finally retired in 1990. Once more design crossed new frontiers, this time in structure, materials, engines and systems. Even the hydraulic fluid had to be specially created.