Airplane: An Anthem for the Strong in Spirit
Dear reader, please use your imagination a little; it will be greatly needed. Modern media allow you to do anything, even to the point of imagining yourself as a modern pilot, so onward and upward!
Just imagine:
- a high-altitude compensation suit that allows for overloads of up to 10G, controlled by a computer that predicts overloads depending on the maneuver;
- a radar that allows you to see at distances inaccessible to the human eye;
- a computer that helps control a multi-ton, and also aerodynamically unstable, machine;
- a helmet with a screen that displays all the necessary information, protects from many factors and supplies oxygen;
- a chair containing the catapult's pyropatrons, a parachute, and an emergency supply of food and water, allowing one to hold out until help arrives.
At this point, you just need to look to the left. And see THIS there.
Maybe not right away, maybe in about 20 seconds, but you'll realize that this strange apparatus, made of plywood, cables, and a small amount of metal, contains NOTHING from the above list. It's 1906, after all...
Instead of a suit, they wore ordinary clothes, a helmet—hand-sewn in a tailor's shop from leather or thick fabric, and goggles—the most ordinary kind, called "automobile goggles." There was such an innovation on earth as the automobile, for which accessories had already begun to be produced: high-top boots, elbow-length leather gloves, helmets, and "canned" goggles. Not to protect against "tremendous" speeds, but from oil, turpentine, kerosene, and other pleasant liquids without which internal combustion engines couldn't function, but which they spewed out in quantities worthy of frying the driver or pilot.
In general, both pilots and car owners of the early 20th century were real daredevils.
As for equipment, budding aviators used whatever was at hand, outfitting themselves with whatever they could find. Style was created right before their eyes.
A parachute... We won't even mention the catapult; it appeared in 1943, and there was no parachute either. There was a device for rescuing aeronauts, a huge contraption that was attached to the side of a hot air balloon or aerostat, and Gleb Kotelnikov's invention of the knapsack parachute was still four years away. And even in World War I, parachutes were a rarity; pilots fought alongside or outside of their planes.
Gleb Kotelnikov and his backpack parachute
The parachute came into use as a means of rescuing flight personnel after the First World War. The first person to use a rescue parachute in the USSR was test pilot Mikhail Gromov.
It happened on June 23, 1927, at Khodynka Airfield. Gromov deliberately put the plane into a spin from which he was unable to recover, and at an altitude of 600 meters, he parachuted out.
Incidentally, the seatbelts we were accustomed to weren't there either. It wasn't that long before they were available, but...
The first seat belt, or rather, a seatbelt, appeared in 1911 in the United States. The idea was brought to fruition by American pilot Benjamin D. Foulois, a student of the Wright brothers, a future major general, and then a lieutenant.
After nearly falling out of the cockpit while flying the Wright No. 1 airplane, Foulois commissioned the cavalry to make him a leather belt about 120 cm long to tie himself to the seat.
In Europe, Pyotr Nesterov and Adolphe Pegoud pioneered the use of seat belts. Both men concluded that such equipment was necessary when preparing an aircraft for a loop-the-loop. Nikolai Zhukovsky, in fact, provided Nesterov with the theoretical calculations and justification for this necessity when he developed the theory of the loop-the-loop's feasibility. Thus, the aircraft that performed the world's first two loop-the-loop maneuvers were already equipped with such safety devices.
However, seat belts only became widely used after the First World War, although during it, many manufacturers began installing them directly at their factories. American pilots generally favored this safety measure, unlike their European counterparts.
At the beginning of the century, it was truly the start of all starts: just having taken wing, aviation It really began to develop at an unprecedented pace: both improved foreign models and the first independent developments appeared in various countries, following the pioneers, who undoubtedly were France and Great Britain.
But other countries—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the United States—were not far behind. Moreover, Russia was a fully-fledged participant in this race, developing and building its own airplanes, which were no less impressive in terms of design; the only major drawback was the complete lack of domestic engines and 100% dependence on foreign manufacturers for supplies.
But import substitution only began under Soviet rule, in the second half of the 30s, and before that, Russian aircraft manufacturers were dependent on supplies from abroad. But they built. That's just the way they are, these Russians...
And the French were the trendsetters, yes. Aviation at that time generally spoke French. Caudrons, Blériots, Voisins, Farmans, Breguet, Dewoitines, Moranes, Nieuports, Saulniers, and many others colored the skies with the French tricolor.
The Voisin. A truss biplane that was actively used and improved during those years. The Voisin brothers had several modifications for different purposes: Type de Course, Type Bordeaux, and Type Militaire. The horror of these creations was mesmerizing.
Interestingly, Voisins weren't just purchased in Russia, they were also built under license—at the Dux plant in Moscow and the Lebedev plant in St. Petersburg. Many Russian and even Soviet pilots received their first flights in these aircraft.
How can we not cite the legendary Bleriot 11 airplane as an example here?
Louis Blériot's monoplane became famous back in 1909, when it was flown across the English Channel itself! An unprecedented flight that rightfully elevated the pilot-designer to the pinnacle of fame.
Bleriot XI over the English Channel
But even in 1910, the airplane often featured in aviation competitions and demonstration flights.
Nieuport monoplane
In 1910, a monoplane designed by Edouard and Charles Nieuport distinguished itself at the Reims competition. Its key feature was that Nieuport, for the first time, completely covered the fuselage with skin. This made a huge impression on contemporaries; it turned out that an airplane could be more than just a mysterious construction of sticks, cables, and planes; it could also be savagely beautiful! Moreover, the machine was relatively lightweight and powered by a relatively small 20-horsepower engine.
And what about us?
It is customary for us to talk about the genius of Sikorsky (and absolutely rightly so), the talents of Grigorovich, Tupolev and... and on this point, as it were, story Aviation development isn't exactly halting—it's being curtailed. It's being curtailed politically, primarily because many aeronautical engineers rejected Soviet rule and left Russia. Sikorsky simply can't be erased from history; he's ingrained in it. Removing Igor Sikorsky would be like erasing the entire development of Russian aviation. But we'll talk about those who are traditionally overlooked, even though their traces in the history of the skies are quite visible.
Prince Alexander Sergeevich Kudashev, professor at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. A pioneer of domestic aircraft construction, he was the first Russian to fly a domestically designed airplane. This occurred on May 23, 1910.
The Kudashev-1 was one of the first Russian airplanes of an original design. It was a truss biplane with a forward elevator and a 35-horsepower Anzani engine.
On May 23, 1910, Prince A.S. Kudashev personally demonstrated the flight: the craft flew in a straight line for about 70 meters. Later, modifications appeared: the Kudashev-2 (with a 50-horsepower Gnome engine and without a forward elevator) and the Kudashev-3 monoplane.
The Kudashev-2 was also a truss biplane, powered by a 50-horsepower Gnome Omega engine and a conventional horizontal tail, lacking a forward elevator. Its distinctive landing gear design was remarkable. Ashwood arches served as struts, and a through axle with wheels was attached to the curves of these arches with rubber shock absorbers. The first aircraft suspension with shock-absorbing elements was evident!
By 1911, the prince-professor had created his first monoplane, the Kudashev-3, which was distinguished by its exceptional lightness, simplicity, and low cost.
"Kudashev-3", reconstruction
In 1911, A. S. Kudashev was invited to work at the aircraft workshop of the Russian-Baltic Wagon Plant (RBVZ) in Riga. In Riga, Kudashev built his fourth airplane, the Kudashev-4 (RBVZ-1), which took to the air on April 2, 1911.
Ten days later, the Kudashev-4 was demonstrated at Russia's first International Aeronautical Exhibition, which opened in the capital's Mikhailovsky Manege. The aircraft received a large silver medal from the Imperial Russian Technical Society and participated in several exhibitions and competitions.
Unfortunately, for reasons unknown today, Kudashev emigrated to France in 1914, where he continued his teaching career. With the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for the front, where he died in 1917.
Yakov Modestovich Gakkel
History's most underrated Russian and Soviet engineer and inventor, he made a significant contribution to the development of domestic aircraft and diesel locomotive manufacturing in the first half of the 20th century, authored numerous scientific papers and inventions, and was an electrical engineer. He was awarded the title of Honored Scientist and Engineer of the RSFSR (1940). A pioneer of aircraft manufacturing, along with Sikorsky and Kudashev, he suffered utterly in the aircraft industry but redeemed himself in diesel locomotive manufacturing.
The Gakkel-I biplane, built in 1909 and otherwise called the YaMG (after the initials of its creator), with a 25 hp Antoinette engine transmitted thrust via belts to two propellers mounted between the wings.
The airplane's design was unique because, according to Gakkel, the aircraft's lifting surfaces should not be aligned, as was common elsewhere, but rather staggered, with the lower wing extending forward. In the 20s, the staggered wing arrangement became the norm, with the upper wing being positioned forward.
Testing of this airplane failed; the plane was badly damaged in a fire and was not restored.
Gakkel built his second airplane using a "classic" design, with a tail truss, abandoning the complex and unreliable twin-rotor design. Unfortunately, the Gakkel II never got off the ground.
The designer rebuilt it into the "Gakkel III," which featured a number of important innovations: for example, coil springs for shock absorption and anti-coupling skids on the landing gear. These things can be seen on many airplanes; they look like skis between the landing gear wheels. But they're not for sliding on snow; they're to prevent the plane from nose-diving (flipping forward).
On May 24, 1910, Gakkel made a solo flight of approximately 200 meters in the Gakkel III airplane. However, due to its unreliable engine, this aircraft was unable to achieve long flights.
Nikolai Vasilievich Rebikov.
Information about N.V. Rebikov is extremely fragmentary. He is mentioned exclusively in the context of early Russian aircraft construction from 1910 to 1912, as a "then-famous figure in Russian aviation" and the creator of the first Russian production aircraft, the Rossiya-A. No later references to his life could be found in available sources; there is information about an accident on July 5, 1912, when Rebikov's flight ended in a crash, from which the aircraft was not repaired. It is possible that this marked the end of the career, and perhaps even the life, of this talented designer.
In the fall of 1909, St. Petersburg lawyer S. S. Shchetinin founded the First Russian Aeronautics Partnership plant. In February 1910, under the direction of engineer Rebikov, this plant began producing the first domestically produced aircraft of the "Russia-A" series.
Russia-B
On the one hand, there's the monoplane, which Rebikov was working on because he was looking at the Bleriot XI. But, excuse me, the Bleriot XI was all over the newspapers for a year! After all, it was this plane that crossed the English Channel between Great Britain and France in just over thirty minutes!
Okay, go ahead and laugh. Old Louis will chuckle too from the other side.
The Rossiya-B flew for the first time on August 12, 1910. It was tested by pilot K.K. Artseulov, who would later become a legend. This airplane, too, was produced in a series of five! It was powered by an Anzani engine producing only 25 horsepower, but it flew, and it flew really well!
The Rossiya-B emerged during the formative years of the domestic aviation industry. Shchetinin's factory in St. Petersburg was just gaining momentum: initially, it fulfilled orders for flying clubs and private individuals, assembling airplanes from foreign manufacturers individually. And in 1912, it began receiving orders from the military department. And it worked, because the company later became famous for mass-producing flying boats designed by Dmitry Grigorovich.
Overall, the Rossiya-B was one of the major steps in the development of Russian aircraft manufacturing at the beginning of the 20th century—a transition from copying foreign designs to developing our own solutions, albeit based on foreign prototypes.
Chaotic, desperate, I would say reckless, but the airplanes were tearing into the sky. Russian, French, German, English, American, Italian. People watching the "Nesterov loop" or Pegoud's "upside-down" flights saw something new, attractions of unprecedented daring and technical perfection. And this despite the fact that just 10 years earlier they were applauding aeronauts in hot air balloons.
"He blew up the furwin with stinking smoke and rose above the church, and the priest cursed him" - well, that's already a classic, isn't it?
But those who stormed the skies with 20 to 50 horsepower cars saw something entirely different. They had their own horizons.
Alas, we will never know what Arthur Hubert Latham felt on August 26, 1909, when he set a distance record: he flew 156 kilometers non-stop in 2,5 hours.
Hats off, dear readers. 62,5 km/h. Two and a half hours in the sky in the elegant Antoinette, at a simply insane speed.
On January 7, 1910, Latham reached an altitude of 1100 meters—a colossal achievement for airplanes of the time (the previous record was about 500 meters). He later broke his own record, reaching 1384 meters.
Truly, these weren't just men—they were giants. It was a time of such breakthroughs that only the smiling Soviet lad Yuri Gagarin could match these guys—the Wrights, Bleriot, Latham, Nesterov, Pegoud, and the rest—in the sheer madness of their accomplishments. But behind Yuri Gagarin stood one-sixth of the earth's surface and 200 million people.
Behind the pioneers of aviation stood automobile engines, wood, fabric, and simply a mad desire to fly.
And now for more than 120 years we, humanity, have been in the sky.
December 17, 1903 is often cited as the starting point. On this day, brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright made a controlled flight in the Flyer 1 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA.
What was important was that the Wrights didn't just get the machine airborne. They solved a key problem—achieving controllability in all three axes (roll, pitch, and yaw). This allowed the pilot to actually control the craft, not just stay aloft. That day, Orville Wright flew about 36 meters in 12 seconds, and later that same day, December 17, there were even longer flights.
But there were earlier attempts that are also worth mentioning.
On October 9, 1890, French engineer Clement Ader took off from the ground in the Aeolus (with a steam engine) and flew approximately 50 meters.
This was the first time that a heavier-than-air craft took off under its own power, without external assistance.
However, the Aeolus was uncontrollable - after a short "jump" it fell.
In Russia, A. F. Mozhaisky is sometimes remembered: his flying machine with a steam engine and two propellers made a short experimental flight/takeoff with a man on board in 1882.
In Sytin’s Military Encyclopedia (1914 edition), in the article “Mozhaisky, Alexander Fedorovich,” it says:
The airplane's first flight, over a military field in Krasnoye Selo, yielded poor results: the craft lifted off the ground, but, being unstable, tilted sideways and broke a wing. Further experiments were not carried out due to a lack of funds. Mozhaisky's aircraft is noteworthy as the first practical attempt to build a large airplane.
Many Soviet researchers (V.F. Bolkhovitinov, P.D. Duz, V.B. Shavrov, and others) believed that the plane actually lifted off the ground. However, they acknowledged that external factors likely contributed to the liftoff: the slope of the runway, the slope of the ground, and a strong headwind.
In particular, P. D. Duz considers the use of an inclined runway for testing to be an established fact, believing that the same "inclined rails" on which the aircraft had previously "run upward" were used for the aircraft's takeoff roll. Meanwhile, V. N. Bychkov and D. A. Sobolev believe that Mozhaisky's use of a significantly inclined runway is not documented.
Another important milestone: on October 23, 1906, Brazilian-French aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont made a public flight in Paris in a 14-bis airplane.
His achievement was that the craft took off, flew, and landed independently—without a catapult, rails, or strong headwinds, using only its own engine. This proved that heavier-than-air craft could, in principle, take off on their own.
Therefore, in different countries and among different aviation historians, different devices may be called “first”: some emphasize controllability (Wright), some - the very fact of takeoff due to engine thrust (Ader), and some - independent takeoff without auxiliary means (Santos-Dumont).
But in any case, all of these are milestones in the upward movement, into the sky, which was for many centuries inaccessible to man.
A clumsy and strange construction of wood, fabric, and steel tubing, with a car engine and a chassis with bicycle wheels, gave humanity its ticket to the sky. Those who launched these strange structures into the air believed that the sky would become humanly masterful.
Our series will be dedicated to both these strange structures and the people who tried to subjugate the sky to man.
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