- 2 days ago
For educational purposes
Many times in aviation history the ultimate test of aircraft and pilot was to fly around the world.
Competition and showmanship always played a part, but in the end it was the mental and physical endurance of the men and women who climbed into the cockpit that made success possible.
Featured Aircraft:
- Douglas World Cruiser
- Wiley Post's Lockheed Vega “Winnie May,”
- Lockheed Model 10 Electra
- Rutan Model 76 Voyager
Many times in aviation history the ultimate test of aircraft and pilot was to fly around the world.
Competition and showmanship always played a part, but in the end it was the mental and physical endurance of the men and women who climbed into the cockpit that made success possible.
Featured Aircraft:
- Douglas World Cruiser
- Wiley Post's Lockheed Vega “Winnie May,”
- Lockheed Model 10 Electra
- Rutan Model 76 Voyager
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:01Hi, I'm Neil Armstrong. Join me for an adventure through time.
00:54I'm Neil Armstrong.
00:57From the earliest days, flyers have been pushing to fly faster and further.
01:03They soon begin to believe that it just might be possible to fly completely around the Earth.
01:11This Douglas World Cruiser was the first to do it back in 1924.
01:18In the early years, the military was the only sponsor able to finance an attempt to circumnavigate the Earth.
01:27Later, companies and wealthy individuals began to sponsor and take part in global flights.
01:35Competition and showmanship played a part, but in the end, it was the mental and physical endurance of the men
01:43and women who climbed into the cockpit that made success possible.
01:53Following World War I, aviators and militaries looked for new ways to increase public support for aviation.
02:02On April 6, 1924, four aircraft under the sponsorship of the U.S. Army Air Service left Seattle for what
02:10would be the first successful flight around the world.
02:14Teams from five other nations were also attempting round-the-world flights, timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of
02:21the circumnavigation of the world by one of Magellan's ships.
02:24All five of these attempts would end with crashes.
02:29The Americans chose Douglas World Cruisers for their flight.
02:33The design was based on a torpedo plane Donald Douglas had built for the U.S. Navy.
02:37Added fuel tanks increased each world cruiser's capacity from 115 to 644 gallons.
02:45The biplanes could be fitted with either pontoons or wheels.
02:49Radios, navigational aids, and blind flying instruments were not yet available.
02:54Converted into big, ponderous open cockpit by planes, the world cruisers had plenty of range, but no comforts.
03:02The pilots and navigators would have to brave whatever weather they encountered, protected only by heavy clothes.
03:08They flew over 27,000 miles through 29 countries and wore out 11 engines.
03:15Two aircraft were lost. One crashed into a mountain in Alaska and one sank in the North Atlantic.
03:23Along the way, they made the first aerial crossing of the Pacific, were forced down in a lagoon in Vietnam,
03:31flew through typhoon rains, snow, and sandstorms.
03:36175 days after they left, two of the original world cruisers, flown by Captain L.H. Smith, Lieutenant Eric Nelson,
03:45and a replacement aircraft, reached Seattle.
03:54As he climbed out of the cockpit, Captain Lowell Smith was asked if he'd do it again.
03:59His response told it all, only if ordered.
04:02A remark by a Navy admiral about the world cruisers summed up what it meant to make a first flight.
04:09Other men will fly around the world, but never again will anybody fly around it for the first time.
04:18The years after the first round-the-world flight saw a boom in long-distance records.
04:23Pilots vied to cross continents and oceans without stopping.
04:28Floyd Bennett flew over the North Pole.
04:30Charles Lindbergh made the first solo non-stop crossing of the Atlantic.
04:35Lieutenants Heggenberger and Matlin flew non-stop from the U.S. mainland to Hawaii.
04:40Smith and Ulm flew the Pacific.
04:42Williams and Jenkins flew non-stop from England to India.
04:46Heroes were made overnight by longer and more daring flights.
04:55In August 1929, the airship Graf Zeppelin left Lakehurst, New Jersey with a crew of 40 and 20 passengers.
05:03As the ship passes out over the North Atlantic, it will encounter westerly winds which should aid it in its
05:10flight eastward.
05:11In stark contrast to the hardships faced by the crews of the Douglas World Cruisers, Dr. Hugo Eckner's majestic dirigible
05:19was an adventure in comfort.
05:21The trip was not without excitement, however.
05:25Encountering a string of thunderheads near Japan, the Graf was carried up 300 feet in a few seconds, then plummeted
05:32downward.
05:33After crossing the Pacific, the airship made a ceremonial re-entry to the United States at San Francisco, then turned
05:41south for the fourth and final stop of the voyage in Los Angeles.
05:45The passengers were not aviation pioneers.
05:48Their only prerequisite was the $2,500 luxury fare.
05:53Writing for Hearst newspapers, Lady Drummond Hay noted,
05:57It's like going to a party three times a day in a small town.
06:01When the Graf Zeppelin arrived back in Lakehurst, it owned a new record.
06:06Around the world in 21 days, 7 hours and 34 minutes.
06:17For the pilots of the 20s and 30s, the essence of air travel was speed.
06:22The Graf Zeppelin's accomplishment was impressive, but almost as slow as an ocean liner.
06:29One pilot in particular, Wiley Post, was determined to outdo the lumbering airships.
06:35Post was the epitome of the legendary barnstorming pilot.
06:40He was an 8th grade dropout and wore an eyepatch as a result of an accident from his days as
06:46an oilfield roughneck.
06:49But he was also a skilled pilot and brilliant self-taught engineer.
06:53More than anyone else, he brought aviation from the open cockpit era to that of scientific flying.
07:00His most important first flights were accomplished in this modified Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae.
07:08Two years after the Graf Zeppelin's record flight, Wiley Post and his navigator Harold Gaddy planned an around-the-world
07:15flight to take the record away from the balloons.
07:19Extra fuel tanks were added to the Winnie Mae.
07:22Gaddy developed a wind drift and ground speed indicator.
07:26Post grouped the flight instruments on the panel so he could scan them easily during blind flight.
07:34On June 23, 1931, Post and Gaddy roared off from Roosevelt Field, New York into the pre-dawn sky.
07:43Post relied on his gyroscopic instruments for long stretches of flight.
07:49His practice of running each fuel tank dry with a resultant engine sputter before connecting a fresh supply unnerved Gaddy.
07:57Fourteen fuel stops were made along the way.
08:00Eight days, fifteen hours and fifty-one exhausting minutes later, Post and Gaddy returned to a ticker-tape parade that
08:07rivaled Lindbergh's.
08:12Two years later, Post again flew around the world, this time alone.
08:18He broke his previous record by twenty-one hours.
08:22On this flight, Post used a prototype autopilot made by the Sperry Gyroscope Company called Mechanical Mike.
08:31Neil spoke with National Air and Space Museum curator Tom Crouch about Post and his record-setting flight.
08:39Tell me about his autopilot.
08:41Well, in 1933, when he was doing it solo, he took on the airplane a really early experimental autopilot.
08:48He called it Mechanical Mike.
08:50And the autopilot even enabled him to doze off.
08:54He would take a wrench and tie one end of a string to the wrench and the other end to
08:58a finger.
08:59And as he dozed off, of course, when the wrench fell, he'd jerk awake and check the instruments and doze
09:07off again.
09:10It looks like it's entirely jam-packed with tanks.
09:13In 1931, this is where his navigator sat, right inside the hatch.
09:18But in 1933, with the longer legs and doing it solo and so on and so forth, you can see
09:24that he filled this part of the airplane with tanks.
09:29The visibility seems atrocious in this airplane. Is it that bad?
09:33Well, it's especially bad for someone like Post, who, of course, with one eye had a problem with depth perception.
09:40He really had to be able to look out the side, to some extent, just to judge what his altitude
09:46was.
09:47He had to use physical objects to tell, really, what his altitude was on landing and so on and so
09:53forth.
09:54He once, in fact, remarked that he'd be out of business without two-story buildings or if they ever changed
09:59the height of telephone poles.
10:01Post was an innovator as well as a daredevil.
10:04His legacy to aviation research includes the autopilot, supercharged engines, and the pressure suit he developed for an attempt to
10:12break the altitude record.
10:30The 1920s and 30s have been called aviation's golden era. Flying records were broken almost daily, and none seemed out
10:38of reach.
10:40Amelia Earhart had made the first transatlantic flight by a woman in 1932.
10:46Her next goal was a true circumnavigation, flying around the globe at its widest point, the equator.
10:52There had been little interest in such a long flight.
10:55Much of it would be over empty stretches of the South Pacific.
10:59The Lady Eagle, as Earhart was called, chose as her aircraft a twin-engined Lockheed Electra.
11:05Flying eastward, Earhart and her co-pilot, Fred Noonan, took off from Miami in June of 1937.
11:12By July, they had crossed the Atlantic and Africa.
11:15On July 2nd, they took off from New Guinea.
11:17A series of urgent radio messages would be the last ever heard from them.
11:25Two events, one a tragedy, the other a success, brought to an end the era of long-distance daredevil flying.
11:33In July of 1937, Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were lost over the Pacific in a Lockheed 10 like
11:43this one.
11:44A year later, July of 1938, Howard Hughes, at the controls of a Lockheed 14, called the Flying Laboratory, smashed
11:54Wiley Post's round the world record.
11:57The flight was almost routine compared to posts.
12:00It took less than four days.
12:03Aircraft and equipment had become reliable enough to make global flying safe and predictable.
12:15Like Earhart, Howard Hughes had planned his around-the-world flight with great care.
12:21A chain of ships and ground stations stayed in constant touch with Hughes Airplane, a twin-engine Lockheed Super Electra.
12:29Hughes and his crew of four cut Wiley Post's record in half, flying around the world in just three days,
12:3619 hours, and 17 minutes.
12:44After the Second World War, there was a surge of record flights.
12:48The first non-stop round-the-world flight was completed on March 2, 1949.
12:55A B-50A Super Fortress, Lucky Lady, took off from Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas.
13:02This was a training mission designed to determine the capabilities of the B-50, the feasibility of aerial refueling, and
13:10the efficiency of the Air Force's communication system.
13:13The flight took 94 hours and proved to General Curtis LeMay that SAC bombers could reach targets anywhere in the
13:20world, from any base, and return home by refueling along the way.
13:31In 1957, three B-52s flew the same route in less than half the time.
13:41The civilian aviation community could no longer compete with the military for speed or distance records.
13:47So civilian flights pursued increasingly obscure records to satisfy the pilots' desire for an aviation first flight.
13:57In 1947, pilots Evans and Truman flew around the world from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey in a Piper Super
14:05Cub, the first aircraft of its kind to make the trip.
14:10In 1976, a Boeing 747 flew around the world with just two stops, the first commercial aircraft to make such
14:19a trip.
14:21The flight, like that of the Graf Zeppelin 40 years before, promoted round-the-world travel for everyone, not just
14:28adventurers.
14:47In 1982, aviators from several nations were interested in making the first around-the-world flight in a helicopter.
14:54While never reaching the level of nationalistic pride seen before the first around-the-world flight in 1924, the competition
15:02was big news in Texas.
15:04The French were preparing to mount a serious attempt when Americans H. Ross Perot Jr. and Jay Coburn beat them
15:11to the punch.
15:12They flew a Bell Long Ranger, the spirit of Texas, for the entire month of September 1982.
15:19They made 29 stops on their trip from and back to Dallas, while averaging a mere 35 miles per hour.
15:27Nevertheless, it became the round-the-world speed record for helicopters.
15:35The last unaccomplished goal of aviation record setters seemed an impossible dream, to fly around the world non-stop without
15:44refueling.
15:45But in the spirit of Wiley Post and Amelia Earhart, Dick Rutan and Gina Yeager took off in December 1986
15:53in the Voyager.
15:54Amelia Earhart once said that aviation records don't fall unless someone is willing to mortgage the present for the future.
16:02That's what aircraft designer Bert Rutan had done in designing the radical Voyager.
16:10It was an aircraft with one mission.
16:14Neil spoke with Bert Rutan about this remarkable first flight.
16:18Here you were, a small company, without the advantages or the encumbrances of a government or a very large aerospace
16:31concern, had the audacity to make that attempt.
16:36I really believe that it was possible because it was a small grassroots thing and might not have been possible
16:45and may not be possible today to do under the constraints that a NASA or a Boeing or a Lockheed
16:53or a Beechcraft might have.
16:56They would not have had the courage to take some very big risks.
17:01They wouldn't have flown an airplane as frail as that.
17:05NASA told me at one time I was absolutely foolish to do this without having protection on the airplane to
17:13take a lightning strike.
17:15And adding that protection would be possible but not make it all the way around the world.
17:22So it didn't fit within my goal.
17:24So I just told NASA, well, we'll try to stay out of bad weather and take a risk.
17:30What was it that turned the corner and made you conclude you might just give it a try?
17:40Well, I had to do some very special things.
17:42I had to have staging on the engines, as it were, run two engines for takeoff and for the first
17:49couple of days and then shut one of them down so I could run more efficiently when it got lighter.
17:54And also the composite materials, the high-tech, lightweight, graphite materials.
18:03It was a tough decision to make because, keep in mind, the absolute distance record at that time was only
18:11halfway around the world.
18:13We didn't tell the press or didn't tell anybody else.
18:15At that time, our own conclusion was that the crew probably could not do the flight because they had never
18:23been able to fly in turbulence for more than just a few hours at a time.
18:29And they had never been able to sleep in the airplane successfully and perform well.
18:35They had done that in only perfect conditions.
18:39We had flown the airplane a total of 340 hours.
18:43And during that time, we had seven times in which there was a mechanical failure such that we had to
18:49land immediately.
18:51And here we were planning a flight that was nine days and then we had to do it without any
18:55failures.
18:56So our own data showed that it was improbable that we would do it without a mechanical failure.
19:03The flight itself, you were worried?
19:08We had had some very bad failures during the flight testing in the airplane.
19:12For example, a propeller came apart and the engine shook so bad that it just about came off the mount
19:17and it broke a lot of things and we had to glide into Edwards.
19:23So, and we had never flown the airplane away from an airport before.
19:29And that morning, we took off from Edwards and in a few minutes, we were heading out over towards Hawaii,
19:37which is the longest over water.
19:40Get the hardest part over early, huh?
19:42At the time, I think most people in aviation felt it was remarkable that it was pushing every limit and
19:52it was as far as one could expect a piloted airplane to go.
19:58Now, as you look ahead, will it ever be possible to have performance substantially better than Voyager, ever?
20:09Well, keep in mind, flying all the way around the world and coming back to where you start is not
20:14a very practical thing to do.
20:17However, the thing we point out is that the Voyager could fly halfway around the world and arrive there with
20:24something like 25% of its weight in payload, which is a pretty good fraction.
20:31So, we argued that the technologies that made Voyager possible would make it possible to fly oil off the North
20:40Slope to somewhere or to quickly bring fuel to a war zone.
20:58Flying around the world was important because it was difficult.
21:02But those great challenges were met and other great challenges lie ahead.
21:09Join us again next time for First Flights.
21:12First Flights.
21:41First Flights
22:00Transcription by CastingWords
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