The Airplane - Jay Spenser [110]
Glenn Curtiss’ concept of retractable wheels for water and land operations by the same airplane was realized most fully by the boat-hulled Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina, whose retractable wheels also allowed it to use runways. All Catalinas had cleverly designed wing-mounted floats that folded up in flight to become low-drag wingtips.
For all its use of flying boats, World War II also spelled an end to this technology by spurring the development of long-range land planes and fostering the construction of airfields around the world. It was just as well; as airplane speeds and ranges grew, the weight and aerodynamic penalties of boat hulls became increasingly difficult to justify.
A flurry of excitement attended Howard Hughes’ unveiling of his one-of-a-kind Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat in 1947. With eight engines on wings stretching 320 feet (98 meters), it was by far the largest flying boat ever. To this day, no other airplane has had as great a wingspan. Nicknamed the Spruce Goose, this wooden transport flew just once in a brief straight-ahead hop in November 1947.
There were some success stories in the postwar era. Grumman built the Mallard for civil markets and the excellent Albatross for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard. In Japan, Shin Meiwa developed a turboprop flying boat, and an amphibious version of the same craft, that temporarily gave the concept a new lease on life.
The boat hull even flew in the jet age, starting with Saunders-Roe’s single-seat fighter of 1947 and culminating with the Martin P6M SeaMaster, a mid-1950s jet bomber with swept wings and four turbojet engines. A dozen SeaMasters were built for the U.S. Navy. Resting in the water on deep, narrow hulls supported by anhedral wings tipped with floats, they could exceed 600 mph (about 1,000 km/h) in flight and cruise at 40,000 feet (12,192 meters).
In 1876, samurai stopped carrying swords in Japan, Mark Twain published Tom Sawyer in America, and the retractable undercarriage was invented in France.
Alphonse Pénaud, confined to a wheelchair, dreamed of a coming invention that would be the very definition of freedom: the airplane. With the help of his friend, mechanic Paul Gaucho, he drew up plans for an astonishingly advanced full-scale flying machine. As described earlier and detailed in their 1876 patent, the Pénaud-Gauchot airplane looked like something out of a science-fiction movie. A two-seat amphibious flying wing, this craft had an enclosed cockpit complete with instruments and flight controls. It had a moth-like wing form, a rudder and elevators, and four-bladed propellers driven by an internal-combustion engine, something only then being invented.
The design also featured fully retractable wheels. Pénaud probably made them that way for the same reason that Glenn Curtiss gave the Triad retractable wheels more than three decades later: so that the airplane could fly from water or land. But even if Pénaud didn’t propose this idea for aerodynamic reasons (and he may well have), his patent nevertheless remains the first documented reference to retractable wheels for a heavier-than-air vehicle.
The first airplane to even have wheels in North America was the AEA White Wing of 1908. Designed by Frederick Baldwin, a young member of Alexander Graham Bell’s Aerial Experiment Association, the White Wing flew several times before being wrecked. Its longest flight covered 1,017 feet (310 meters) with fellow AEA member Glenn Curtiss at the controls.
Curtiss had already taken the lead in designing the AEA’s next airplane, his June Bug. Three years later, he would introduce the Curtiss A-1 Triad with the first wheel-retraction system in U.S. aviation. That same year, the Wiencziers monoplane racer in Germany reportedly also incorporated an experimental form of gear retraction.
Adventurer James Vernon