Fifty Years of Flying Progress* 



By Grover Loening 



Member, Advisory Board 

 National Air Museum, Smithsonian Institution 



[With 13 plates] 



Fifty years is, actually, not a very long time in the development of 

 one of humanity's greatest means of transportation, but when we stop 

 to appraise aircraft development in this period, and compare the first 

 machine to fly successfully, the Wright "Kitty Hawk," with our latest 

 supersonic airplanes, we see the most striking progress in speed. A 

 gain of well over 1,200 miles an hour in 50 years would average about 

 24 miles an hour faster each year. Curiously enough, this is approxi- 

 mately the rate of progress that actually did take place for several 

 years after 1909. The Wright Model B and the original Curtiss with 

 a speed of about 40 miles an hour in 1909 were outclassed in 1910 when 

 Leblanc in a Bleriot raised the record to 68 milees an hour. In 1911 

 the Nieuport did 82 miles an hour. In 1912 the Deperdussin raised 

 this to 108. And so on through the years. The official records today 

 are, of course, not yet inclusive of the actual speeds made by super- 

 sonic aircraft because of the secrecy that is maintained. But this 

 much we can say — that if the ever-increasing speed records of the years 

 continue, by the year 2003 aircraft will be flying at 2,400 miles an hour ! 

 While it is true that the present supersonic aircraft are merely research 

 airplanes of very small load capacity, more practical load-carrying 

 airplanes will quickly catch up with the initial record-breaker. For 

 example, when subsonic jet aircraft single-seater fighters of recent 

 British and American development, like the Meteors and the Lockheed 

 Shooting Stars, arrived at the 500-mile-an-hour class, it was not very 

 long before the Comet airliner carrying over 36 passengers was doing 

 the same thing. So it will only be a few years before load-carrying 

 aircraft will be equaling and exceeding the speed of the present super- 

 sonic airplanes. 



* Reprinted, with some revisions, by permission from the Journal of the Frank- 

 lin Institute, vol. 256, No. 6, December 1953. 



201 



