Pioneers in Aviation

4.8

Part I

From the earliest times men have wanted to fly. They looked at birds, they watched how they moved their wings and tried to do the same. They made all kinds of wings and tried to fly. They jumped from high hills and from the tops of houses and hoped to fly. But they could not; they only broke their arms and legs or killed themselves. Their wings did not hold them in the air.

Leonardo da Vinci, a famous Italian painter of the fifteenth century was also a scientist. He made drawings of a flying machine. It was constructed much later, and got the name of helicopter. He left drawings of a parachute too, but he did not make any.

Russia is called the Mother Country of Aviation. Here the first flying machines were made. Already in 1731, a Russian made the first hot air balloon out of a bag. When it was full of hot air, the balloon could go up. The man held the rope of the balloon in his hands and was carried up with it high into the air. He went up higher than the tree tops and the wind carried him for some meters. Then the wind stopped and the balloon came down with the man.

Some fifty years later, in June, 1783, two Frenchmen, the Montgolfier brothers, built a very big paper balloon. There was a little platform around it to carry people. The balloon could go up when there was hot air in it.

During the first flight, which took place in France, the balloon went up into the air. It did not carry anybody. During the second flight some dogs were tied to the platform. In the third flight, which was in November of the same year, two men went up in the balloon. They were twenty-five minutes in the air and traveled six kilometers.

In those days balloons could not fly far. They were carried by the wind; when the wind stopped, the balloon came down.

Today balloons have gas inside which is lighter than hot air, so they do not fall when the wind stops.

The great Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov was the first man who worked out the flying model of a helicopter. He finished this model in 1754.

Another famous Russian scientist, Dmitry Mendeleyev, did much important work for aviation. He made experiments with big kites that could carry a man up into the air. For some years he worked at the model of a stratospheric balloon. Two years later he himself went up in the basket of a big stratospheric balloon over three thousand meters high and watched an eclipse of the sun.

The Frenchman Picard built his stratospheric balloon only in 1931.

Part II

The first aeroplane in the world was built in Russia in 1881 by Alexander Mozhaisky, a very good engineer in the Russian army. He was already over fifty years old, when he began to work at a model of a flying machine with a motor. The Russian government did not give him any money to build his machine, so Mozhaisky had to use his own money. The aeroplane was not very large. It was only fifteen meters long and had two wings. It was made of metal, wood and canvas and had a motor which was also constructed by Mozhaisky.

This first aeroplane could fly eleven meters a second, and could go up into the air from any plain. The first flight with a man on it was very short. The aeroplane went up into the air, flew for some meters and then came down on one side. But this was the first aeroplane flight in the history of world aviation.

From 1882 to 1885 Mozhaisky made several flights in his aeroplane. In the United States, twenty-two years after Mozhaisky's first flight, the two Wright brothers built an aeroplane with a motor. They flew up in it for the first time in 1903.

Russia is the country that gave the world the first aeroplane pilots. In 1910, Sergei Utochkin learned to pilot an aeroplane. He often made flights over different towns and cities of our country. Many people came to watch the flights of Utochkin. Sergei Korolyov saw one of Utochkin's flights when he was five years old.

Pyotr Nesterov was a very good pilot. He worked out many tricks of air pilotage. He looped the loop in September 1913. No other pilot could do it in those days. Later this trick was called Nesterov's loop. Today many pilots can loop the loop.

When World War I began in 1914, Nesterov fought enemy planes. He was the first to ram an enemy aeroplane, but his aeroplane fell and Nesterov was killed. He was only twenty-seven at that time.

After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution the Soviet Government did much for aviation. It gave money and help, and better and newer aeroplanes were constructed. The best aeroplanes have the names of their Soviet constructors: Tupolev, Ilyushin, Yakovlev, Lavochkin and others. After World War II the USSR became one of the greatest aviation countries in the world.