VISION ACHIEVED

[Music] this is an everyday site in New York today Boeing 107 helicopters operating from the heliport atop the Pan Am building speeding some 50,000 passengers per month high above traffic choke streets in highways to and from nearby airports but this is nothing new back in 1958 a Boeing 44 helicopter demonstrated the feasibility of such an operation in Houston Texas now it was only a matter of time before the helicopter was developed to the point where it could consistently perform this operation and complete safety with twin-engine reliability and instrument flight capability man was getting close to achieving his original concept of flight the vision of flying goes back a long long ways back to the time when men first watched the birds and had begun their gift of flight and imagined themselves with the same gift possessing the ability to launch themselves into the air however laborious ly able to hover and soar over land and sea free is the wind back in the age of Greek mythology there were those who even envisioned reaching the Sun in the stars with disastrous results and others who felt that the power of flight belonged only to the Angels that it was wicked to dream such dreams over 400 years ago a man put his vision on a piece of paper that exists to this day Leonardo da Vinci envisioned to mechanical glider propelled by manpower this is the model of da Vinci's machine he also envisioned a flying machine that could rise vertically he designed this machine on the principle of Archimedes screw a plane bent spirally around a movable axis and covered with starched linen the greeks call this spiral shape a halex which is the root of the modern word helicopter over the ensuing centuries many men attempted to design and build machines that would enable them to achieve the capability of controlled flight all of them failed a one necessary ingredient was lacking an engine that was light enough yet powerful enough to drive the propulsive mechanism man had a great deal to learn about the principles of aerodynamics before earning his wings for example he had to learn that planes revolving horizontally do not provide lift whereas if the planes are tilted they rise vertically when rotated if they cannot be rotated fast enough and they have to be driven through the air in a fixed position like the wings of a conventional airplane it was learned for instance that air must pass over the curved surface of the wing or rotor to obtain limped thus a low-pressure area is created causing the aircraft to rise this is the sort of information that had to be learned the hard way as men continued to strive to achieve their vision of flight but man is a persistent animal he doesn't give up easily and there's always another way the skin account so he kept on trying most of these early attempts looked and performed like agricultural machinery here is the threshing machine the aerial disk Harold the cement mixer 1907 the grass cutter 1922 the flying fertilizer it actually got off the ground a little erratic perhaps but airborne nevertheless as humorous as these early attempts appear to us today we should not overlook their importance it took a lot of courage to persevere while the world laughed and it finally paid off it's interesting to note that most of man's early attempts to develop a mechanically propelled flying machine were centered on the use of movable wings the basic principle of the modern helicopter by the turn of the century he had found out that with the power plants then available it was easier to obtain lift by driving fixed wings through the air but that didn't solve the problem of vertical takeoff and landing and this was his original goal to be as versatile as the birds finally in 1939 he began to make headway here we see the lift imparted by rotating and tilting the rotor blades a little propeller on the boom is actually an ante port rotor to keep our intrepid friends from rotating with the blades like a whirling dervish with the anti torque rotor stationary the helicopter would rotate like this [Music] now the torque from the whirling blades is being offset by the anti torque rotor a helicopter has directional stability in 1945 this was one of the first successful single rotor helicopters in America the pv2 it was the first helicopter ever produced by the company which eventually became the virtual division of the Boeing Company [Music] but by placing rotors at each end of the helicopter with counter-rotating blades the need for the anti torque rotor was eliminated the power needed to turn the anti torque rotor was now being used to turn the rotor blades that provided lift and thrust and the event of loss of power the angle of the rotor blades could be quickly adjusted by the pilot so that the blades continued to spin and a controlled landing could be made by placing the lifting force at each end of this air-conditioned xhr px helicopter in 1944 several advantages were gained over the single rotor configuration the entire power output of the engine could be utilized to generate lift and thrust because of the counter-rotating blades it was no longer necessary to counteract torque with an anti torque rotor also the center of gravity travel of the tandem rotor helicopter was considerably increased over that of a single rotor aircraft in other words it was possible to shift weight to a greater extent without jeopardizing the critical balance of the helicopter in flight and finally because of the two rotors that tandem did not have the tendency to weathercock into the wind it possessed directional stability regardless of the direction of the web the HRP series helicopters were the first successful 10/2 motor helicopters to fly and also the largest helicopters at the time HRP ones were 10 placed single-engine helicopters that operated successfully with both the US Marine Corps in the u.s. Coast Guard during the late 40s and early 50s then came a more sophisticated tandem rotor design the hup with it's synchronized overlapping blades this helicopter won an AV production contract in competition with a single rotor helicopter built two identical specifications hundreds of them were built in the early 50s for the US Navy and US Army the Royal Canadian Navy and the French Navy they were remarkable machines and some of them are still flying today one may be up even transported 21 flood victims in Mexico a remarkable achievement for a sixth-place helicopter here the hop-on plane guard duty was johnny-on-the-spot quickly twisting the pilot out of the sea aeronautical engineers never stopped thinking there [Music] and this was the result the h16 a largest helicopter in the world in 1955 with a service ceiling of over 18,000 feet it could carry 40 troops or 7 tons of cargo and unofficially both the helicopter speed record but there was no real need at that time for a helicopter of such size it served a useful purpose however it was instrumental in the further development of large tandem rotor helicopters like the here's a helicopter that did a magnificent job in recent years with military forces around the world age 21 patrolled the dew line in the Arctic at 45 below zero with the US Air Force in the Royal Canadian Air Force it went into combat in North Africa with the French later they were the work forces in South Vietnam until the larger Chinooks became operational with the high rise first power it sustained as many as eight hits in a single rotor blade and still retain the photography while at quantities of sand and sweltered in the heat operated in the jungles mountains and rice paddies [Music] this age 21 is on duty with the German air force on the North Sea military and utility versions of the age 21 helicopter were purchased not only by West Germany Canada and France but also by sweeping commercial versions acted as aerial cranes transported passengers and serviced the oil and construction industries by whatever name the h21 was called the Shawnee the workforce the flying banana it was one of the most versatile aircraft of its day and that day was only yesterday now let's see what our intrepid airman is up to he's got a friend helping him but his friend seems to be dragging his feet fortunately each engine in the modern tandem rotor helicopter is geared to both rotors and one engine automatically goes into high gear should the other fail as a safety measure and here are the twin turbine tandem rotor helicopters up today first the Boeing 107 military versions of on active duty with the US Navy the US Marine Corps the Canadian Army the Royal Canadian Air Force the Royal Swedish Air Force and the Royal Swedish Navy utility versions of this same helicopter are in use in Japan and Thailand this is the 107's Big Brother the ch-47 Chinook the US Army's mainstay in Vietnam when it comes to moving heavy loads deploying artillery units and salvaging downed aircraft it has been one of the major factors in determining victories in Vietnam [Music] yes we've come a long ways since men first watched the great bird soar and dreamed of flying we've even begun to approach the maneuverability of the hummingbird and surpassed him in certain respects whoever heard of a hummingbird getting its feet way a vision for centuries old now a reality a reality that actually exceeded the vision speeds and altitudes and dreamed of in da Vinci's day lifting capability and maneuverability that he could scarcely have imagined could he have possibly envisioned a flying machine that could land and take off from water or fly through the blackest night and what about the future the future started yesterday with this bird tall 76 tilt wing back in 1958 the entire wing and both rotor propellers could be tilted enabling the 76 to take off and land vertically combining the speed potential of a fixed-wing airplane with a versatility of a helicopter man never stops dreaming and planning here are just a few glimpses of vertical lift concepts there are many others after all these centuries of vision achieved with the help of men of vision at Boeing [Music]