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Schatzberg, Eric, 1956- / Wings of wood, wings of metal : culture and technical choice in American airplane materials, 1914-1945
(1999)
2. Engineering enthusiasm: World War I and the origins of the metal airplane, pp. [22]-43
Page 23
ENGINEERING ENTHUSIASM 23 The use of metal in German aircraft during the war took two paths. One proved useful on a wide scale, while the other had a much stronger symbolic impact. The first and more practical development was the substitution of steel tubing for wood in fuselage structures. The more symbolic develop- ment was the construction of military aircraft made entirely of metal. The steel-tube fuselage first achieved widespread success through the work of Anthony H. G. Fokker (1890-1939). Fokker, a flamboyant Dutch- man working in Germany, was already a well-known flyer and airplane builder before the war. In early 1914 he developed a new model, the M5, patterned after a French monoplane, the Morane-Saulnier. Instead of copy- ing the French airplane's wooden fuselage, Fokker had Rheinhold Platz, a skilled welder who would later become Fokker's chief engineer, design and build a fuselage framework of welded steel tubing. Platz had already built a steel-tube fuselage for an earlier, unsuccessful Fokker design, the M2 of 1913. The M5 proved successful, and Fokker quickly adopted the welded steel-tube fuselage for all his designs, while continuing to use wood for his wings. Fokker's airplanes found favor with the German military, and the German army purchased over a thousand Fokker fighters with steel-tube fuselages.' The M5 fuselage designed by Platz was simple, light, and easy to manu- facture. In form, the Fokker fuselage followed the wood structures of the pe- riod (figure 2.1). Four tubes called longerons ran the length of the fuselage, forming the edges of a long, roughly rectangular box. The longerons con- verged somewhat toward the tail, giving the fuselage a tapered look. The longerons were connected by vertical struts, also of steel tubing, which were butt-welded to the longerons. Steel wire provided the diagonal bracing that kept the rectangular structure rigid. Fokker used tubing of mild steel, which was easy to weld. The heat of welding sometimes distorted the longerons, which were easily trued by a little hammering. The completed framework was covered with fabric or plywood.4 While Fokker was busily building his steel-tube airplanes for the German army, other German designers were experimenting with a more radical de- parture from current practice-building airplanes entirely of metal. Not only did these designers extend the use of metal from the fuselage to the wings, but they also went one step further, replacing fabric or plywood coverings with sheet metal. The most important of these designers were Hugo Junkers and Claude Dornier' Hugo Junkers (1859-1935) was a successful inventor, industrialist, and engineering professor at the Aachener Technische Hochschule. Junkers be- came involved in aircraft design in 1909 when he collaborated with fellow professor Hans Reissner in designing and building an airplane called the Ente (Duck). Reissner's Ente had a monoplane wing covered with corru- gated aluminum. Junkers soon became convinced that the ideal airplane would be one approaching a "flying wing," an airplane consisting almost
Copyright Eric Schatzberg| For information on re-use, see: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Copyright