Birth of a Giant: RCAF Argus

[baz62]

interesting video of the desgin and construction of the Canadair Argus. Great footage of the way they used to design a aeroplane and the construction methods of the day. Very hands on!

[davidd]

Great stuff. Incidentally at about this time, the CL-28 was put forward in New Zealand as a possible replacement for the RNZAF's obsolete Sunderlands. Actually the Sunderlands were obsolete before we got them!
David D

[Dave Homewood]

That was a brilliantly produced documentary.

When it comes to the design of an aircraft you always hear a name being credited as the designer, such as Reginald Mitchell, or Sydney Camm, or Roy Chadwick, or Kelly Johnson, etc. But the reality is there are thousands of parts in an aeroplane, and something big like this had 200,000 parts. Each and every part was designed, and tested, and modified if needed. And the there is all the machinery that makes or assembles the parts, and the jigs and even the scaffolding and stands used in the assembly or the maintenance. Also in the design work it is not simply about providing a part but also about how that part will wear over time, and how it'll be maintained during servicing and how it will be replaced, etc. There's so much consideration in the design side, and it's almost always a huge team of highly skilled and intelligent people all contributing their own skills to work towards a single goal. That shot near the beginning of the design office with maybe a hundred people all working on drawings really showed the reality of what happens behind the scenes. And of course that did not show the designers from all the many subsidiary companies at other factories also contributing. I also know in some companies they ask the engineers to make something to fix a problem and then after it's proven to work they get the drawing office to make a drawing of it - rather than a pre-designed part. I think we need to give more credit to design teams rather than chief designers.

[davidd]

Quite right Dave, well said. There were of course experts in every part of aircraft design, such as engine installation, undercarriages design, hydraulic, electrical and pneumatic systems, experts in aircraft flying controls, and the very important structural designers who have to ensure that, even when fairly badly mishandled, an aircraft should not get torn to bits by aerodynamic forces (although extreme forces well beyond normal load calculations might do it!)

I read somewhere how they did the calculations to obtain the VNE for the DH 89 (Dragon Rapide/Dominie), and this naturally had to be confirmed by flight test. I think the speed was 160 MPH IAS, and that was also pushed a bit to see if anything threatened to break. They more or less knew that the cockpit windscreens and other Perspex windows were vulnerable, and this proved to be the case. A pilot up front would have to have a real death wish if he exceeded the posted limit in that fairly lightly built section at the sharp end.
David D

[johnnyfalcon]

And it wasn't even a clean-sheet design having been developed from the Bristol Britannia