Musings on the 1910 Coanda Jet

[maxmwill]

In 1910, Henri Coanda flew, or at least tried to fly(there is some dispute on this) the first airplane with a jet unit.

I call it a "jet unit" because it wasn't a turbine engine or any other of that type, but an impellor powered by a piston engine, with a fuel sprayer/igniter immediately aft of the engine, and the efflux went directly back, over the fuselage and the pilot.

It didn't do very much at first until a pair of plywood plates were attached to the sides of the fuselage to help direct the thrust.

This resulted in a couple things:

First, the efflux was directed along these two plates.

It provided the inspiration for Coanda to later develop his law(Coanda's Effect, which, when all the technical explanations and equations are boiled down to "moving air is sticky", which is part of how many high lift devices on wings operate, as well as certain kinds of nozzle and duct designs)

But, at this time, the aircraft may or may not have actually flew, but it did more than it did before, but this time, with the efflux directed along the sides of the fuselage, along with the thrust came the flames from the combustion of the fuel(remember the fuel is being ignited after the impellor), so the bird caught fire, and Henri escaped with his life.

After that, Coanda shelved the airplane idea, and went on to other endeavors.

Now, since then, as time marched, turbine engines were invented, much later, and so airplanes were designed, and the world embraced them.

Around the same time turbines were being investigate, another ducted fan powered airplane was designed and built, and this was the Caproni-Campini N1, a rather large and bulky looking flying machine, with, and I confess that I'm partial to it, a graceful elliptical wing.

Didn't fly very fast, couldn't go very far, but it still flew.

In case you're curious, there are a couple kits of this, both in 1/72, one kit of the original test craft, and one as a whiff, both by Valom, and, after doing a bit of digging, I see that there is a thread on the N1.

Anyway, this isn't about the N1, it is about what could have might have come after had Coanda not dropped his idea for an alternate way to power an airplane into the air.

This being 1910, the rumblings from the Balkans most likely weren't as portentous as they were just before a certain Serbia took the chance and assassinated the Arch Duke and his wife, leading up to the first of historical conflicts leading to today's world situation.

But, he approached one of the British firms, Vickers, Short Brothers, Blackburn, or even any of the Japanese manufacturers, or outfits like Sikorsky, became interested?

This might sound unkind, but it really isn't, because given that time period, with aeronautics in its infancy, such were the case, what kind of potential "flying freaks" might have come out of the 1911-1913 time period, or even beyond that when the expected geographic conflagration exploded and all of a sudden, some or more design engineers decided to try to put anything into the air?

What if Tony Fokker and his engineer Reinhold Platz(Platz designed, among other things, the D7 and the DR1, and so he knew a thing or two about designing flying machines without all those draggy flying wires), or even Hugo Junkers?

What if WW1, not only became the first flying war, but also the first conflict which used airplanes powered by reaction thrust?

Just to give you an idea as to the tangent this could go off on, a few years back, there was a short story by Ben Bova, titled, "The Great Supersonic Zeppelin Race", and yes, that's what was attempted. Here is a link to part of the story:

http://books.google.com/books?id=bCM4EdtinGMC&pg=PT227&lpg=PT227&dq=supersonic+zeppelin+race&source=bl&ots=UaCe0PPvmG&sig=Bg51DD_o_n-5SQltiwKqvCP0zO8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LXLKU__BMYuzyATlm4D4DA&ved=0CEMQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=supersonic%20zeppelin%20race&f=false

[maxmwill]

Forgot to add:

There was one airplane which used the idea of mounting in the nose a reaction engine.

This was the Focke Wulf FW190TL.

The idea was to take an FW190A8, remove the engine, install a turbine engine, and have the jet exhaust blow back along the sides and bottom of the fuselage.

Nothing came of the proposal, but that hasn't stopped any enterprising after market accessories from being designed and sold for a 190 kit modification in 1/48 scale.

http://www.scalemates.com/products/product.php?id=180494

[royabulgaf]

Well, I think that designers would soon realize that mounting a Coanda engine on the nose of a wood and fabric aircraft was a non-starter.   There were similar engines tried until true turbojets became practical, such as the Caproni-Campini.  I don't know much about their thrust/weight ratios, but fuel consumption per useful thrust was godawful.  In WWI, I could see them as booster engines on bombers to get extra speed over heavily defended targets, maybe with the impellers run off PTOs from the actual engines.  Or, something like the Wright turbocompound engines.  The impeller/afterburner is attached to the crankshaft aft of the engine.  Kick it in gear and you get some thrust and a supercharging effect.

[maxmwill]

Actually, the engine was built by Clerget.

But, enough of what I can say, because here is the Wikipediia page on the 1910 Coanda, with the history of it, and subsequent developments, and you'll see what I was trying to get at.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coand%C4%83-1910