The Physics of World War 1 Planes feat. The Great War Channel

this episode of real engineering is presented to you by hover get 10% off your next domain purchase using the code real engineering when we picture scenes from World War 1 we are confronted with terrible visions of violence armies equipped with modern weapons of destruction converging only to shatter against each other and collapse into a war of attrition with both sides cowering in trenches hoping only to defend their lines and survive the night desperate to break this brutal form of warfare each side strive to find ways of crossing no-man's land safely and mankind's newly discovered talent for flight offered a novel solution to the problem but to say these early planes were extremely basic would be an understatement these simple planes were primarily used for aerial reconnaissance of the ground eyes in the sky relaying information back to the troops proved to be incredibly valuable and the enemy soldiers were keenly aware of this and would often look up from their trenches and shoot at anything that flew rarely taking the time to try and identify the plane as Friend or Foe leading to the development of these iconic plane markings to make their job easier these early planes did not have the power or lifter structural integrity to carry any weapons more advanced than a simple revolver or hand grenade in fact the first plane to drop bombs in war was to rumbler table in 1911 when an Italian commander dropped hand grenades on enemy positions in Libya this flimsy bird-like plane warped its wings for control and was capable of reaching speeds up to 100 kilometers an hour had a max range of 140 kilometers and saw some service in the early days of World War one but was soon at class by more advanced machines like to be e2 3500 of these planes were built throughout the war and were primarily used for reconnaissance few planes continue to use this monoplane design in World War 1 for two primary reasons the low power engines available at the time meant that airplanes flew slowly and thus the wings generated less lift less lift means the plane can carry less load so how can we increase the lift without increasing the speed the primary way we can do this is by increasing the wing area modern gliders fly very slowly and so need a large wing area and they do this by increasing the wingspan but making the wings longer was not an option for a world war 1 airplanes because lightweight material is capable of withstanding the bending moment long wing did not exist so to increase the wing area and maintain a shorter structurally sound wing the plane designers instead created two wings stacked on top of each other this increased the lift of the plane and even had added benefits as the second moment of area of a biplane is much higher than that of a monoplane making them much stiffer allowing them to make high G maneuvers if you don't understand this go ahead and watch my wire I beams shaped like an eye video on top of this a long wing decreases maneuverability of the plane as they have a higher moment of inertia a plane would a shorter wingspan can perform quicker roles as they have a lower moment of inertia similar to how an ice skater will pull their arms close to their body to spin faster a shorter wingspan also reduces the role dampening as a result of air resistance planes like the Fokker dr1 flown by the infamous Red Baron added a third middle wing to shorten the wing span again and allow for a shorter cord the Red Baron is set up gained 80 victories in world war 1 partially due to his shrewd tactics but also because of the superior climbing and rolling capabilities of the dr1 but each additional wing contributes to drag and so stronger materials became available and more powerful engines were developed these multiple wing fighters became obsolete continued improve all of these aircraft allowed their total weight to increase and soon heavy weapons like machine guns were being attached to the aircraft the cowboy days of the pilots taking potshots at each other with their revolvers were over and a new era of military aerial combat was born the introduction of machine guns posed a new problem the best way to fire at an enemy aircraft is to shoot in the direction of travel but you risk destroying your propeller doing this so new designs of planes began to be developed to mitigate this risk pusher planes like the FE two became popular as now he could shoot straight ahead without worry of hitting your propeller but the crew had best hoped that they didn't drop anything and risk it flying into the prop behind them other is mounted the gun on a rail on top of the wing allowing the gun to be lowered to make reloading easier but the most ingenious solution to this problem was the synchronisation gear first patented in 1913 this original was a rather basic device the trigger was literally stopped from firing by a calm with two lobes set 180 degrees apart which was directly timed off the drive shaft to match the propeller passing later designs were far more practical but I will leave that topic for another video at stage planes were becoming effective weapons in themselves and the battle to gain air superiority was well underway no period highlighted this more than bloody April I am by no means a war historian so here's my friend Indy from the great war Channel to tell you more about this battle thanks Bryan bloody April was the result of the large-scale British offensive on the Western Front that began April 9th 1917 now it was a clash of strategies as much as it was a clash of Technology the Germans had found themselves outnumbered in the sky for much of the war so they were more focused on defense and actually keeping their pilots alive but they were also always focused on being ahead with their airplane designs so in 1915 they had the fokker eindecker with their synchronization gear or in 1917 they had just gotten the upper hand with the Albatros d-iii the British had not upgraded their planes significantly since the Battle of the Somme in 1916 still they needed to get a lot of reconnaissance for their plant offensive and deny the Germans the same thing so they were much more focused on the offensive compared to the German defensive doctrine by the end of the month by the end of bloody April the RFC had lost 245 aircraft with 211 Airmen either dead or missing and 108 becoming prisoners of war the Germans inflicted these losses at a cost of just 66 planes making for nearly a four to one kill ratio after that though the British would upgrade their planes significantly again and introduced the legendary soft with camel for example a great plane but apparently really difficult to fly because of the rotary engine so you needed a whole lot of training before you could properly fly that fascinating stuff right Brian absolutely Indy it's pretty clear the rate of technological progress during World War one was not always matched by the experience of the pilots if you'd like to learn more about that battle or World War one in general be sure to check out the Great War Channel indy brought up a really interesting point with the software camel while it was a fantastic plane it required an experienced pilot while young enthusiastic volunteers who were in no shortage drawn by the romance of flight but experienced pilots were far and few between this was one of the reasons Germany was so competitive during bloody ape as they focus much more of their time on training new pilots whereas Brittain focus more on numbers with planes like the Sopwith Camel an experienced pilot was vital to flying the plane effectively the Sopwith Camel used the rotary engine which works in Reverse to the way a normal engine works normal airplanes have their crankcase bolted to the airplane and the prop attached to its crankshaft but rotary engines have the crankshaft attached to the airplane and the propeller is bolted to the crankcase so the entire engine spins around the crankshaft rather than having the crankshaft spinning inside the engine rotaries had a superior power-to-weight ratio and had superior torque but they also gave the plane some unique handling characteristics having a giant chunk of metal spinning on a light plane is not ideal as it makes for a pretty effective gyroscope in level flight the effect wasn't too apparent but when the pilot attempted to maneuver it would dramatically affect the handling turning with the engine rotation was quick but also forced the nose of the plane downwards turning against the engine rotation was slow and forced the nose of the plane up veritasium made a fantastic video explaining this concept which I've linked in the description the skilled pilots took advantage of these traits but inexperienced pilots often struggled these rotary engines had weight advantages over inline engines as they didn't need a flywheel to smooth out the intermittent power strokes of the engine you can watch my video about steam engines if you don't understand this they also didn't need water cooling as they were cooled by the air as the engines spun but this had its limits as power requirements increased over the war as power requirements grew the revolutions per minute of the engines were growing and this meant the rotary engine needed to spin faster and faster the faster the rotary engine spawned the more drag had had to fight against making its power-to-weight advantages slimmer and slimmer until the engine type was no longer used by the end of World War one the rules of war had been rewritten and gaining air superiority became crucial trench warfare began to decline in use as planes and tanks were developed across no-man's land effortlessly these new machines together created armies so mobile that they allowed Germany to invade and conquer countries faster than any army in history in World War two we will learn more about that in an upcoming collaboration with real-life lore oh yes thanks for watching the quality of this footage is going to change dramatically as I change from light into dark and into light again but as you may have heard we launched a podcast recently called show makers FM it's myself and Sam from Wendover Productions and I bought this site show maker starter theme of hover.com who have sponsored this video and have made my life a lot easier if you've ever tried to buy a domain before which I have with my real engineering dotnet 1 you know how much of a headache it is trying to just just get the website without all the add-ons and hover doesn't do that they just allow you to buy the site few clicks and you're done that's what I need recently I've been incredibly busy between traveling and everything else so they have any huge huge help to me so I just want to say thank you to them and I mean if you want any sort of domain they have it from a horse ninja pizza they got it like literally they have all the domains that's why I used them in the first place was because they had Dada theme and I 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Channel: Real Engineering

Views: 1,769,042

Keywords: planes, world war 1, ww1, sopwith camel, bi plane, tri plane, interrupter gear

Id: MI08NGCgISE

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2017