Abstract
AEROPLANES as a means of transport become increasingly attractive as their range increases. For short journeys the saving in time is often negligible, especially in a country in which other forms of carriage are well developed, but on long routes, particularly trans-oceanic services, the time saved may amount to days or even weeks. Long range demands large fuel capacity, and the peculiar conditions in aircraft may reduce the pay load until it becomes uneconomic, and eventually the limiting range is reached over which no pay load can be carried. The principal problem associated with this is the difficulty of taking a heavily loaded aeroplane off the ground. When flying free, a heavier-than-air-craft is capable of carrying a much bigger load than that which it can lift off the surface of a normal aerodrome. The hazard of a heavily loaded take-off is considerable, particularly when the machine has just left the ground. If at this moment there should be an engine failure (and it is a time when engines appear to be liable to fail, due possibly to some small maladjustment during their overhaul since last being run, which develops into a failure catastrophically) the results will almost certainly be serious, as it is necessary to land at high speed with little or no choice of landing site.
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Development of Long-Range Aircraft. Nature 145, 539–541 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145539a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145539a0