Applied Aerodynamics

Abstract

MPATIENTLY as we have waited for the publication of this book, we feel that its appearance could scarcely have been more opportune. For here, as we believe, will be found abundant evidence in support of those who, like the Committee for Education and Research in Aeronautics, have striven to resist the break-up of our aerodynamics laboratories and design staffs. Research is always costly, aeronautical research superlatively so; and a public whose ear has been somewhat dulled by the insistence with which its claims were urged—not always wisely—during the war is somewhat naturally deafened now, by strident calls for economy, to anytemperate statement of its claims. It is not promises that are wanted at the present time, to justify further expenditure, but a record of things achieved; and although the tangible results of British science and invention, as applied to the construction of aircraft, have appealed, and by the glamour of long-distance flying are still appealing, to tfie popular imagination, yet it has resulted from secrecy necessary in war time that the foundations upon which these successes have been built—the patient, detailed investigations which have suppliedour designers with the data they required—are familiar only toÂa very few, being for the mostpart contained in reports of which the circulation, no less than the appeal, has been limited specialists.

Applied Aerodynamics.

By Leonard Bairstow. Pp. xii + 66. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920.) Price 32s. net.