Redefining Flight: How the Predecessors of the Modern United States Air Force Transformed the Relationship between Airmen and Aircraft (2007)
Schultz, Timothy Paul (Author)
Duke University
Roland, Alex
Edition Details: Advisor: Roland, Alex
Physical Details: 284 pp.
Language: English
In traditional portrayals of combat aviation, the pilot reigned supreme. He emerged from the First World War as the icon of flight, the confident master of throttle, stick, and rudder. Yet this image became a mirage. Dramatic improvements in aircraft performance after World War I exposed the human operator as weak, vulnerable, and inefficient. Overcoming human deficiencies required significant scientific and technological advances in the early decades of airpower. These advances enhanced the air weapon by transforming the relationship between airmen and aircraft. This dissertation examines the evolving airman-aircraft relationship by investigating how the predecessors of the modern United States Air Force discovered the inherent limitations of piloted aircraft and developed new means to integrate human and machine. Most of the literature on the technical evolution of combat aviation focuses on the efforts by the Army Air Forces to institutionalize scientific research and development at the end of World War II. This dissertation argues that the scientific foundation of combat aviation had already been established in previous decades, especially in terms of shaping the functional interface between airmen and aircraft. Since World War I, the efforts to fly higher, faster, and farther supported military requirements but were hindered by human physiological limitations. Experts in aviation medicine studied these limitations and worked with engineers to enable humans to function in environmental extremes. Pilots also lacked the ability to remain spatially oriented in inclement weather; a new paradigm of flight produced special instruments to replace the pilot's dangerously inaccurate, seat-of-the-pants instincts. Along with the development of instrument-based flight, aircraft achieved increasingly sophisticated capabilities due to improvements in automation. The autopilot, for example, usurped some of the pilot's traditional functions, and the air force altered the airman's role as it sought to balance human and machine components for optimal effect. While airmen placed increasing reliance on automatic control, they also witnessed the development of unmanned aircraft during the interwar years and World War II. By 1945 developments in life-support equipment, instrument flight, and automation reflected an early interplay between science, technology, and military necessity that transformed the airman-aircraft relationship and redefined flight.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/07 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3271007.
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