From Autogiro to Gyroplane

摘要

The man who would become known as the father of Spanish aviation, Juan de la Cierva, was born in Murcia, Spain, on September 21, 1895. By 1908 he had decided to make aviation his career, and in 1911 he enrolled at the Civil Engineering College of Madrid. In 1912 he and his friends "Pepe" Barcala and Pablo Diaz constructed the first Spanish airplane, the BCD-1, known as El Cangrejo—the "Red Crab." In 1919 Cierva produced a large three-engine bomber that, piloted by Captain Julio Rios Argueeso, stalled and crashed on its initial flight. Pondering the crash, Cierva had an inspiration about wing design. He reasoned that stalls could be effectively eliminated if the wing itself moved independently of the aircraft. In his new design, the rotor, a moving, stall-proof wing, was placed on top of a fuselage. He patented the name Autogiro and said that his aircraft flew by autorotation, "the process of producing lift with freely-rotating aerofoils by means of the aerodynamic forces resulting from an upward flow of air." As long as the Auto-giro was propelled forward, air coming up through the rotor would generate lift.