INVENTOR'S DEATH

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 55, 20 March 1937, Page 15

INVENTOR'S DEATH

Bold And Skiiful Cierva

By the untimely death of Senor de la Cierva, world aviation has suffered the less of one who cannot be replaced. A genins in every eense of the word, his revolutionary creation, the autogiro, will aufflce aa * permanent and enduring monument to his memory. By the btflliant we of his brain; aheetrfenacity^f •purpose, and the ao%xage of his convictious, he has done more than any other man to make the air safer as a aonnal means of transport. It is indeed a qneer whim of iate that he should mcet' his death linden such tragio cirswastances, and when he was on the threshold of succeas. For it wa* a mishap to an aeroplane of his desigs i» 1919 which prompted him to ehallenge all prcconceived ideas about praotical fiying machines, and to create something which, althongh snoh a coklt plete departnre trom thef conventional, yet poiseieas * snsh nnbonnded poseibilities. Althongh ha has died a comparatively youag man, Cierva posiessed that matnreness of mind, real ability and self assurance which normally come* to those of riper age. Even so, he has done his life'i work so thoroughly, and laid the fonndations so truly, that those who are left to carry ©n wiil do so with even greater determination than before. The antogiro was his hobby as well as Ms work— work which reached ite climas only three montbs ago, when for the fifft time a vertical take-ofi autogire was pnblicly demonstrated. Cierva reelised from the ontset that. however desirabla jt might be to travei at high epeeda, the air wouJd nev«jr be accepted m a norma! means of trang.

port unless a fiying machine could fly really slowly as well as fast. To date, nearly fifty different types of autogiros bave been constmcted and fiown. His first efforti wero natnraUy very crude, and it was not nntil fo»r maohines had been wrecked that succesa was achieved, A, little story conneeted with this will serve to illustrate Oierva's analytica! mind, and his attention to detailHe was most perplexed at the Jack of atability of his early machines, where«a a small model flew very well, With „his prob|em weighing on his mind, the solution came snddenly during a visit to the opara when he realised that the mpdel fiew becanse its thin and light blades wero fiexible, whereas the blades in the big machines wero not. McorcUagly, he re-designed the blades so that they wero hinged in sueh a manner at the hnb a# to be free to fiap up and down in their circnlar flight aftey the manner of a bird's wing. And the problem was solved. To those actively engaged in aviation, Cierva will also be remembered as a bold and skiiful pilot. Not only did he personally supervise the initial design and construction of each new type produced, but what is mere, he invariably undertook the initial test flighfs as well, and it was not until he was satisfied that the machine was reasonably safe to fly that other pilots were allowed to earry on. i A deep thinker, he was a rare combination oi ' brilliant mathematieian and engineer. He had a remarkable i personality, and was beloved by all I with wfiem he came in contaet. In i fact it is safe to say that he was one • of those who had no enemy.