The Boundary Layer in Flight: Some Recent Flight Experiments on the Transition from Laminar to Turbulent Flow

THE authorities of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences have decided, so I am instructed, that the Wright Brothers' Lecture should deal with subjects upon which the lecturer is engaged at the time, rather than with a general survey of some wide branch of aeronautical knowledge. This decision has the advantage that the lecturer is actively interested in the subject about which he talks, but it leaves to chance the question whether he is in a position to end his lecture with simple and clear cut conclusions. I mention this because the problem upon which we are working at Cambridge, and about which I shall speak, is not yet solved and my lecture must, perforce, be confined to a discussion of aims and methods and of results so far obtained; it does not contain that simple statement of conclusions which is the ultimate aim of all good research. After this explanation you will not, I hope, be disappointed when the lecture ends on a note of interrogation.