American Views on Spin Phenomena: Three Papers Read before the Eighteenth National Aeronautic Meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers Available to Purchase

THE phenomenon of spinning has apparently been known to some extent since the first days of flying, but for many years it was considered a dangerous evolution from which no one ever recovered. It was not generally known that recovery was possible until 1916, when a British pilot, Major F. W. Gooden, made a scries of experiments, in which he deliberately put his aeroplane into spins and brought it out by the use of the controls. After that the spin became an ordinary manoeuvre, into which any, except the largest aeroplanes, might be put. Since then, however, and particularly in recent years when aero‐planes have been put into longer spins, difficulty has sometimes been experienced in recovering. This has given rise to considerable research, starting about twelve years ago, but the problem is so complex that results which can be satisfactorily used in a general way are just starting to come in. In this paper I hope to cover briefly the present status of spinning research, and the main results which have been obtained to date. Only the steady spin and the recovery from it will be considered—not the problem of avoiding the spin entirely.