Cierva Autogiros; The Development of Rotary-Wing Flight

Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 384 pages. Frontis Illustration. Illustrations (maps, drawings and photographs). Appendices (including Chronology of Autogiro Development, Type Numbers, Production List, and Production Numbers). Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. DJ has some wear and soiling, and is in a plastic sleeve. The author, a deeply experienced pilot, served on an aircraft carrier in WWII, and later worked for British Aerospace, He was the first International Fellow of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. He has focused as a writer and lecturer on aviation history. Autogiro, also spelled autogyro, rotary-wing aircraft, superseded after World War II by the more efficient helicopter. It employed a propeller for forward motion and a freely rotating, unmotorized rotor for lift. In searching for an aircraft that could be slowed down in flight and landed vertically, experimenters built many prototypes that were difficult to control in flight. Before the helicopter was the Autogiro. This study of the revolutionary development of this early rotary-wing craft by Juan de la Cierva is well written and complete. An important addition to any library of aeronautics or the history of aviation. Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu, 1st Count of la Cierva, OCIII (21 September 1895 in Murcia, Spain - 9 December 1936 in Croydon, United Kingdom) was a Spanish civil engineer, pilot and aeronautical engineer. His most famous accomplishment was the invention in 1920 of the Autogiro, a single-rotor type of aircraft that came to be called autogyro in the English language. In 1923, after four years of experimentation, De la Cierva developed the articulated rotor, which resulted in the world's first successful flight of a stable rotary-wing aircraft, with his C.4 prototype. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1925 where, with the support of Scottish industrialist James G. Weir, he established the Cierva Autogiro Company.