Sharing the sky with birds

The dramatic ditching two weeks ago of US Airways flight 1549 in New York’s Hudson River shows what can happen when birds and airplanes cross paths. Although relatively rare and generally not harmful to aircraft or their occupants, bird strikes do occur and have been part of the aviation scene since the beginning.

Orville Wright logged an in-flight encounter with a bird in 1905. While circling his flying field east of Dayton, Ohio, the younger Wright brother flew through a rising flock and struck one of the birds. Stunned or dead, it lay accusingly atop his biplane’s wing until he banked into a sharp turn.

Even though airplanes flew no faster than birds back then, such encounters could be deadly. Calbraith Perry Rodgers, another early aviator, drowned when a seagull jammed his biplane’s rudder, causing him to plunge into the waters off Long Beach, California. Famous for the first aerial crossing of the United States the previous year—a feat that took him 84 days due to countless mishaps—Cal Rodgers was lamented until public attention shifted to the sinking of the Titanic the following week.

As aviation came of age, faster cruise speeds lent urgency to the issue. Basic physics tells us that force rises as the square of velocity. Thus, colliding with a bird of a given weight will have four times the effect if the impact speed doubles.

Fortunately, the same human ingenuity that gave us airliners has also been addressing this issue. For starters, the global aerospace industry has learned how to make jets and their fanjet engines more robust and tolerant of such events. Design “best practices” and lessons gleaned from operational experience are formalized in the evolving certification standards that govern airframe and engine development.

Among other things, these standards decree that jets must be able to suffer an engine failure at takeoff and still climb safely out. Consequently, all twin-engine types—including the Airbus A320 involved in the January 15, 2009, ditching—are 100-percent overpowered. In practice, this thrust margin means that even when birds are ingested into both engines, enough power generally remains in one or both fanjets for a safe return to the airport. In a rare exception, however, both engines were knocked out last Thursday, and no airplane can sustain flight without power.

The aerospace industry’s many stakeholders—including airports, airlines and other operators, manufacturers, pilots’ associations, regulatory authorities and other government agencies, and interested nongovernmental organizations—have also collaborated with considerable success to reduce the likelihood that aircraft and birds will cross paths in the first place. Guided by data analysis showing where the greatest gains are to be realized, these interdisciplinary efforts gather together experts on flight procedures, bird migratory patterns, wildlife management and emerging technologies.

Because most strikes occur at low altitude when airplanes are taking off or landing, airports landscape to discourage geese, heron, and other large birds from congregating. Airports may also employ noise generators, pulsing or strobing lights, dogs trained to chase birds, and other active but benign measures that discourage resident avian populations.

Commercial aviation is the safest mode of mass transportation in human history and it is getting more so. Nevertheless, US Airways flight 1549 reminds us—fortunately without loss of human life—that we have more to learn on this key front. It also reminds us that when things go badly wrong, as they can every few million airline flights, there is no substitute for a well trained, proficient and professional flight crew.

Boyhood heroes

Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, I had three heroes. Two were fictional fliers on ’50s TV: the crime-fighting aviator Captain Midnight and USAF Colonel Ed McCauley, the brave astronaut leading Men Into Space. In contrast, my third hero was a real person, and even then I thought he was the most remarkable of all.

Born in December 1896, Jimmy Doolittle spent his early years in Nome, Alaska, a true frontier back then. It helped shape his personality. During World War I, he trained as an Army pilot and was such a natural that, to his great frustration, the U.S. Army Air Service kept him stateside to train others.

Between the wars, Doolittle set many records including being the first person to cross the United States in less than 24 hours (1924) and the first to do so in less than 12 hours (1931). He also became the first and only flier ever to win all three of the major pre-WWII air races (the Schneider, Bendix, and Thompson). He flew the hottest Gee-Bee racer of all and lived to tell about it.

In the 1920s, Doolittle earned masters and doctorate degrees in aeronautical engineering from MIT, and led the pioneering team that in 1929 performed history’s first blind flight. Flying under a hood, he took off, flew a rectangular pattern, and landed again using new gyro instruments, radio-navigational aids, and flight procedures he had helped define. Later he pushed the United States to manufacture 100-octane aviation gasoline. The British in part credit their survival during the Battle of Britain to the extra 300 hp that this higher octane fuel gave their Hurricanes and Spitfires.

A little more than four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into World War II, Doolittle commanded the single most dramatic mission flown by U.S. forces in that conflict. On April 18, 1942, he led 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers off the deck of the USS Hornet to attack military targets on the Japanese mainland. For that, he was promoted from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general (skipping full colonel) and awarded the Medal of Honor. By the time WWII ended in 1945, he had commanded three of the component U.S. Army Air Forces—including the legendary Eighth Air Force, the greatest air armada in history—and was a lieutenant general. A fourth star came later in retirement.

If you could point to any one person and say, "Here's the greatest pilot ever," it would probably be Jimmy Doolittle. I was hugely honored to know him because my godfather was the copilot of the eighth B-25 off the deck of the Hornet, and I later prepared exhibits about him while a curator at the National Air and Space Museum. Doolittle died at 96 in 1993. He is still my hero today.

First rollout...

Welcome to the debut of Their Dreams, My Thoughts, a new aviation blog offering a mix of history, technology, glimpses of flight’s pioneers, and fun anecdotes about famous aviation personalities. I’ll provide new ways for us to view familiar flying machines, speculate on today’s aerospace scene, share favorite aviation photos, and even do the occasional flying book or film review. In short, you'll find just about anything here that relates to flying machines and the people in and around them.

Please feel free to comment because I’d love to know your thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams about flight. I’ll also count on you to further broaden my horizons as we collectively spread our wings over a fascinating subject area. Questions are welcome, as is your help in answering them.

Aviation history is my background. While I love all flying machines, rotorcraft included, my primary interest is aviation’s technological evolution. You already know that if you’ve seen my latest book.

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