Bartini Project

21/08/2024

China: Holes in a Supersonic Plane Wing. Boost in Aviation?
***
A new solution: holes in the wings that only open when the aircraft exceeds the speed of sound.

Researchers say the holes facilitated airflow, which mitigated shock wave vibrations and improved aerodynamic efficiency.

Sonic booms, shockwaves— and the shattered windows they often cause— have been major obstacles preventing the return of supersonic aircraft.

However, scientists from Northwestern Polytechnical University in China have found a remarkable way to reduce the effects of these phenomena.

Conventional aircraft wings follow design principles established by the Wright brothers and rely on Bernoulli’s principle. This dictates that faster airflow over the top of the wing results in lower pressure, while slower airflow underneath generates higher pressure, thus lifting the plane.

However, as an aircraft approaches the speed of sound, shock waves come into existence, creating turbulence and drag. These reduce lift and cause damaging vibrations.

The research team, led by Professor Gao Chao of the university’s School of Aeronautics, proposed that strategic holes in the wing could solve these ill effects.

They employed computer simulations and wind tunnel experiments, which demonstrated that the holes in the wing disrupted shock waves and mitigated the ensuing vibrations. Remarkably, they also discovered a boost of over 10% in aerodynamic efficiency.
***
A crucial moment in aircraft design

Few countries are capable of producing supersonic jets today as these require specialized and expensive construction to withstand the forces encountered at supersonic speeds.

Additionally, the resulting sonic booms led to restrictions on supersonic travel over populated areas and, most notably, contributed to the retirement of the Concorde in 2003.

The team’s solution is simple, elegant, and effective. By covering the holes with a mechanism that opens only when the aircraft exceeds the speed of sound, they can effectively manage the airflow around the wing.

Within these holes is an air pump that adjusts the jet stream’s intensity, limiting turbulence towards the wing’s front. This reduces wing vibrations.

Despite a slight loss in lift, the overall drag reduction results in a higher lift-to-drag ratio.
***
Future prospects and global efforts

While the team is now looking forward towards additional wind tunnel testing to refine their technology, other research teams around the world are seeking solutions to the challenges faced by supersonic flight, reports the South China Morning Post.

These efforts include adding grooves or protrusions to wing surfaces, employing mechanical devices to suppress shock waves, and applying piezoelectric film coatings to control airflow.

NASA, in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, is expected to conduct the inaugural test flight of its experimental X-59 supersonic jet this year.

This aircraft features an elongated nose and a cockpit without a forward-facing windscreen, designed to reduce the noise of supersonic flight significantly.

Gao’s team, however, remains confident in their solution. “When using jet stream control to suppress shock wave buffeting, although there is a slight loss of lift, it can reduce overall drag, so the lift-to-drag ratio increases rather than decreases,” they noted in their report.

The team’s findings were published in the Chinese aviation journal Acta Aerodynamica Sinica.
***
https://interestingengineering.com/science/supersonic-aircraft-wing-with-holes

30/03/2024

French Inventors

The Leduc 022 was the prototype of a mixed-power French interceptor built in the mid-1950s.

Designer René Leduc had been developing ramjet-powered aircraft since before World War II.He was awarded a contract for two examples of a short-range supersonic interceptor armed with two air-to-air missiles (AAMs).

Intended for combat use, the 022 was able to take off from a runway as it was fitted with a supplementary turbojet engine, unlike his earlier aircraft which required a mother aircraft to carry them to altitude because ramjets cannot produce thrust while stationary.

Development was cancelled by the French Air Force in 1958 due to budgetary problems while flight testing was underway and before the second prototype was completed.

In 1953 the French Air Force issued a specification for a high-performance interceptor that could intercept and destroy any aerial threat after taking off from a 940-metre (3,080 ft) grass runway.

First flown on 26 December 1956 on turbojet power alone, the ramjet was finally fired on the 34th flight, on 18 May 1957. It reached a speed of Mach 1.15 on 21 December 1957, but was damaged shortly afterwards when it caught fire while taking off.

Construction of a second prototype had been cancelled.

The ongoing Algerian War was consuming more of the military budget and the more conventional Dassault Mirage III was selected to meet the interceptor requirement.

The unflown second prototype 022 is on display at the Musée de l'air et de l'espace at Paris–Le Bourget Airport.

Specifications
Crew: 1
Length: 18.21 m (59 ft 9 in)
Wingspan: 9.95 m (32 ft 8 in)
Max takeoff weight: 8,975 kg (19,786 lb)

Maximum speed: 1,200 km/h (750 mph, 650 kn) this speed was met in tests, which were cut short due to loss of first prototype
Service ceiling: 8,800 m (28,900 ft) (achieved)

11/11/2023

Flying Triangles?

Startup JetZero Inc. is taking aim at that design with a radical proposition: a triangle-shaped aircraft resembling a giant manta ray in the sky, boasting a shorter fuselage that’s wide enough to contribute to the lift needed to keep the thing airborne.

Gone is the tail, with two engines piggybacked onto the rear taking its place to provide both power and stability.

JetZero says its design has several advantages over traditional aircraft: It’s quieter, it’s more stable, and it uses interior space more efficiently, with a triangular cabin that has three aisles to ease bottlenecks during boarding.

It’s also lighter, requiring engines no bigger than those on today’s single-aisle models. The startup says its so-called blended-wing aircraft could haul as many as 250 people—the capacity of a widebody jet such as Boeing’s 767—while burning half the fuel.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-08/jetzero-s-triangle-shaped-jet-aims-to-cut-fuel-consumption-in-half?srnd=premium-europe

28/08/2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqeoKrKDffc

If you love classical music as much as we do, check out Apple Music Classical here: https://apple.co/ThePianoGuys. You can get 1 month for free if you are ne...

03/04/2023

Wings of NASA

The unique oblique wing was demonstrated on a small, subsonic jet-powered research aircraft called the AD-1 (Ames-Dryden-1).

The aircraft was flown 79 times during the research program, which evaluated the basic pivot-wing concept and gathered information on handling qualities and aerodynamics at various speeds and degrees of pivot.

The research program to validate the oblique wing concept was typical of any NASA high-risk project — to advance through each test element and expand the operating envelope.

The basic purpose of the AD-1 project was to investigate the low-speed characteristics of an oblique-wing configuration.

The AD-1 made its first flight late in 1979. The wing was pivoted incrementally over the next 18 months until the full 60-degree angle was reached in mid-1981.

The aircraft continued to be flown for another year, obtaining data at various speeds and wing-pivot angles until the final flight in August 1982.

The first known oblique wing design was the Blohm & Voss P.202, proposed by Richard Vogt in 1942.

The oblique wing concept was later promoted by Robert T. Jones, an aeronautical engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Analytical and wind tunnel studies indicated that a transport-size oblique-wing aircraft, flying at speeds up to Mach 1.4, would have substantially better aerodynamic performance than aircraft with more conventional wings.

[Wikipedia]

21/12/2022

Bell X-22 (back to 1960-s) 🤓

- is an American plane with 4 tilting ducted fans: takeoff was to selectively occur either with the propellers tilted vertically upwards, or on a short runway with the nacelles tilted forward at approximately 45°. Additionally, the X-22 was to provide more insight into the tactical application of vertical takeoff troop transporters.

The maiden flight of the prototype occurred in March 1966.

Due to failure of a propeller controlnt component in the power chain, the prototype crashed on 8 August 1966 and technicians stripped it for components in order to make the second prototype flight capable.

The second X-22 first flew on 26 August 1967. Early that year, it was equipped with a variable flight control and stabilizer system.

Although the X-22 was considered to be the best aircraft of its type at the time, the program was canceled. The required maximum speed of 525 km/h was never reached.

Although the ducted fan propellers were considered usable, they were not used again on a US military aircraft until the F-35B.

Although not on display, the only currently remaining craft is currently stored by the Niagara Aerospace Museum, New York.

General characteristics
Crew: two + six passengers
Length: 39 ft 7 in (12.07 m)
Wingspan: 39 ft 3 in (11.96 m)
Wingspan (front wing): 22.916 ft (6.98 m)
Height: 20 ft 8 in (6.31 m)
Empty weight: 10,478 lb (4,753 kg)
Max takeoff weight: 17,644 lb (8,003 kg)
Powerplant: 4×GE turboshaft engines, 1,267 hp (945 kW) each
Propellers: three-bladed propellers mounted in wingtip swivelling ducts, 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m) diameter

Performance
Maximum speed: 221 kn (254 mph, 409 km/h)
Range: 387 nmi (445 mi, 716 km)
Service ceiling: 27,800 ft (8,500 m)

27/11/2022

Laws, Flocks, Outcast...
.."It was only a month later that Jonathan said the time had come to return to the Flock.

"We're not ready!" said Henry Calvin Gull. "We're not welcome! We're Outcast! We can't force ourselves to go where we're not welcome, can we?"

"We're free to go where we wish and to be what we are," Jonathan answered, and he lifted from the sand and turned east, toward the home grounds of the Flock.
There was brief anguish among his students, for it is the Law of the Flock that an Outcast never returns, and the Law had not been broken once in ten thousand years.

The Law said stay; Jonathan said go; and by now he was a mile across the water. If they waited much longer, he would reach a hostile Flock alone.

"Well, we don't have to obey the law if we're not a part of the Flock, do we?" Fletcher said, rather self-consciously. "Besides, if there's a fight we'll be a lot more help there than here."

And so they flew in from the west that morning, eight of them in a double-diamond formation, wingtips almost overlapping. They came across the Flock's Council Beach at a hundred thirty-five miles per hour, Jonathan in the lead. Fletcher smoothly at his right wing, Henry Calvin struggling gamely at his left.

Then the whole formation rolled slowly to the right, as one bird... level... to... inverted... to... level, the wind whipping over them all.

The squawks and grockles of everyday life in the Flock were cut off as though the formation were a giant knife, and eight thousand gull-eyes watched, without a single blink"...
***
the source: "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", 1970, by Richard Bach (born in 1936 in the U.S.A)

06/10/2022

Unknown Planet + Meanings of Arts

Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla both play chess with composer Sergei Rachmaninoff near IBM computer on the Moon

By Andrei Martynov, Unknown Planet 😎 a.k.a AI

25/08/2022

Being Richard Bach and Unknown Planet 🙃

"They are saying in the Flock that if you are not the Son of the Great Gull Himself," Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after Advanced Speed Practice, "then you are a thousand years ahead of your time."

Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.

"What do you think, Fletch? Are we ahead of our time?"

A long silence. "Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be
learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time.

We're ahead of the fashion, maybe, ahead of the way that most gulls fly."

"That's something," Jonathan said rolling to glide inverted for a
while. "That's not half as bad as being ahead of our time."

03/07/2022

Airbus in 1959-1962

The Fairey Rotodyne was a British compound gyroplane
for commercial and military uses.

A development of the earlier Gyrodyne, which had established a world helicopter speed record, the Rotodyne featured a tip-jet-powered rotor that burned a mixture of fuel and compressed air

The rotor was driven for vertical takeoffs, landings and hovering, as well as low-speed translational flight, but autorotated during cruise flight with all engine power applied to two propellers.

One prototype was built. On 6 November 1957, the prototype performed its maiden flight.

On 10 April 1958, the Rotodyne achieved its first successful transition from vertical to horizontal and then back into vertical flight.

On 5 January 1959, the Rotodyne set a world speed record in the convertiplane category, at 190.9 mph (307.2 km/h), over a 60-mile (100 km) closed circuit.

As well as being fast, the rotorcraft had a safety feature: it could hover with one engine shut down with its propeller feathered, and the prototype demonstrated several landings as an autogyro.

The prototype was demonstrated several times at the Farnborough and Paris air shows, regularly amazing onlookers.

The Rotodyne's tip drive and unloaded rotor made its performance far better when compared to pure helicopters and other forms of "convertiplanes." The aircraft could be flown at 175 kn (324 km/h) and pulled into a steep climbing turn without demonstrating any adverse handling characteristics. .....
While the costs of development were shared half-and-half between Westland and the government, the firm determined that it would still need to contribute a further £9 million in order to complete development and achieve production-ready status.

Following the issuing of a requested quotation to the British government for 18 production Rotodynes, 12 for military and 6 commercial, the government responded that no further support would be issued for the project due to economic reasons.

Accordingly, on 26 February 1962, official funding for the Rotodyne was terminated in early 1962.

Thus ended all work on the world's first vertical take-off military/civil transport rotorcraft.

General characteristics
Crew: two
Capacity: 40-48 passengers
Length: 58 ft 8 in (17.88 m) of fuselage
Wingspan: 46 ft 6 in (14.17 m) fixed wings
Height: 22 ft 2 in (6.76 m) to top of rotor pylon
Empty weight: 22,000 lb (9,979 kg)
Gross weight: 33,000 lb (14,969 kg)
Fuel capacity: 7,500 lb (3,402 kg)
Powerplant: 2 × Napier Eland N.El.7 turboprops, 2,800 shp (2,100 kW) each [49]
Powerplant: 4 × rotor tip jet , 1,000 lbf (4.4 kN) thrust each [50]
Main rotor diameter: 90 ft 0 in (27.43 m)
Blade tip speed: 720 ft/s (219 m/s)
Disc loading: 6.14 lb/ft2 (30 kg/m2)
Propellers: 4-bladed, 13 ft (4.0 m) diameter Rotol propellers

Performance
Maximum speed: 190.9 mph (307.2 km/h, 165.9 kn) speed record
Cruise speed: 185 mph (298 km/h, 161 kn)
Range: 450 mi (720 km, 390 nmi)
Service ceiling: 13,000 ft (4,000 m)

After the programme was terminated, the prototype Rotodyne itself, which was government property, was dismantled. A single fuselage bay plus rotors and rotorhead mast survived, and are on display at The Helicopter Museum, Weston-super-Mare.

21/06/2022

Zero-emission Aircraft by 2027?

This Celera 500L was designed for transcontinental range with operating costs equal to or better than commercial airline ticket pricing per passenger basis.

Otto Aviation and ZeroAvia have teamed up to implement the latter’s ZA600 zero-emission engines to build a hydrogen-powered "the most fuel-efficient, commercially viable business aircraft in the world” by Otto Aviation, according to the firm's official website.

This criterion requires extremely low drag across the entire aircraft with a highly fuel-efficient propulsion system. To achieve this, extensive laminar shapes were used for the wings, fuselage, and tail sections — maximizing laminar flow to avoid air turbulence, which causes aerodynamic drag and wasted energy.

The fuel efficiency of the aircraft is due to its unique shape, which delivers a 59 percent reduction in drag.

Otto Aviation claims that the idea of laminar flow was taken to new metaphorical heights with the design of Celera. For example, it uses 80 percent less fuel than a traditionally designed aircraft.

The Celera runs on a 550-horsepower combustion engine and is able to carry six passengers up to 4,500 nautical miles (8,334 km) at cruise speeds of more than 460 mph (740 km/h).

Celera has a glide ratio of 22:1, meaning that the aircraft can glide for up to 120 miles (roughly 200 km) with the engines turned off.

This allows Celera to cut $328 hourly operating costs and operate at a much smaller cost than similar aircraft.

“The data from our first phase of test flights show that we are on the path to achieving our goals for the aircraft,” said William Otto Jr., CEO of Otto Aviation.

Otto Aviation has announced that the company officially concluded Phase One testing of its Celera 500L aircraft with 55 successful test flights and roughly 51 hours of flight time.

Several flights reached airspeeds of more than 250 mph (402 km/h) at altitudes up to 15,000 feet (4,572 m) which rises to an airspeed of 460 mph (740.3 km/h) at 50,000 feet (15,240 m).

Otto Aviation CTO David Bogue: “The volumetric capacity of the fuselage and specific configuration choices allows our design to adopt either hydrogen or battery-electric propulsion".

Otto projects that a viable zero-emission aircraft will be available by 2027.

08/06/2022

Book Unknown Planet: Wernher von Braun-Mars-Elon and We 😎

***
[Wikipedia] This article is about the science fiction novel by Wernher von Braun. "Project Mars: A Technical Tale", illustrator Chesley Bonestell, publisher - Apogee Books (Canada), 2006.

The original German text remains unpublished...
"Project Mars: A Technical Tale" is a 2006 science fiction novel by German-American rocket physicist, Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), written in German in 1949 and entitled Marsprojekt. Henry J. White (1892–1962) translated the book into English.

The novel set in the 1980s and is about the first human mission to Mars and their encounter with benevolent Martians on the planet.

While the book was not published for 57 years, its appendix, a technical specification for an expedition to Mars was published in English in 1953 by the University of Illinois Press as The Mars Project.

Von Braun wrote Marsprojekt, a science fiction novel in German between 1948 and 1949 while stationed at the U.S. Army's rocket research facility at Fort Bliss in New Mexico.

It was translated into English as Mars Project by Lieutenant Commander Henry J. White of the United States Navy and cleared for publication by the U.S. Defense Department in early 1950.

The DoD felt that von Braun's visions of space travel were "too futuristic to infringe on classified matters". Von Braun submitted the English manuscript to eighteen US publishers, but it was rejected by all of them.

In 1952 the technical appendix to "Marsprojekt", which contained the specifications for the novel's expedition to Mars, was published by Umschau Verlag in Germany as Das Marsprojekt.

In the late 1950s, This Week, an American syndicated Sunday magazine supplement published excerpts from Mars Project. The magazine focused on von Braun's philosophies on space flight and the future of humanity, rather than the novel's technical details.

In the Author's Preface to Project Mars: A Technical Tale, written by von Braun in 1950 in Fort Bliss, he states that the purpose of the book is to "stimulate interest in space travel".

Von Braun goes on to say that once his explorers land on the planet, "the solid, scientific platform upon which we have stood sinks beneath our feet and we tread upon the fairy bridge of fantasy".

The Martian canals are speculation and the inhabitants are fiction. Von Braun concluded that "readers who may have gagged a bit on the mass of technical detail upon which they fed during the long voyage through space, this part of the story may offer opportunities for ruminative philosophical reflection."

Project Mars: A Technical Tale takes place in 1980, thirty years in the future. The world is governed by the United States of Earth, established after a devastating war in the 1970s between the Western Powers and the Eastern Bloc.

The West won the conflict with the aid of Lunetta, an orbiting space station that dropped nuclear missiles on the Soviet Union.

Soon after peace is achieved, a reflecting telescope on Lunetta confirms the existence of canals on Mars, vindicating Percival Lowell's assertion that intelligent life exists on the planet. The President orders a mission to Mars to establish just how intelligent the Martians are and whether they pose a threat to Earth.

Lunetta is used as the base from which to launch a ten-spaceship flotilla to Mars. Materials and equipment are ferried from Earth to the space station where the spaceships are constructed and prepared.

Von Braun describes in detail the ships' life support systems, and the problems of cosmic rays, weightlessness and boredom. Technical details of the voyage to the red planet are also given, including the necessary mid-course maneuvers. Once in orbit around Mars, three winged landing craft descend to the surface of the planet.

After not too long, the explorers make contact with the Martians. They are humanoid in appearance and live underground.

They welcome the earthlings who quickly establish that they are an ancient and benevolent "super-civilization".

After establishing verbal communication, the humans learn about the Martians' social structure and their form of government, which is run by ten men under the leadership of "the Elon".

The visitors witness technology far superior to their own, including underground transport and organ transplants. They also learn from the Martians their views on ethics and morality, and the responsible use of technology.

Earth, pleased with developments on Mars, decides to establish formal relations between the two planets. They invite three Martians to accompany the explorers on their return trip home. The landing craft on the planet's surface are converted to return to the mother ships in orbit, and the explorers, with their three Martian guests, return to Earth.
***
Interest in this novel increased in 2021 when people connected Elon, the Martian leader, to business magnate, Elon Musk, suggesting that von Braun may have predicted Musk's space exploration ventures. "Chapter 24: How Mars is Governed" states:

The Martian government was directed by 10 men, the leader of whom was elected for 5 years and entitled "Elon." Two houses of Parliament enacted the laws to be administered by the Elon and his cabinet.
😅

23/05/2022

"Flying Pancake"! Or UFO?! 😎

It was an American experimental test aircraft built as part of the Vought XF5U program during World War II.

Airplanes featured an unorthodox "all-wing" design consisting of flat, somewhat disk-shaped bodies (hence the name) serving as the lifting surface.

Two piston engines buried in the body drove propellers located on the leading edge at the wingtips.

In the 1930s, Charles H. Zimmerman was a noted aeronautical engineer who advocated the concept of "discoidal" aircraft, the so-called "Zimmer Skimmer" and worked on a variety of projects on his own and with the Vought company.

After testing using scale models, including a remotely controlled, electrically powered large-scale model, designated the Vought V-162, the US Navy approached Zimmerman and offered to fund further development.

Data and concept documentation was given to the Navy in 1939, with wind tunnel tests on full-scale models being completed in 1940-1941.

The original prototype, designated the V-173 (Flying Pancake), was built of wood and canvas and featured a conventional, fully symmetrical aerofoil section (NACA 0015).

Designed as a "proof-of-concept" prototype, the initial configuration V-173 was built as a lightweight test model powered by two 80 hp (60 kW) Continental A-80 engines turning F4U Corsair propellers. These were replaced by a pair of specially modified 16 ft 6 in three-bladed units. A tall, fixed main undercarriage combined with a small tailwheel gave the aircraft a 22° "nose-high" angle.

The disc wing design featured a low aspect ratio that overcame the built-in disadvantages of induced drag created at the wingtips with the large propellers actively canceling the drag-causing tip vortices.

The propellers were arranged to rotate in the opposite direction to the tip vortices, allowing the aircraft to fly with a much smaller wing area. The small wing provided high maneuverability with greater structural strength.

The empennage consisted of two vertical fins with rudders, all-moving stabilizers with anti-servo tabs,[5] and two large elevator/trim surfaces on either side of centerline on the trailing edge of the wing planform.[6]

The first flight of the V-173 was on 23 November 1942.

The aircraft's most significant problem concerned its complicated gearbox that routed power from the engines to its two long propeller shafts. The gearbox produced unacceptable amounts of vibration in ground testing, delaying the aircraft's first test flight for months.

This contributed to the aircraft feeling much too heavy when maneuvering for its light weight. In addition to this on the first few flights, the pilot was never able to achieve enough speed to achieve the correct amount of airflow over the control surfaces to pull the aircraft into level flight.

Flight testing of the V-173 went on through 1942 and 1943 with 190 flights, resulting in reports of UFOs from surprised Connecticut locals.

Charles Lindbergh piloted the V-173 during this time and found it surprisingly easy to handle and exhibiting impressive low-speed capabilities. Both Lindbergh and Guyton found that they were almost unable to stall the aircraft. ......
The developmental V-173 made its last flight 31 March 1947. In 131.8 hours of flying over 190 flights, Zimmerman's theory of a near-vertical takeoff- and landing-capable fighter had been proven.

As of April 2012, after undergoing a long restoration by Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation volunteers, the V-173 is on loan from the Smithsonian Institution to the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas.
[Wikipedia]

01/05/2022

At Last! - Comfortable for the Pilot 😎 1903-1912

The Avro Type F - a British single-seater - on May 1, 1912 became the first aircraft to fly with a completely enclosed cabin for the pilot as an integral part of the design.

It was a wire-braced mid-wing monoplane with a tailskid undercarriage. The fuselage was teardrop-shaped with flat sides and cellon windows.

Oil leakage from the engine had been anticipated to obscure pilot view by coating cabin windows; so two circular windows at the pilot's head level could be opened for the pilot's head to protrude when flying, but their use proved unnecessary.

Ingress and egress was via a sheet-aluminum trapdoor in the fuselage top. The cabin was only 2 ft (60 cm) across at its widest point.

The Type F made a few test flights in mid-1912 until damaged beyond repair in a hard landing on 13 September, after which it was not repaired.

Its Viale 35 hp engine is on display at the Science Museum in London; and the rudder was preserved by the Royal Aero Club.

Specifications
Crew: one pilot
Length: 23 ft 0 in (7.01 m)
Wingspan: 28 ft 0 in (8.53 m)
Height: 7 ft 6 in (2.29 m)
Wing area: 158 sq ft (14.7 m2)
Empty weight: 550 lb (250 kg)
Gross weight: 800 lb (360 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × Viale 35 hp 5-cylinder radial , 35 hp (26 kW)

Maximum speed: 65 mph (105 km/h, 56 kn)
Rate of climb: 300 ft/min (1.5 m/s)

04/03/2022

Amelia Earhart's helmet worn on 1928 flight across Atlantic sells for $825,000

Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) made aviation history as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Now, a tangible piece of that history -- the leather cap she wore during the journey -- has sold for $825,000, more than 10 times its high estimate of $80,000.

The online sale was hosted by Heritage Auctions, which released black-and-white photos of Earhart wearing the helmet in 1928.

The cap sold by Heritage Auctions went to an anonymous buyer.

Prior to its sale, it was a family heirloom, according to the New York Times. A Minnesota man, 67-year-old Anthony Twiggs, had inherited the aviator helmet from his mother 20 years ago and was steadfast in his belief that the cap was Earhart's.

arhart, 1928. Credit: New York Times Co./Archive Photos/Getty Images

Earhart made the historic journey that year from Newfoundland, Canada, to Burry Port, Wales, in a seaplane piloted by Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon. 4 years later, she flew a plane across the Atlantic on her own.

She famously went missing with her navigator Fred Noonan in July 1937 while attempting to become the first woman to fly across the world.

The exact circumstances of Earhart's disappearance are still unknown, but she and Noonan were on their way to Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean at the time.