This document discusses the history and development of autopilot and gyroscopic instruments from the 1930s through World War 2. It describes some of the early gyroscopic compasses developed in the 1930s by Sperry, Pioneer, and others. During World War 2, there was increased integration of autopilot, bombing sights, and other instruments. After the war, autopilots began incorporating rate and acceleration functions in addition to displacement, enabled by electrical systems. This allowed for features like automatic airspeed control and radio approach couplers. Development continued towards heavier aircraft requirements.
This document discusses the history and development of autopilot and gyroscopic instruments from the 1930s through World War 2. It describes some of the early gyroscopic compasses developed in the 1930s by Sperry, Pioneer, and others. During World War 2, there was increased integration of autopilot, bombing sights, and other instruments. After the war, autopilots began incorporating rate and acceleration functions in addition to displacement, enabled by electrical systems. This allowed for features like automatic airspeed control and radio approach couplers. Development continued towards heavier aircraft requirements.
This document discusses the history and development of autopilot and gyroscopic instruments from the 1930s through World War 2. It describes some of the early gyroscopic compasses developed in the 1930s by Sperry, Pioneer, and others. During World War 2, there was increased integration of autopilot, bombing sights, and other instruments. After the war, autopilots began incorporating rate and acceleration functions in addition to displacement, enabled by electrical systems. This allowed for features like automatic airspeed control and radio approach couplers. Development continued towards heavier aircraft requirements.
the long Empire air routes for Imperial Airways in the late 1930s. As far as concentration of panel instruments was concerned, the first and probably most important group to be tackled was that giving heading information. Various forms of gyro-magnetic compass were developed in the 1930s to combine the magnetic compass and directional gyro. The R.A.F. distant-reading compass originally conceived by Air Ministry and S. G. Brown, Ltd., in 1934, was put into full-scale production for bombers and was, in fact, a standard instrument throughout World War 2 in heavier Service aircraft. In America, Sperry and Pioneer were working on the same problem and examples of the result of their efforts were the Sperry "slaved" gyro-magnetic compass in 1937 and the Pioneer gyro-fluxgate compass which was widely used in U.S. military aircraft during World War 2. These were the forerunners of the present day Sperry "Gyrosyn," Bendix, Kelvin Hughes and other gyro-magnetic compasses which are now almost universally used in all but the smallest and simplest types of aircraft. The gyro-magnetic compass was a step in the right direction, but the number of instruments required continued to grow as all forms of radio aids, including Lorenz, Standard Beam Approach, homing and, for military purposes, Gee and the other positionfixing radio aids came to be added to the range and scope of instrument information required at various times during a flight. From the purely military point of view, during World War 2, bombing aids and weapon sighting instruments were added, and these still further aggravated the problem. Towards the end of the war it became obvious that, for accurate bombing, much closer integration of aircraft-control and weapon-sighting was needed; and this laid the foundation for the modern electronic automatic pilots which are now almost a standard fitment in heavy transport as well as bomber aircraft. The combination of the American Norden bomb-sight and Minneapolis-Honeywell electric autopilot or the Sperry integrated bombing and autopilot system were widely used in Liberators and Fortresses. Work along similar lines for the British Services was carried out under the guidance of R.A.E. and based on the Mk 14 bombsight, D.R. compass and Mk 8 autopilot. Thus, for bombers, a stage had been reached by the end of World War 2 where there was a large degree of integration of gyro-magnetic compass, autopilot and bomb-aiming equipment. At this stage it is of advantage to digress for a while from the main theme of integration and concentrate on the development of autopilots, i.e., of the basic automatic Control equipment. This equipment can be divided largely into two general categories : firstly, that which assists the pilot to fly his aircraft more efficiently in the face of stability limitations in the basic airframe; and, secondly, that which relieves fatigue during flying for comparatively long periods. Into the second category, of course, fall all those civil autopilots of the pre-war era and, to a lesser extent, the military equipments of the same and rather later years. These were essentially displacement-type autopilots which, with references about all three axes, worked through all three control channels. The majority had facilities for the superimposition of manual control so that normal flight manoeuvres such as turns, climbs, and descents could be executed by overriding the outopilot. But for military purposesand it was here that the greater autopilot development effort was appliedthe initial emphasis was rather different. For example, the original Mk 1 autopilot, developed by R.A.E., was intended primarily as a stabilizing control for bombing. It was nominally a two-axis control for rudder and elevators only, used a single conventional displacement gyro, and corrected yaw and pitch disturbances. In fact, an indirect control about the roll axis was achieved by the girnballing effect of the inclined gimbal-axis of the gyro. Later versions, from the Mk 2 up to the Mk 7, utilized a separate aileron-control gyro and servo system in addition to this rudder/ elevator control. Other forms of early military autopilots, such as the Pollock Brown and some German Siemens and Askania types, were two- or single-axis systems principally concerned with the steering and pitch functions. But once the value of the stabilizing effect in these two axes was appreciated there came a tendency to adopt a control on the third axis, either by means of an additional separate gyro-reference and servo-channel or by some form of combination of all three channels. Further development of airframe design, bringing improvement of aerodynamic stability, particularly about the yaw axis, tended to reduce the importance of the rudder-control function, thus allowing the design of autopilots for control through ailerons and elevators only. A notable example of this predominantly aileron/ elevator type of control was the R.A.E. Mk 8 autopilot widely used in R.A.F. bomber aircraft during World War 2. This was a displacement-type autopilot utilizing a single, gravity-controlled, inclined-axis gyro to provide pitch and roll reference. A short-term yaw reference was provided indirectly by gimballing effect and the long-term heading reference was supplied by signals from the
The Curtiss F-Boat in which Lawrence Sperry first installed a gyropilot.
It is here seen in Franceon the Seinein 1914.
D.R. compass. Control was applied by pneumatic servos to the
aileron and elevator channels only. Complete manual override was possible for climbs, descents, and turns; and a novel means of "jinking" or taking avoiding action, was incorporated. As aircraft development continued it became apparent that the aerodynamic characteristics or short-term stability of the airframe would not be sufficient to damp out the inherent tendency of the purely displacement-type of automatic control to hunt about the mean flight-path, although various artificial methods were adopted in the follow-up or feed-back function of autopilots to reduce this hunting to a minimum. Thus a rate function was introduced and (at least in the earlier stages) added to the displacement function about one or more axes to provide a damping factor in the automatic control system. In some cases the second derivative, i.e., an acceleration term, was added; but until comparatively recently, with one or two notable exceptions, acceleration terms were not considered to be of major importance. Before rate terms were incorporated, most autopilots had employed vacuum-driven gyros and either pneumatic or hydraulic signalling and actuation. But the Pollock Brown equipment was significant in that it was entirely hydraulic in operation, except for an electrical system for applying manual override. The inclusion of rate, and particularly the mixing of rate with displacement terms, was much easier to achieve in electrical signalling systems; and for this and other possibly more important reasons electrical operation was introduced into autopilots. One of the most elaborate early electrical designs was a German three-axis control, the joint product of Askania, Patin and Siemens, which, quite early in the war, incorporated displacement, rate and acceleration terms. The displacement and rate references were obtained from electrically driven displacement and rate gyros, and the acceleration term (about the pitch axis only) from a fore-and-aft linear accelerometer. The various pick-off signals in each control channel were suitably mixed in a galvanometer type of movement and the output was used to control a rotary electrical servo coupled to the aircraft controls. This equipment was especially interesting as it was one of the first examples of an autopilot in which control was by the rate of application of control, i.e., a servo speed was made proportional to the control signals and no follow-up system was required. In America, the Minneapolis-Honeywell electric autopilot was another early example of the new technique of combining rate and displacement. But here just two displacement gyros were used, one vertical and one directional, the rate function being obtained for the yaw plane by an ingenious viscosity throttle/potentiometer device which, operated by the directional gyro, supplied yaw displacement signals. Rate and displacement control was applied only in the yaw plane, the other two planes being controlled solely according to displacement. Control signals were electronically amplified to operate the electric servos coupled to all three control surfaces. The interaction between the three control surfaces was particularly carefully studied in order to achieve proper co-ordination during disturbances or controlled manoeuvres. In America, too, the Sperry A-5 began a long line of electronic autopilots, developed initially for precise aircraft control to provide a stable bombing platform. In this equipment electrical differentiation of displacement signals was used to provide both rate and acceleration terms and the electrical and electronic circuitry enabled a number of additional features to be incorporated, such as automatic airspeed control, height lock and, later on, radio approach couplers. By this time (shortly after World War 2) the heavier military bomber and transport and civil airliner requirements had become very similar. But the development story may be interrupted here by recording one particular autopilot which caused a substantial proportion of Flight readers acute discomfort towards the end of World War 2, namely, that in the V.I. This was a rudder-and-