On Great White Wings - Dunmore

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On Great White Wings paints a compelling picture of Wilbur and Orville Wright as it describes the many trials that led up to their epic achievement. Although the brothers were often portrayed as unsophisticated bicycle mechanics working in isolation, authors Fred Culick and Spencer Dunmore reveal that the Wright brothers were actually rigorous, self-taught scientists who were influenced by such giants of nineteenth-century aviation as Germany's Otto Lilienthal and France's Alphonse Penaud. And Culick and Dunmore describe, in engaging and accessible prose, how the indefatigable Wrights solved such "unsolvable" problems as lift, propulsion, and control that had stumped their predecessors. Aeronautics expert Fred Culick has devoted many years to studying the 1903 Wright Flyer, and he brings an exciting new dimension to the story. In special illustrated features throughout the book, he provides for the first time a complete explanation of the complex aerodynamic forces that lifted the first manned flight into the air - something even the Wright brothers didn't fully understand at the time.