WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.279 Welcome back to the show. We have an incredible 00:00:02.279 --> 00:00:05.280 mission for today's deep dive. You, the listener, 00:00:05.459 --> 00:00:08.900 sent us an excerpted Wikipedia article covering 00:00:08.900 --> 00:00:12.400 a largely forgotten but honestly utterly massive 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:14.919 chapter of aviation history. Well, massive is 00:00:14.919 --> 00:00:16.660 definitely the right word for it. Yeah. We're 00:00:16.660 --> 00:00:18.440 talking about the reason Flugzeug today, our 00:00:18.440 --> 00:00:21.730 planes, and... looking at the virtual backdrop 00:00:21.730 --> 00:00:24.550 you've set up for us. Ah, you like the dusty, 00:00:24.789 --> 00:00:28.350 sepia -toned hangar look? I love it. It's perfect. 00:00:28.410 --> 00:00:30.190 We're just surrounded by these sprawling, incredibly 00:00:30.190 --> 00:00:34.149 complex blueprints of early 20th century biplanes 00:00:34.149 --> 00:00:36.600 and triplanes. It really sets the mood. Because 00:00:36.600 --> 00:00:40.380 to grasp the sheer, just the audacity of this 00:00:40.380 --> 00:00:42.600 era, we really need to anchor ourselves firmly 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:45.759 in the years between 1915 and 1919. Right. When 00:00:45.759 --> 00:00:48.200 people think about World War I aviation, the 00:00:48.200 --> 00:00:50.020 picture that usually comes to mind is, you know, 00:00:50.039 --> 00:00:53.140 flimsy single -seat biplanes, the classic dogfighters 00:00:53.140 --> 00:00:55.020 swirling over the trenches. Snoopy and the Red 00:00:55.020 --> 00:00:57.640 Baron kind of stuff. Exactly. But operating right 00:00:57.640 --> 00:01:01.079 alongside those tiny maneuverable aircraft, Germany 00:01:01.079 --> 00:01:03.299 was actually building absolute behemoths. I mean, 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:05.719 the largest warplanes of the entire conflict. 00:01:06.159 --> 00:01:08.859 Okay, let's unpack this. Because defining what 00:01:08.859 --> 00:01:11.439 actually makes something a Riesenflugzeug is 00:01:11.439 --> 00:01:13.879 crucial. Yeah, the term itself just translates 00:01:13.879 --> 00:01:17.099 to giant aircraft in German. Right, but the German 00:01:17.099 --> 00:01:20.239 military used it as a very strict technical classification. 00:01:20.359 --> 00:01:23.519 It wasn't just a nickname. To actually qualify 00:01:23.519 --> 00:01:26.140 for the R -Class, a bomber had to have at least 00:01:26.140 --> 00:01:28.700 three aircraft engines. So they usually had four 00:01:28.700 --> 00:01:31.790 or more. Right. And their payload capacity had 00:01:31.790 --> 00:01:34.129 to be significantly larger than the standard 00:01:34.129 --> 00:01:36.730 heavy bombers of the time, the Grossflugzeug. 00:01:36.930 --> 00:01:39.810 Like the Gotha GV. Exactly. But what completely 00:01:39.810 --> 00:01:42.010 blew my mind in the article you sent us, and 00:01:42.010 --> 00:01:44.890 this is a staggering piece of context, the airplanes 00:01:44.890 --> 00:01:47.329 that bombed London during the First World War 00:01:47.329 --> 00:01:49.689 were actually larger than any of the primary 00:01:49.689 --> 00:01:52.810 German bombers used decades later during World 00:01:52.810 --> 00:01:55.250 War II. Which is wild when you think about the 00:01:55.250 --> 00:01:57.790 timeline of aviation. The Luftwaffe in the Second 00:01:57.790 --> 00:02:00.810 World War. had large planes, sure, but they were 00:02:00.810 --> 00:02:03.650 mostly transports or maritime patrol. World War 00:02:03.650 --> 00:02:06.709 I airplanes were true strategic bombers built 00:02:06.709 --> 00:02:08.990 on a scale that just defied the materials of 00:02:08.990 --> 00:02:10.770 the time. They were building outward instead 00:02:10.770 --> 00:02:13.569 of upward with engine power. Yeah, because early 00:02:13.569 --> 00:02:16.439 engines were weak. If you wanted to lift a heavy 00:02:16.439 --> 00:02:19.159 bomb load, you needed immense wing surface area. 00:02:19.340 --> 00:02:21.699 And Germany wasn't alone in this. It was an international 00:02:21.699 --> 00:02:25.180 arms race. The source lists the Allied equivalents, 00:02:25.180 --> 00:02:26.919 and everyone was trying to build these giants. 00:02:27.039 --> 00:02:29.199 Yeah, the direct inspiration for the German program 00:02:29.199 --> 00:02:32.340 was actually a Russian plane, the Sikorsky Ilya 00:02:32.340 --> 00:02:35.500 Muromets. Right, with a wingspan of 29 .8 meters. 00:02:35.819 --> 00:02:38.020 Exactly. That proved you could build a multi 00:02:38.020 --> 00:02:40.569 -engine giant and keep it in the air. Then Italy 00:02:40.569 --> 00:02:43.610 stepped in with the Caproni Sackway 4. That one 00:02:43.610 --> 00:02:46.509 marginally beat the Russian plane with a 29 .9 00:02:46.509 --> 00:02:48.909 meter span. Just inching past them. Totally. 00:02:48.990 --> 00:02:50.870 And the British weren't sitting out either. They 00:02:50.870 --> 00:02:53.050 had the Felixstowe Fury, which was this one -off 00:02:53.050 --> 00:02:56.509 flying boat that hit 37 .5 meters. And the Panley 00:02:56.509 --> 00:02:59.930 Page V1500 stretched all the way to 38 .41 meters. 00:03:00.189 --> 00:03:02.569 But the absolute peak of this specific era, the 00:03:02.569 --> 00:03:05.620 undisputed record holder, was German. The Siemens 00:03:05.620 --> 00:03:08.680 Shuckert R8. Built in 1918. And its wingspan 00:03:08.680 --> 00:03:13.520 was 48 .0 meters, almost 160 feet. Which is staggering. 00:03:13.780 --> 00:03:16.719 Just an ocean of timber, bracing wire, and fabric 00:03:16.719 --> 00:03:19.780 stretching across the sky. And here's the craziest 00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:23.500 part about that 48 meter wingspan. It took a 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:27.539 full 16 years before any other nation built an 00:03:27.539 --> 00:03:30.740 airplane with a larger wingspan. 16 years. Yeah. 00:03:30.740 --> 00:03:34.039 It held the record until the Soviet Union built 00:03:34.039 --> 00:03:37.259 the Tupolev Maxim Gorky in 1934. And that was 00:03:37.259 --> 00:03:40.060 a 63 -meter wingspan, but it was a much later 00:03:40.060 --> 00:03:43.819 monoplane design. For a wooden wire biplane from 00:03:43.819 --> 00:03:46.479 1918 to hold that record for that long just shows 00:03:46.479 --> 00:03:48.650 how far they were pushing the engineering. But 00:03:48.650 --> 00:03:51.210 pushing the size was just one part of the headache. 00:03:51.370 --> 00:03:53.090 Oh, absolutely. Because there was a specific 00:03:53.090 --> 00:03:55.469 rule from the German military that made the R 00:03:55.469 --> 00:03:58.110 -Class an absolute nightmare to design. What's 00:03:58.110 --> 00:04:00.830 fascinating here is that defining mandate. It 00:04:00.830 --> 00:04:02.530 wasn't just about having three or more engines. 00:04:02.830 --> 00:04:05.030 The military demanded that those engines had 00:04:05.030 --> 00:04:07.009 to be serviceable in flight. Here's where it 00:04:07.009 --> 00:04:09.069 gets really interesting. You have to picture 00:04:09.069 --> 00:04:12.389 the reality of 1915 engines. They were, frankly, 00:04:12.550 --> 00:04:15.349 terrible. Very unreliable. They overheated. They 00:04:15.349 --> 00:04:17.889 spewed oil. They ceased up. If you are flying 00:04:17.889 --> 00:04:20.430 deep into enemy territory and an engine dies, 00:04:20.790 --> 00:04:22.949 you can't just land in a field. Right. You become 00:04:22.949 --> 00:04:26.230 a prisoner of war. Or worse. Exactly. So the 00:04:26.230 --> 00:04:28.870 military said, fine, if the engines are going 00:04:28.870 --> 00:04:31.269 to break, the plane has to be a flying workshop 00:04:31.269 --> 00:04:34.170 so mechanics can fix them in the air. And to 00:04:34.170 --> 00:04:37.110 solve this, the engineers split into two totally 00:04:37.110 --> 00:04:38.949 different design camps. Right. Let's look at 00:04:38.949 --> 00:04:42.329 design one first. This group approached the bomber 00:04:42.329 --> 00:04:44.310 almost like it was a naval ship. An airborne 00:04:44.310 --> 00:04:47.430 submarine, basically. Yeah. They decided. The 00:04:47.430 --> 00:04:49.209 safest place for the engines and the mechanics 00:04:49.209 --> 00:04:52.870 was inside the fuselage, centralized. So they 00:04:52.870 --> 00:04:55.629 mounted these massive heavy engines in the belly 00:04:55.629 --> 00:04:57.750 of the plane. But then how do you turn the propellers? 00:04:57.990 --> 00:05:00.470 That was the catch. They had to invent this insane 00:05:00.470 --> 00:05:03.930 system of gearboxes and long metal drive shafts 00:05:03.930 --> 00:05:05.850 running from the center of the plane out through 00:05:05.850 --> 00:05:08.269 the wooden wings to spin remote propellers. Which 00:05:08.269 --> 00:05:10.850 is a mechanical disaster waiting to happen. The 00:05:10.850 --> 00:05:13.389 source notes that in practice, this power transmission 00:05:13.389 --> 00:05:15.910 method was incredibly troublesome. Troublesome 00:05:15.910 --> 00:05:18.550 is an understatement. You've got rigid, high 00:05:18.550 --> 00:05:21.470 -speed metal shafts spinning inside flexible, 00:05:21.649 --> 00:05:24.970 vibrating wooden biplane wings. The harmonic 00:05:24.970 --> 00:05:27.290 resonance alone would tear the gearboxes apart. 00:05:27.430 --> 00:05:30.129 The friction, the twisting, it just didn't work. 00:05:30.389 --> 00:05:32.769 The material science of the day just wasn't up 00:05:32.769 --> 00:05:35.490 to that kind of precision. Which brings us to 00:05:35.490 --> 00:05:39.709 design two. The pragmatists? Exactly. They scrapped 00:05:39.709 --> 00:05:41.670 the internal engine room and the drive shafts. 00:05:41.670 --> 00:05:44.009 They went with conventional setups. They mounted 00:05:44.009 --> 00:05:46.230 the engines directly out on the wings in large 00:05:46.230 --> 00:05:50.149 nacelles or on the nose, direct drive. The propeller 00:05:50.149 --> 00:05:52.269 is attached right to the engine. But they still 00:05:52.269 --> 00:05:54.389 had to follow the military rule. The engines 00:05:54.389 --> 00:05:57.670 had to be serviced mid -flight. Yes. So their 00:05:57.670 --> 00:05:59.610 solution was to build the engine nacelles out 00:05:59.610 --> 00:06:01.990 on the wings large enough to put a person inside. 00:06:02.439 --> 00:06:04.180 I just can't get over this detail. They actually 00:06:04.180 --> 00:06:06.959 stationed mechanics inside these wooden pods, 00:06:07.100 --> 00:06:10.019 out on the wings, sitting next to a roaring engine 00:06:10.019 --> 00:06:12.420 during the entire flight. It sounds like fiction, 00:06:12.540 --> 00:06:14.839 but it was standard practice for these planes, 00:06:15.060 --> 00:06:17.519 and the direct drive method actually won out. 00:06:17.660 --> 00:06:20.560 The most successful model of the entire R -Class 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:24.100 used this design. The Zeppelin -staken RVI. Exactly. 00:06:24.379 --> 00:06:26.660 18 of them were built, which is a massive production 00:06:26.660 --> 00:06:29.339 run for the R -Class. And they weren't just test 00:06:29.339 --> 00:06:32.019 models. They actively bombed the Western Front. 00:06:32.379 --> 00:06:35.220 18 units really is a huge success when you look 00:06:35.220 --> 00:06:37.060 at the rest of the list in the source, because 00:06:37.060 --> 00:06:39.579 almost all the other planes were one -offs. Just 00:06:39.579 --> 00:06:42.040 a menagerie of monsters. Truly. I mean, imagine 00:06:42.040 --> 00:06:43.759 you're a soldier in the trenches and you see 00:06:43.759 --> 00:06:46.779 one of these bizarre multi -engine wooden castles 00:06:46.779 --> 00:06:49.240 lumbering overhead. But because they were mostly 00:06:49.240 --> 00:06:51.100 experiments, the outcomes were often incredibly 00:06:51.100 --> 00:06:53.519 tragic. The trial and error phase was brutal. 00:06:53.740 --> 00:06:58.149 Take the AEGRI, for example. Built in 1918. It 00:06:58.149 --> 00:07:00.569 literally broke up in midair. The aerodynamic 00:07:00.569 --> 00:07:02.810 forces just ripped it apart. Yeah, structural 00:07:02.810 --> 00:07:06.110 failure. And it was so bad, they instantly abandoned 00:07:06.110 --> 00:07:08.310 seven other airframes of the same model that 00:07:08.310 --> 00:07:10.069 were currently being built. Just pulled the plug 00:07:10.069 --> 00:07:12.730 completely. We see that same fatal structural 00:07:12.730 --> 00:07:16.290 issue with the Seaman Shickert Forceman R. Ah, 00:07:16.410 --> 00:07:19.790 the Forceman. This thing was an absolute mess. 00:07:20.029 --> 00:07:23.009 It was used as a trainer starting in 1915. It 00:07:23.009 --> 00:07:26.100 had this weird, unbalanced engine setup. Two 00:07:26.100 --> 00:07:28.980 smaller engines and two massive ones. They had 00:07:28.980 --> 00:07:30.639 to rebuild it over and over again before the 00:07:30.639 --> 00:07:32.560 military would even let it be used just to train 00:07:32.560 --> 00:07:35.420 pilots. And its final fate. It was scrapped because 00:07:35.420 --> 00:07:37.980 the fuselage just snapped in two. Just broke 00:07:37.980 --> 00:07:40.079 its own back. Broke its own back under the weight. 00:07:40.160 --> 00:07:42.620 But instead of dialing it back, designers kept 00:07:42.620 --> 00:07:46.439 pushing for even more absurd extremes. Look at 00:07:46.439 --> 00:07:49.339 the Manisman giant triplane. Oh, the Manisman. 00:07:49.610 --> 00:07:52.029 The sheer hubris of that design. If four engines 00:07:52.029 --> 00:07:54.889 are good, why not ten? Ten engines on a triplane. 00:07:54.949 --> 00:07:58.149 Yes. The blueprints called for a 50 -meter wingspan 00:07:58.149 --> 00:08:01.550 to carry ten individual engines. Thankfully, 00:08:01.610 --> 00:08:03.269 it was canceled before they could finish building 00:08:03.269 --> 00:08:06.449 it because the war ended. The drag alone would 00:08:06.449 --> 00:08:08.610 have made it a brick. And then there's the Link 00:08:08.610 --> 00:08:11.180 Hoffman, Shay. This one actually flew in 1919. 00:08:11.459 --> 00:08:14.259 It only had four engines, but it drove the largest 00:08:14.259 --> 00:08:16.480 single propeller ever built for an aircraft. 00:08:16.720 --> 00:08:19.639 6 .9 meters in diameter. Nearly 23 feet across. 00:08:19.879 --> 00:08:23.379 Just one massive blade. Think about the engineering 00:08:23.379 --> 00:08:26.480 nightmare that creates. The gyroscopic force 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:29.300 of a 23 -foot propeller spinning on the front 00:08:29.300 --> 00:08:31.540 of a wooden plane. Every time the pilot tries 00:08:31.540 --> 00:08:33.940 to turn, the physics want to rip the nose off. 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:36.279 Not to mention just trying to take off. You need 00:08:36.279 --> 00:08:39.220 incredibly tall scaffolding -like landing gear 00:08:39.220 --> 00:08:41.299 just so the propeller blade doesn't strike the 00:08:41.299 --> 00:08:44.220 dirt. Right, which adds tons of drag and weight. 00:08:44.299 --> 00:08:46.460 It's just solving one problem by creating three 00:08:46.460 --> 00:08:49.419 worse ones. Exactly. But it's important to note 00:08:49.419 --> 00:08:51.559 that this whole R -class obsession wasn't just 00:08:51.559 --> 00:08:54.100 for land -based bombers. There was the whole 00:08:54.100 --> 00:08:57.179 subcategory of flying boats. The Zeppelin Lindau 00:08:57.179 --> 00:08:59.320 R series? Right, the R's all the way through 00:08:59.320 --> 00:09:02.379 the R -6. These were designed for long -range 00:09:02.379 --> 00:09:05.389 maritime patrols over the ocean. And there is 00:09:05.389 --> 00:09:07.769 a great historical connection here. These giant 00:09:07.769 --> 00:09:10.269 flying boats were developed by Claudius Dornier. 00:09:10.429 --> 00:09:12.370 While he was still working for Zeppelin. Yes. 00:09:12.470 --> 00:09:15.210 He used the R -series to figure out the complex 00:09:15.210 --> 00:09:18.710 math of multi -engine seaplanes. The R -SIF actually 00:09:18.710 --> 00:09:22.250 had a 37 -meter wingspan and was evaluated by 00:09:22.250 --> 00:09:25.129 the military in 1917. So he took all the hard 00:09:25.129 --> 00:09:27.929 lessons he learned from these World War I wooden 00:09:27.929 --> 00:09:30.710 giants managing water landings, the corrosive 00:09:30.710 --> 00:09:33.870 sea air, the structural stress, and applied that 00:09:33.870 --> 00:09:36.230 directly to his famous interwar flying boats. 00:09:36.350 --> 00:09:39.049 Weeding right up to the massive Dornier 2X. That's 00:09:39.049 --> 00:09:41.169 a great through line. Now, organizing all of 00:09:41.169 --> 00:09:43.029 this chaos, all these competing manufacturers 00:09:43.029 --> 00:09:46.110 and experimental prototypes took a massive amount 00:09:46.110 --> 00:09:48.870 of bureaucracy. The German military had a dedicated 00:09:48.870 --> 00:09:52.019 department for it, the Idflieg. The Inspection 00:09:52.019 --> 00:09:56.659 of the Air Force. They managed the funding, evaluated 00:09:56.659 --> 00:09:59.360 the prototypes, and tried to enforce some level 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:02.279 of standardization on this fleet of weird machines. 00:10:02.740 --> 00:10:05.000 And their naming convention reflects that. It 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:08.259 was incredibly rigid, but simple. Any plane that 00:10:08.259 --> 00:10:11.559 met the giant multi -engine, in -flight serviceable 00:10:11.559 --> 00:10:14.740 criteria was an R. Followed by a period and then 00:10:14.740 --> 00:10:16.919 a Roman numeral. Right. So that Zeppelin stake, 00:10:16.980 --> 00:10:19.139 and we talked about earlier, is the RVI because 00:10:19.139 --> 00:10:21.860 it was the sixth accepted model from that manufacturer. 00:10:22.220 --> 00:10:24.039 And for the seaplanes, they just added a lowercase 00:10:24.039 --> 00:10:27.580 s. So Dornier's third flying boat became the 00:10:27.580 --> 00:10:30.059 Ars III. Exactly. It kept the paperwork clean, 00:10:30.220 --> 00:10:32.320 even if the planes themselves were a chaotic 00:10:32.320 --> 00:10:34.980 mess of trial and error. So what does this all 00:10:34.980 --> 00:10:37.149 mean? When we look back at the R plane. we're 00:10:37.149 --> 00:10:40.850 looking at a very brief, incredibly intense window 00:10:40.850 --> 00:10:45.049 in aviation history. Just 1915 to 1919. Right. 00:10:45.169 --> 00:10:48.370 And driven by the desperation of a global war, 00:10:48.610 --> 00:10:52.370 engineers tried to basically cheat the slow evolution 00:10:52.370 --> 00:10:54.470 of technology by simply making things bigger. 00:10:54.629 --> 00:10:58.029 They pushed wood, canvas, and wire to limits 00:10:58.029 --> 00:10:59.970 that wouldn't be touched again for almost two 00:10:59.970 --> 00:11:03.309 decades. They paved the way for the heavy multi 00:11:03.309 --> 00:11:05.809 -engine strategic bombers that would define the 00:11:05.809 --> 00:11:08.370 rest of the 20th century. But this raises an 00:11:08.370 --> 00:11:10.289 important question, and I think it's something 00:11:10.289 --> 00:11:12.110 we really need to sit with. What's that? The 00:11:12.110 --> 00:11:14.389 human element. We talked about the engineering 00:11:14.389 --> 00:11:16.850 mandate for in -flight servicing. We talked about 00:11:16.850 --> 00:11:19.470 placing mechanics inside the engine nacelles, 00:11:19.470 --> 00:11:22.389 the direct drive models. But imagine the raw 00:11:22.389 --> 00:11:24.830 physical reality of being one of those mechanics. 00:11:25.110 --> 00:11:27.370 It's almost unimaginable. You're stationed inside 00:11:27.370 --> 00:11:30.309 a thin, unpressurized wooden box suspended out 00:11:30.309 --> 00:11:32.950 on the wing of a biplane, thousands of feet in 00:11:32.950 --> 00:11:35.909 the air. Over an active battlefield. Or the freezing 00:11:35.909 --> 00:11:38.350 ocean. The air is freezing, the plane is vibrating 00:11:38.350 --> 00:11:41.090 violently. And right next to you is a massive, 00:11:41.269 --> 00:11:44.090 unsilenced aviation engine running at full RPM. 00:11:44.760 --> 00:11:47.379 The noise alone would be a physical assault. 00:11:47.539 --> 00:11:49.639 You'd go deaf instantly without modern protection. 00:11:49.820 --> 00:11:52.740 You are surrounded by highly flammable aviation 00:11:52.740 --> 00:11:55.759 fuel, hot oil spitting everywhere, and you're 00:11:55.759 --> 00:11:58.419 just holding a wrench. Your only job is to keep 00:11:58.419 --> 00:12:00.480 that temperamental engine running, because if 00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:03.879 a valve seizes or an oil line cracks, the entire 00:12:03.879 --> 00:12:06.200 behemoth might fall from the sky. the psychological 00:12:06.200 --> 00:12:08.659 endurance that would require. You are crawling 00:12:08.659 --> 00:12:11.120 around in the freezing dark, totally exposed, 00:12:11.500 --> 00:12:13.940 knowing the lives of the whole crew depend on 00:12:13.940 --> 00:12:16.139 you fixing an experimental engine mid -flight. 00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:18.759 It's a terrifying, visceral human experience 00:12:18.759 --> 00:12:21.940 hidden inside the belly of these giant machines. 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:24.820 It really grounds all these massive blueprints 00:12:24.820 --> 00:12:27.840 and records into a stark reality. Thank you to 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:29.820 the listener, the learner, for sending this source 00:12:29.820 --> 00:12:32.740 in and sparking this deep dive. The R -planes 00:12:32.740 --> 00:12:35.360 are a fascinating piece of history. To everyone 00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:37.539 listening, keep exploring the hidden margins 00:12:37.539 --> 00:12:40.000 of history, and we will catch you on the next 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:40.580 deep dive.