The Century of Flight — Season 1, Episode 25: Madcaps and Oddballs
Documentary • 50 min • 1 season, 26 episodes
Episode synopsis
Japanese manpowered flight competition. Manpowered flight - the story from Icarus and Daedalus to Kanellopolous’s 1988 distance record. Footage includes many bizarre attempts down through the decades, with a fair degree of colour and humour. Diagrams explain the problems of manpowered flight. It will never fly - Zany home-made flying machines 1900-39. Humour is the keynote. Wartime Oddballs - German piggyback aircraft and other projects, the flying jeep, and many more. White Elephants - expensive projects that hardly got off the ground. These will include Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, the Northrop Flying Wing, and the British TSR project. The one that worked - Voyager’s 1986 non-stop circumnavigation.
About The Century of Flight
This definitive history of manned flight has been compiled into 26 hour episodes, with access to some of the rarest archive film ever taken. Unprecedented co-operation has been extended by the world's leading aircraft manufacturers and leading archive libraries. Included in the footage are shots of rare prototype accidents and failures which contributed to the inevitable achievement and success of man in the air. Since Charles Lindbergh became the first lone aviator to cross the Atlantic in 1927, air transport has greatly accelerated , revolutionised by the giant Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet - and what might we see in the 21st century?