Golden Age Pioneers: Juan de le Cierva

Juan de la Cierva (21 September 1895 -- 9 December 1936) born in Murcia, Spain to a wealthy family, was a Spanish civil engineer and pilot. His most famous accomplishment was the invention in 1919 of the Autogiro, a type of aircraft that later came to be called an autogyro. Juan de la Cierva started building aircraft as early as 1912, and in 1919 he started to consider the use of windmills or rotors as a means of sustaining lift at low speed, and possibly eliminating the risk of stalling altogether. Ironically, he was later killed in an airline accident attributed to a stall. Before this could be satisfactorily achieved, Cierva experienced several failures primarily associated with the unbalanced rolling movement generated when attempting take-off, due to asymmetry of lift between the advancing and retreating blades. This major difficulty was resolved by the introduction of the flapping hinge. In 1923, Cierva's first successful "Autogyro" was flown in Spain by Lt Gomez Spencer. In 1925 he brought his C.6 to England and demonstrated it to the Air Ministry at Farnborough. This machine had a four bladed rotor with flapping hinges but relied upon conventional aircraft controls for pitch, roll and yaw. It was based upon an Avro 504K fuselage, initial rotation of the rotor was achieved by the manual tension of a rope passed around stops on the undersides of the blades. The Farnborough demonstration was a great success, and resulted in an invitation to continue the work in the ...

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