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FLIGHT, 12 April 1957

Autopilot to Flight-control System . . .


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-

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