US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

© 1994 - 2015 Fiddlersgreen.net. wrote:Building a rubber airplane or glider that would safely bounce a few times in the event of a crash landing rather than disintegrate on contact-has intrigued aeronautical engineers for many years. The first known attempt to design, build and fly an inflatable rubber glider and then a powered rubber airplane came about after a fatal crash in a Brazilian jungle after World War I. The accident, which resulted in the death of his friend and partner' prompted Taylor McDaniel to think about building an airplane out of inflatable rubber tubes to protect the passengers and pilot in an accident.
Back in the United States, McDaniel worked on his idea for a number of years and finally received a patent for an inflated rubber tube glider that flew twice on January 4, 1931. After making a few control adjustments, an experienced glider pilot and friend of McDaniel's, Joseph P. Bergling, flew the glider four more times that same day.
On January 11, McDaniel scheduled another test flight and press demonstration for newsreel companies, newspaper reporters and photographers. Towed by a truck, the glider reached an altitude of 100 feet before the pilot experienced control problems. He managed to land safely.
McDaniel wanted to cancel the demonstration and take the plane back to his shop to rerig the control system, but a photographer who had missed the landing insisted on one more attempt. This time the glider had reached about 80 feet when the pilot lost control. The right wing hit the ground in a near vertical position, collapsing it. When the nose hit next, the wing snapped back to its original configuration, leaving the glider intact. The test pilot suffered only a bruised right heel and a twisted left knee. Close examination of the point of impact revealed that only one wire had been broken in the crash, amounting to about 50 cents worth of damage.
McDaniel's second construction effort was a bird shaped inflated rubber tube glider mostly put together from his first aircraft before he ran out of money. But when the Great Depression hit the United States in 1931 and 1932, paralyzing the aviation industry, it became next to impossible to raise money for further development. Taylor McDaniel died in 1952 at the age of 61, still convinced his idea for a rubber airplane was a sound concept. http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/aircraft/Goodyear-Inflatoplane.html