Annular biplane Following a series of patents on circular-wing aircraft taken out by Williband Franz Zelger and Isaac Henry Storey, the
boiler engineer John George Aulsebrook Kitchen built an annular-wing biplane but was unable to fly it. He later took out his own patent, while he and Storey also jointly patent an entirely different type of multiplane. Kitchen subsequently sold both the patent and the machine to Cedric Lee, who would also later acquire Zelger's patent. Tilghman Richards joined Lee in 1910 and together they finished the aeroplane, fitting a
Gnome Omega engine in the front. The machine is known variously as the
Kitchen annular biplane and the
Lee-Richards annular biplane. Flight tests in 1911 were disappointing. That Autumn, the biplane was destroyed on the ground by high winds, when its hangar collapsed. A non-flying replica later appeared in the 1965 film
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and is now on display at the
Newark Air Museum.
Annular glider Lee and Richards continued experimenting with models. They developed a form having a circular lower wing with an auxiliary plane above the front half of the main wing. A full-size manned glider proved successful.
Annular monoplanes Model tests of a new design at the
National Physics Laboratory gave promising results, suggesting that an annular monoplane would be aerodynamically stable and have benign
stalling characteristics. The first full-size monoplane was taken for its maiden flight in 1913 by
Gordon England. It was found to be stable in the air but was tail-heavy and crashed when the engine failed. Gordon England survived to fly the next one. A second example was built with modified tail surfaces. It was flown by Gordon England,
C. Gordon Bell and N. S. Percival. It too was stable and was reported to be pleasant to fly. Bell subsequently crashed it, also surviving. The third and last monoplane to fly was further modified and was also pleasant to fly. It was used regularly until the outbreak of war in 1914. Lee himself then tried to fly it but succeeded only in crashing it into a lake before swimming to the shore. Two further examples were under construction in 1914, with the intention of competing in the next planned
Gordon Bennett air race, however they were never completed.
Later work Tilghman Richards continued to promote the benefits of the annular wing, but without success. While working for
Beardmore in 1916 he patented an improved method of construction. He went on to work for the
Science Museum, London, where a model of a Lee-Richards annular monoplane is on display. During World War I Lee ended up with the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and was subsequently killed in action. ==The annular monoplane==