This Could’ve Changed Air Travel Forever

In the late 1950’s, intercity air travel was on the rise. But while a trip from New York to Boston by airplane might only take about an hour, you’d still need to get to and from the airport. And in many congested cities, that was already taking longer than the flight itself. As a solution, helicopter airlines had begun to crop up in major cities, letting passengers skip over traffic to connect airports with their city centers. But helicopters were ultimately too inefficient to become a viable form of mass transport. The Rotodyne was going to change all that. Taking off from downtown rooftops and heliports, but flying faster, further, and more economically than any helicopter, the Rotodyne would be the quickest way to move from one city centre to the next.

The Rotodyne might have looked like part helicopter, part plane, but it was actually neither. Where a helicopter uses engine power to spin a rotor blade to force air down and create lift, on a Rotodyne the large rotor wasn’t directly driven by a motor. Instead it used a freely-spinning rotor called an autogyro. As air passed naturally through the rotor blades during flight, it caused the rotor spin around like a pinwheel to create lift. The Rotodyne still had wings and a pair of turboprops much like an airplane. But in forward flight, the unpowered spinning rotor lifted more than half the aircraft’s weight. To take off and land vertically and hover, tip jets at the end of each rotor blade would be used to spin up the Rotodyne’s rotor. Once in forward flight, the tip jets were shut off and the rotor would once again spin freely.

When the first Rotodyne prototype took to the skies, it could carry 40 passengers over 700km and reach speeds of over 300km/h, all while being able to land and take off on a space not much larger than the aircraft itself. And after 350 successful test flights, the Rotodyne proved to be safe and capable. But despite plans for an even larger more powerful version, a combination of noise concerns and lack of government support for research and development ultimately led to cancellation of the project.

Select footage courtesy the AP Archive:

Special thanks to Nick Arehart for helping clean up our audio:

Thanks for watching!

[MustardChannel]

Hi all - as some viewers are pointing out, it's a mistake to describe a 133 dB to 96 dB reduction as 15%. It's much more than that, as decibels are a logarithmic unit. Sorry for letting that error slip in and any confusion (note that 96dB is still incredibly loud).

[jascrandom]

"...and it all went to s$%t"


That took me completely off guard.

[randomroughneck]

Why does the British government need to destroy all useful engineering documents of cancelled projects damnit!

[Tomek_i]

6:54 Small correction - since sound is on a logarithmic scale, the reduction in noise wasn't by 15%, *but rather by 86%*

[TallulahSoie]

This seems like a technology that should be revisited.

[PongoXBongo]

It should be illegal to destroy research. Maybe shoehorn it into protections on financial records?

[jonathanhill]

I remember, when I was a boy, the sound of the Rotodyne. There was nothing like it. When you saw it flying over you felt like you were seeing the future. And perhaps it could have been, but it was too much ahead of its time.

[edwardhandley]

I remember the Rotodyne flying over our house! The Rotodyne was based at a small airfield called White Waltham just outside Maidenhead and as a child we lived on the direct line between White Waltham and Farnborough which was the base of the British Aircraft Establishment. On several occasions we heard the distinct sound of the Rotodyne flying over and dashed outside to watch it go over. Yes, it was noisy, but so were most aircraft at that time, especially the big jets like the Boeing 707. The difference was the big jets landed at airports outside the city centres so did not fly low over the houses, except of course the ones on the flight path into the airports. People these days forget how noisy those old aircraft were!


A few years ago I heard a racket and went outside to see what it was and was treated to the sight of a Dreamliner on its way to the Farnborough Airshow escorted by a Spitfire and a Hurricane. I could barely hear the Dreamliner - the racket was all being made by the Merlins. A beautiful racket though!

[holthogan]

I've never even heard of the Rotodyne. Man I love this channel.

[tovsteh]

5:08 Gotta love the test pilot gear back in the day: Suit and hat.

[andrewhawkings]

It almost physically hurts to see this beautiful thing to to waste. Couldn't they just resurrect the project and use today's advancements and technologies to fix the 60 year old issues?

[n_tag]

Me: you returned? Even after all this time?

Mustard: of course, child. I never left.

Me: *sheds a tear*

[jensdevos]

The models are so clean like this is even better than a model aircraft.

[toinfinityandbeyond]

I feel like out of all the failed projects this one is the only one im like damn thatd be cool as hell and i genuinly think it would work

[stevenlitvintchouk]

When I was a kid, I put together a plastic model kit of a Fairey Rotodyne, with a detailed interior including seats, passengers, even luggage racks. I really thought it was the wave of the future. Technologically, it could have been, given a sufficient commitment.

[chrissmith]

An old coworker of mine worked on this project as a young man. He told me some of the technical issues. He liked to say that like Concorde it was ahead of the technology of the day. Even without the ear splitting noise he told me about thermal issues regarding the rotor blades and the complications of combustors in the rotor tips was just beyond what they could reliably build.

[charliehall]

This is so great to see. I’m the grand son of Geoffrey Hall who was chairman of Fairey. I never met him but to see the work he and the team of engineers in the company was trying to create is so humbling. One point that was not mentioned was that the British government had also compulsory purchased Fairey airfields which just so happened to be Heathrow, so a vertical take off aircraft didn’t suit the governments new airfields strategy? If anyone know more about this I would love to know. Charlie.

[cedricye]

Last time I was this early, the dassalt mecure was selling well

[LunringNassar]

I genuinely hate how this aircraft didn't succeed, it should really be reconsidered.

[maxsmodels]

One of the coolest aircraft that never went into service.