Czerwiński Sparrow

Czerwiński Sparrow
Role	Single seat basic training and soaring glider
National origin	Canada
Designer	Wacław Czerwiński
First flight	August or September 1942
Developed from	W.W.S.1 Salamandra

Last updated March 22, 2019

The Czerwiński Sparrow, sometimes known as the de Havilland Canada glider, was a single seat glider, designed and built by a group of de Haviiland engineers in Canada in 1942. It was intended to popularise gliding and be suitable for both basic training and thermal soaring.

A glider or sailplane is a type of glider aircraft used in the leisure activity and sport of gliding. This unpowered aircraft uses naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmosphere to remain airborne. Gliders are aerodynamically streamlined and are capable of gaining altitude and remaining airborne, and maintaining forward motion.

Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border. Its capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra. Consequently, its population is highly urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies widely across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons.

Design and development

In the early years of World War II there was little gliding activity in Canada. Feeling that a Gliding Club would be well received by the military, and with the approval of their employers, some staff at the de Havilland Aircraft Company of Canada decided to form their own. The initiative was taken by W. Czerwinski who went on to lead the design of the group's own glider, a very close copy of the W.W.S.1 Salamandra which Czerwiński had designed before the war in Poland. Members of the drawing office worked in their own time to produce the engineering blueprints, de Havilland and other companies took an interest, assisting the project with donations of instruments and a landing wheel.^[1]

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

The W.W.S. 1 Salamandra (Salamander) was a single-seat training glider designed and built in Poland from 1936, and again from 1947 after World War II as IS-A Salamandra.

The design aim was to produce an aircraft which could be used both as basic trainer (primary glider) and as a sailplane capable of exploiting the strong thermals of the Toronto region. The docile handling of a typical primary glider, particularly in the stall, had to be maintained alongside a better lift to drag performance than most of that class. It was a high wing aircraft, with a single spar wing with rounded tips, straight taper on the outer ⅔ of the span and a constant chord centre section. The wings were ply covered from the leading edge to the main spar and fabric covered aft. The wings carried some dihedral and there was washout, a decrease in angle of incidence outwards along the span, on the outer panels to avoid spin initiation at the stall. Generous differential ailerons, also fabric covered, ran from the wingtips over most of the outer, tapered panels. The wing was mounted on a fuselage pedestal above and immediately behind the cockpit in the flat sided forward fuselage. Though open, this cockpit enclosed the pilot as in a light aircraft, rather than leaving him fully exposed as on many earlier primary gliders. A pair of lift struts joined the main spar to the lower fuselage longerons.

Primary gliders are a category of aircraft that enjoyed worldwide popularity during the 1920s and 1930s as people strove for simple and inexpensive ways to learn to fly.

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards which includes medium-density fibreboard (MDF) and particle board (chipboard).

Behind the wing trailing edge the enclosed fuselage was replaced by a pair of nearly horizontal beams, one vertically above the other, which carried the tail unit. The ply-covered tailplane and fabric covered elevators were mounted on the upper fuselage beam. Fin and rudder, ply and fabric covered respectively, continued down below the horizontal surfaces to the lower beam, the rudder moving in an elevator cut-out. Like the wing, the tailplane was strut braced from below. The rear surfaces were braced against lateral deflections by pairs of wires from the upper wing surfaces to the top of the fin and by similar wires from below to its bottom.^[1]

The trailing edge of an aerodynamic surface such as a wing is its rear edge, where the airflow separated by the leading edge rejoins. Essential flight control surfaces are attached here to control the direction of the departing air flow, and exert a controlling force on the aircraft. Such control surfaces include ailerons on the wings for roll control, elevators on the tailplane controlling pitch, and the rudder on the fin controlling yaw. Elevators and ailerons may be combined as elevons on tailless aircraft.

A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyroplanes. Not all fixed-wing aircraft have tailplanes. Canards, tailless and flying wing aircraft have no separate tailplane, while in V-tail aircraft the vertical stabilizer, rudder, and the tail-plane and elevator are combined to form two diagonal surfaces in a V layout.

A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. Fins are also used to increase surface areas for heat transfer purposes, or simply as ornamentation.

The undercarriage consisted of a keel skid which ended about midway below the wing, where a single wheel was partially exposed. There was a tailskid and wire loops at the wing tips to protect them and ease ground handling.^[1]

Keel Lower centreline structural element of a ship or boat hull

On boats and ships, the keel is either of two parts: a structural element that sometimes resembles a fin and protrudes below a boat along the central line, or a hydrodynamic element. These parts overlap. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in the construction of a ship, in British and American shipbuilding traditions the construction is dated from this event. Only the ship's launching is considered more significant in its creation.

The Czerwiński Sparrow flew for the first time in late August or early September 1942, aero-towed by a Tiger Moth. Released at 1,380 ft (420 m), it reached an altitude of 5,800 ft (1,770 m) during a 2 hr test flight.^[2]

The de Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth is a 1930s British biplane designed by Geoffrey de Havilland and built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company. It was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and many other operators as a primary trainer aircraft. In addition to the type's principal use for ab-initio training, the Second World War saw RAF Tiger Moths operating in other capacities, including maritime surveillance and defensive anti-invasion preparations; some aircraft were even outfitted to function as armed light bombers.

Operational history

The Sparrow was operated by the de Havilland Glider Club at Downsview, Ontario, initially without a registration, being registered as CF-ZAI on 10 June 1947. In 1948 it was donated to the Toronto Gliding Club, and was wrecked in an accident at Oshawa Airport on 4 June 1950.^[3]

Variants

W.W.S.1 Salamandra: The original aircraft designed and built in Poland by Wacław Czerwiński at the Wojskowe Warsztaty Szybowcowe - Military Glider Workshops.
Czerwiński Sparrow: Designed and built in Canada by Wacław Czerwiński and employees at the de Havilland Canada factory in Toronto during WWII, after Czerwiński had escaped Poland at the outbreak of war.
Czerwiński Robin: A modified version of the Sparrow designed and built in Canada.

Specifications (Czerwiński Robin)

Data from The World's Sailplanes:Die Segelflugzeuge der Welt:Les Planeurs du Monde Volume II^[4]

General characteristics

Crew: 1
Length: 5.8 m (19 ft 0 in)
Wingspan: 11.35 m (37 ft 3 in)
Wing area: 15.68 m² (168.8 sq ft)
Aspect ratio: 8.2
Airfoil: Sikorski G.S.1
Empty weight: 120 kg (265 lb)
Gross weight: 214 kg (472 lb)

Performance

Stall speed: 41 km/h (25 mph; 22 kn)
Never exceed speed: 161 km/h (100 mph; 87 kn)
Rough air speed max: 161 km/h (100.0 mph; 86.9 kn)
Aerotow speed: 161 km/h (100.0 mph; 86.9 kn)
Winch launch speed: 93.8 km/h (58.3 mph; 50.6 kn)
Maximum glide ratio: 16.4 at 55 km/h (34.2 mph; 29.7 kn)
Rate of sink: 0.823 m/s (162.0 ft/min) at 51.4 km/h (31.9 mph; 27.8 kn)
Wing loading: 13.65 kg/m² (2.80 lb/sq ft)

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References

Notes

1 2 3 "de Havilland glider". Flight . No. 25 June 1942. p. 308.
↑ "Canadian Aviation News - Glider test flight". Flight . No. 17 September 1942. pp. 650–1.
↑ Department of Transport: Civil aircraft registration, inspection and operation files, 1920-1986: T-7942, images 1067-1094
↑ Shenstone, B.S.; K.G. Wilkinson (1963). The World's Sailplanes:Die Segelflugzeuge der Welt:Les Planeurs du Monde Volume II (in English, French, and German) (1st ed.). Zurich: Organisation Scientifique et Technique Internationale du Vol a Voile (OSTIV) and Schweizer Aero-Revue. pp. 44–45.

Bibliography

Shenstone, B.S.; K.G. Wilkinson (1963). The World's Sailplanes:Die Segelflugzeuge der Welt:Les Planeurs du Monde Volume II (in English, French, and German) (1st ed.). Zurich: Organisation Scientifique et Technique Internationale du Vol a Voile (OSTIV) and Schweizer Aero-Revue. pp. 44–45.
"de Havilland glider". Flight . No. 25 June 1942. p. 308.
"Canadian Aviation News - Glider test flight". Flight . No. 17 September 1942. pp. 650–1.

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[Flight1942a-1] 1 2 3 "de Havilland glider". Flight . No. 25 June 1942. p. 308.

[Flight1942b-2] "Canadian Aviation News - Glider test flight". Flight . No. 17 September 1942. pp. 650–1.

[3] Department of Transport: Civil aircraft registration, inspection and operation files, 1920-1986: T-7942, images 1067-1094

[Shenstone-4] Shenstone, B.S.; K.G. Wilkinson (1963). The World's Sailplanes:Die Segelflugzeuge der Welt:Les Planeurs du Monde Volume II (in English, French, and German) (1st ed.). Zurich: Organisation Scientifique et Technique Internationale du Vol a Voile (OSTIV) and Schweizer Aero-Revue. pp. 44–45.