Two very important names missing here – Lawrence Hargrave and Sir Lawrence Wackett.
Wackett could have many claims to fame, including being one of the developers of the synchronised machine gun in WW1 fighters and planning and actually flying the first aerial deliveries of ammunition and water to front line troops during the Allied advances of 1918.
But since we’re talking big picture Aviation here, possibly his most important contribution was that he was the man responsible for establishing an Australian aircraft industry in the 1930’s (despite serious opposition from the powers that be in ‘Mother England’ at the time, who saw Australia as a captive market for British aircraft sales). He oversaw the production of the Wirraway, Boomerang, Woomera, the CA6 Wackett Trainer, Mustang, CA15, and was instrumental in seeing the F86 Sabre selected over the Hunter in the mid fifties, (to howls of protest from ‘the home country’, but at least he put a Brit engine into it).
His autobiography, ‘Aircraft Pioneer’
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...286623-0984710 should be a ‘must read’ for any Australian involved in Aviation,
(if not at the price Amazon are asking for that particular copy!!!) and would (or should) not make comfortable reading for any Englishman. If Wackett had been an American, he’d quite probably be as well known today as Henry Ford, such was his contribution to Aviation and developing heavy industry in general in Australia.
As for Lawrence Victor Hargrave, he was one of the leading men of the time in kite and glider design (1890s and early 1900s). To quote Ian Debenham, from his ‘Hargrave – Saluting 150 Years of Australian Aviation History’:
The Wright brothers regarded him as one of the great pioneers of aviation even though they claimed that he made no contribution to their success. … Further `smoke screening' is provided by their need to protect their patents by secrecy and their long battle with Langley, Curtiss and the Smithsonian Institution about recognition of their achievement. Thus they became defensive about acknowledging any debts to anyone.
…the basic biplane structure with parallel wing leading and trailing edges of the successful Wright Flyer should owe some debt to Hargrave and his boxkite. … the Wright brother's 'Flyer' and Alberto Santos Dumont's '14bis', recognised as the first to achieve powered, controlled flight in Europe, owe nothing to the general layout of the Lilienthal gliders.
In my opinion Lilienthal proved that aviation was possible but fatal, Hargrave proved that it was possible and safe and thus Hargrave's stable boxkite structure was used as a basis for flying machines rather than the 'cranky' Lilienthal glider.
Hargrave was a major influence on the development of the first successful heavier-than-air craft to fly in Europe. Even to the casual observer Alberto Santos-Dumont's '14bis' is a collection of Hargrave box kites flying in tight formation. It is claimed, perhaps with some justification that the design of '14bis' was developed from the successful 1905 floatplane glider designed and built by Gabriel Voisin while an employee of the Syndicat d' Aviation.
Gabriel Voisin, with his brother, Charles, had built his first 'Hargrave', as he called his box-like structures, in 1898. He was astonished by its remarkable stability.
I’m also told that the ‘VH’ on Australian-registered aircraft comes from Hargraves’ initials, but that may not be so, as variations of the ‘V-’ are used in other ex-British Empire colonies (Hong Kong, Caymans?), no it might have in fact come from the UK.
These links are worth a look.
Lawrence Hargrave, see:
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/debenham.html
http://www.design-technology.org/hargraves.htm
http://www.design-technology.org/boxmodel.htm
Sir Lawrence Wackett see:
http://users.chariot.net.au/~theburfs/ljwackett.html /
http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse?SIMID=3td9hehbfp7b .