Direct Lift Control

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Control of flight is essentially control of lift. When one proposes—as we shall do here—to tamper with one of the most fundamental principles of aircraft control, it is evident that this may have far reaching repercussions and that such a venture cannot therefore be undertaken lightly. The elevator has been the primary longitudinal control since the earliest pioneering days and has served the aircraft well from its modest beginnings to this age of supersonic flight. Why do we want to change and what do we want to take its place; how will the pilot react to an altogether novel way of controlling the aeroplane? These are the questions one is bound to ask when direct lift control is suggested as an alternative and these are the questions which we shall attempt to answer here.