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THE FLYING SUIT by
Graham Chandler
A TOP SECRET CANADIAN INVENTION GAVE SECOND WORLD WAR AIRCREW A TACTICAL EDGE n 1939, driven by the demands of the Second World War and the advent of combat aircraft that flew higher, faster and manoeuvred more tightly than ever before, a top secret aviation research facility was opened by the Royal Canadian Air Force in downtown Toronto in what used to be the sprawling Eglinton Hunt Club. One of its priority projects was to find ways to prevent pilot blackout during sharp turns and dive pullouts. Led by Dr. Wilbur Franks, a colleague of Frederick Banting at the University of Toronto, the world’s first antigravity, or G-suit, was designed and tested. G is the force of gravity. One G is what is felt when a person is standing still on the ground. G-forces are experienced by a pilot during sharp aerobatic manoeuvres such as steep turns, loops and pullouts from dives.
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Measured as multiples of gravity, the higher the number, the greater the forces draining the blood from a pilot’s upper body. At 2 G there’s little physical effect. At 3 G vision dims. Between 4 and 6 G total blackout occurs. And Spitfires and Messerschmitt 109s of the time had the power to sustain up to 7 G in a turn. Clearly if the G-effects could be counteracted, Allied pilots would have a distinct edge in dogfights. Franks had a simple idea for a waterfilled suit: when a pilot experienced Gs, the suit would force water—later compressed air was used—into bladders to constrict the body, forcing blood upward and helping to maintain consciousness. It was dubbed “The Franks Flying Suit.” In 1939, Franks accidently found a way while conducting cancer research using a small lab centrifuge. He discovered “that mice, when suspended in a fluid the specific gravity of which approached that of the mouse’s body, could withstand, without apparent damage, over 100 times the normal gravity.” He thought, why wouldn’t the same principle apply to humans? In humans, he reckoned, the water would exert pressure against the lower body and prevent blood from pooling in the calves, thighs and abdomen under high G-forces. He set out to design a wearable water-filled suit that would do just that. His design concept was relatively simple. The suit would need two layers, with the fluid contained between them. Importantly, the outer layer would have to be non-extensible and the inner layer, extensible, because the purpose of the suit was to direct the
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2017-01-27 1:58 PM
