Bonney Gull

Bonney Gull
Role	Experimental aircraft
National origin	United States
Designer	Leonard Warden Bonney
First flight	4 May 1928
Introduction	1928
Status	Crashed on first flight
Number built	1
Unit cost	$83000 in 1928

The Bonney Gull was an experimental aircraft that used variable incidence wings with bird-like shapes.

Leonard Warden Bonney was an early aviator, who flew with the Wright Exhibition Team as early as 1910. An experienced aviator with service in the First World War, Bonney set out to develop a plane with more efficient wings and controls than contemporary aircraft. Noting the gull's two to one lift to weight ratio, he set about molding gull wings for their shape. Construction took place over the course of five years. The ideas were tested in MIT and the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics wind tunnels.

A 1928 issue of Time magazine described the unusual aircraft:

It was fat in body with graceful curving wings. Bonney followed the bird principle, abandoned the aileron, or balancing contrivance which airplane designers have always considered an essential feature of stability in the air. His plane had new features: an expanding and contracting tail, like a blackbird's, for varying loads; variable camber in the wings, so that they could flatten out like a gull's when flying level; a varying angle of incidence to its wings, so that they could turn sideways into the wind on landing...

The Gull was assembled at the Kirkham facility in Garden City, New York and Mitchel Field. It used conventional landing gear, a mid-wing arrangement, corrugated aluminum skins, and a radial engine. The cockpit featured a large streamlined greenhouse bubble with two seats. The large tailwheel was steerable and fully faired. The tail used small vertical stabilizers, with large elevators that could be swept back in flight. The aircraft profile was not unusual for the era with the exception of the highly tapered and swept back wings with a large dihedral and large tapered tail surfaces.

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