Roderick Collar was at the centre of aeroelastic research during the interwar period and during World War II. In this lecture he shows an audience of historians how he and his fellow scientists unravelled the mysteries of how aerodynamics, elastic and inertia forces interact.

Staring off by showing how the Wright Brothers overcame the problems in their kites and aeroplanes and how Griffith Brewer used an 1913 article in Flight to described how monoplanes wings collapsed in flight with often fatal consequences, he then explains how he and his fellow scientists explored the problems around flutter in the 1920s and made other theoretical advances in later years to explain many aeroelastic problems including vibration, flutter and quasi-static deformation.

Prof Collar gave the lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Historical Group on 13 December 1977. The podcast was edited by Mike Stanberry FRAeS and it was digitised thanks to a grant from the Royal Aeronautical Society Foundation.