FAILURE always attracts more attention than success. Thus, in aviation, a single crash is long remembered while any number of successful flights are instantly forgotten. And so it was with the first attempts at flying; Icarus is universally recalled as the one who came to grief, but Daedalus, the brains behind the venture and the one who successfully completed a 750mile flight from Crete to Naples, has largely lost his seminal place in history.
The story is well known. Icarus and his father Daedalus were imprisoned on the island of Crete by Minos, the island's wicked king. Flight in the literal sense - was their only hope of freedom, and Daedalus, handy craftsman that he was, arranged just that: he built them both a set of wings.
The wings were made of countless feathers, carefully arranged and held in place by thread and wax.
When they were completed, the happy pair soared high above their Aegean prison and headed west for Italy. Icarus, however, came to an ignominious end: he flew too close to the sun, his waxen wings suffered structural failure, and he crashed into the sea.
Now the question arises - how did Daedalus succeed? Without the aid of artificial power of any kind, and presumably lacking sufficient strength to flap their wings effectively, both aeronauts, once launched, would have a tendency to drift slowly back to earth. To remain aloft and gain height, they would need to find areas of the sky that were the lift provided to the wings was sufficient to overcome the pull of gravity.
There are two common ways in which this can be achieved. "Ridge soaring" relies on the fact that air approaching a sizeable hill does not go round the obstacle but climbs over it, forced upwards in a gentle sliding motion. Thus on the windward side of hills, and for some considerable altitude above them, there is a body of rising air which can be used systematically by gliders to gain height. The mountains of Crete would have served our heroes well in this respect.
And the second major source of lift comprises "thermals" - invisible currents of ascending warm air, that spread heat upwards through the atmosphere from patches of ground that have been heated by the sun. A good thermal not long after take off would have provided Daedalus with the opportunity of an exhilarating upward spiral, from the summit of which he could glide gently westwards in search of another rising current. Thus, step by step, would he have achieved his destination, Naples.