Flight research

The document by Milt Thompson that is reproduced here was an untitled rough draft found in Thompson’s papers in the Dryden Historical Reference Collection. Internal evidence suggests that it was written about 1974. Readers need to keep this date in mind, since Milt writes in the present tense. Apparently, he never edited the document. Had he prepared it for publication, he would have done lots of editing and refined much of what he said.I have not attempted to second guess what Milt might have done in revising the paper, but I have made some minor stylistic changes to make it more readable without changing the sense of what Milt initially wrote.Where I have qualified what Milt said or added information for the reader’s benefit, I have done so either in footnotes or inside square brackets [like these]. The draft itself indicated that it should contain numerous figures to illustrate what he wrote, but no such figures were associated with the manuscript. I have searched out figures that appear to illustrate what Milt intended to show, but in some cases I have found none. When that has been the case, I have deleted his references to figures and simply kept his text, which does stand on its own.