Author Description

The history of flight is literally full of weird planes, over-the-top aircraft that are the offspring of the visionary creativity of their designers. In many cases these were outlandish inventions without any scientific basis, destined not even to get off the ground because these would-be designers were almost always individuals endowed with an ego as big as their ignorance. Not all of them, however: some were genuine visionary precursors, true "lateral thinkers". This expression, coined fairly recently by a well-known psychologist, refers to a problem-solving methodology that does not follow the normal sequential logic as in linear thinking, but leads one down different and unexpected paths by looking at things from different angles than usual. Seemingly insane aircraft such as the Stipa-Caproni, Lippisch's Aerodyne or the Horten brothers' and Jack Northrop's flying wings have allowed aviation technology to evolve to the development of ever more efficient jet engines or highly advanced and once inconceivable aircraft such as the B-2, the F-35 and others. Even aeromodeling is not immune to lateral thinking. The list of unusual solutions would be very long to say the least, but the great thing is that some of these children of lateral thinking have since been successfully applied to major aeronautics.