The Cyclocrane The largest experimental aircraft ever made and the first new type of aircraft since the helicopter, the Cyclocrane, the invention of Arthur G. Crimmins, Jr., flew in Tillamook, Oregon in the 1980s. By Rob Crimmins
The Cyclocrane was a hybrid airship intended for ultra-heavy vertical lift. Hybrid airships use lighter than air gases and aerodynamic forces to generate useful lift. The Cyclocrane used a device known as a cycloidal-rotor for producing aerodynamic lift. Helium, and for awhile a helium and hydrogen mixture, were the lifting gases. The inventor of the Cyclocrane
was Arthur George Crimmins, Jr., my father. Dad came up with the idea after working on a similar device, the Aerocrane, which was conceived by a brilliant engineer, Donald B. Doolittle. Don was the President of All American Engineering, a Wilmington, Delaware manufacturer of aircraft arresting gear among other things. When Don invented the Aerocrane Dad was the company’s marketing director. I was in high school when Dad and Don began work on the Aerocrane in the early 70s and I even helped Dad a little on the first model in 1973, parts of which were built in our basement. I also saw them conduct early flight tests in All American’s shop on the riverfront in Wilmington. Dad immersed himself in his work and when he was on a project that excited him his devotion to it could become complete. As he learned more about the industries that the Aerocrane would benefit he became more dedicated to the advancement of the idea. He was an engineer too so he was able to contribute to the development of the concept in nearly every way. While considering how to overcome some of the complications with the Aerocrane the idea for the Cyclocrane came to him. The Aerocrane generated aerodynamic lift with a rotor disk that turned on a vertical axis just like a helicopter. Like a helicopter it had, what Dad called, a “second order effect” control system because the rotor disk had to be tilted in