During the 1930s and 1940s, aircraft designers worked on developing novel design features. Some of these features worked and are commonplace today. Other features fell by the wayside and have been forgotten. These novel design features include laminar flow wings, low-drag cooling systems, buried propulsion systems, canard configurations, jet engines, break-away wing tips, pressure cabins and swept wings.
The development and applications of these features will be examined. Specific technical details of these applications will be included in this examination. For the design features that fell by the wayside, the reasons for this outcome will be discussed