2. What is the meaning of the word streamlining?

The phrase "streamlining" can be thought of as smoothing, or cleaning up the external

shape of a vehicle. The expression comes from the word "streamline," a rather
precisely-defined term in aeronautics that refers to the path a fluid particle takes as it
moves past a solid object, as illustrated below.

Streamlines flowing smoothly over an airfoil

A streamlined shape is one with a contour that is itself a streamline (such as the airfoil
above), or its shape is such that its resistance to the flow of air, water, or another fluid
past it is minimized. So when we talk about streamlining a body, we are trying to smooth
out the external contours of the shape to create a streamlined flow over it and reduce
the flow's resistance to that motion. This resistance is what we call drag, and this
particular kind of drag is referred to as form drag.
The importance of drag was very much underappreciated in the early days of aviation,
and this we can see in the many boxy, jagged, rough, and irregular aircraft of the early
1900s. In particular, the fixed landing gear, exposed engines, and wing bracing so
common on early airplanes created significant drag that drastically reduced the
performance of these aircraft. It was not until the 1920s that the true significance of drag
began to be understood. The impetus for this research came when engineers with the
National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) discovered vast discrepancies in
the drag data recorded in wind tunnel studies of propellers alone and propellers
attached to fuselages. To resolve these discrepancies, NACA director George Lewis
proposed the construction of a radical new wind tunnel four times larger than those
typically in use at the time. Such a large wind tunnel would allow NACA to test full-sized
aircraft fuselages and engines to accurately measure the drag data. Once completed in
1927, the Propeller Research Tunnel (PRT) rapidly revolutionized the streamlining of
modern aircraft.
Almost immediately, researchers discovered that exposed landing gear contributed up
to 40% of the drag on a fuselage, and manufacturers soon began incorporating
retractable gear or streamlined gear fairings into their designs. Even more surprising
was the discovery that nearly one-third of the fuselage drag was created by the exposed
cylinders and other components of the air-cooled engines used at the time.

Manufacturers had left the cylinders and cooling fins exposed to maximize cooling, but
they had never had any idea how much of a drag penalty this caused.

Comparison of airflow around an exposed engine and that with a cowling

NACA then set about designing a streamlined cowling that allowed sufficient air into the
engine case for cooling but created a smooth external contour for the engine to reduce
drag. In fact, the cowling that first appeared in 1928 was found not only to significantly
reduce drag, but to significantly improve engine cooling because the airflow around the
engine itself was much less turbulent.

Lockheed Vega before and after

The first production aircraft to benefit from this breakthrough research was the
Lockheed Vega. The original design managed to fly nonstop from Los Angeles to New
York at an average speed of 157 mph (253 km/h). Following a redesign in which a
NACA cowling was added and the exposed landing gear tires and struts were covered
with streamlined fairings, the same trip was made at an average speed of 177 mph (285
km/h), a 13% increase.