Davis wing

The airfoil had a lower drag coefficient than most contemporary designs, which allowed higher speeds, and created significant lift at relatively low angles of attack.

[citation needed] Davis had designed the profile "in reverse", starting with a basic low-drag teardrop shape and then modifying it to provide lift.

Additionally the thickness of the wing provided space for fuel storage, or even embedding engines, an idea that was in vogue at the time.

Neither Fleet nor Isaac M. Laddon, Consolidated's chief engineer, were impressed and Davis failed to convince them to try out his new design.

A few days later, however, Laddon changed his mind and convinced Fleet to pay for construction of a model and wing wind tunnel test at the California Institute of Technology.

This is a common problem since the tunnel's walls affect the results by increasing the effective aspect ratio, or the Reynolds number used could have been incorrect.

Largely through accident, the shape maintained laminar flow further back from its leading edge, to about 20 or 30% of chord compared to the 5 to 20% managed by most airfoil sections of the era.