Why do planes fly?

Are you sure?

(removed hacked link to jef reskin center)
I remember Marc telling me about airplanes wings (back in his airplane phase). From a pilots point of view they are just like big sheets of plywood. The Bernoulli effect just makes wings more efficient.

I saw a picture of a big old flying boat once (not the Spruce Goose, but one that was actually in service) and noticing how blinking thick the wings were at the root (where they attached to the fuselage). They must have been six or eight feet thick! Here is a small flying boat, only two engines:

Notice how thick the wings are here. Spruce Goose wings were 11.5 feet thick. I didn't find this dimension for any other flying boats.

All this got me thinking about just how wings work, which led me to the conclusion that they don't. Start with the leading edge. It is generally rounded. Part of the airstream is going to be directed up and compressed, and a smaller part will be forced down. The part being forced down will give you some lift, but the part being forced up is much larger and is going to try to force you down. After the air reaches the thickest part of the wing, the compressed air, if it is still compressed, will start to expand, and if not, will create a low pressure area, which may provide some lift, but more likely will just create more drag. So the only reason wings work is that they look enough like bird wings to fool the air GOD and so he lets them fly.

Never heard of the Coanda effect before. Tried reading the Raskin Center web page, but the guy is just too argumentative/evasive/something I didn't like. So I went to Wikipedia and tried to read their article about it, but I have spent too many years believing in Bernoulli to be able to accommodate their heretical logic all at once.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture, removed hacked links. Jef Reskin, RIP, used to have a website, but it's been hacked by some kind slime.