Amelia Earhart

“ Perhaps the greatest joy of flying is the magnificent extent of the view. If the visibility is good, the passenger seems to see the whole world.
I have spoken of the effect of height in flattening the landscape, always a phenomenon in the eyes of the air novitiate. Even mountains grow humble and a really rough terrain appears comparatively smooth. Trees look like bushes, and automobiles like flat-backed bugs. A second [230] plane which may be flying a few hundred feet above the ground, as seen from a greater altitude looks as if it were just skimming the surface. ”

“ A young American woman has crossed the Atlantic in an aeroplane and has arrived safely on the shore of Wales. Within the past few months three other women have lost their lives in attempting the same feat, and Miss Earhart is to be congratulated on escaping their fate. The voyage itself, for nearly all the way through fog, is a remarkable achievement made possible by the skill and courage of the pilot. ”

“ Meticulous care of a plane’s power plant is vital. It is not that the motors themselves are any more complicated than the engines of large automobiles, but there simply aren’t any service stations 10,000 feet in the air. An oversight on a highway means only inconvenience; one aloft means inconvenience, too—the inconvenience of coming down where there may be a landing field or there may not. ”

“ Seriously, of course a person with a chronically weak heart, who is affected by altitude, should not invite trouble by flying. A lame man should exercise special care in crossing a street with crowded traffic, and one with weak lungs should not attempt swimming a long distance unaccompanied.
Consciousness of speed in the air is surprisingly absent. Thirty miles an hour in an automobile, or fifty in a railroad train, gives one greater sensation of speed than moving one hundred miles an hour in a large plane. ”

“ They were full-sized birds that slid on the hard-packed snow and rose into the air with an extra roar that echoed from the evergreens that banked the edge of the field. They were a part of war, just as much as the drives, the bandages and the soldiers. I remember well that when the snow blown back by the propellers stung my face I felt a first urge to fly. ”

“ Withal, I believe that the maintenance of a plane is probably very little greater than that of a similarly priced automobile.
There is a belief, I suppose (and perhaps it is well founded) that women shrink more than do men from the alleged hazards of aviation. Inheritance, training and environment seem to make women less aggressive than men, although in real courage I think they are equals. So much of woman’s excitement through the ages has been pushing the men into adventure that they have the habit of hanging back a little. ”

“ Many of the pioneers sank their teeth into aviation’s problems at the very beginning—or was it the other way about?—and simply wouldn’t let go.
So I owned my own plane. Immediately I found that my whole feeling toward flying had changed. An added confidence and satisfaction came. If I crashed, it was my own responsibility and it was my own property that was being injured. It is the same sort of feeling that obtains, I think, in driving. There is a freedom in ownership which is not possible with a borrowed car. ”

“ It is not wildly speculative to think of dispatching a plane after a liner on a well-traveled route in these days of excellent radio communication. It would be well to use for that purpose amphibian or seaplanes carrying fuel enough to take them all the way across the Atlantic if necessary.
It is conceivable that ocean flight between Europe and the United States will be the sequel to a ship-and-plane system of mail delivery, the distances covered by the plane becoming longer and longer until the steamship can be dispensed with altogether. ”

“ The first thing most people want to do when they get a new car is to take someone out driving in it; a desire which seems to apply equally to a plane. Somehow I have always felt a little differently. It isn’t that I am not proud of my possession, but that I always have a suspicion that my pride may run away with my prudence. If it be car or plane, my inclination is to be absolutely sure of myself before I whisk anybody else’s body around in it. ”

“ On the Atlantic our maximum altitude was about 11,000 feet, with an average far lower. Doubtless it would have been colder had we flown high more of the distance.
In addition to the visual joys of airscapes, there is much else that flying gives. Nothing, perhaps, is more appealing than the sense of quick accomplishment—of getting somewhere, sooner. Aviation means an approach to the elimination of time wastage, and seems to point the way to further increase in the world’s leisure.
Humanity reaches for leisure—as time in which to do what it wants. ”

“ If one is fortunate enough to fly over clouds, another world is entered. The clouds may be grey or white or tinted the exquisite colors of sunset. Sometimes “holes” occur in them through which little glimpses of the earth may be seen. It is possible to be lying in sunshine and to look down on a piece of dull grey earth. There is sport to be had playing hide-and-seek through the light fluffy clouds that are not compact [231] enough to be ominous. An instant of greyness is followed by a flash of sunlight as one emerges into the clear air. ”

“ At the worst, in after years what a generous gesture it would be for the municipalities to plan to turn these unused fields into playgrounds for the derelicts whose mentality has finally snapped under the strain of a too enthusiastic promotion of aviation!
Just another word about fields—a word of warning, if you will. A great many communities, even really small ones, can support and will be benefited by landing fields. But the smaller community should not strain its resources trying to create elaborate airports, for which economic support reasonably cannot be expected. ”

“ For a ship doesn’t fall like a plummet, even if the engine goes dead. It assumes a natural gliding angle which sometimes is as great as eight to one. That is, a plane 5000 feet in the air can travel in any direction eight times its altitude (40,000 feet) or practically eight miles. Thus it has a potential landing radius of 16 miles.
Sometimes, a cautious pilot elects to come down at once to make a minor engine adjustment. Something is wrong and he, properly, is unwilling to risk flying further, even though probably able to do so. ”

“ The big fellows can be much more serious. Once into them, and one has the sensation of being surrounded by an everlasting mass of grey, comparable, so far as visibility goes, with a heavy fog. In such clouds one can find all varieties of weather—rain, snow, or sleet.
In the trans-Atlantic flight, we encountered both rain and snow. There lies one of the greatest risks of long distance flying—I mean moisture freezing upon the wings of the plane. The danger zone of temperature is said to lie chiefly between twenty-four and thirty-eight degrees, when slush begins to form. ”

“ I can’t help expressing the wish that men already trained could have more opportunity to fly. Many excellent flyers who served in the war, and later, want to keep in practise. They can, of course, join the reserves and fly Peteys (P.T.s) , the training plane which replaced the Jennys, recently condemned. But flying a P.T. doesn’t equip one to pilot the modern pursuit and larger planes. Unless these men are able to afford the luxuries of planes of their own, they can’t obtain any adequate training and their [271] great value in possible national emergency is lessened. ”

“ There are poor days for flying as well as good ones. Just as in yachting, weather plays an important part, and sometimes entirely prevents a trip. Even ocean liners are occasionally held over in port to avoid a storm, or are prevented from making a scheduled landing because of adverse conditions. In due time a plane will probably become as reliable as these ocean vessels of today, because although a severe storm will wreck it, its greater speed will permit it to fly around the [227] storm area—to escape dangers rather than battle through them as a ship must do. ”

“ The nautical boys have an advantage over the avigators. Constant things like the gulf stream can be labeled and put on charts and shoals marked. But one can’t fasten buoys in the atmosphere. Flyers can only plot topography. Air, like water, gives different effects under different conditions. The pilot must learn that when the wind blows over a hill from one direction, the result is not the same as that when it blows from another. Water behaves similarly. The shoals of the air seem a little more elusive, however, because their eddies are invisible. ”

“ Straight flying is, of course, the necessary basis; but it is the ability to meet crises, large and small, which counts. And the only way to train for that is, as I have said, to have actual instruction in stunting and in meeting emergencies. To gain experience after the beginner has soloed, and while he is at home in a plane he knows intimately and upon a field familiar to him, he should play around in the air for four or five hours alone, practising landings, take-offs, turns and all the rest of it where he is perfectly safe and can come down easily any time. ”

“ Despite the fact that there are traffic laws to govern flying, and inspectors to enforce them, many infringements occur. Bad manners of the [250] air exist, unfortunately, as they do on the automobile highways or on the high seas. Any maneuver which endangers another’s life needlessly, no matter where, seems to me bad manners. The pilot who flies low over crowds or stunts near the ground, I fear, is not quite playing the game. His misdemeanors can be reported to the police and his license number given just as can be an offending automobile driver. ”

“ Besides skidding, a plane can stall exactly as a car does on a hill. The motor is overtaxed and stops. The plane motor doesn’t stop, but just as a stalled car starts to roll backwards down the hill, so the stalled plane begins to drop. Recovery of control with an automobile is simple; only a matter of jamming on the brakes and getting the engine started again. With the plane there is similarly little difficulty; it falls for a moment until it attains enough forward speed to make the rudder and elevators again effective. ”

“ A novice can learn to drive an automobile in a way in a matter of a few hours, but only mileage makes him competent.
New planes can be bought for a little more than $2000 and up. Hangar space comes to from twenty-five to fifty dollars a month and up. Obviously a very large plane will cost more to store and handle than a small one. A plaything with a wing spread of seventy-two feet, such as Friendship had, requires as much space as a whole fleet of trucks, and specialized space at that. It is not simply a matter of a building in which to house the plane. ”

“ The small air-cooled motor I speak of was the first in this country. The man who had built it was not well known then. He was one of a number of able experimenters who were working out their own private ideas, often in the face of all sorts of sacrifices. The name of the builder of this original air-cooled engine is Charles L. Lawrence, famous today as the creator of the Wright Whirlwind which carried Lindbergh, Byrd, Chamberlin, Maitland and others on their famous flights, and with which our own Friendship was equipped. ”

“ Woman’s influence primarily is responsible for the rapid development of the American automobile’s beauty and comfort. A similar influence inevitably will be exerted in connection with air transport—if women will fly. As they became an important factor in passenger revenue their requirements will be increasingly studied and met.
Conversely, it is my opinion that if the show windows of aviation were made more attractive women in far larger numbers would be lured into the air. Specifically, I mean landing fields and their appurtenances. The average field today is a comfortless place. ”

“ But whether one feels flying fairly safe or not it must be admitted it is safer than it was. Recent steps have been made in securing true safety for the flyer in the last few years. Once attainment of something akin to it was merely a vague hope. If one flew one took the risks. Selah.
The problems of safety are concerned with the engineering problem of the motor and design of plane, the skill of the pilot and ground technique. Probably improvements in the power units will always be made. But it seems impossible that advances can go on so rapidly as they have in the last few years. ”

“ Nonchalantly he hauled forth a sandwich.
We could see only a few miles of water, which melted into the greyness on all sides. The ceiling was so low we could fly at an altitude of only [196] 500 feet. As we moved, our miniature world of visibility, bounded by its walls of mist, moved with us. Half an hour later into it suddenly swam a fishing vessel. In a matter of minutes a fleet of small craft, probably fishing vessels, were almost below us. Happily their course paralleled ours. Although the gasoline in the tanks was vanishing fast, we began to feel land—some land—must be near. ”

“ There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war. ”

“ If one motor fails the other two can carry on, even with the large gas supply for long-distance flying aboard. At the end of a flight, when a minimum load weight has been reached, it is possible with one motor to keep the plane in the air. One engine can also greatly prolong the downward glide of the crippled plane for a forced landing, if need be. ”

“ Today there are ample facilities for flying instruction throughout the United States. It is, however, considerably more difficult for a woman to procure it than it is for a man. A primary reason is the advantage a man has through what the army and the navy offer. By enlisting in either branch the beginner has not only free [241] instruction but actually receives a salary as well and in due course may emerge as a competent pilot. There is no such opening for women. She must pay for the instruction she gets. ”

“ Water is thrown up when it strikes against a rock and just so is a stream of air broken on the object in its way, and diverted upward in atmospheric gusts which correspond to the spray of the seaside. Encountering such a condition a plane gets a “wallop”—is tossed up and buffeted as it rolls over the wave. ”

“ WOMEN IN AVIATION WHILE this chapter is called “Women in Aviation,” just as appropriate a title might have been “Women Outside of Aviation.” For women really to influence aviation development it is not essential that they be flyers themselves, although the more who fly the better. When the women of America are thoroughly “sold” on aviation, not only as a sporting phenomenon but as an everyday utility, air transport will come into its own.
Today we have planes for carrying passengers, mail, express and freight. ”

“ Because the plane would skid in exactly the same way a car does if it whirls around a level corner.
The inside of an automobile race track is like a bowl, with the sides growing steeper toward the top. The cars climb toward the outer edge in proportion to their speed, and it is quite impossible to force a slow car up the steep side of the bowl. The faster it goes the steeper the bank must be and the sharper the turn. A pilot must make his own “bowl” and learn to tip his plane the right degree relative to the sharpness of his turn and his speed. ”

“ Piloting differs from driving a car in that there is an added necessity for lateral control. An automobile runs up and down hill, and turns left or right. A plane climbs or dives, turns, and in addition, tips from one side to another. There is no worry in a car about whether the two left wheels are on the road or not; but a pilot must normally keep his wings level. ”

“ Because the whole industry is so new it probably has more difficulties proportionately than many others. Growing pains are inevitable. Aviation is only now emerging into the status of an industry. Hitherto it has been largely a jumble of gallant individual efforts. Even today, there are more independent producers of airplanes than there are automobile manufacturers. The survival of the fittest, with accompanying combinations, will come just as they have come in the motor industry. ”