Claude Grahame-White

“ The earth, when viewed by a airman who looks down almost directly upon it, is apt to be deceptive as to its contour. A field that is selected say, from a height of several thousand feet, may not prove—as the aviator nears it in his glide—to be at all the haven he imagined it. More than once, seeking to alight on a field which appeared to him, as he was high above it, to be level as a billiard table, a pilot has found, when it is too late, that the ground has sloped so steeply that his machine, after landing, has run on downhill and ended by crashing into a fence or ditch. ”

“ Flying is, of exact sciences, surely the most exact. The man who is only half-trained, who is more or less slovenly in his work, who will not bend his whole energies to his task, will find no place in this new industry. A young man is wasting his time, if, after deciding to enter aviation, he acquires knowledge that is no more than haphazard. He who contemplates aviation as a profession must set himself the task of learning all there is to be learned, and in the right way. ”

“ There are still people, not few of them but many, who would be ready to declare, offhand, that one aeroplane flight in six ends in a disaster.
It is a truism, but one that has a peculiar truth in aviation, to say that history repeats itself. To-day we find large numbers of people who still cherish the opinion that—save perhaps when on service in war—it is nothing less than criminal foolishness for men to ascend in aeroplanes. That attitude of mind persists; the growing safety of flight has not affected it to any appreciable degree. ”

“ To those who study aviation, and have done so constantly, say from the year 1909, one of the most striking signs of progress lies in the fact that, though unable at first to fly even in the lightest winds, the aviator of to-day will fight successfully against a 60 miles-an-hour wind, and will do battle if need be, once he is well aloft, with a gale which has a velocity of 90 miles an hour. He will ascend indeed, and fly, in any wind that permits him to take his machine from the ground into the air, or which the motor of his craft will allow it to make headway against. ”

“ With machines built lightly, and subjected to heavy strains when at high speeds, it is vital that the inspection of such craft, that the examination of every detail of them, should be carried out in a spirit of the greatest care. The fraying through of a control wire, unnoticed by those in charge of a machine, has been sufficient to cause a disaster; while carelessness in overhauling a motor, a task of supreme importance, seeing that its engine is the heart of an aeroplane, has been another cause of accident. ”

“ No man, even a normally healthy man, should attempt to pilot a machine in flight when he is feeling unwell. In such cases the strain of flying, and the effect of the swift motion through the air, may cause a temporary collapse; and in the air, when a man is alone in a machine, any slight attack of faintness may be sufficient to bring about a fatality.
A fair judgment of speed, and an eye for distance, are very helpful to the man who would learn to fly, and it is here that a man who has motored a good deal, driving his own car, is at advantage at first over one who has not. ”

“ Sometimes a pilot has been careless, or perhaps in a hurry, and has failed to locate some defect which, had it been seen and attended to, would have saved a disaster when a machine was in flight. Such inattention, which is sufficiently dangerous in the handling of any piece of mechanism, is deadly in its peril when those who are guilty of it navigate the air. A man who brings out a machine time after time, and ascends without examining it carefully, is adding vastly to the risks that may attend his flight; and the same remark will apply to the carelessness of mechanics ”

“ That it should have taken years to gain such strength, and to reduce so largely the risk of breakage, is not in itself surprising. Men had to devise new methods in construction—always with the knowledge that weight must be saved—and to create new factors of safety, before they could build an airworthy craft.
To-day, when a man flies, he need have no lurking fear, as had the pioneers, that his craft may break in the air. Even when it is driven through a gale, plunging in the rushes of the wind, yet held straining to its task by the power of its motor, the modern aeroplane can be relied upon ”

“ But the man who undertakes exhibition flying needs not only to be a highly-skilled pilot, but a man also of an exceptional temperament—a man whose familiarity with the air never leads him into a contempt for its hidden dangers; a man who will not, even though he is called on to repeat a feat time after time, abate in any way the precautions which may be necessary for his safety. In looping the loop, for instance, or in upside-down flying, it is necessary always that the aeroplane should be at a certain minimum height above the ground. ”

“ The pilot, raised to a lonely height above the earth, is pictured sitting more or less inertly in his seat, with nothing to do but retain his control on the levers, and look out occasionally so as to keep upon his course. But the beginner, when he first attempts cross-country flying, will have an impression not of inactivity, but of the necessity to be constantly on the alert. He will be engrossed completely by the manipulation of his machine, with no time to sit in idle speculation, or to analyse his feelings as the country passes away below. ”

“ Aviation, as an industry, must prepare for years of strenuous work. A great air service must be created. Machines must be designed and built in thousands instead of hundreds, and men trained to fly them. Nor is this all. The aeroplane, though it has such significance as a weapon of war, is destined primarily and eventually to be an instrument of peace; a machine for the transport by air of passengers, mails, and goods, at speeds greater than will be feasible by land or water ”

“ An aeroplane does not strike the ground with the impact of a hard, unyielding structure. It is essentially frail in its construction; and this frailness, though it spells destruction for the machine in a bad descent, provides at the same time an element of safety for its crew. Take the case for instance of a machine falling sideways, and striking the ground with one plane or planes. These planes, built of nothing stronger as a rule than wood, crumple under the impact. But in their collapse, which is telescopic and to a certain extent gradual, a large part of the shock is absorbed. ”

“ It is now a fair contention that, provided a man exercises judgment, and ascends only in weather that is reasonably suitable, there is no more danger in flying an aeroplane than in driving a motor-car.
Much depends of course on the dexterity of the pupil, and particularly on his manual dexterity—on what is known, colloquially, as "hands." Some men, even after they have been carefully taught, are apt to remain heavy and clumsy in their control. Others, though, seem to acquire the right touch almost by instinct; and these are the men who have in them the making of good pilots. ”

“ Experience, the researches of science, and the growing skill with which aircraft are built, stand between the airman and many of his previous dangers. The aeroplane to-day, one of the structural triumphs of the world in its lightness and its strength, has a factor of safety which is sufficient to meet, and to withstand, not merely ordinary strains, but any such abnormal stresses as it may encounter—and which may be many times greater than the strains of normal flight. ”

“ THEORIES OF TUITION
Only eight years ago, in 1908, it was declared impossible for one man to teach another to fly. Those few men who had risen from the ground in aeroplanes, notably the Wright brothers, were held to be endowed by nature in some very peculiar way; to be men who possessed some remarkable and hitherto unexplained sense of equilibrium. That these men would be able to take other men—ordinary members of the human race—and teach them in their turn to navigate the air, was a suggestion that was ridiculed. ”

“ Unless, therefore, a machine is automatically stable—and with craft of this type we shall deal later—the pilot must be ready, by a movement of the surfaces which govern the flight of the machine, to counteract quickly, with a suitable action of his levers, the overturning influence that may be exercised by a gust of wind. Here lies the art of flying. A man is given a machine which, by the action of its motor and propeller, will raise itself into the air ”

“ With the aeroplane engine, even with types that have gained a high average of reliability, there are many possibilities of a slight mishap—each of them sufficient, for the moment, to put an engine out of action—that the pilot who is flying across country must, all the time he is in the air, have at the back of his mind the thought that at any moment, and perhaps without any warning, he may find that his motive power has gone. ”

“ It is not so much the normal strains, as those which are abnormal, that must be guarded against in flight. A high-speed machine, if piloted on a day when the air is turbulent, may be subjected to extraordinarily heavy strains; rising many feet in the air one moment, falling again the next, and being met suddenly by vicious gusts of wind—in much the same way that a fast-moving ship, when fighting its way through a rough sea, is beaten and buffeted by the waves. ”

“ Under favourable conditions, such as a pupil will experience in his first flights, nothing more is necessary with the hand-lever than a very slight but fairly constant action; a similar motion, in a way, as is made by the driver of a motor-car when he maintains, by his "feel" on the wheel, his sense of control over the machine. In the controlling actions of an aeroplane—and this is a fact which tends sometimes to the confusion of the novice—nothing more is required, normally, than the most delicate of movements. ”

“ A man may be a capable pilot, and yet not have the temperament that will suit him for imparting his knowledge to others. The instructor who, besides being a fine flyer, has the patience and sympathy of a born teacher, is by no means easy to find. A school which does find such men, and retains their services, offers attractions for a pupil which—in any preliminary visit he pays to a school before joining it—he should look for keenly. And he should make certain, too, that the school has a staff of skilled and experienced mechanics. ”

“ Landmarks fail to attract his attention, at this altitude, which would be clearly seen if he were on the ground. Hills, for example, unless they are high, are so dwarfed as he looks down on them that they scarcely catch his eye. What is done, by the designer of air maps, is to accentuate such details of a landscape as will prove conspicuous when seen from above. A river, or an expanse of water, is clearly seen; so also are railways and main roads; while factory chimneys, and large buildings which stand alone, may be identified from a distance when a pilot is in flight. ”

“ It is not, as a rule, until he has passed through his early stages of tuition, and has begun to handle an aeroplane alone, and is beyond the direct control of his instructor, that the temperament of a pupil really plays its part. Up to this point he is one among many, conforming to certain rules, and obliged to mould himself to the routine of the school. But when he begins to fly by himself, and particularly when he has passed his tests for proficiency, and is embarking, say, on cross-country flights, then this question of temperament begins really to affect his flying. ”

“ Apart from the risks of flying, which appeared to them ceaseless and terrible, the actual industry of building aeroplanes, regarded as an industry, seemed so haphazard and objectless an affair—so much like playing at work—that they discouraged any wish that a youth might show to enter it. Many people, these people of intelligence, regarded the building and flying of aeroplanes as being no more than a passing phase, and a regrettable one, which it was hoped men would soon abandon, and turn their attention to tasks more serious and profitable. ”

“ Two of the worst traits in an aviator are impatience and irritability. A man who has these temperamental drawbacks in a form which is strongly marked, and who cannot control them, should not think of becoming an aviator. The man who is impatient and irritable finds himself out of harmony with the whole theory of aerial navigation. There is a long list of "don'ts" in flying; in the handling of one's machine, in the weather one flies in, in all the feats that one should attempt and leave alone. ”

“ There is often, when a catastrophe seems imminent, a choice of things that may be done. If an engine fails, for instance, under awkward circumstances, the pilot may have, say, three courses open to him in regard to his descent. Two may spell disaster and the third safety. It is here that the innate judgment of a pilot, combined with his experience, will tell its tale. But this personal element in flying, and particularly in regard to an accident, is often a very difficult one for which to make allowances. ”

“ As aviation passed from its earliest infancy, and a number of men began to fly, the temperament of the individual pupil, and the effect of this temperament on his progress as an aviator, began to reveal itself. And temperament does play a large part in flying; as it does in any sport in which a man is given control of a highly sensitive apparatus, errors of judgment in the handling of which may lead to disaster. ”

“ Naturally there is an ideal temperament for flying; but it is one which, owing to the combination of qualities that are required, is very rarely met with. The man who possesses it is gifted with courage, ambition, "dash," and with a readiness in an emergency that amounts to intuition. And yet these positive qualities are, in the ideal temperament, allied to, and tempered by, a strong vein of prudence and of caution. The pilot has absolute system, method, and thoroughness in everything he does. ”