Evan John David

“ Taken all in all, the speed of transportation has increased man’s pleasures and years proportionately.
But how many people to-day realize that when aerial transportation of passengers and freight has become an actual accomplished fact in the sense that water and land transportation of man and his goods now is, a complete redistribution and reconcentration of the cities, people, and nations and a new internationalism in the form of customs and language will have become a historic fact! ”

“ For example, if the tail plane or flat, finlike surface that projects from the sides of the tail of the body, or fuselage, has too much “incidence,” or, in other words, is slanted at too sharp an angle downward, it has a tendency in flight to lift the rear of the machine and to make it dive. A seaplane, when properly constructed, is so evenly balanced that, when the crane that lifts it off the mother ship holds it suspended in the air, the machine is equipoised like a bird with wings spread in flight. ”

“ There is no gainsaying that stunt flying, or aerial acrobatics, was absolutely essential to the flying of scout and combat machines in the Great War, for in order to survive in the war in the air it was necessary for the pilot to be able to manœuvre and dodge about in the sky as easily as a fish in the water; otherwise, the flier would be shot down by a more agile machine or clever aviator. ”

“ Without going into a technical discussion of all the forces that enter into the flight of an aeroplane we must, however, realize that if the pressure of the atmosphere is uniform in all directions, in order to make the air forced under a wing or plane lift more than the air above forces down, the wing of the plane must be curved in such a way that the forward motion of the edge of the wing causes the air underneath to force any particle of the surface upward, while the upper surface is relieved of the pressure. ”

“ Just as the navigator must know the sea, so the aviator must have a knowledge of the heavens and the basic principles of aerodynamics in order to become a successful pilot. Although the air is volatile like the water, the aviator flies through it as a fish moves through water. Therefore the aerial navigator must know enough about the medium through which he travels to know what to do in an emergency. ”

“ Because of the small size of the scout machine—with only a 26-foot wing spread—and its speed of more than a hundred miles an hour—compared to the Zeppelin speed of 60 or 70 miles—the aeroplane was invaluable for scouting over short distances, for duels in the air, for directing artillery-fire, for contact patrol; and the larger aeroplanes were useful for bombing in huge fleets.
In all other purposes of war the Zeppelin is far superior to the aeroplane. Even the contention that the aeroplanes stopped the Zeppelin raids on England is absurd. ”

“ If he has engine trouble he can land anywhere and fix his machine and then fly on. Since air resistance is much less than road resistance he can traverse the distance much cheaper than in an inexpensive automobile. If there is no body of water near his place of business he can land his cross-country flier in the park or flying-field just as easily as on the water. This same machine will lend itself to all kinds of pleasure flying, and no other sport gives so much exhilaration, scenic view, and adventuresome excitement as the aeroplane ”

“ Early in the war most of the army, navy, and private aviation schools of the United States adopted the penguin system of learning to fly. That method, invented by the French, consisted of using as a training-machine an aeroplane that had so small a wing spread or so weak a motor that it merely hopped five or six feet off the ground when the motor was wide open. The small wing spread caused it to zigzag along the ground like a drunken man. ”

“ Within a comparatively short time, then, we ought to see many companies organized in this country for aerial transnavigation of the globe by helium airship! Before the year 1919 has come to a close we ought to see aeroplanes and dirigibles jumping the Atlantic from shore to shore. Who knows, it may even come to pass that man shall become as much a creature of the air as the birds! As a world of exploration and travel the heavens offer him many adventures. ”

“ Indeed, in the last days of training the student was encouraged to practise all kinds of stunts and tricks, for when an enemy descended on you from the clouds above and was sitting on your tail weaving a wreath of bullets from a machine-gun round you, your only chance of escape was by means of a loop, a dive, a side slip, or a roll.
Another interesting test a pilot had to undergo before he got his license to do battle was to ascend fifteen hundred feet, cut off all power, and volplane down in a spiral to a fixed point. To perform the manœuvre successfully required great skill. ”

“ Clouds and mist are two of the worst enemies of the aerial navigator; first because it shuts off the observer’s vision of the terrain, preventing him from knowing exactly where he is, and because it makes it difficult for him to locate his landing-field. Directional wireless and the wireless telephone do help a great deal in giving information about the lay of the land beneath the clouds or mist, but of course it cannot visualize the ground on which the aeroplane is to land for the pilot to see exactly where he should set the wheels down. ”

“ Indeed, ever since man has learned to fly he has become such an exalted creature that he has ceased to regard any mechanical feat as impossible. This is, in a measure at least, pardonable when we stop to consider that ever since man got up off his hands and learned to walk upright he has longed to be able to fly as a bird through the heavens in any direction he chose, without let or hindrance, boundary or border. ”

“ Seldom is any stipulation made that limits the weight of the automobile motor in proportion to the amount of horse-power; a few pounds more or less is not an important consideration in a pleasure-car or a motor-truck. But in an aeroplane every ounce of superfluous weight must be eliminated from the engine, which must nevertheless be strong enough to withstand the most violent strain.
The aeroplane motor is subject to far greater strains [38] than the automobile motor is. Except during a race, one rarely runs the engine of an automobile at its maximum speed ”

“ From the time of the first flight of the Wright brothers in 1903 to the breaking out of the Great War in July, 1914, the art of flying an aeroplane was not taught systematically either in private or military schools, primarily because flying in a heavier-than-air machine was regarded by civilians as a very dangerous sport and by military authorities as hardly more than a dubious scout for locating troop or train movements. For that reason very few civilians were induced to take up aviation except a few of the more daring sportsmen. ”

“ Teaching men [348] to fly, to send messages by wireless, to operate machine guns in the air, to know artillery fire by its bursts, and to travel hundreds of miles by compass, teaching other men to read the enemy’s strategy from aerial photographs, and still others to repair instruments, ignition systems, propellers, aeroplane wings, and motors, has required a network of flying fields and schools, a large instructional force, and a maze of equipment and curricula. ”

“ Then, with our feet firmly planted on the ground but with our heads up in the clouds so that we may see over the highest mountains, let us look down the corridors of the ages and discern through the mists of time some of the transportation feats which this new invention of man will most certainly perform. ”

“ In the United States laws should be adopted to regulate the inspection of aircraft which carry passengers, just as sea and river navigation is now regulated, in order to protect the lives of the passengers, and also to protect the lives of the people living in the cities where these machines are apt to descend, on account of damages that could be collected, etc., in case a machine fell upon and destroyed private property. ”

“ The helicopter is a machine which theorists of that school believe can fly straight up into the sky because its air screw propeller works on a vertical axis. This type of aircraft has never been successful, for the reason that the propeller does not lift. It simply pulls a stream-lined surface through the air. The lifting must be done by planes.
The ornithopter is another heavier-than-air craft which seeks to fly by flapping wings like a bird. The effort to build this type of machine is as old as human desire to imitate the fowls of the air and it has been as unsuccessful as the helicopter. ”

“ Thirty-five miles an hour, except where the head resistance is great, is the slowest speed now made in landing a heavier-than-air machine. The invention of a device or the discovery of a means of reducing the speed to ten miles an hour when touching the ground, though still only in the realms of the probable, is by no means diametrically opposed to the inherent laws of the aeroplane. This accomplished, the danger of flying in an aeroplane will be reduced to infinitesimal proportions—at least to a degree no more precarious than riding in an automobile. ”

“ So if a gale is blowing 20 miles an hour the aeroplane may be lifted off the ground when moving no faster than 15 miles an hour with respect to the earth. Likewise unless a machine is moving 35 miles an hour it will lose flying speed and fall to the ground.
Machines do not all land at the same speed. The famous Morane monoplane skimmed along the ground at anywhere from 45 to 90 miles an hour. It is manifestly impossible to do more than suggest the fundamental principles of aeroplane flight here. To be sure, the type of aircraft has, as we have indicated, much to do with why and how it flies. ”

“ Often the machine drops straight down, and the pilot should immediately head his machine into the current. Sometimes winds will be found blowing in different directions and passing in layers above one another. These have a tendency to turn the ship about, and is one of the reasons why the aviators prefer to get altitude before doing any stunt flying. Except close to the ground these contrary winds are not dangerous. So just as a vessel is safest far from a coast in a storm, [165] so an aeroplane is safest at a reasonable altitude where the wind is not so bumpy. ”

“ Of course, when an aviator is lost in the fog or above the clouds he needs to use all the instruments on board to find his position. For that purpose drift instruments are mounted on aircraft; those tell how much the air-currents, which have the same effect on aircraft as the tide has on a boat, have driven him off his course. A compass indicates the direction in which he is travelling, and other instruments show him whether his machine is climbing, diving, or “banking”; the aneroid barometer indicates the altitude. ”

“ The evolution of the heavier-than-air flying-machine, like that of the lighter-than-air, covers a long period of time, and was fraught with many difficulties and dangers. For ages many scientific men played with the idea, but owing to the lack of motive power light enough to be mounted on a glider yet supplying sufficient strength to drive a set of planes through the air at 45 miles an hour, very little progress was made until the perfection of the steam-engine and the development of the gasoline motor. ”

“ With aircraft flying over cities, towns, countries, continents, and the oceans, carrying passengers, it is becoming absolutely essential that a code of laws for aerial navigation should be adopted by the United States, and an international code should also be adopted by the nations of the earth. ”

“ It was thus that man transformed the floating log, which he propelled with his feet, into a floating palace, driven thousands of miles across the greatest of oceans. Likewise he metamorphosed the puny stationary steam-engine into a demon that is more powerful than a thousand horses, and that rushes him across the broad spaces of the earth faster than the fastest deer.
Indeed, with the aeroplane, man has already done what was considered for countless ages as the acme of the impossible—he has learned to fly ”

“ Thus by levelling boundaries and borders of nations and countries the aircraft promises to perform the greatest blessing of mankind by abolishing war, destroying nationalism, and establishing internationalism and the brotherhood of man throughout the world. ”

“ This unlawful use of these giant aircraft does not detract from what they demonstrated could be done in the way of aerial navigation and transportation under the frightful opposition of war, and it is only an augury of what will be accomplished when the same vessels of the air will be put to carrying man up and down the aerial highways of the heavens, which know no barriers, obstructions, or hostile opposition. ”