Gordon Lamont

“ In twenty years' time our life of to-day will seem centuries old, just as to-day it is hard to realize that the automobile and motor-truck do not date back much over a generation. No change that has ever come in man's history will be so great as the change which takes him up off the ground and into the air. This swift and dazzling era that is so close upon us is hardly suspected by the great mass of people. The world will [106] be both new and better for it. Less than the train or the motor-car will the airplane disturb its features. ”

“ Now comes news of an airplane with room for ninety-two passengers. Engine power and wing space have gone on increasing in a dazzling way till one is almost afraid to guess what the future may hold. But, omitting all prophecy, the actual accomplishments to date are so stupendous that there is no need to speculate as to the future. If all technical development were to stop just where it stands, the factories and workshops of the world could well be occupied for years in turning out the machines necessary for the work awaiting them. ”

“ There will be accidents in learning to fly, there will be accidents of foolhardiness and of collision or in landing, but they will decrease to the vanishing-point as experience grows. Already the air routes which have been established have a high record of success and freedom from fatalities.
The great need of aviation to-day is faith—faith among the people, among the manufacturers, among the men who will give it its being. ”

“ This has been the case at the birth of every great development in human progress and will undoubtedly be the case with the science of flight. Until a field becomes standardized it offers extremes on both sides rather than a dull, dreary, but safe average.
As aviation runs into every phase of activity it will require every kind of man—manufacturer, scientist, mechanic, and flier. It offers problems more interesting and more complex than almost any others in the world. The field is new and virgin, the demand world-wide, and the rewards great. ”

“ There is no chance to pull it out of a spin unless the pilot is alert and realizes that he has lost speed, and noses down before he spins. Often he spins, and a fall with an airplane from a hundred feet is just as nasty as it can be.
For his own safety in the air the civilian who is about to take up instruction in flying should insist at his flying-school that he be taught thoroughly, to his own satisfaction, the control of his machine with the engine [51] shut off for the moment. There is a certain feel, a sing in the wires, he must know. ”

“ What is to become of all the new words, some of them with new meanings, the old words with new meanings, and the new words with old meanings, coined by the aviators of the American and British flying services in the war? Are they to die an early death from lack of nourishment and lack of use, or will they go forward, full-throated into the dictionary, where they may belong? ”

“ Flying for an early solo pupil is the greatest mental strain that a man can experience. Every moment the fact that he is up in the air, supported only by wood, wires, and fabric, may be on his mind. He is making desperate efforts to remember everything his instructor has told him since he started his dual. He tries to keep that nose on the horizon, the wings balanced, and the machine flying true. He is in fear of stalling and consequent loss of control. ”

“ Most essential of all, for the man who would become an airplane mechanic, is a thorough knowledge of gasolene-engines. This should include not only a knowledge of such fundamentals as the theory of the internal-combustion engine, carburetion, compression, ignition, and explosion, but also a keen insight into the whims of the human, and terribly inhuman, thing—the gasolene-motor. Nothing can be sweeter [54] when it is sweet, and nothing more devilish when it is cranky, than an airplane engine. ”

“ As the sea has been the great civilizer of the past, so the air will be the great civilizer of the future. Through it men will be brought most intimately in touch with one another and forced to learn to live together as they have not been forced to live together before. ”

“ It teaches control over a machine as nothing else will. It may be carried out from any height, shutting off the motor, picking out a field, gliding for it, turning and twisting to get into proper position as regards the wind, and "giving her the gun" just at the fence and flying on.
A forced landing over the country is safe, but over a city it is the most deadly thing imaginable. For a machine caught with a "dud" engine over New York there is no escape but a terrific crash in the city streets, against the side of some building, with danger to the pilot and the people in the street below. ”

“ It is, in fact, only considered a matter of time before companies are started to carry passengers and mails across the Atlantic at a price that would offer serious competition to the fastest steamships.
The airship has been very much neglected by popular favor. Its physical clumsiness, its lack of sporting competition in comparison with the airplane which must fight to keep itself up in the air, its lack of romance as contrasted with that of the airplane in war, have all tended to cast somewhat of a shadow over the lighter-than-air vessel and cause the public to pass it by without interest. ”

“ An airplane is in no particular danger in the air if the motor stops—provided it is in an open stretch of country with plenty of fields. Instinctively the pilot will nose down and glide, and on that glide he will find himself maintaining flying speed. He can turn and maneuver his machine, and pick out almost any field near at hand. The only limitations are that he cannot glide more than five times his height, and when he comes down to the ground he must stop gliding and land. He must land on anything that presents itself, a field if he has good judgment ”

“ The best men of every type are needed to give aviation its full fruition. In Europe this is realized to a supreme degree. England especially, and also France and Italy, have put their best genius at work to fulfil the conquest of the air. Their progress is astonishing and should be a challenge to the New World. After the natural hiatus which followed the armistice the leading men have set to work with redoubled vigor to take first place in the air. ”

“ There can be only one answer to this question which men ask themselves daily—there is every chance in the world. Commercial flying, in the day when the air is to become a medium of transportation, just as ground and water are at present, must draw to itself hundreds of thousands of mechanics. ”

“ If he has nerve enough to drive an automobile through the streets of a large city, and perhaps argue with a policeman on the question of speed limits, he can take himself off the ground in an airplane, and also land—a thing vastly more difficult and dangerous. We hear a great deal about special tests for the flier—vacuum-chambers, spinning-chairs, co-ordination tests—there need be none of these. The average man in the street, the clerk, the laborer, the mechanic, the salesman, with proper training and interest can be made good, if not highly proficient pilots. ”

“ The speed of the lighter planes, quick, life-taking duels in several different strata at once, would provide a clash of action, speed, and skill far more beautiful and yet in many ways far more terrible than anything ever recorded in the history of war. ”

“ Up to date the essential fact is that the science, the value, and the possibilities of flight have been proved in a thousand different ways. Vistas of travel and experience have been opened up which but a few months ago would have seemed fanciful. Everywhere men are dreaming dreams of the future which challenge one's deepest imagination. ”

“ It is well in these early days, when flight is with the general public a very special and occasional event, to remember what has happened since Watt developed the steam-engine only a few generations ago, when Columbus set the first ship westward, or when America's first train ran over its rough tracks near the Quincy quarries.
The development of aviation will be world-wide and will include all sorts and races of men. The nations all start pretty much abreast. Those which developed war air services have an advantage in material and experience, but this is a matter only for the moment. ”

“ The pupil is a pilot, the air has no terrors, and he has learned the oldest truth of flying, that there is nothing to a spin unless you don't come out.
The natural result of training a pupil along those lines is that he graduates rapidly into a good stunting pilot. He realizes that he cannot tempt the devil at three hundred feet and hope to live, but he takes a good altitude, throws his machine upside down, and knows that, given enough air, he must come out. He does come out unless he loses complete control of his mind and body. ”

“ Any one with a reasonable amount of intelligence can be made a good pilot. He need not hold a college degree, or even a high-school diploma, tucked away in some forgotten place. If he has the sense of touch of the normal man, the sense of balance of a normal man, can skate, or ride a bicycle, he should be in the air, flying. There is a difference between the war or army pilot and the peace-time flier yet to be developed. ”

“ A modern two-seated airplane, even to-day, costs not over $5,000, or about the price of a good automobile. Very soon, with manufacturing costs standardized and the elements of newness worn off, this price will fall as sharply as it has already fallen during the war.
But what, after all, is cost in comparison with time? Modern civilization will pay dearly for any invention which will increase ever so little its hours of effectiveness. The great German liners before the war lavished money without stint to save a day or two in crossing the Atlantic. ”

“ War flying calls for highly trained men, a man who has proved himself fit for combat under all conditions, a man who can shoot straight, think quickly, and turn immediately. He must possess a little more than the average nerve, perhaps, or he must be trained to the point where shooting and maneuvering are the natural reactions to certain circumstances. He must be able to stand altitudes of 20,000 feet; he must be quick with his machine-gun, have a knowledge of artillery, and know, in fact, a little about everything on the front he is trying to cover. This requires training and aptitude. ”

“ Here at take-off and landing the pupil finds himself up against the most difficult part of his training. He has the problem of stopping a large machine weighing a ton or more, traveling at a landing speed of forty to fifty miles an hour, with the center of gravity just balanced over the under-carriage. An error in judgment will pile the machine up on its nose with a crashed propeller, and perhaps two broken wings and damaged under-carriage. Not a dangerous accident for the pilot, but very humiliating. ”

“ The problem is that of controlling a machine with its engine cut off, to have complete control of it within the radius of its gliding distance. Again, the dart gliding to its uncertain landing. In the hands of an unskilled pilot, an airplane gliding without power is a very dangerous thing. He may pile up the machine against some farm-house, fence, haymow, or clump of woods, smashing it badly and injuring himself. Or he may, through inexperience, lose flying speed in the course of his descent and topple over into a spin. ”

“ The law of the air will be one of the most intricate and the most fascinating in the world. It presents problems never before presented and covers a scope paralleled only by the laws of the sea. Very fortunately, however, aerial international law may be written at the very start of the science by a common international standard and practice, thus obviating the greatest part of the divergences which long years of habit have grafted into the maritime laws of the various nations. ”

“ The treacherous thing about a spinning-nose dive is that, to come out of it, a pilot must put his stick forward, not hold it back, in spite of the fact that the machine is falling nose first and spinning at the same time. A spin is possible only from a stall, and only when the stick is back and rudder in either direction is given. The position is an easy one to get into from a steep turn. Air resistance against a machine turning becomes greater, it slows down the speed, decreases the lifting power of the planes. ”

“ Scientific development has gone so infinitely far ahead of actual production that as yet aviation is not being put to a fraction of its use.
Even more serious, however, is the general public failure to realize the gift which is within their reach. Flying was first a circus stunt and later a war wonder. The solid practical accomplishments have been lost sight of in the weird or the spectacular. ”

“ For the man who would like to work into the piloting of aircraft there is a very good opportunity by starting with the mechanical side. Too many pilots know next to nothing about the construction of their machines. When an engine goes bad they know that it won't run—that is all. The pilot who is a good mechanic is a gifted man in his profession.
There are endless opportunities at flying-fields for mechanics who want to learn to fly. During the war it became customary to take mechanics up for flying at least once in two weeks on some fields. ”