Laurence Yard Smith

“ This spectacle of a man gliding through the air attracted large crowds. People assembled from far and wide to behold the flying man, and his achievements were greeted with wild cheering. On his huge winged glider he floated calmly over the heads of the astounded multitude, often landing far behind them in the fields. In the difficult matter of balancing himself in mid-air he became exceedingly skilful. Every slight gust of wind had a tendency to overturn him, but Lilienthal constantly shifted the weight of his body in such a manner as to balance himself. ”

“ Yet undoubtedly the greatest exploits will be told of those heroes who, in the Great War, flew daily over the lines, meeting the aviators of the enemy in mortal combat.
Every allied nation engaged in the great conflict has her sacred roll of honor of those who fought for her in the air. Americans will never grow weary of tales of the great Lufbery; Englishmen will boast of the prowess of Bishop, McCudden and the rest of them; while Frenchmen will tell, with mingling of joy and sadness, of the immortal Guynemer, Prince of Aces. ”

“ Machines are gone over to make sure that everything is in perfect condition. Then the first bombing plane, bearing the flight leader, “taxis” across the field, appearing to stagger under its great burden. Suddenly it takes to the air, and like a large graceful bird, its clumsiness all gone, it soars up into the blue. Rapidly the other big birds follow suit, and at a signal they are off, the flight commander heading the group, and the others following in close formation, like a huge flock of wild geese. ”

“ But at night,—on a cloudy night at that, when there are no lights on earth to guide him and no stars visible in the sky—the aviator faces some of his gravest perils. Strange as it may seem it is often very difficult for him to tell whether his machine is in a horizontal position, whether he is flying right-side-up or is toppling over at a perilous angle. ”

“ The English nation was as wild with joy as the French had been at the early balloon ascents. Lunardi was lionized and became the favorite of the hour; his presence was demanded everywhere and he was royally entertained by the foremost people of the realm.
The British Isles became, from this time on, the scene of many a thrilling adventure with the balloon. It was only a few years later that Charles Green, the most famous of all the early English aeronauts, began his voyages in the Great Nassau, the balloon whose name is even to-day a tradition. ”

“ Undoubtedly the engine problem has been the big one in the history of aviation. The coming of the internal combustion engine might be said to have placed practical aviation within the range of possibility, but at that it took a long time to evolve a motor especially suited to the needs of aircraft. There were three things needed in an airplane motor: Light weight, high power, and absolute reliability. How important the third factor is we can imagine if we stop to think that nothing keeps the heavier-than-air machine afloat but its own speed, creating an air pressure beneath its wings. ”

“ Military photography sounds easy and comfortable. It demands the type of courage which can make a man stick to a given line of flight, even when certain death lies straight ahead.
Sometimes a machine carries both bombs and a camera, and, as it drops its missiles, keeps a continuous record of its “hits” to carry home. And that brings us to the bombing machine, last but not least of the trio of military airplanes.
The bomber that works by day and near to its own lines, is similar to the reconnaissance machine, except that it does not usually carry a radio apparatus or a camera. ”

“ The Training of an Aviator
It is a rocky road that leads from the obscurity of civilian life to the glory and achievement of a successful “bird-man.” The man—or the boy—who elects to follow it must be possessed of brains, physical perfection, and iron grit, for he will need them all if he is to become one of the “heroes of the air.” With one's feet on solid earth it is easy enough to make mistakes and profit by them, doing better the next time. The airman seldom profits by his serious blunders, for he is no longer on the scene when the experts are pointing out what error he was guilty of. ”

“ There is something wrong with its engine. It does its best to keep up with its fellows, but soon it is left behind, and the enemy craft dive after it. Battered and torn, its numbers depleted sadly, several of its crew wounded, its wings perhaps riddled with bullets, the photographing squadron turns its face toward home, and, flying now as high as possible to keep out of sight, puts on all speed for the safe side of No Man's Land. ”

“ Ballooning in itself will probably never be the sport that it once was, for the coming of the swift motor-driven dirigible and the still swifter airplane has made the old wind-driven vessel a hopelessly obsolete contrivance. It is therefore all the more interesting to know that the captive balloon, developed to highest form of efficiency, gave good service in the war against Germany and made itself a reliable and valuable servant of our armies, accomplishing its mission in a particular field in which neither the airship nor the airplane was able to compete with it successfully. ”

“ At each lesson he has mastered some new problem. He knows how to leave the earth at the proper angle after the first short run over the ground, and how to come down again, how to turn in the air, when to cut off the power in alighting and when to apply the brakes. He learns to listen for the rhythmic sound of the engine and to know when anything has gone wrong with it.
By far the most difficult of his problems is the art of landing. As we have already seen the speed of an airplane cannot be reduced below a certain danger line if its wings are to continue to support it in the air. ”

“ Like the boy who runs with his kite in order to make it go up, the airplane must “go” if it would rise, and the moment its engine fails there is nothing to prevent it from falling to the earth. The driver of a [154] motor car, can, if his engine goes wrong, get out and go over it carefully until he finds what the difficulty is. The pilot of an airplane, soaring thousands of feet above the earth, is at the mercy of his motor's reliability or lack of it. Engine failure was, and still is, one of the greatest dangers the airman has to fear. ”

“ In the long run it is perhaps the bombing plane that represents the greatest saving in human life in time of war. An army may be well equipped with reconnaissance machines and speed scouts, so that it may keep in closest touch with every move of the enemy. But unless it is able to interfere with those moves before they reach the proportions of a direct and staggering blow, then the best it can do is to concentrate its own troops and supplies in readiness to meet the blow when it does fall. ”

“ To-day the airplane that is used for general service duties over the lines is a dreadnaught of the air, and although it may still take along with it on its errands a few scouts to give battle to the faster airplanes of the enemy, yet on the whole it is self-reliant and has little to fear. ”

“ Altogether, it was not until the nineteenth century that any real progress toward flight in a heavier-than-air machine was made. It came when experimenters began to investigate the definite laws of air resistance and air pressure which control the action of a bird just as they do the action of a kite. As a matter of fact, a bird, or an airplane, is nothing more than a complicated kite, controlled by an intelligence within itself, rather than by an operator standing on the ground and guiding it by means of a cord. ”

“ He presented a curious spectacle when he took to flight with his gaudily painted flock of birds and the British promptly nicknamed his squadron “Richthofen's circus.” The “circus” usually consisted of about 30 fast scout machines, with every pilot a picked man. Freed from all routine duties over the lines its one object was to destroy, and so it roved up and down, appearing now here, now there, in an effort to strike terror to the hearts of British and French airmen. It took a large toll of our best fighters, although Richthofen's personal record of 78 victories was undoubtedly exaggerated. ”

“ The Montgolfier balloon rose in the air because it was lighter than air,—just as a piece of cork rises in water because it weighs less in proportion to its volume than the water. But a man equipped with wings is a fairly heavy object; where is the force that is to lift him and carry him soaring into the sky?
Unfortunately the early experimenters in aeronautics were not men who had had the long training in keen observation nor the groundwork of mechanical knowledge which would have fitted them for their task of devising a flying machine. ”

“ The moment his machine, after a run across the ground, suddenly lifts and goes skimming off into the blue, he must depend upon himself. No friend upon the earth can shout to him any advice; his own unfailing knowledge and quick judgment must dictate in every emergency and see him through until once more he alights upon this old world. ”

“ The first place among fighters is now perhaps held by the Spad. Carrying one or two passengers and equipped with an engine of 150 to 250 horsepower, with its Lewis and Vickers machine guns spitting away at the enemy, it is a formidable object in the arena of war.
Not to be left behind, America has developed a small, fast fighting machine which bids fair to make the other two look to their laurels. It is a tiny Curtiss triplane, the span of whose wings is only 25 feet. Its extra lifting surface gives it remarkable climbing powers without increasing its size as a target. ”

“ From altitudes so [137] tremendous that they awe the mere earthly pedestrian it swoops down upon its unsuspecting victim, opening upon him a stream of machine gun fire. For its pilot is also a skilled gunner and a crack shot. Upon his ability to maneuver his machine swiftly and cleverly and hit his target unerringly depends his own life and the life of a costly military airplane.
The reconnaissance machines and the bombing planes may do valuable service,—and indeed they invariably do—but it is the “speed scout” that covers itself with glory. ”

“ London as well as Paris suffered from enemy bombing planes. Raid followed raid in the Spring of 1918, but the British had so improved their aerial defenses that they were able to meet the attempted ravages of the enemy with the most powerful anti-aircraft guns, which, like a wall of fire, forbade the dread monsters to come within the limits of the metropolis. Many machines in the German squadrons never got close enough to London to bomb it, but those which did let fall their terrible explosives without aim or object, killing and maiming a large number of civilians. ”

“ From the tiny fighting machines that carried so many of our bravest pilots to personal combat over the lines, to the enormous bombing planes used to scatter destruction and ruin among the military strongholds of the enemy, our machines were trustworthy and brave, but they were also machines of honor. ”

“ But whatever structural difficulties have yet to be overcome in connection with the airplane, certain it is that the big birds which we saw so often in the sky during the war, are going to be yet numerous in peace times. As for the purely military machines, let us hope that their work is over, and that they may never be called on to fight another battle in the air. Yet if other wars should come, it is certain that they would play a still more tremendous rôle than they have in the present struggle. We can imagine the war of the future being fought almost entirely above the clouds. ”

“ Imagine a balloon all ready to be inflated, that is, ready to be filled with gas. The bag or “envelope” hangs limp and lifeless. Together with the basket, ropes, etc., which are attached to it, it probably weighs several hundred pounds, yet because its volume is so small it displaces very little air. Now we commence to inflate the balloon. As the gas rushes in, the envelope commences to swell; it grows larger and larger, displacing a greater volume of air every moment. When fully inflated it displaces a volume of air much greater in weight than itself. ”

“ But the last year or so have brought many improvements in airplane construction and it has been found possible to build a machine which can not only carry the heavy photographic apparatus and a couple of machine guns, but which can also travel at a good speed and climb fast enough to escape from the anti-aircraft guns. Instead of the rather helpless, clumsy, slow-flying reconnaissance machines of the early part of the war, we now have powerful “aerial dreadnaughts,” which no longer need to run away, but can stay and fight it out when they are interrupted in the course of their air duties. ”

“ THE LAUNCHING OF A LANGLEY, A GIANT BOMBING AIRPLANE
The Allied nations have vied with each other in their efforts to produce the king among bombing planes. The Italians have undoubtedly carried away the prize. Their Caproni triplane is among the largest in the world. The details of its construction were kept secret, as it was one of the most dreaded weapons of the Allies. Three powerful Fiat motors drive it at a speed of about 80 miles an hour. With its five tons of bombs, destined for important objectives in the land of the enemy, it is an object to inspire awe. ”

“ During the last few years we have been thinking of the airplane solely as an instrument of war, and for that purpose we have bent our entire energies to developing it. When all the wealth of skill we have acquired during strenuous war times is turned to solving the problem of making the airplane useful in times of peace, there will be new and fascinating chapters to relate.
The war has done a lot for the airplane. It has raised up a host of aircraft factories in all the large countries, with thousands of skilled workers. It has given us a splendid force of trained pilots and mechanics. ”

“ It is almost humorous that man, who for centuries had nourished the secret ambition of acquiring wings, should have found his dream imperfectly realized in the twentieth century by riding in a kite. For that is all an airplane actually is. Yet a “kite” which is no longer tied to earth by a cord and which is equipped with a motor to drive it forward at a great speed has one decided advantage over the old-fashioned sort. The paper kite had to wait for a favorable breeze to catch it up and bear it aloft. ”

“ Every American must feel a glow of pride when he stops to think that it was two of his fellow-countrymen, Wilbur and Orville Wright, who invented the airplane. But it is largely to France, our great ally and friend, that the credit must go for improving upon the invention of the Wrights, and making possible the wonderful aerial feats, the marvelous flights and accomplishments of the airplane of to-day. ”

“ A wing gains lifting power from two sources: the upward pressure of the air current underneath it, and the force of the vacuum above it which is created by the arch of the wing. If a wing is only slightly arched it can move forward through the air more swiftly, but it will not have the lifting power of the high arched wing. This is the reason that an airplane which must be a weight carrier cannot be as fast in flight as the “speed scout,” which has only its pilot and a machine gun to carry. ”

“ Famous Allied Airplanes
Airplanes, like men, are not all alike, even when they are in the same line of work and performing the self-same duties. In war time, every gunner has his own little peculiarities, every sharpshooter has his personal ideas about catching the enemy napping, and every infantryman who goes over the top, in spite of his rigorous training in the art of war, meets and downs his opponent in a manner all his own. ”