Air superiority

“ Yet the fact that the Allied airmen kept the air at all in the early days proved on which side personal superiority lay, for they were outnumbered, out-manoeuvred, and faced by better material than any that they themselves possessed ”

“ An airman, flying in a wind, is rather in the position of a man who puts to sea in a small boat when waves are high. Once he can clear the shore, the boatman feels at ease; but should a breaker catch him before he reaches the smooth, rolling billows a little distance from the beach, his craft may be overturned and dashed to pieces. So with the airman; his moments of peril, when flying in a gusty wind, come just as he is soaring from the ground, and when descending from a flight. Then an air-wave, like a sea-wave, may lift his craft and drive it with a crash to earth. ”

“ Glad am I to be an airman, well-clad, well-fed, and warm in my sheltered aeroplane, with the thought of the welcoming fire and white sheets and hot-water bottle which will greet me when I return, to buoy me onwards through the momentary discomforts of a few hours in the air! As I see the water-filled shell-holes shining in the moonlight like strings of pearls, and picture the cold and the mud and the desolation, I realise that it is the infantryman, the man on the ground, who suffers most and has the worst time. ”

“ The dauntless courage of the aviators, not only in America, but in Europe also, is a wonderful thing. "The toll of the air", in the shape of fatal accidents from aviation, mounts into the hundreds, and yet men are undeterred in the pursuit of their investigations. With such intrepidity, perseverance, and genius, it is merely a question of time, and I hope it will not be long, when the art of flying, either by aeroplanes or airships, will be perfectly safe. ”

“ Four years of the Great War have shown how splendidly airmen have risen to the great demands made upon them. In dispatch after dispatch from the front, tribute has been paid to the gallant and devoted work of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. In a long and bitter struggle British airmen have gradually asserted their supremacy in the air. In all parts of the globe, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, in Africa, the airman has been an indispensable adjunct of the fighting forces. Truly it may be said that mastery of the air is the indispensable factor of final victory. ”

“ The struggle for the air mastery never ceases, and although it may never be absolute and complete, because the air is a big place to sweep quite clear and clean, the fact that scores of our machines spend all their flying hours anywhere over Hunland from the front lines to fifty miles and more behind them for every one Hun who flies over ours and, after a cruise of some minutes, races back again, is fairly good evidence of who holds the whip hand in the air. ”

“ Let there be a strong odor of burnt castor oil and gasoline as you enter the door; a wide view from the verandas of earth and sky; maps on the walls; and on the roof a canvas “pantaloon-leg” to catch the wind. Nothing else matters very much. There they will be as happy as any old airman can expect to be, arguing about the winds and disputing one another's judgment about the height of the clouds. ”

“ Imagine that a battle impends, and that the Commander-in-Chief of one army seeks news as to the movements of some division of his enemy; so he orders the air-scouts to ascend. But the wind may be blowing hard; and if it is, and the aeroplanes are only fair-weather machines, they will have to remain on the ground till the wind drops, and perhaps miss their greatest chance during a whole campaign. ”

“ Our aviator swings free in a great circle, banks, and at top speed makes back to his air-line patrol, while the German Archies open up on him with redoubled violence, as, serenely confident, he hums along his way.
It is truly wonderful what a fire an aeroplane can pass through quite unscathed as far as actual hinderance to flight is concerned. Many a time you can count nearly two hundred wreathing balls of smoke in the track of [43] the machine, and yet it sails placidly onward as though the air were the native element of its pilot and the attentions of Archie nonexistent. ”

“ This was not mere rhetoric, as the world will shortly realize. The science of aeronautics has already advanced so far that one is as safe to-day in the air as on the railway, on the sea or in a motor-car on the road. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As it is, at any aerodrome one sees a machine come down, the pilot and passenger (a fare or a pupil) climb out, the mechanics hang round and smoke cigarettes, unless they have to perform the arduous duties of filling up with petrol. In due course another passenger and a pilot climb in, a mechanic swings the propeller, and away they go quite happily. If anything casts loose they come down—and it is truly wonderful how many things can come loose or break in the air without anyone being killed. ”

“ Happily the experience of those days, though purchased at the cost of many lives, has taught makers of air-craft to design their machines on more trustworthy lines. Pilots, too, have made a scientific study of air eddies, gusts, and so on, and the danger of flying in a strong or gusty wind is comparatively small. ”

“ In his graceful air diving, looping the loop, and flying upside down, he gave the world a great object-lesson of the materiality of air. He showed the air can give the aviator as much support as the water can to a fancy swimmer. He showed that if the aëroplane is an unstable thing, the human brain can supply the stability; that in human flight, like the bird and its wings, the machine and individual can be in closest touch. No one has stripped the air of its terrors as has M. Pégoud. In the yielding air there is indeed safety! It is the ground the aviator has to fear! ”

“ It must be remembered that an advantage in altitude can be always turned to account to give a temporary advantage in speed, as in the swoop of a bird of prey. We may look confidently to the wide employment of such swooping tactics in the future of aerial warfare. The advantage possessed by an air fleet having its base at high altitude, sometimes even some 6,000 ft, or 8,000 ft, above sea-level, will be very great ”

“ There are so many problems to be solved in regard to the governing of flight, that they can only be dealt with as they arise. The air, as an element in which men may navigate a craft, has aspects which are unique. ”

“ Even before the 'plane responds to some sudden gust of wind, or drops into a hole in the air, the trained aviator will foresee precisely what is about to happen. He reads it in some little thrill of his lever, a quiver in the frame, as the trained boxer reads in his antagonist's eyes the sort of blow that is coming. ”

“ The handicap was not a serious one, and I think I may truthfully say that we kept pace with our French comrades. The most important thing was to gain actual flying experience, and as much of it as possible. Only in this way can one acquire a sensitive ear for motors, and an accurate sense of flying speed: the feel of one's machine in the air. These are of the greatest importance. Once the pilot has developed this airman's sixth sense, he need not, and never does, worry about the scantiness of his knowledge of the theory of flight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those first aviation meetings did not promise mastery of the air except by the eye of faith. For hours, and sometimes for days, we waited on the edge of flat fields while men like Graham White, Latham, Blériot, Hamel, and other pioneers whose names, alas! I have forgotten—there is something terrible and tragic in that quick forgetfulness of heroic adventure—tinkered with their machines, stared at the wind gauge, would not risk the light breeze that blew, or rose a little, after running like lame ducks around the field, and crashed again like wounded birds. Death took a heavy toll of them. ”

“ The foregoing outline of the development of aviation from the earliest times up to the war—a story of human endeavour and achievement in the air with its attendant dangers and difficulties—is not without value in endeavouring to assess that which has since occurred. ”

“ But our aviators have given America total dominance of the air and space, no matter where we fly. Now when our enemies hear the F-35 engines, when they're roaring overhead, their souls will tremble and they will know the day of reckoning has arrived. ”

“ Above all, flying has been rendered safe: with a sound machine to-day, and a competent pilot, it is as safe in the air as it is on the ground. So much for five years: but aeroplanes are still small, and their engine-power is low; and airmen may be likened perhaps to the first navigators of the sea. They paddled tiny boats, and found they could control them; then longed for larger craft, with which they might cross the ocean, and bear passengers from land to land. ”

“ The air service still flourishes; its health depends on a secret elixir of immortality, which enables a body to repair its severest losses. The name of this elixir is tradition, and the greatest of all the achievements of the air service is that in a very few years, under the hammer of war, it has fashioned and welded its tradition, and has made it sure. ”

“ Then against our aerostat, and with the wind driving them clean overhead of us, come the antagonistic flying-machines. I incline to imagine there will be a steel prow with a cutting edge at either end of the sort of aerostat I foresee, and conceivably this aerial ram will be the most important weapon of the affair. When operating against balloons, such a fighting-machine will rush up the air as swiftly as possible, and then, with a rapid contraction of its bladders, fling itself like a knife at the sinking war-balloon of the foe. ”

“ Sweeping once more upwards, the airman regains the pre-determined level, performs a certain evolution in the air which warns the observer at his base that he has made a discovery, and promptly drops his guiding signal directly over the point from which he has drawn fire. ”

“ Even after one has become an expert, the battle is not won, by any means. While flying in calm weather is extremely pleasurable, a protracted flight is very fatiguing; and when it is necessary to wrestle 172 with gusts of high wind and fickle air currents, the strain upon the strongest nerve is a serious source of danger in that the aviator is liable to be suddenly overcome by weariness when he most needs to be on the alert. ”

“ So, in the case of aviation, man was long convinced, for no scientific reason, that flight was possible. With the first ascent by balloon came the imagined mastery of the air; later, the invention of flight that can be controlled at will. To-day we are still in the stage of colonization. The future resources of the air remain hidden from our view. ”

“ As may be surmised, the duties of the pilot were not merely to steer and keep a lookout ahead, but also to watch the machine and counteract the influence of unexpected air currents and those atmospheric obstructions like “pockets,” indistinguishable puffs of air, and the like, which are always very dangerous and will jolt an airship exactly as a rock or piece of wood will bounce an automobile into the air and maybe completely overturn it. Among experienced aeronauts, these air-ruts are recognized as being one of the chief perils in aviation. ”

“ Many a pilot who got his first flying training in a Jenny or a Curtiss flying boat is now an airline executive or a world-famous flying general or admiral. It was the steadfast efforts of such veteran airmen as Mitchell, Arnold, Spaatz, Eaker, Rickenbacker, Harold L. George, Artemus Gates, Bob Lovett, Louis Brereton, Jimmy Doolittle, Frank Lahm, Gill Robb Wilson, Jack Jouett, John H. Towers, and others, who have built American air supremacy. ”

“ Had we recognized the revolutionary character of air transport, we might have removed enough of the causes of war to have avoided World War II. Instead, we hamstrung our own air power and provided our enemies with a favorable opportunity to seize control of the air. ”

“ If he is well aloft, with plenty of air space beneath him, and particularly if he has a machine that is inherently stable, he has little to fear from the wind; save, perhaps, should his engine fail him, or should he find—as has been the case in war flying—that the force of the wind, blowing heavily against him, and reducing the speed of his machine, has prevented him from regaining his own lines before his petrol has become exhausted. The modern aeroplane, when its engine-power is ample, and it is at a suitable altitude, can wage battle successfully even with a gale. ”

“ That "air activity," so frequently reported and so casually read in the despatches, means a good deal more than "fleets of aeroplanes darkening the sky," machines dashing and flashing around anywhere up to their "ceiling" of twenty odd thousand feet, shooting holes in and crashing each other, bombing and photographing and contact-patrolling and ground-strafing, and all the rest of it. ”