Civil aviation

“ Military air supremacy can best be assured by the intensive development of industrial air organization for commercial purposes. The conception of civil aviation as the mainstay of air power as a whole is right. Service aviation is bound by technical and financial limits; its scope confined to the requirements of war. Civil aviation, on the other hand, opens out a prospect of productive expansion. The steady growth of the Continental services is already beginning to demonstrate the importance of air transport. ”

“ The advance of civil aviation is bound to be slower than was that of war aviation. But, as war experience improved old and evolved new types, so will peace requirements and experience shape the type and design of aircraft and engine best suited to its purposes. ”

“ Meanwhile, if [133] civil aviation can be built up as a productive organization to a position relative to that held by our mercantile marine, we must understand that it will ensure air supremacy better than a large unproductive outlay on armaments. And I am convinced that, with public support, this can, and will, be done. Others will do it if we do not. But air power, although drawing its vitality from the expansion of air commerce and the growth of the civil aircraft industry, must at the same time rely upon the nucleus of a highly trained and technical air force. ”

“ Although America was actually the birthplace of the airplane, many years passed after the first flight of the Wright Brothers before there was any real consideration of the military or civil values of aviation. That aviation did progress at all in its early years was due to the efforts of a few fledgling military fliers, a group of barnstormers, and a handful of aircraft builders.
Working closely together, these men flew and experimented with our first flying machines. They risked their lives time and again in order to learn everything possible about flying and the flying machine. ”

“ Turning now to the machine and engine, the Military Trials held in 1912, when the Royal Flying Corps was started, represented the first organized effort to assist the evolution of service aeroplanes in this country and a brief comparison will be useful to show the performance of the average machines and engines of that date, at the beginning, and at the end of the war, and of civil machines of to-day. ”

“ In modern war the mobilization period tends to shorten, and every effort will be made towards its further reduction, since mobilizing armies are particularly vulnerable from air attack.
Civil Aviation as a Factor in National Security.
The picture I have drawn may appear highly coloured for the reason that no country is likely for some time to possess sufficiently large air forces to obtain a decisive victory, or at any rate an uncontested superiority, at the outbreak of war. ”

“ Many pages could be filled with the difficulties and exploits of the first British aviators, but enough has been said to show that, compared with that of aeroplanes in France and of airships in Germany, development in this country started late, progressed slowly and excited little public interest. The work of the pioneers was, however, not in vain, since it opened the eyes of our military authorities to the value of aviation and led to the formation of that small but highly efficient flying corps which during the war expanded into an organization without rival. ”

“ Although the first country to adopt aeroplanes for use by its army, the United States is now far behind other nations in its aviation squads. The United States Signal Corps owns only a few Wright and Curtiss biplanes, with only a small number of officers who know how to fly them. France has an extensive fleet of several hundred aeroplanes and a small army of aviators, while Germany has established a school for aviation where sixty or seventy officers are always 84 being instructed in flying the various types of machines. ”

“ The air problems of the army and navy are peculiar to themselves. Governmental support is naturally important in the development of planes and motors and in quickening production. Then, too, both branches are turning out trained pilots, useful in national emergency, many of whom will eventually find their way into the fields of commercial aviation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A big plane must have two engines, one of which could keep the plane flying if the other failed. Boeing went to work with this in mind.
Near Los Angeles, the young man who had been dreaming of big commercial transport planes since the Wright Brothers’ trials at Fort Meyer, also was thinking of two-engined transports that could fly on one engine. From the time Donald Douglas’ World Cruisers had circled the globe, his aircraft had grown larger and larger. His orders, however, were for Army, Navy, and Coast Guard planes; not for great commercial airliners. ”

“ Aviation has transformed modern life. The Golden Age of Flight during the 1920s and 1930s captured the imagination of the American people, and soon opened commercial opportunities for transport and trade. Two world wars led to the development of the modern U.S. Air Force, strengthening our national security and enabling us to command the battlefield and protect our homeland from the sky. Aviation has also connected far-away nations, changing the way we conduct business, spend our leisure time, and spread new ideas. ”

“ Naval and military airmen predominate at the schools; but there are many civilians, also, who come to learn to fly. Some of them, after they are skilled, become professional pilots, being employed by an aeroplane company to demonstrate its machines: others, having money to invest, will buy one or two craft and start a flying school of their own; others again, after purchasing a machine, will take it abroad with them and give exhibition flights, visiting places if possible where aviation has not been seen before. ”

“ We can not place dependence on civilian aviators, for they have not had the training along the highly technical and specialised lines that are necessary. We can not rely on enlisted men of the army, for the same reason.
There is another class of fliers that will, undoubtedly, be of use in war time. These are the men to drive fast-flying, single-passenger machines for speedy messenger service between detached bodies of troops, or to drive the heavy ammunition or food-carrying aeroplanes to relieve a besieged place. ”

“ As in World War I, we have seen Army aviation reach the brink of war without being fully prepared. Again we have seen our military leaders and aircraft builders roll up their sleeves and go to work. However, we have never seen anything to equal the development of our Army Air Forces.
From a force which numbered hardly more than 100,000 men and a handful of airplanes at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Army Air Forces have grown to be the world’s greatest aërial striking power. ”

“ In plane-to-plane combat our military pilots showed a courage and initiative unequaled by ally or foe.
With our entry into the war, our infant aviation industry also picked up speed. With typical American energy it built up an enviable production record before the end of the war. As America had no combat airplane designs at the start of the war, our industry turned out planes and engines of foreign design. Aircraft factories built English DH-4 observation planes, Handley-Page bombers, and SE-5 fighter planes. ”

“ The pilot of a helicopter of today is a very busy fellow. New developments, however, will probably simplify the operation of the machine.
{102}
The year 1945 marks the beginning of the forty-third year of powered flight in America. Before we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk air travel will be the world’s primary means of transportation. No spot on the globe will be more than fifty hours distant from wherever you may live. Truly the shortest distance between any two points on earth will be an airline! ”

“ Within a year and a half the Air Service had been expanded from a beginning of little consequence to a size greater than that of the army in the years before the war and all of it had been trained in the technique of a new branch of warfare. In the production of aircraft and accessories 200,000 men and women were engaged, nearly all of whom had been trained for this skill-demanding work. There had been produced over 12,000 air and sea planes, more than 1,000 balloons and 31,800 aviation engines. ”

“ Flying in single-engined, open-cockpit Army Jennies and DH-4’s, the unsung pioneers of our early air mail service were Army aviators. They had no reliable flight instruments. Roads, rivers, and railroad tracks were their only airway markers, and the family wash on a clothes line was the means by which the fliers ascertained their wind direction.{40}
PRECISION BOMBING IS BORN
The end of World War I found Army aviation with a personnel of 18,000 officers and 135,000 enlisted men. ”

“ And it finally so filled the consciousness of our people with conviction of the supreme importance of aviation as an arm of the national armed service that long before the declaration of war the government was embarrassed by the flood of volunteers seeking to be enrolled in the flying forces of the nation. ”

“ Thus, with no military planes suitable for use against a well-equipped enemy, no fliers trained in the use of high-powered fighting planes and aërial machine guns, and with few factories that had had any previous experience in the production of airplanes, America plunged into the midst of World War I.
Although a little late, America went to work. Having no good combat designs of our own, our fliers fought in British and French airplanes. We developed the best training plane in the world, the Curtiss JN-Jenny (page 32) , and trained 15,000 flying cadets. ”

“ Although prevented from any great expansion in the years following World War I, the Army led the way in many phases of aviation. United States Army planes were the first to fly around the world. Army aviation also pioneered night flying and the use of the lighted airfield, refueling in the air, and radio communication between ground and plane. ”

“ In those early days the head-quarters of the corps were at Eastchurch, and there both naval and military officers were trained in aviation. In an arm of such rapid—almost miraculous—development as Service flying to go back a period of six years is almost to take a plunge into ancient history. Designs, engines, guns, fittings, signals of those days are now almost archaic. The British engine of reliable make had not yet been evolved, and the aeroplane generally was a conglomerate affair made up of parts assembled from various parts of the Continent. ”

“ This year more than 450 million American passengers will use aircraft, the world's fastest and safest transportation. In the 84 years since the Wright Brothers' first flight, American aviation, in cooperation with the Federal government, has continued to improve the safety and the efficiency of air travel. Thanks to both industry and the Federal Aviation Administration, this effort goes on today. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Two new types of aeroplane have been alluded to in the last, preceding paragraph; the fast-flying, quick-climbing racer and the slow-going, heavy-weight carrier. We are of opinion that there should be three types in all for military purposes. Of greatest importance and in greatest numbers we should have the middle-class machines; those capable of staying in the air for at least three hours of continuous flight, while carrying two men and one hundred and fifty pounds extra, of either wireless apparatus or machine gun and ammunition. ”

“ Unless some startling innovation—a much cheaper fuel for example, or a successful helicopter—revolutionizes commercial aviation, its near-future is unlikely to stray beyond the extension of airways over distances of about five hundred to two thousand miles. These are likely to be covered mostly by heavier-than-air craft, although, as in Germany, dirigibles will have their place.
Extension of air traffic is especially probable in industrial and agricultural countries of large area, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, India and the South American republics. ”

“ There are people who cannot sail a sail-boat or ride a bicycle—these people have no place in the air. But ninety-nine out of one hundred men, the ordinary normal men, can learn to fly. This has been the experience of the Royal Air Force in Canada.
There will be as much difference between the civilian pilot, the man who owns an airplane of the future and drives it himself, and the army flier, as there is now between the man who drives his car on Sunday afternoons over country roads and the racing driver who is striving for new records on specially built tracks. ”