Forced landing

“ If one motor fails the other two can carry on, even with the large gas supply for long-distance flying aboard. At the end of a flight, when a minimum load weight has been reached, it is possible with one motor to keep the plane in the air. One engine can also greatly prolong the downward glide of the crippled plane for a forced landing, if need be. ”

“ Such things may bother an aviator when over the enemy's country, because if a landing seems necessary in order to avoid a fatal drop, there must always arise the risk of capture. How much more serious would even the smallest engine trouble become, once they were far out over the ocean with nothing in sight as far as the eye could reach save an endless vastness of rolling waters beneath, and passing clouds overhead? ”

“ But the pupil was not permitted to land a machine until near the end of his course; for next to getting out of a tail spin, a dive, or a side slip, landing was the hardest task in flying. Statistics show that more aviators have been killed in making landings than in any other way. Many of the accidents, of course, were [42] caused by the nature of the ground, for when the engine of the aeroplane stops, the aviator has to volplane or glide down wherever he can. ”

“ The young pilot comprehended in a mental flash that a downshoot of the wings of the war-plane was the only thing to do, and he made it a long slide, so long, indeed, that the garrison waiting for the capture never made it.
But the landing on Marmora Island offered no other than the same result—the aviators had fallen into a web too wide for avoidance. ”

“ Every new landing will force them to provide more and more space in their ships. This will dissipate the forces of our enemies and open up new venues for the deployment of our arms. Wherever such a landing takes place, we will be prepared. ”

“ That can only happen to bunglers; there is not the least necessity for landing where danger is to be apprehended. When the aeronaut is near the ground, and sees that the spot is unfavorable for debarkation, he drops a little ballast, the balloon mounts, and he comes down again somewhere else. ”

“ We should be wrong, were we in France, to suppose that we are the only people the story of whose aviation has been marked by crises. Our Allies, though their practical nature is proverbial among us, were forced to experiment and grope their way for a long time before they could arrive at a solution of the many knotty problems of aerial defence. ”

“ If a thousand machines were built, each carrying ten men, and they made three flights to some given spot, a force of 30,000 men could be transported by air; and even with a slow-flying, weight-carrying machine, a distance of say 30 miles should be transversed in half-an-hour. Battles have been won by virtue of forced marches, thus bringing troops to some vantage-point before an enemy expects them. ”

“ Then one seized the aircraft, and just as the sun caught and flung back to earth a flash from one of the busy propeller-blades a huge cloud swallowed up machine and aviator and they vanished like mist.
It was odd how the terror of the spectators increased at this sudden disappearance; they knew that somewhere in that awesome, infinite firmament a frail thing made by the hand of man was battling with nature’s most mysterious forces for supremacy. And man won. ”

“ After that morning, the enemy aviators transported their tents farther back. But the camp remained, and inasmuch as several 84 days ago Austrian planes had landed on the field it seemed highly probable that there had been no recent works such as would obstruct the landing of a plane. At times, a small hole, a rock, or a bush is enough to so damage an aeroplane that it cannot again lift from the field. ”

“ Launch cleverly prepared powerful quick thrusts and vivid sudden attacks, and after having attacked and having destroyed the enemy landing forces, first24 of all, then scatter and break up their groups of boats and ships. ”

“ This is comparable to the ineffectiveness of a rudder on a too slow-moving boat. If a plane stall with out motor occurs so close to the earth that there isn’t time to recover control, a hard landing results. ”

“ My additional difficulty was one that always confronts a pilot when landing at night, namely, an ignorance of the direction of the wind. By day the pilot can tell this from the way in which smoke blows, the currents of air waving across growing crops, and by other signs which in the darkness are not available. A good landing should be against the wind, so as to break the impact of coming to earth. ”

“ We must at once modify all our plans because if in the field where we had decided to land there is a green light it means that nearby there are Austrians and if we do not wish to be captured at once we must attempt a landing in some other place. ”

“ Down, down, down, through a vast alert tension of flight, down it will swoop, and, if its stoop is successful, slash explosively at last through a suffocating moment. Rifles will crack, ropes tear and snap; there will be a rending and shouting, a great thud of liberated gas, and perhaps a flare. Quite certainly those flying machines will carry folded parachutes, and the last phase of many a struggle will be the desperate leap of the aeronauts with these in hand, to [Pg 194] snatch one last chance of life out of a mass of crumpling, fallen wreckage. ”

“ It must have been an impressive sight for friend or foe to witness the departure of each aerial vessel on its venturesome mission. The bold plunge into space above the roofs of the imprisoned city; the rapid climb into the sky and, later, the pearl drop high in air floating away to its uncertain and hazardous haven, running the gauntlet of the enemy's fire by day or braving what at first appeared to be equal danger, attending the darkness of night. ”

“ A hazard as great as being shot down was a crash landing or bail-out at sea, where the water was cold enough to kill a man in 20 minutes. Survival clothing and equipment was so bulky that pilots could barely get into their cockpits. ”

“ This gave me a dangerous sense of safety, and so I tipped up on one side, then on the other, examining the roads, searching the ruins of villages, the trenches, the shell-marked ground. I saw no living thing; brute or human; nothing but endless, inconceivable desolation.
The foolishness of that close scrutiny alone, without the protection of other avions, I realize now much better than I did then. Unless flying at six thousand metres or above,—when he is comparatively safe from attack,—a pilot may never relax his vigilance for thirty seconds together. ”

“ At first they had stared, and shouted in wonder at the sight of the airship, hovering above them, but their anger soon drew their attention to the fighting at hand, and, after useless gestures toward the craft of the air, and after some of them had vainly fired their guns or arrows at it, they paid no more attention, but rushed on with their shouts and cries and amid the beating of their rude drums. ”

“ The objection of aviators to flying above a ground-fog, rain, snow, or heavy clouds with single motor-planes is the possibility of the motor stopping over a village, city, or other bad landing-place, with the radius of visibility so little as to afford no opportunity to pick out a place for landing. ”

“ For the intrepid flyers behind that vanguard which had vanished had witnessed the wholesale disintegration of the leading element of the vast armada, and the pilots realized on the instant that no headlong rush into the very noses of the aero-subs would avail anything.
The vast American formation broke into a mad maelstrom of whirling, darting, diving planes. Every third plane plummeted downward, every second one climbed, and the remaining ships, even in the face of what had happened to the vanished first flight, held steadily to the front. ”

“ All we knew was that we would see an airman flying gamely among the puffballs of the breaking anti-aeroplane shells of the enemy, and sometimes he seemed to get into trouble, and we used to cry out, 'They have got him!' He would fall like a stone, recover, fall again, and then when we looked for the awful end he would skim low over the German trenches plying his machine-gun like one o'clock. ”

“ If he is flying low when his machine side-slips, nothing can avert disaster. Falling at first sideways in a helpless lurch, then diving violently, the craft will strike ground with shattering force—completely beyond its pilot’s control. ”

“ The execution of the landing as a rule is as follows: The advance guard rides ahead, on the last stretch, with its own escort of battleships, and lands, if possible, unawares, usually at night. If the landing be on an open coast, the mass of troops which follow should immediately throw up earthworks. The entire disembarking must be made with great speed, for the quicker the landing is accomplished the less the danger of being disturbed. The most favorable time for attacking the coast is at dawn, for the landing can take place unknown to the enemy and day be used for disembarking. ”

“ The operations of the landed expedition corps on the whole can be conducted according to the principles set down by the commanders of the troops, but these principles must take into account the particular conditions under which the forces operate. The well-known marine writer, Mahan, emphasizes the fact that a landing operation must be offensive to succeed. ”

“ Airplanes, perhaps even Zeppelins of the latest and most powerful description, would attack the raiders, and seek to smash their formation into a chaos that must mean disgraceful flight and heavy losses. ”

“ The aeroplane would be faced with such a concentrated hostile fire as to menace its own existence—its forward rush would be frustrated by the dirigible just as a naval vessel parries the ramming tactics of an enemy by sinking the latter before she reaches her target, while if it did crash into the hull of the dirigible, tearing it to shreds, firing its gas, or destroying its equilibrium, both protagonists would perish in the fatal dive to earth. ”

“ The sudden burst of power shot the big airship suddenly skyward on an angle of almost eighty degrees and with a suddenness which nearly threw both Ned and Alan off their feet. The huge propeller began to whirl with dizzying velocity, and the wind screeched and whined through the propellers like an animal in pain. ”

“ To use the advantage of travelling in the air at altitudes for the purpose of the wanton destruction of harmless citizens, and, further, to destroy in cities the amassed wealth of art that only centuries, not years, produce, is an unrighteous use of the science of aërial navigation. ”

“ Clouds veiled the sea again, and the long straggling wedge of air-ships rising and falling as they flew seemed like a flock of strange new births in a Chaos that had neither earth nor water but only mist and sky. ”

“ If the aeroplane pilot is prepared to sacrifice himself, and has at his disposal a powerful machine of modern design, no dirigible can stand against him. Thus, if, as a matter of experience in actual service, men are found of sufficient grit and grim determination to adopt ramming tactics, and to hurl themselves and their craft bodily at the gas-bag of the dirigible, its destruction is immediate and complete. ”

“ But whether undertaken as part of a general programme of frightfulness or as reprisals for cruel and indefensible outrages air raids upon defenceless towns, killing peaceable citizens in their beds, and children in their kindergartens, are not incidents to add glory to aviation. The mind turns with relief from such examples of the cruel misuse of aircraft to the hosts of individual instances in which the airman and his machine remind one of the doughty Sir Knight and his charger in the most gallant days of chivalry. ”

“ A non-rigid airship in a nasty wind can land and deflate itself at once by ripping the panel in the envelope, at no greater price than the loss of its gas, and probably some damage to its car. To land in a rigid ship is at best a ticklish business; indeed, the rigid airship is in exactly the same case as a large sea-going vessel; its chief dangers are from the land, which it cannot touch with impunity. ”

“ The old way of flying had made all aeroplanes easy prey to anti-aircraft guns and to attacking machines, but when it became necessary to dart out of the range of any enemy who had suddenly revealed his presence with bursting shrapnel, or when only a quick maneuver could prevent him from blocking the way home, the old-fashioned, steady, level flyer and slow climber became deathtraps. ”

“ This aerial fighting, which will wax and wane, dying down only to be renewed with a greater fierceness, must precede the battles of land or sea; and so, while the aerial armies are struggling for supremacy, those moving upon the land, or the fleets steaming upon the water, will be manœuvring for position and creeping stealthily nearer. A conquest in the air, if it be decisive, may spell also a victory upon land and sea. A nation which has its air-fleet destroyed or crippled will lie helpless before the attacks of hostile craft, and will lose also the aid of its aerial scouts and spies. ”

“ In aerial war the stronger side, even supposing it destroyed the main battle fleet of the weaker, had then either to patrol and watch or destroy every possible point at which he might produce another and perhaps a novel and more deadly form of flyer. It meant darkening his air with airships. It meant building them by the thousand and making aeronauts by the hundred thousand. A small uninitated airship could be hidden in a railway shed, in a village street, in a wood; a flying machine is even less conspicuous. ”