The Way of the Air 2

The Way of the Air 2

Aircraft played a great part in the Franco-Prussian war, and during the

siege of Paris alone as many as 66 balloons left the stricken city,

carrying 60 pilots, 102 passengers, 409 carrier pigeons, 9 tons of

letters and telegrams, and 6 dogs. Five of the dogs were sent back to

Paris, but were lost and never heard of again, while 57 of the carrier

pigeons carried 100,000 messages. Of the 66 balloons 58 got through, 5

fell into German hands, and 2 into the sea.

 

Among the more historical trips is that of Gaston Tissandier, who went

over the German lines, and dropped 10,000 copies of a proclamation

addressed to the soldiers, asking for peace, yet declaring that France

would fight to the bitter end.

 

In South Africa an observation balloon was in use at Ladysmith for

twenty-nine days, doing extremely useful work in spotting the Boer

artillery. The pilot of an observation balloon reported the enemy’s

position on Spionkop to be impregnable, and, at Paardeberg, another

disclosed the precise position of Cronje’s force and directed our

artillery fire thereon.

 

Of all the Great Powers, Italy is more responsible, perhaps, than any

other for the evolution of aircraft. From the sixteenth century the

most accomplished Italian scientists have given their attention to the

solving of the riddle of the air. Such names as Leonardo da Vinci and

Fausto Varanzio stand out prominently in the history of aviation; and

to-day the Italian rigid airships are the best in the world. It was,

however, mainly due to the efforts of two Frenchmen that prominence

was first given to aircraft. Joseph and Stephen Montgolfier were the

sons of a rich paper-maker of Annoney, and the story goes that, while

rowing, Stephen’s silk coat fell overboard into the water. When drying

the coat it was noticed that the hot air tended to make it rise, and

the upshot of the affair was the Montgolfier balloon. Since those

days France has devoted herself almost entirely to the development of

aeroplanes, which are second only to those of German manufacture. To

the latter power honor, however unwilling, must be given as regards

aircraft. On the outbreak of war her aeroplanes were the finest in

the world, and her Zeppelins were beyond comparison. Great Britain

possessed an advantageous lead in the matter of aeroplanes.

 

The development of aviation in this country was mainly due to the

untiring efforts of the Royal Aero Club affiliated to the Fédération

Aéronique International; and the splendid encouragement of the

proprietors of the _Daily Mail_, who generously put aside an aggregate

sum of £37,000 towards prize-money for aeronautical events. The

Fédération Aéronique had already branches in America, Argentine,

Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary,

Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland. In England

the R.A.C. controlled every matter connected with aviation, such as

the arranging and governing of competitions, the granting of pilots’

certificates, and the ruling of the air. Up to August, 1914, they had

already granted 926 certificates, of which 863 were aeroplane, 24

airship and 39 aeronaut (balloon). The first of their competitions for

the Britannia Challenge Trophy was carried off by Captain C. A. N.

Longcroft, R.F.C., in 1913 with a flight from Montrose to Farnborough

via Portsmouth, a distance in a direct line of 445 miles. It was the

R.A.C. that arranged the _Daily Mail_ competitions, several of which

have yet to be carried out, including the £10,000 Cross-Atlantic (by

aeroplane). The _Daily Mail_ International Cross-country flight for

£1,000 was won by Louis Blériot, July 25, 1909: it is needless to

remark that this flight has now become an everyday occurrence. The

£10,000 London to Manchester flight was awarded to Louis Paulhan

(France). The second £10,000 circuit of Britain of 1010 miles was

carried off by André Beaumont; and J. T. C. Brabazon was successful

in the National _Daily Mail_ £1000 for a flight of one mile in an All

British machine.

 

The highest altitude that had been reached in Great Britain was 14,920

feet; the greatest distance flown 287 miles; and the longest duration 8

hours 23 minutes.

 

Whether we were prepared for the war is a matter for too extensive a

discussion for this little book, but the fact remains that the number

of firms engaged in the manufacturing of aeroplanes could be counted on

both hands, and that we were without a useful and reliable engine of

British construction.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

JOINING THE SERVICE

 

 

The Air Service is young, very young; it is like an overgrown

schoolboy, strong, healthy and full of life, but lacking just that

sense of proportion that distinguishes the schoolboy from the man. It

is wise, for it is endowed with the wisdom of initiative, courage and

resource. Turned loose into an entirely novel and little understood

element, it has had to create its own methods of procedure, its own

ideals, its own traditions. Reference to the policies and the formulas

of past generations are impossible, for there are none!

 

The main principles of aerial warfare are entirely new; in every

combat, and in every raid, some precedent is established, some new

form or theory of attack is set up. To the airman every day is alike.

In times of peace he risks his neck as much as he does in time of war,

save that engaged in the latter he has the additional unpleasantness

of shell fire. He willingly gives all, but asks for nothing. He is the

knight-errant of the twentieth century.

 

In days of the past, it was the cavalryman, wounded and galloping

across country, with a hundred foemen hard at his heels, who first

brought news of the enemy to the general in command. His was a pleasant

occupation, that smacked largely of daring and romance. He stood an

excellent chance of getting a bullet through his lungs, or of being

clapped into an enemy prison. To-day there comes flying across the

heavens a resolute young hero, in a few feet of wood and fabric,

throwing defiance to shot and shell alike, suspended thousands of feet

up between heaven and earth, peering from that swaying aeroplane at the

panorama of the earth beneath.

 

This is the age of science and invention. War on and over the earth, on

and under the sea. For many years we have steadily been putting behind

us the barbarities of our forbears, we have become more civilized, and,

though more civilized, more barbarous. This is no paradox; science has

made great and wonderful strides, but science has been more devilishly

ingenious than any torture of Spanish Inquisition days.

 

The airmen who pilot their frail craft over hill and valley, sea and

land, across cloud and through fog and mist, are the privateers of

modern times; but for them there can be no capture, no quarter: only

victory or a thousand feet drop to the cruel earth below. Through their

young veins must flow the blood of a Drake, of a Philip Sidney, of a

Nelson. Theirs must be the courage of a conqueror, the heart of a lion,

the nerve of a colossus.

 

No bounded ocean is their sea, but the infinity of space. The ship’s

compass is their best friend; for they maneuver their craft like a ship

at sea. Wind and weather affect them as they would a mariner. For rock,

shoal, sandbank and channel there are the high hills, the tall factory

stack, the church steeple, and the deep valley. Landmarks there are,

but always below, not on either side. Railways, roads, rivers, fields,

woods and hills form the color scheme of the surface of the earth, by

which the air pilot steers a course.

 

This, the youngest and most important Service, is essentially one _for_

the young man and _of_ the young man: a Service the future of which is

being steadily built up by the “muddied oafs and flanneled fools” of

the playing-fields of the public schools of Great Britain.

 

Immediately after leaving school is the most perplexing period in a

boy’s life. Not only for the boy himself, but for his parents, for then

has to be considered his future career. What is the boy capable of?

What are his own personal wishes? What profession is he best adapted

for physically? It is indeed a momentous question.

 

It is worse than useless for the boy fond of good, wholesome,

out-of-door exercises and games to be put into an office or to study

for the Bar, or to mope his young life away pen-driving. And, on

the other hand, it is a positive torture for the youth with distinct

literary taste, or love of things scholastic, to take up a Commission

in one of the Services, or to go in for farming or a similar profession.

 

Taking everything into consideration, at least eighty per cent. of

boys may be grouped into the former class--that is to say, they wish

to adopt a healthy, open-air profession; and for this type of youth

nothing can be better, and nothing can offer greater inducements, than

the profession of the airman. It is a calling that appeals irresistibly

to a boy’s heart.

 

The best possible training for the pilot of the air are outdoor sports

and games. Football, which teaches the boy to keep his head in all

emergencies, to keep his feelings always well under control, and to

learn to obey implicitly the discipline of the referee’s whistle will

prove invaluable to him when learning to fly, when he will be subject

to every kind and manner of unexpected and sudden mishap and accident.

 

Cricket will teach him patience, judgment--so invaluable when landing

an aeroplane (which, incidentally, is by far the most difficult feat to

accomplish in flying)--and a steady eye.

 

Swimming and running will develop those muscles of the back and thigh

which are used extensively in the pilotage of the aeroplanes.

 

Again, the sensation of a horse jumping a hedge is exactly similar to

that of an aeroplane just getting off from the ground. With ski-ing,

on the other hand, there is the feeling--and, in fact, the action--of

plunging desperately into what, at the first attempt, appears to be an

interminable and awful space. This is exactly the feeling experienced

by the novice in his first trip up aloft. There is a strong similarity

to ski-ing at the moment that the nose of the machine is suddenly put

down, and she commences to sink rapidly towards the earth.

 

The next matter to be taken into consideration is that of physical

peculiarities. The would-be pilot must be neither too tall nor too

short. This is essentially a matter to do with the steering of the

aeroplane. If he is too tall, he will find himself very cramped in the

confined space between the pilot-seat and the rudder-bar. If he is too

short he will discover that his legs will not be long enough to reach

that