A STUDY OF THE METHODS OF GREAT PILOTS
The masters of flying, and this is a fact the novice should ponder
well, have been conspicuous almost invariably for their prudence. No
matter how great has been their personal skill, they have never lost
their respect for the air; and this is why so many of the great flyers,
after running the heaviest of risks in their pioneer work, have
managed to escape with their lives. What patience and sound judgment
can accomplish, when pitted even against such dangers as must be faced
by an experimenter when he seeks to fly, is shown by an incident from
the early career of the Wright brothers. With one of their gliders, a
necessarily frail machine, and in tests made when they were both
complete novices, they managed to make nearly 1000 glides; and not
once in all those flights, during which they were learning the
rudiments of balance and control, did they have a mishap which damaged
at all seriously their machine.
These two brothers, Wilbur and Orville, offer to the student of flying,
apart from the historical interest which is attached to their work, a
temperamental study of the greatest interest. Wilbur, who was grave,
judicial--a man of infinite patience and with an exceptional power of
lucid thinking--found in his brother and co-worker, Orville, a
disposition just such as was necessary to strengthen and support him
in his great research; a disposition more vivacious and more
enthusiastic than his, and one which acted as a balance to his own
gravity. The method of these brothers in first attacking a mass of
data, most of it contradictory--and a large amount of it of little
intrinsic value--and then framing their own research on lines which
they discussed and studied with methodical care, forms a model of
sound judgment for workers in any complex field. Their kite
experiments, their gliders, their refusal to hasten their steps unduly
in the fitting of an engine to their machine, reveal again their
discretion, and that judgment which never failed them. Perseveringly
and unswervingly, exhibiting doggedness without obstinacy, and with
their work illuminated always by the highest intelligence, they moved
surely from stage to stage; and at last, when they fitted a motor to
their machine, such was their knowledge of the air, and of the control
of their craft when in flight, that they were able to make this
crucial step, from a glider to a machine driven by power, without any
breakage of their apparatus or injury to themselves.
The same self-control marked them when, having demonstrated that men
can ascend in a power-driven machine, and steer such a craft at will,
they dismantled their apparatus and commenced their negotiations with
foreign Governments. Wilbur Wright, too, when he came to France to
give his first public demonstrations, provided by his methods a model
for aviators, either present or future. He resisted all temptations to
make injudicious flights. If he considered the weather conditions at
all unsuitable he said that he would not ascend, no matter who might
have come to see him fly, and that settled the question once and for
all. He was deaf to all pleadings, to all proffered advice. When
conditions were perfectly suitable, and then only, would he have his
craft brought from its shed.
The same meticulous care, in every flight he made, marked his
preparation of his machine. Motor, controls, propeller-gearing, every
vital part, received its due attention; and this attention was never
relaxed, no matter how frequently he flew, nor how great was his
success. An observer of one of his early flights at Le Mans has given
us an impression that is typical of this unremitting care. There was a
question of some small adjustment that Wilbur had instructed should be
made to the machine. When the time came to fly, and he was in the
driving-seat waiting for the motor to be started, he called a question
as to whether this detail had been attended to. He was assured it had.
But this was not enough for Wilbur Wright. Climbing from his seat and
walking round the biplane, he made a careful examination for himself,
and then returned quietly to the front of the machine. People who came
to see him fly, and expected some picturesque hero, leaping lightly
into his machine and sweeping through the air, found that reality
disappointed them. This quiet, unassuming man, who slept in his shed
near his aeroplane, and took his meals there also, refused to be feted
or made a fuss of; while his deliberation in regard to every flight,
and his indifference to the wishes or convenience of those who were
watching him, drove nearly frantic some of those influential people
who, coming in motor-cars and with a patronising spirit, thought the
aviator might be treated rather as a superior mountebank, who would be
only too glad to come out and fly when a distinguished guest arrived.
M. Louis Bleriot, whose name was next to become world-famous, after
that of the Wrights, and who owed his distinction to his crossing of
the English Channel by air, revealed in his character determination
and courage, and imagination as well. And yet allied to these
qualities--and here lay his temperamental strength--he had a spirit of
quiet calculation and an eery considerable shrewdness. He knew, and was
not afraid of showing that he knew, the full value of caution. And yet
on occasion also--as in the cross-Channel flight--he was ready to put
everything to the test, and to take promptly and with full knowledge
the heaviest of risks. The motor in his cross-Channel monoplane was an
experimental one of low power, air-cooled, and prone to over-heat and
lose power after only a short period of running. To cross the Channel,
even under the most favourable circumstances, he knew this engine must
run without breakdown for thirty-five or forty minutes. This it had
not done--at any rate in the air--before. There was a strong
probability--and Bleriot knew this better than anyone else--that the
motor would fail before he reached the English shore, and that he
would have to glide down into the sea. It was arranged that a
torpedo-boat-destroyer should follow him, and this afforded an element
of safety. But Bleriot guessed--as was actually the case--that he
would outdistance this vessel in his flight, and soon be lost to the
view of those upon it. And he did not deceive himself as to what might
happen, if his engine stopped and he fell into the water. His
monoplane, as it lay on the surface of the water, would, he knew,
prove a very difficult object to locate by any vessel searching for it;
while it was so frail that it would not withstand for long the
buffeting of the waves. He carried an air-bag fixed inside the
fusilage, it is true; but, in spite of this precaution, Bleriot knew
he ran a very grave peril of being drowned. There was, on the morning
of his flight, another disturbing factor to be reckoned with. The wind,
calm enough when he first determined to start, began very quickly to
rise; and by the time he had motored from Calais to the spot where his
aeroplane lay, and the machine itself was ready for flight, the wind
out to sea was so strong that the waves had become white-capped. But
Bleriot, aware of the value at such moments of decision, had made up
his mind. He knew that, if his engine only served him, his flight
would be quickly made. And so he reckoned that, even though the wind
was rising, he would be able to complete his journey before it had
become high enough seriously to inconvenience him; and in this
calculation, as events proved, he was right. His motor did its work;
and, though the wind tossed his machine dangerously when he came near
the cliffs of the English coast, he succeeded in making a landing and
in winning the L1000 prize.
M. Hubert Latham, Bleriot's competitor in the cross-Channel flight,
had that peculiar outlook on life, with its blend of positive and
negative--puzzling often to its owner as well as to the onlooker--that
is called, for the sake of calling it something, the artistic
temperament. He was impulsive, yet impassive often to a disconcerting
extent: extremely sensitive and reserved as a rule, yet on occasion
almost boyishly frank and communicative. He lacked entirely ordinary
shrewdness, or everyday commonsense. He was a man of a deeply romantic
temperament, and this inclined him towards aviation and the conquest
of the air; while in actual piloting he had such a quickness and
delicacy of touch, and such a sure and instinctive judgment of
distance and of speed, that he was undoubtedly a born aviator--one of,
if not the, finest the world has seen. That he did not attain greater
success, from a practical point of view, was due to the fact that he
was without the level-headedness and the business ability which
characterised others of the pioneers. When he was in flight in his
Antoinette--Latham flew that machine and no other--he was a supreme
artist. His machine was beautiful, and his handling of it was
beautiful.
M. Henri Farman, beyond question, of course, another of the great
pioneers, is a man of imagination and of a highly nervous temperament,
yet possessing at the same time a very pronounced vein of caution. No
success has for an instant caused him to lose his head. At Rheims, in
1909, when he had created a world's record by flying for more than
three hours without alighting, those who hastened to congratulate him,
after his descent, found him absolutely normal and unmoved. Washing
his hands at a little basin in the corner of the shed, he discussed
very quietly and yet interestedly, and entirely without any
affectation of nonchalance, the details of his flight and the
behaviour of his motor. His attitude was that the flight was something,
yet not a great deal, and that very much more remained to be done; a
perfectly right and proper attitude, one which was just as it should
be, yet one encountered very rarely under such circumstances--human
nature being what it is.
Farman's patience, his perseverance, were in the very early days what
gave him his first success. With the biplane the Voisins built him,
for example, nothing but his own determination, and his ceaseless work
upon his engine, enabled him to do more with this type of machine than
others had done.
As the aeroplane increased in efficiency, and in the reliability of
its engine, and was used in cross-country journeys, there came an era
of flying contests, in which large prizes were offered, and in which
airmen passed between cities and across frontiers, and traversed in
their voyages the greater part of Europe. In the making of these
flights, which needed an exceptional determination and skill, allied
also to a perfect bodily fitness, there came into prominence certain
aviators whose precision in their daily flights, passing across
country with the speed and regularity of express trains, won
admiration throughout the world. Prominent among these champions was
the French naval officer, Lieut. J. Conneau, who adopted in his
contests the flying name of "Beaumont." His success and his exactitude,
when piloting a Bleriot monoplane for long distances above unknown
country, guiding himself by map and compass, gave the public an
indication, for the first time, of what might be accomplished by an
expert airman when flying a reliable machine. Lieut. Conneau's success,
winning as he did several of the great contests one after another,
and the absence of error in his flying from stage to stage, and his
accurate landings upon strange and often badly-surfaced aerodromes,
should provide for the novice in aviation--when the secret of this
success is understood--an object-lesson that is of value.
This quiet, efficient airman, and his methods in making himself so
competent, afford indeed an interesting study. Here was one who,
suited already by temperament for the tasks he undertook, trained
himself with such care, with such patience, that he attained as nearly
to the ideal as is possible for living man. When he had asked for, and
obtained, permission from the Minister of Marine to study aviation in
all its aspects, he began his task in a spirit that was admirable. "I
was convinced," he wrote afterwards, "that a perfect knowledge of
machines and motors was necessary before one could use them." For
nearly a year, on leaving the sea, he worked to obtain a certificate
as a practical engineer. This gained, he went through a period of
motor-cycling and motor-car driving, varied by flights in captive
balloons and free balloons, and afterwards in airships. Following this
he obtained leave to stay for a time at Argenteuil, and enter the
works of the builders of the Gnome motor. Here he lived the life of a
mechanic, and learned to understand completely the operation of this
famous engine, which he was destined to drive afterwards in his great
flights.
Presently he went to Pau, in order to obtain his certificate as an
aeroplane pilot. At first, taking his turn with a number of other
pupils, he could only get a few minutes at a time in a machine. But
being a keen observer he found that, by listening to the instructors,
and watching the flights made, he could pick up useful information
without being in the air; and this led him to the observation that "to
learn to fly quickly, one must begin by staying on the ground."
He secured in due course his certificate of proficiency, astonishing
the instructors by his skill and sureness in the handling of his
machine. Then followed what might be called an apprenticeship to
cross-country flying. He made constant flights in all weathers, flying
for instance from Pau to Paris, and studying closely not only the
piloting of his machine and the aerial conditions he encountered, but
also the art of using a map and compass, and in finding a path without
deviation from point to point. Improving daily in confidence and skill,
and learning practically all there was to be learned as to the
handling of a Gnome-engined Bleriot, he was able soon to fly under
weather conditions which would have seemed hopeless to a pilot of less
experience; while engine failure and other troubles, which overtook
him frequently on these long flights, taught him to alight without
damaging his machine on the most unpromising ground.
Now, feeling himself at last competent, he obtained permission to
figure on the retired list, so that he might take part in the aviation
races which were then being organised. Of these great contests Lieut.
Conneau won three in succession--the Paris-Rome Race, in which he flew
928 miles in 21 hours 10 minutes; the European Circuit, in which he
flew 1,060 miles in a total flying time of 24 hours 18 minutes; and
the Circuit of Britain, in which he flew 1,006 miles in 22 hours 26
minutes. Lieut. Conneau's success, which appeared extraordinary, and
his skill in finding his way across country, which seemed abnormal,
were due as a matter of fact to his assiduous preparation, and to a
temperament which, even under the heavy strains of constant flying,
saved him from errors of judgment or ill-advised decisions. His
temperament was, indeed, ideal for a racing airman. He was quiet and
collected, with a natural tendency to resist excitement or confusion.
His physique was admirable, and he had that elasticity of strength,
both in body and nerve, which are invaluable to a pilot when on long
flights. Also, and this was of importance, Lieut. Conneau had a
natural cheerfulness of disposition which carried him without
irritation or despondency through those ordeals of weather, and of
mechanical breakdowns and delays, which are inseparable from such
contests as those in which he was engaged.
A contrast to Lieut. Conneau, both in temperament and method, was his
rival Jules Vedrines--the aviator who, notably in the Circuit of
Britain, flew doggedly against Lieut. Conneau from stage to stage.
Vedrines, who had not had the advantages in tuition that had been
enjoyed by Lieut. Conneau, nor his grounding in technique, was
nevertheless a born aviator; a man of a natural and exceptional skill.
In energy, courage, and determination he was unexcelled; but such
qualities, though of extreme value in a long and trying contest, were
marred by an impetuosity and an excitability which Vedrines could not
master, and which more than once cost him dear. He had not, besides,
as was shown in the Circuit of Britain, that skill in steering by map
and compass which aided Lieut. Conneau so greatly in all his flying.
A personality of unusual interest was that of the late Mr. S. F.
Cody--a man of a great though untutored imagination, and of an
extraordinary and ceaseless energy. A big man, and one whom it might
be thought would have been clumsy in the handling of an aeroplane, he
piloted the biplanes of his own construction with a remarkable skill.
He flew no other, of course, and this was greatly to his advantage in
actual manipulation. The great pilots who have excelled--one may
instance again Lieut. Conneau--have concentrated their attention as a
rule on one type of machine, learning all there is to be learned about
this particular craft, and being prepared in consequence, through
their knowledge both of its capacities and weaknesses, for any
contingency that may arise in flight. Another instance of such
specialisation was provided by Mr. Gustave Hamel. M. Bleriot--an
admirable judge in this respect--singled out Mr. Hamel, while this
young man was learning to fly in France, as an aviator of quite
unusual promise; and his prediction was, of course, more than
fulfilled. Devoting himself exclusively to the monoplane, Mr. Hamel
became a pilot whose perfection of control, very wonderful to witness,
was marked strongly by his own individuality. He had beautiful
"hands"--a precision and delicacy on the controls which marked his
flying from that of all others; while his judgment of speed and
distance, which was remarkable, represented natural abilities which
had been improved and strengthened by his constant flying.