SOME FEATURES OF AËRIAL WARFARE
As devices to translate German hate for England into deeds of bloody
malignancy and cowardly murder the German aircraft have ranked
supreme. The ruthless submarine war has indeed done something toward
working off this peculiar passion, but it lacked the spectacular
qualities which German wrath demanded. As the war proceeded, and it
became apparent that the participation of Great Britain--at first
wholly unexpected by the Kaiser's advisers--was certain to defeat
the German aims, the authorities carefully inculcated in the minds
of the people the most malignant hatred for that power. As
Lissauer's famous hymn of hate had it--
French and Russians it matters not,
A blow for a blow, and a shot for a shot.
.................................
We have one foe and one alone--
England!
By way of at once gratifying this hatred and still further
stimulating it the German military authorities began early in the
war a series of air raids upon English towns. They were of more than
doubtful military value. They damaged no military or naval works.
They aroused the savage ire of the British people who saw their
children slain in schools and their wounded in hospitals by bombs
dropped from the sky and straightway rushed off to enlist against so
callous and barbaric a foe. But the raids served their political
purpose by making the German people believe that the British were
suffering all the horrors of war on their own soil, while the iron
line of trenches drawn across France by the German troops kept the
invader and war's agonies far from the soil of the Fatherland.
[Illustration: ©International Film Service.
_The U. S. Aviation School at Mineola._]
The first German air raids were by Zeppelins on little English
seaside towns--Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Harwich. Except in so
far as they inflicted mutilation and death upon many non-combatants,
mostly women and children, and misery upon their relatives and
friends they were without effect. But early in 1915 began a
systematic series of raids upon London, which, by October of 1917,
had totalled thirty-four, with a toll of 865 persons killed, and
2500 wounded. It seems fair to say that for these raids there was
more plausible excuse than for those on the peaceful little seaside
bathing resorts and fishing villages. London is full of military
and naval centres, arsenals and navy yards, executive offices and
centres of warlike activity. An incendiary bomb dropped into the
Bank of England, or the Admiralty, might paralyze the finances of
the Empire, or throw the naval organization into a state of anarchy.
But as a matter of fact the German bombs did nothing of the sort.
They fell in the congested districts of London, "the crowded warrens
of the poor." They spread wounds and death among peaceable theatre
audiences. One dropped on a 'bus loaded with passengers homeward
bound, and obliterated it and them from the face of the earth. But
no building of the least military importance sustained any injury.
It is true, however, that the persistent raiding has compelled
England to withhold from the fighting lines in France several
thousand men and several hundred guns in order to be in readiness to
meet air raids in which Germany has never employed more than fifty
machines and at most two hundred men, including both aviators and
mechanics.
It is entirely probable that the failure of the Germans to strike
targets of military importance and the slaughter they wrought among
peaceful civilians were due to no intent or purpose on their part.
Hitting a chosen target from the air is no matter of certainty. The
bomb intended for the railway station is quite as likely to hit the
adjacent public school or hospital. If the world ever recurs to that
moderate degree of sanity and civilization which shall permit wars,
but strive to regulate them in the interest of humanity this
untrustworthiness of the aircraft's aim will compel some form of
international regulation, just as the vulnerability of the submarine
will force the amendment of the doctrine of visitation and search.
But neither problem can be logically and reasonably solved in the
middle of a war. And so, while the German violation of existing
international law had the uncomfortable result for Germany of
bringing the United States into the war, the barbarous raids upon
London caused the British at last to turn aside from their
commendable abstention from air raids on unfortified and
non-military towns and prepare for reprisals in kind.
From the beginning of the war the British had abstained from bombing
peaceful and non-military towns. They had not indeed been weak in
the employment of their air forces. General Smuts speaking in
October, 1917, said that the British had, in the month previous,
dropped 207 tons of bombs behind the lines of the enemy. But the
targets were airdromes, military camps, arsenals and munitions
camps--not hospitals or kindergartens. The time had now come when
this purely military campaign no longer satisfied an enraged British
people who demanded the enforcement of the Mosaic law of an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth, against a people whom General Smuts
described as "an enemy who apparently recognizes no laws, human or
divine; who knows no pity or restraint, who sung Te Deums over the
sinking of the _Lusitania_, and to whom the maiming and slaughter of
women and children appear legitimate means of warfare."
And Premier Lloyd George, speaking to an audience of poor people in
one of the congested districts which had suffered sorely from the
aërial activities of the Hun, said:
"We will give it all back to them, and we will give it soon. We
shall bomb Germany with compound interest."
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. There were hosts of such incidents--men who fought
gallantly and who always fought fair, men who hung about the
outskirts of an aërial battle waiting for some individual champion
of their own choosing to show himself and join in battle to death in
the high ranges of the sky. Some of these have been mentioned in
this book already. To discuss all who even as early as 1917 had made
their names memorable would require a volume in itself. A few may
well be mentioned below.
There, for example, was Captain Georges Guynemer, "King of the
French Aces." An "ace" is an aviator who has brought down five enemy
aircraft. Guynemer had fifty-three to his credit. Still a youth,
only twenty-three years of age at the time of his death, and only
flying for twenty-one months, he had lived out several life times in
the mad excitement of combat in mid-air. Within three weeks after
getting his aviator's license he had become an "Ace." Before his
first year's service had expired he was decorated and promoted for
gallantry in rushing to the aid of a comrade attacked by five enemy
machines. He entered the combat at the height of ten thousand feet,
and inside of two minutes had dropped two of the enemy. The others
fled. He pursued hotly keeping up a steady fire with his machine
gun. One Boche wavered and fell, but just then an enemy shell from
an "Archie" far below exploded under Guynemer, tearing away one wing
of his machine. Let him tell the rest of that story:
I felt myself dropping [he said later]. It was ten thousand feet
to the earth, and, like a flash, I saw my funeral with my
saddened comrades marching behind the gun carriage to the
cemetery. But I pulled and pushed every lever I had, but nothing
would check my terrific descent.
Five thousand feet from the earth, the wrecked machine began to
turn somersaults, but I was strapped into the seat. I do not know
what it was, but something happened and I felt the speed descent
lessen. But suddenly there was a tremendous crash and when I
recovered my senses I had been taken from the wreckage and was
all right.
Two records Guynemer made which have not yet been surpassed--the
first, the one described above of dropping three Fokkers in two
minutes and thirty seconds, and rounding off the adventure by
himself dropping ten thousand feet. The second was in shooting down
four enemy machines in one day. His methods were of the simplest. He
was always alone in his machine, which was the lightest available.
He would rather carry more gasoline and ammunition than take along a
gunner. The machine gun was mounted on the plane above his head,
pointing dead ahead, and aimed by aiming the whole airplane. Once
started the gun continued firing automatically and Guynemer's task
was to follow his enemy pitilessly keeping that lead-spitting muzzle
steadily bearing upon him. In September, 1917, he went up to attack
five enemy machines--no odds however appalling seemed to terrify
him--but was caught in a fleet of nearly forty Boches and fell to
earth in the enemy's country.
One of the last of the air duels to be fought under the practices
which made early air service so vividly recall the age of chivalry,
was that in which Captain Immelman, "The Falcon," of the German
army, met Captain Ball of the British Royal Flying Corps. Immelman
had a record of fifty-one British airplanes downed. Captain Ball was
desirous of wiping out this record and the audacious German at the
same time, and so flying over the German lines he dropped this
letter:
CAPTAIN IMMELMAN:
I challenge you to a man-to-man fight to take place this
afternoon at two o'clock. I will meet you over the German lines.
Have your anti-air craft guns withhold their fire, while we
decide which is the better man. The British guns will be silent.
BALL.
Presently thereafter this answer was dropped from a German airplane:
CAPTAIN BALL:
Your challenge is accepted. The guns will not interfere. I will
meet you promptly at two.
IMMELMAN.
The word spread far and wide along the trenches on both sides.
Tacitly all firing stopped as though the bugles had sung truce. Men
left cover and clambered up on the top to watch the duel. Punctually
both flyers rose from their lines and made their way down No Man's
Land. Let an eye witness tell the story:
From our trenches there were wild cheers for Ball. The Germans
yelled just as vigorously for Immelman.
The cheers from the trenches continued; the Germans increased in
volume; ours changed into cries of alarm.
Ball, thousands of feet above us and only a speck in the sky, was
doing the craziest things imaginable. He was below Immelman and
was apparently making no effort to get above him, thus gaining
the advantage of position. Rather he was swinging around, this
way and that, attempting, it seemed, to postpone the inevitable.
We saw the German's machine dip over preparatory to starting the
nose dive.
"He's gone now," sobbed a young soldier, at my side, for he knew
Immelman's gun would start its raking fire once it was being
driven straight down.
Then in a fraction of a second the tables were turned. Before
Immelman's plane could get into firing position, Ball drove his
machine into a loop, getting above his adversary and cutting
loose with his gun and smashing Immelman by a hail of bullets as
he swept by.
Immelman's airplane burst into flames and dropped. Ball, from
above, followed for a few hundred feet and then straightened out
and raced for home. He settled down, rose again, hurried back,
and released a huge wreath of flowers, almost directly over the
spot where Immelman's charred body was being lifted from a
tangled mass of metal.
Four days later Ball too was killed.
But the Germans, too, had their champion airmen, mighty fliers,
skillful at control and with the machine gun, in whose triumphs they
took the same pride that our boys in France did in those of Chapman,
Rockwell or Thaw, the British in Warneford, or the French in
Guynemer. Chief of these was Captain Boelke, who came to his death
in the latter part of 1917, after putting to his credit over sixty
Allied planes brought down. A German account of one of his duels as
watched from the trenches, will be of interest:
For quite a long time an Englishman had been making circles
before our eyes--calmly and deliberately.... My men on duty
clenched their fists in impotent wrath. "The dog--!" Shooting
would do no good.
Then suddenly from the rear a harsh, deep singing and buzzing
cuts the air. It sounds like a German flyer. But he is not yet
visible. Only the buzz of an approaching motor is heard in the
clouds in the direction of the Englishman. More than a hundred
eyes scanned the horizon. There! Far away and high among the
clouds is a small black humming bird--a German battle aeroplane.
Its course is laid directly for the hostile biplane and it flies
like an arrow shot with a clear eye and steady hand. My men crawl
out of the shelters. I adjust my field glasses. A lump rises in
our throats as if we are awaiting something new and wonderful.
So far the other does not seem to have noticed or recognized the
black flyer that already is poised as a hawk above him. All at
once there is a mighty swoop through the air like the drop of a
bird of prey, and in no time the black flyer is immediately over
the Englishman and the air is filled with the furious crackling
of a machine gun, followed by the rapid ta-ta-ta of two or three
more, all operated at the highest speed just as during a charge.
The Englishman drops a little, makes a circle and tries to escape
toward the rear. The other circles and attacks him in front, and
again we hear the exciting ta-ta-ta! Now the Englishman tries to
slip from under his opponent, but the German makes a circle and
the effort fails. Then the enemy describes a great circle and
attempts to rise above the German. The latter ascends in sharp
half circles and again swoops down upon the biplane, driving it
toward the German trenches.
Will the Englishman yield so soon? Scattered shouts of joy are
already heard in our ranks. Suddenly he drops a hundred yards and
more through the air and makes a skillful loop toward the rear.
Our warrior of the air swoops after him, tackles him once more
and again we hear the wild defiant rattle of the machine guns
over our heads. Now they are quite close to our trenches. The
French infantry and artillery begin firing in a last desperate
hope. Neither of them is touched. Sticking close above and behind
him the German drives the Englishman along some six hundred yards
over our heads and then just above the housetops of St. A. Once
more we hear a distant ta-ta-ta a little slower and more
scattered and then as they drop both disappear from our view.
Scarcely five minutes pass before the telephone brings up this
news: Lieutenant Boelke has just brought down his seventh flyer.
Methods of air-fighting were succinctly described in a hearing
before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, in June, 1917. The
officers testifying were young Americans of the Lafayette Escadrille
of the French army. To the civilian the testimony is interesting for
the clear idea it gives of military aviation. The extracts following
are from the official record:
_Adjt. Prince_: Senator, there are about four kinds of machines
used abroad on the western front to-day. The machines that Adjt.
Rumsey and myself are looking after are called the battle
machines. Then there are the photography machines, machines that
go up to enable the taking of photographs of the German
batteries, go back of the line and take views of the country
behind their lines and find out what their next line of attack
will be, or, if they retreat from the present line, then
everything in that way. Probably we have, where we are, in my
group alone, a hundred and fifty photographers who do nothing all
day long except develop pictures, and you can get pictures of any
part of the country that you want. When the Germans retreated
from the old line where they used to be, by Peronne and Chaulnes,
we had absolute pictures of all the Hindenburg line from where
they are now right down to St. Quentin, down to the line the
French are on. We had photographs of it all.
_Senator Kirby_: When they started on the retreat?
[Illustration: © Kadel & Herbert.
_Miss Ruth Law at Close of her Chicago to New York Flight._]
_Adjt. Prince_: Yes, sir. So we knew exactly where their stand
would be made. Then, besides that, those photograph machines do a
lot of scouting. They have a pilot and a photographer aboard. He
has not only a camera, but quite often he has a Lewis gun with
him in order to ward off any hostile airmen if they should get
through the battle planes that are above him; in other words,
should get through us in order to fight him. They do a great deal
of the scouting, because they fly at a lower level. The battle
planes go up to protect photography machines, or to go
man-hunting, as it is called; in other words, to fight the
Germans. We fly all day, like to-day, as high as we can go, or as
high as the French go as a rule, about 5500 metres, about 17,000
to 18,000 feet.
[Illustration: © International Film Service.
_A French Aviator between Flights._]
_Adjt. Rumsey_: I think 5500 metres is about 19,000 feet. Some go
up 6000 metres, which makes about 20,000 feet.
_Adjt. Prince_: We go up there, and we have a certain sector of
the front to look after. If we are only man-hunting, we go
backward and forward like a policeman to prevent the Germans from
getting over our own lines. We usually fly by fours, if we can,
and the four go out together, so as not to be alone. We are
usually fighting inside of the German lines, because the morale
of the French and English is better than that of the Germans
to-day; and every fight I have had--I have never been lucky
enough to have one inside of my own lines--they have all been
inside of the German lines.
_Senator Kirby_: What is the equipment of a battle plane such as
you use?
_Adjt. Prince_: I use the 180 horse-power machine. It is called a
"S. P. A. D.," which has a Spanish motor. But a great many of the
motors to-day are being built here in America.
_Senator Kirby_: How many men do you carry?
_Adjt. Prince_: We go up alone in these machines. We did have two
guns. We had the Lewis gun on our upper wing and the Vickers down
below, that shoots through the propeller as the propeller turns
around. Then we gave up the Lewis above. It added more weight,
and we did not need it so much. The trouble with the Lewis gun is
that it has only ninety-seven cartridges, while the Vickers has
five hundred, and you can do just as much damage with the Vickers
as you could with them both.
_Senator Sutherland_: You drive and fight at the same time?
_Adjt. Prince_: Yes, sir.
_Adjt. Rumsey_: The machine gun is fixed.
_Adjt. Prince_: It is absolutely fixed on the machine, and if I
should want to adjust it to shoot you, I would adjust my machine
on you.
The witness then took up the nature and work of some of the heavier
machines. He testified:
_Adjt. Prince_: Then comes the artillery regulating machine. That
machine goes up, and it may be a Farman or a bi-motor, or some
other kind of heavier machine, a machine that goes slowly. They
go over a certain spot. They have a driver, who is a pilot, like
ourselves; then they have an artillery officer on board, whose
sole duty it is to send back word, mostly by Marconi, to his
battery where the shots are landing. He will say: "Too far," "Too
short," "Right," or "Left," and he stays there over this battery
until the work done by the French guns has been absolutely
controlled, and above him he has some of these battle planes
keeping him from being attacked from above by German airmen. Of
course, they may be shot at by anti-aircraft guns, which you can
not help. That is artillery regulating.
_The Chairman_: Are you always attacked from above?
_Adjt. Prince_: By airplanes; yes, sir. It is always much safer
to attack from above.
Then you have the bomb-dropping machines, which carry a lot of
weight. They go out sometimes in the daytime, but mostly at
night, and they have these new sights by which they can stay up
quite high in the air and still know the spot they are going at.
They know the wind speed, they know their height, and they can
figure out by this new arrangement they have exactly when the
time is to let go their bombs.
_Senator Kirby_: Something in the nature of a range-finder?
_Adjt. Prince_: A sort of range-finder.
_Adjt. Rumsey_: It is a sort of telescope that looks down between
your legs, and you have to regulate yourself, observing your
speed, and when you see the spot, you have to touch a button and
off go these things.
_Adjt. Rumsey_: In a raid my brother went on there were
sixty-eight machines that left; the French heavy machines, the
English heavy machines, and then the English sort of
half-fighting machine and half-bombing machine. They call it a
Sopwith, and it is a very good machine. They went over there, and
the first ones over were the Frenchmen, and they dropped bombs on
these Mauser works, and the only thing that the English saw was a
big cloud of smoke and dust, and they could not see the works so
they just dropped into them. Out of that raid the fighting
machines got eight Germans and dropped them, and the Germans got
eight Frenchmen. So, out of sixty-eight they lost eight, but we
also got eight Germans and dropped six tons of this stuff, which
is twenty times as strong as the melinite. We do not know what
the name of the powder is. The fighting machines on that trip
only carried gasolene for two hours, and the other ones carried
it for something like six hours, so we escorted them out for an
hour, came back to our lines, filled up with gasolene, went out
and met them and brought them back over the danger zone.
_Adjt. Prince_: Near the trenches is where the danger zone is,
because there the German fighting machines are located.
_Senator Kirby_: How far was it from your battle front that you
went?
_Adjt. Rumsey_: I think it was about 500 miles, 250 there and 250
back; it was between 200 and 250 miles there.
_Senator Kirby_: Beyond the battle front?
_Adjt. Rumsey_: Yes; or, to be more accurate, I think it was
nearer 200 than 250.
_The Chairman_: What do you think of the function of the airplane
as a determining factor?
_Adjt. Prince_: There is no doubt that if we could send over in
huge waves a great number of these bomb-dropping machines, and
simply lay the country waste--for instance, the big cities like
Strassburg, Freiburg, and others--not only would the damage done
be great, but I guess the popular opinion in Germany, everything
being laid waste, would work very strongly in the minds of the
public toward having peace. I do not think you could destroy an
army, because you could not see them, but you could go to
different stations; you could go to Strassburg, to Brussels, and
places like that.
_The Chairman_: Then, sending them over in enormous numbers would
also put out of business their airplanes, and they would be
helpless, would they not?
_Adjt. Prince_: Absolutely. You not only have on the front a
large number of bomb-dropping machines, but a large number of
fighting machines. When the Somme battle was started in the
morning the Germans knew, naturally, that the French and British
were going to start the Somme drive, and they had up these
Drachens, these observation balloons, and the first eighteen
minutes that the battle started the French and the English, I
think, got twenty-one "saucisse"; in other words, for the next
five days there was not a single German who came anywhere near
the lines, but the French and English could go ahead as they-felt
like.
_Admiral Peary_: Have you any idea as to how many airplanes there
are along that western front on the German side?
_Adjt. Prince_: There must be about 3000 on that line in actual
commission.
_Admiral Peary_: That means, then, about 10,000 in all, at least?
_Adjt. Prince_: I should think so; I should say the French have
about 2000 and the English possibly 1000, or we have about 2500.
_Adjt. Rumsey_: If they have 3000 we have 4000; that is, right on
the line.
_Adjt. Prince_: We have about 1000 more than they have, and we
are up all the time. The day before I left the front I was called
to go out five times, and I went out five times, and spent two
hours every time I went out.
It would be gratifying to author and to reader alike if it were
possible to give some account of the progress in aërial equipment
made by the United States, since its declaration of war. But at the
present moment (February, 1918), the government is chary of
furnishing information concerning the advance made in the creation
of an aërial fleet. Perhaps precise information, if available, would
be discouraging to the many who believe that the war will be won in
the air. For it is known in a broad general way that the activities
of the Administration have been centred upon the construction of
training camps and aviation stations. Orders for the actual
construction of airplanes have been limited, so that a chorus of
criticism arose from manufacturers who declared that they might have
to close their works for lack of employment. The apparent check was
discouraging to American airmen, and to our Allies who had expected
marvellous things from the United States in the way of swift and
wholesale preparation for winning battles in the air. The response
of the government to all criticism was that it was laying broad
foundations in order that construction once begun would proceed with
unabated activity, and that when aircraft began to be turned out by
the thousands a week there would be aviators and trained mechanics
a-plenty to handle them. In this situation the advocates of a
special cabinet department of aeronautics found new reason to
criticize the Administration and Congress for having ignored or
antagonized their appeals. For responsibility for the delay and
indifference--if indifference there was--rested equally upon the
Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of War. Each had his measure
of control over the enormous sum voted in a lump for aviation, each
had the further millions especially voted to his department to
account for. But no single individual could be officially asked what
had been done with the almost one billion dollars voted for
aeronautics in 1917.
But if the authorities seemed to lag, the inventors were busy.
Mention has already been made of the new "Liberty" motor, which
report had it was the fruit of the imprisonment of two mechanical
experts in a hotel room with orders that they should not be freed
until they had produced a motor which met all criticisms upon those
now in use. Their product is said to have met this test, and the
happy result caused a general wish that the Secretaries of War and
of the Navy might be similarly incarcerated and only liberated upon
producing plans for the immediate creation of an aërial fleet suited
to the nation's needs. If, however, the Liberty motor shall prove
the complete success which at the moment the government believes it
to be, it will be such a spur to the development of the airplane in
peace and war, as could not otherwise be applied. For the motor is
the true life of the airplane--its heart, lungs, and nerve centre.
The few people who still doubt the wide adoption of aircraft for
peaceful purposes after the war base their skepticism on the
treachery of motors still in use. They repudiate all comparisons
with automobiles. They say:
It is perfectly true that a man can run his car repeatedly from
New York to Boston without motor trouble. But the trouble is
inevitable sooner or later. When it comes to an automobile it is
trifling. The driver gets out and makes his repairs by the
roadside. But if it comes to the aviator it brings the
possibility of death with it every time. If his motor stops he
must descend. But to alight he must find a long level field, with
at least two hundred yards in which to run off his momentum. If,
when he discovers the failure of his motor, he is flying at the
height of a mile he must find his landing place within a space of
eight miles, for in gliding to earth the ratio of forward
movement to height is as eight to one. But how often in rugged
and densely populated New England, or Pennsylvania is there a
vacant level field half a mile in length? The aviator who made a
practice of daily flight between New York and Boston would
inevitably meet death in the end.
The criticism is a shrewd and searching one. But it is based on the
airplane and the motor of to-day without allowance for the
development and improvement which are proceeding apace. It
contemplates a craft which has but one motor, but the more modern
machines have sufficient lifting power to carry two motors, and can
be navigated successfully with one of these out of service.
Experiments furthermore are being made with a device after the type
of the helicopter which with the steady lightening of the aircraft
motor, may be installed on airplanes with a special motor for its
operation. This device, it is believed, will enable the airplane
so equipped to stop dead in its course with both propellers out of
action, to hover over a given spot or to rise or to descend gently
in a perpendicular line without the necessity of soaring. It is
obvious that if this device prove successful the chief force of the
objections to aërial navigation outlined above will be nullified.
The menace of infrequent landing places will quickly remedy itself
on busy lines of aërial traffic. The average railroad doing business
in a densely populated section has stations once every eight or ten
miles which with their sidings, buildings, water tanks, etc., cost
far more than the field half a mile long with a few hangars that the
fliers will need as a place of refuge. Indeed, although for its size
and apparent simplicity of construction an airplane is phenomenally
costly, in the grand total of cost an aërial line would cost a tithe
of the ordinary railway. It has neither right of way, road bed,
rails, nor telegraph system to maintain, and if the average flyer
seems to cost amazingly it still foots up less than one fifth the
cost of a modern locomotive though its period of service is much
shorter.
Just at the present time aircraft costs are high, based on
artificial conditions in the market. Their construction is a new
industry; its processes not yet standardized; its materials still
experimental in many ways and not yet systematically produced. A
light sporting monoplane which superficially seems to have about
$250 worth of materials in it--exclusive of the engine--will cost
about $3000. A fighting biplane will touch $10,000. Yet the latter
seems to the lay observer to contain no costly materials to justify
so great a charge. The wings are a light wooden framework, usually
of spruce, across which a fine grade of linen cloth is stretched.
The materials are simple enough, but every bit of wood, every screw,
every strand of wire is selected with the utmost care, and the
workmanship of their assemblage is as painstaking as the setting of
the most precious stones.
[Illustration: © International Film Service.
_A German "Gotha"--their Favorite Type._]
"REMEMBER THE LEAST NEGLIGENCE MAY COST A LIFE!" is a sign
frequently seen hanging over the work benches in an airplane
factory.
When stretched over the framework, the cloth of the wings is
treated to a dressing down of a preparation of collodion, which in
the jargon of the shop is called "dope." This substance has a
peculiar effect upon the cloth, causing it to shrink, and thus
making it more taut and rigid than it could be by the most careful
stretching. Though the layman would not suspect it, this wash alone
costs about $150 a machine. The seaplanes too--or hydroaëroplanes as
purists call them--present a curious illustration of unexpected and,
it would seem, unexplainable expense. Where the flyer over land has
two bicycle wheels on which to land, the flyer over the sea has two
flat-bottomed boats or pontoons. These cost from $1000 to $1200 and
look as though they should cost not over $100. But the necessity of
combining maximum strength with minimum weight sends the price
soaring as the machine itself soars. Moreover there is not yet the
demand for either air-or seaplanes that would result in the division
of labour, standardization of parts, and other manufacturing
economies which reduce the cost of products.
To the high cost of aircraft their comparative fragility is added as
a reason for their unfitness for commercial uses. The engines cost
from $2000 to $5000 each, are very delicate and usually must be
taken out of the plane and overhauled after about 100 hours of
active service. The strain on them is prodigious for it is estimated
that the number of revolutions of an airplane's engine during an
hour's flight is equal to the number of revolutions of an
automobile's wheels during active service of a whole month.
It is believed that the superior lightness and durability of the
Liberty motor will obviate some of these objections to the
commercial availability of aircraft in times of peace. And it is
certain that with the cessation of the war, the retirement of the
governments of the world from the purchasing field and the reduction
of the demand for aircraft to such as are needed for pleasure and
industrial uses the prices which we have cited will be cut in half.
In such event what will be the future of aircraft; what their part
in the social and industrial organization of the world?
Ten or a dozen years ago Rudyard Kipling entertained the English
reading public of the world with a vivacious sketch of aërial
navigation in the year 2000 A.D. He used the license of a poet in
avoiding too precise descriptions of what is to come--dealing
rather with broad and picturesque generalizations. Now the year 2000
is still far enough away for pretty much anything to be invented,
and to become commonplace before that era arrives. Airships of the
sort Mr. Kipling pictured may by that period have come and
gone--have been relegated to the museums along with the
stage-coaches of yesterday and the locomotives of to-day. For that
matter before that millennial period shall arrive men may have
learned to dispense with material transportation altogether, and be
able to project their consciousness or even their astral bodies to
any desired point on psychic waves. If a poet is going to prophecy
he might as well be audacious and even revolutionary in his
predictions.
Mr. Kipling tried so hard to be reasonable that he made himself
recognizably wrong so far as the present tendency of aircraft
development would indicate. _With the Night Mail_, is the story of a
trip by night across the Atlantic from England to America. It is
made in a monster dirigible--though the present tendency is to
reject the dirigible for the swifter, less costly, and more
airworthy (leave "seaworthy" to the plodding ships on old ocean's
breast) airplanes. If, however, we condone this glaring
improbability we find Mr. Kipling's tale full of action and
imaginary incident that give it an air of truth. His ship is not
docked on the ground at the tempest's mercy, but is moored high in
air to the top of a tall tower up which passengers and freight are
conveyed in elevators. His lighthouses send their beams straight up
into the sky instead of projecting them horizontally as do those
which now guard our coasts. Just why lighthouses are needed,
however, he does not explain. There are no reefs on which a packet
of the air may run, no lee shores which they must avoid. On overland
voyages guiding lights by night may be useful, as great white
direction strips laid out on the ground are even now suggested as
guides for daylight flying. But the main reliance of the airman must
be his compass. Crossing the broad oceans no lighted path is
possible, and even in a voyage from New York to Chicago, or from
London to Rome good airmanship will dictate flight at a height that
will make reliance upon natural objects as a guide perilous. The
airman has the advantage over the sailor in that he may lay his
course on leaving his port, or flying field, and pursue it straight
as an arrow to his destination. No rocks or other obstacles bar his
path, no tortuous channels must be navigated. All that can divert
him from his chosen course is a steady wind on the beam, and that
is instantly detected by his instruments and allowance made for it.
On the other hand the sailor has a certain advantage over the airman
in that his more leisurely progress allows time for the
rectification of errors in course arising from contrary currents or
winds. An error of a point, or even two, amounts to but little in a
day's steaming of perhaps four hundred miles. It can readily be
remedied, unless the ship is too near shore. But when the whole
three thousand miles of Atlantic are covered in twenty hours in the
air, the course must be right from the start and exactly adhered to,
else the passenger for New York may be set down in Florida.
It is not improbable that even before the war is over the crossing
of the Atlantic by plane will be accomplished. Certainly it will be
one of the first tasks undertaken by airmen on the return of peace.
But it is probable that the adaptation of aircraft to commercial
uses will be begun with undertakings of smaller proportions. Already
the United States maintains an aërial mail route in Alaska, while
Italy has military mail routes served by airplanes in the Alps.
These have been undertaken because of the physical obstacles to
travel on the surface, presented in those rugged neighbourhoods. But
in the more densely populated regions of the United States
considerations of financial profit will almost certainly result in
the early establishment of mail and passenger air service. Air
service will cut down the time between any two given points at least
one half, and ultimately two thirds. Letters could be sent from New
York to Boston, or even to Buffalo, and an answer received the same
day. The carrying plane could take on each trip five tons of mail.
Philadelphia would be brought within forty-five minutes of New York;
Washington within two hours instead of the present five. Is there
any doubt of the creation of an aërial passenger service under such
conditions? Already a Caproni triplane will carry thirty-five
passengers beside guns--say, fifty passengers if all other load be
excluded, and has flown with a lighter load from Newport News to New
York. It is easily imaginable that by 1920 the airplane capable of
carrying eighty persons--or the normal number now accommodated on an
inter-urban trolley car--will be an accomplished fact.
The lines that will thus spring up will need no rails, no right of
way, no expensive power plant. Their physical property will be
confined to the airplanes themselves and to the fields from which
the craft rise and on which they alight, with the necessary hangars.
These indeed will involve heavy expenditure. For a busy line, with
frequent sailings, of high speed machines a field will need to be in
the neighbourhood of a mile square. A plane swooping down for its
landing is not to be held up at the switch like a train while room
is made for it. It is an imperative guest, and cannot be gainsaid.
Accordingly the fields must be large enough to accommodate scores of
planes at once and give each new arrival a long straight course on
which to run off its momentum. It is obvious therefore that the
union stations for aircraft routes cannot be in the hearts of our
cities as are the railroad stations of to-day, but must be fairly
well out in the suburbs.
A form of machine which the professional airmen say has yet to be
developed is the small monoplane, carrying two passengers at most,
and of low speed--not more than twenty miles an hour at most. In
this age of speed mania the idea of deliberately planning a
conveyance or vehicle that shall not exceed a low limit seems out of
accord with public desire. But the low speed airplane has the
advantage of needing no extended field in which to alight. It
reaches the ground with but little momentum to be taken up and can
be brought up standing on the roof of a house or the deck of a ship.
Small machines of this sort are likely to serve as the runabouts of
the air, to succeed the trim little automobile roadsters as pleasure
craft.
[Illustration: © International Film Service.
_A French Monoplane._]
The beginning of the fourth year of the war brought a notable change
in aërial tactics. For three years everything had been sacrificed to
speed. Such aërial duels as have been described were encouraged by
the fact that aircraft were reduced to the proportions needful for
carrying one man and a machine gun. The gallant flyers went up in
the air and killed each other. That was about all there was to it.
While as scouts, range finders, guides for the artillery, they
exerted some influence on the course of the war, as a fighting arm
in its earlier years, they were without efficiency. The bombing
forays were harassing but little more, because the craft engaged
were of too small capacity to carry enough bombs to work really
serious damage, while the ever increasing range of the "Archies"
compels the airmen to deliver their fire from so great a height as
to make accurate aim impossible.
[Illustration: Photo Press Illustrating Service.
_A German Scout Brought to Earth in France._]
But Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Zeebrugge are likely to change all this.
The constant contemplation of those nests for the sanctuary of
pestiferous submarines, effectively guarded against attack by either
land or water, has stirred up the determination of the Allies to
seek their destruction from above. Heavy bombing planes are being
built in all the Allied workshops for this purpose, and furthermore
to give effect to the British determination to take vengeance upon
Germany, for her raids upon London. It is reported that the United
States, by agreement with its Allies, is to specialize in building
the light, swift scout planes, but in other shops the heavy
triplane, the dreadnought of the air is expected to be the feature
of 1918. With it will come an entirely novel strategic use of
aircraft in war, and with it too, which is perhaps the more
permanently important, will come the development of aircraft of the
sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace when
the war shall end.
THE SUBMARINE BOAT