twenty-eight feet in its widest diameter, made of rubberized cotton
cloth and sharply streamlined. Hydrogen gas is the ascensive power used,
lifting the cable, two men, basket, and all other equipment to a maximum
altitude, in the best weather conditions, of over 5,000 feet. It has a
balloonet, or air-chamber, within the main body of the gas-envelope,
which as the balloon ascends fills automatically with air through a
simple scoop placed under the nose of the balloon. The air and gas
chambers are separated by a diaphragm of cloth. When the balloon is fully
inflated this diaphragm rests on the underbody of the gas-envelope, there
being no air in the balloonet. When the balloon descends, minus the
several hundred feet of hydrogen which has escaped into the air, it would
lose its shape and grow flabby, a condition of considerable potential
danger, were it not for the balloonet, or air-chamber, coming into play.
As the air is driven in through the scoop, precisely as an air-scoop
fixed in the port-hole of an ocean liner brings air into a cabin, the
diaphragm rises and takes up the lost bulk in the gas-envelope above. In
other words, the escaping gas is replaced by air by means of what amounts
to an elastic air-envelope below the gas-envelope. Is that quite clear?
Three lobes of rubberized fabric give stability to the balloon. They are
filled automatically by the wind, if it blows, and, expanding to their
full capacity, act as rudders to hold the balloon steady. If there is no
wind there is, of course, no need for the lobes and they hang loosely,
like elephants’ ears, Caquots frequently being called “elephants” because
of these drooping lobes.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN KITE BALLOON ABOUT TO ASCEND.
The lobes of rubberized fabric give stability to the balloon. They are
filled automatically by the wind, if it blows, and, expanding to their
full capacity, act as rudders to hold the balloon steady.]
[Illustration: PLANES IN BATTLE FORMATION.
As accurately spaced as the pips on a card; as picturesque as a flock of
geese southwardly bound.]
When the United States entered the war we were practically without this
type of aircraft, the only balloon possessed by our military forces on
the Mexican border having been the gift of an Akron rubber company to the
Ohio National Guard. In April, 1917, the whole production of military
balloons in the United States was not over two or three a month, but
at the request of the government the various rubber manufacturers went
whole-heartedly into the business of production, so that when the war
ended we were producing ten balloons a day. Up to November 11 there
had been produced for the United States Army alone 1,025 balloons of
all types, 642 of these being the final Type R Observation Balloon.
Propaganda and target balloons were likewise developed and produced, as
were new-type parachutes, canvas balloon hangars, and 1,221,582 feet of
steel cable—a sufficient length of single-strand, specially manufactured
wire to more than reach around the globe.
One of the chief difficulties which had to be overcome was the question
of a sufficient supply of cotton cloth of proper strength and texture,
for balloon cloth was practically unknown in this country when we
entered the war. In order to keep up with the balloon schedule of the
War Department, the manufacturers required millions of yards of a very
high-grade cloth with a weave of 140 threads to the inch both ways. At
first the wastage due to imperfect balloon cloth was enormous, frequently
running as high as 60 per cent, but by care and effort this was reduced
to perhaps 10 per cent in total from the loom to the balloon. The
wastage was largely caused by “slubs,” knots, and other imperfections of
weaving, which prevented an even surface for rubberizing and consequently
impaired the strength and gas-holding qualities of the cloth. Hundreds
of inspectors, both factory and government employees, were necessary to
get an approximately perfect fabric, and all had to be developed for this
work. Indeed, the making of balloon cloth in the United States amounted
to the development of an entirely new industry, for which thousands of
men had to be specially trained for months. It will give you a better
conception of the magnitude of this new industry, perhaps, when I tell
you that to make ten balloons a day it was necessary for the cotton-mills
to weave about 600,000 yards of this special balloon cloth a month, and
this required 3,200 looms. It is a tribute to the skill of the American
weavers that reports from the front stated that the American fabric burnt
very much more slowly than that made in Europe, thus giving the observer
more time to get away in his parachute and minimizing the danger of the
burning balloon falling on him.
Everything connected with the kite-balloon presented more or less of a
problem because it was new. The mobile windlass, for example, by which
the balloon was let up and pulled down on its cable, had to be developed
from nothing. But the genius of the American manufacturer overcame this
difficulty as it did every other in the manufacture of instruments for
war. Though steam was the motive power first used for balloon windlasses,
before the close of the war American ingenuity had developed both gas and
electric windlasses which were thoroughly efficient. The mobile windlass
could move on the road under its own power at a speed of twenty miles an
hour, and could tow a balloon in the air at the rate of five miles an
hour, or even better if necessity demanded. The gasoline windlass has
made a record pull-down of 1,600 feet a minute, bringing down its balloon
at a speed more than _three times that of the fastest passenger-elevator_.
A sufficient supply of hydrogen gas was, at the beginning, another of
the balloon problems. Hydrogen, before the war, was a by-product in the
manufacture of commercial oxygen, and only a small quantity was used
in this country. But the sudden demand for millions of cubic feet of
this gas was promptly met by the establishment of government plants and
the expansion of privately owned ones. Though by far the greater part
of the gas used in balloons at home and abroad was made at permanent
supply stations and shipped to the points where it was needed, in
steel cylinders, an extremely ingenious type of portable generator was
developed for the manufacture of hydrogen in the field. When these
portable hydrogen generators were unnecessary or unavailable, the gas
shipped from long distances was stored in high-pressure cylinders or
“nurse balloons,” the latter being simply huge bags of rubberized fabric,
each with a capacity of 5,000 cubic feet of hydrogen, which were used in
the same way as the ordinary steel gasometers to be seen in any American
city.
Hydrogen is itself an inflammable gas, and when mixed with air or oxygen
is dangerously explosive. It has, therefore, always been a source of
great concern to balloonists, who had long dreamed of a non-inflammable,
non-explosive gas, sufficiently light to function as does hydrogen. It
was known that helium was such a gas, but it was, until very recently,
so scarce and costly that its use in balloons had scarcely been given a
serious thought. Not more than 100 cubic feet of helium had ever been
produced up to the time we started our balloon programme, and it was
valued at $1,700 a cubic foot. Scientific investigators in the employ of
the government discovered about this time, however, that certain natural
gases in the United States contained limited quantities of helium, and
the problem then resolved itself into one of extracting the helium
from these gases in sufficient quantities, and at a sufficiently low
cost, to make practical its use. Funds were forthcoming and, under the
supervision of the Navy Department and the Bureau of Mines, the process
of gas liquefaction was put into operation, with the result that on
the day of the Armistice there were on the docks, ready for shipment
overseas, 147,000 cubic feet of helium with a pre-war value of a quarter
of a billion dollars. Plants were under construction which, had the war
continued, would have produced 50,000 cubic feet of this gas a day at a
cost of approximately ten cents per cubic foot. The importance of this
discovery cannot be overestimated, for it marks the opening of a new era
in lighter-than-airship navigation. In war it will make the incendiary
bullet, which has caused the destruction of countless balloons, a joke.
The only way to bring down a balloon filled with helium will be literally
to tear it apart by a direct hit with a high-explosive shell. Under peace
conditions, it opens up undreamed-of possibilities in the development of
new types of dirigible airships, as the danger from lightning, static
electricity, and sparks of any kind has been entirely eliminated. To
cross the Atlantic in a helium-filled balloon will be safer, so far as
danger from fire is concerned, than to cross the continent in a train.
* * * * *
Do you remember that hot September afternoon at the county fair when
you sat perched on the white-washed race-track fence, your face turned
skyward, and watched with fascinated eyes the tiny yellow globule, high,
high in the blue, which you had seen rise from the ground half an hour
before as a giant gas-balloon? And do you remember how, as you watched,
the band in the grand stand suddenly stopped playing and an awed hush
fell upon the crowd, and you saw a tiny something detach itself from
the yellow globule and drop into space, at first falling with sickening
speed, then slower, still slower, until the object, which you knew
was a man in pink tights (though sometimes, in order to heighten the
sensation, it was a young and, of course, beautiful woman), landed
quite gently in a distant field? In those days we little dreamed that
the strange, umbrella-like contrivance which brought the aeronaut
safely to earth would ever be used for any other purpose than to thrill
the admission-paying multitudes, but the emergencies and necessities
provoked by the Great War turned things with which we were all familiar
to unfamiliar uses, as, for example, when it converted a farm tractor
into a fighting-tank. Thus it was that the observers came to use
parachutes to escape from their burning balloons just as the inmates of
an office-building dash down the iron fire-escapes when somebody shouts
“Fire!”
At first the individual or one-man parachute was used to insure the
escape of the observer in the basket from his burning balloon, but
though the man escaped, the valuable maps and records were lost. In
order to save these records there was invented the basket parachute.
This was considerably larger in diameter than the individual parachute,
and when cut away brought the basket with all that it contained—men,
records, instruments, everything—safely and quickly to the ground. All
the observer had to do was to pull a cord and he started downward. It was
easier than stepping into an elevator and saying: “Ground floor, please.”
Amazingly few fatalities occurred in the hundreds of cases in which the
individual and basket parachutes were used in actual war service or in
training. I heard of one balloon observer who was forced to make four
parachute jumps in a single day, and of another who made three in four
hours, two balloons being burned over his head. Thirty parachute jumps
were made by American observers during the Argonne offensive alone. Yet
the safety of the parachute is demonstrated beyond all question by the
fact that during the entire time the American forces were in the field
only one death occurred as the direct result of a parachute drop, and in
that particular instance the burning balloon fell directly on top of the
open parachute, setting it on fire and allowing the observer to fall the
rest of the distance to the earth.
[Illustration: A BASKET PARACHUTE DROP.
The basket parachute brings men, instrument, and records safely to the
ground.]
[Illustration: BALLOONIST MAKING A PARACHUTE JUMP FROM AN ALTITUDE OF
7,900 FEET.]
[Illustration: TRAINING THE STUDENT AVIATOR.
“By means of a machine known as the Ruggles ‘Orientator,’ he could, while
on the ground, be put through every possible evolution experienced in
actual flying.”]
It is interesting to note that the use of parachutes is relatively new
compared even with ballooning. The man who developed the parachute and
who first descended safely to earth by its means—Thomas S. Baldwin—now
holds a major’s commission in the American Air Service, and during
the war had direct charge of the inspection of all army balloons and
parachutes. As the result of a life spent in performing aerial exploits
of all kinds, under all conditions and in all parts of the world, Major
Baldwin knows what is and what is not safe, so that when a balloon or
parachute was sent into action the observer always had the satisfaction
of knowing that the world’s most famous balloonist had given it his O. K.
* * * * *
Speaking of parachute jumps reminds me of an incident which actually
occurred on one of the American sectors toward the close of the war.
Despite the fact that only one American balloonist lost his life in
making a parachute jump—and in that case the fatality was caused by the
burning balloon falling on and setting fire to the parachute—a very
considerable element of risk is involved in the performance. In fact,
it became the custom to recommend a man making a parachute jump for the
Distinguished Service Cross, or, if he was operating with the French, for
the Croix de Guerre.
Just before the opening of the Argonne offensive an observation balloon
over the American lines was attacked by a German plane and sent down in
flames, the observer escaping by means of his parachute.
“You’ll get the D. S. C. all right,” his friends greeted him, as he
disentangled himself from the parachute harness.
“We’re sending up another balloon in a few minutes,” said the commanding
officer. “Want to try it again?”
“Surest thing you know, sir,” replied the grinning youngster.
But before the second balloon had been in the air an hour another enemy
plane swooped down upon it, like a hawk on a chicken-yard, and it too
burst into flame. Again the observer floated to safety beneath his
parachute.
“I guess I’ve got that D. S. C. copper-riveted this time,” he remarked;
but, when a third balloon ascended, he was in the basket. Once more a
German plane came tearing down the skies, a stream of bullets ripped the
silken gas-bag, and for the third time that day the observer reached the
earth by the parachute route.
“You’ll probably get the Croix de Guerre as well as the D. S. C.,” his
friends assured him. “The French are strong for this sort of thing. They
may even give you the Legion of Honor.”
Treading on air, the youngster returned to balloon headquarters. Tacked
on the bulletin-board in the hallway was a General Order. He paused to
glance at it. This is what he read:
“It is hereby directed that the custom of recommending officers making
parachute jumps for the Distinguished Service Cross or other decorations
be discontinued.”
Though the question of providing proper clothing for our flying-men and
balloon observers did not loom large when compared with the vast problems
involved in the production of engines, spruce, balloon cloth, bombs, and
machine-guns, it was nevertheless an exceedingly important one, for an
aviator cannot do his work if he is cold, and it is always bitterly cold
in the higher air-lanes. A man flying at 20,000 feet, say, suffers more
from the cold than he would on the ice-fields at the North Pole. Aviators
are commissioned officers, and when not at work wear the regular uniform,
which, as in the case of all officers, is furnished by the officer
himself. But the clothing required for work in the air, being of a highly
special character and very expensive, is loaned to the flyers by the
government. In view of this, it is a source of satisfaction to know that
it was frankly admitted on the front that our flyers were by far the best
and most efficiently equipped of any nation.
After many tests and much development, the following outfit was
devised: On the head was worn, in moderate weather, first a woollen
hood, or helmet, so designed as to fit closely over the entire head and
shoulders. In extremely cold weather, or for high-flight work, there
was worn a silk hood of like design and double thickness, having between
its layers an electrically heated unit connected by copper-wire cables
extending through the suit proper with the generator on the engine of the
plane. Over this silk hood was worn a soft-leather helmet lined with fur,
the face was entirely covered with a wool-lined leather mask, and the
eyes were protected by goggles. When it was necessary for the aviator to
use the radiotelephone, however, the fur-lined helmet was replaced by the
radio helmet, a leather affair somewhat similar in design to the other
but so fashioned as to contain the receivers of a wireless telephone. For
high-flight work, in addition to the above equipment, a rubber oxygen
mask, which contained a transmitter permitting the wearer to speak as
well as hear by wireless, was also worn. This mask was attached by a
flexible tube to a tank of oxygen carried in the plane, being so arranged
that it automatically fed the aviator with the amount of oxygen required
for the altitude at which he was flying.
Over the body was worn a one-piece flying suit of waterproof, airproof
material, reaching from throat to feet, buttoned tightly at wrists and
ankles, and lined throughout with fur. Through these suits, between the
fur and the outer coverings, were placed wire cables terminating in
snap-fasteners at neck, wrists, and ankles, to which could be attached
silk-covered wires leading to other electrical heating units in the
helmets, gloves, and moccasins, all of which were warmed by a current
drawn from the generator on the engine. Hence, though our aviators not
infrequently flew in a temperature of thirty degrees below zero, they
were as warm and comfortable as though they were sitting before a log
fire at home—much more comfortable, in fact, than were their relatives
and friends in America on the fireless Sundays which made uncomfortable
the first winter of the war. On his hands the aviator wore, in addition
to the electrically heated gloves, a pair of muskrat gauntlets extending
nearly to the elbow; on his feet, over the electrically heated moccasins,
another pair of moccasins, lined with sheepswool, reaching almost to the
knees. It is scarcely necessary to add that our air-fighters spent more
time in dressing than does a chorus-girl in a comic opera, and that when
they were dressed they looked like a cross between an Arctic explorer and
a deep-sea diver.
The question of obtaining the fur for lining this clothing presented a
perplexing problem, for there were required vast quantities of pelts
or skins of extreme warmth and sufficiently strong to withstand rough
usage, but not too bulky or heavy. After considerable investigation it
was found that these requirements were met by the skin of the Nuchwang
dog, which inhabits one of the provinces of north China, though I have
no doubt that sable or ermine would have answered the purpose equally
well had cost been no consideration. The demands of the American Air
Service required practically all of these skins that could be had in
China and necessitated the lifting of an embargo to bring them into
the United States, which, thanks to the co-operation of the War Trade
Board, was obtained. The last purchase before the Armistice was signed
called for 500,000 of these dog-skins. A strange thing, was it not,
that the lust for power of one William Hohenzollern, late of Berlin and
Potsdam, should bring about, among countless other things, the slaughter
of half a million dogs in far-off China? Though figures are, as a rule,
dry things, the magnitude of the Air Service’s clothing problem can be
better appreciated by my giving a few of them. The work in hand for
air-clothing when the Armistice was signed involved upward of $5,000,000.
Fifty thousand fur-lined flying suits at $36.25; over a 100,000 leather
helmets at $4.50; a like number of leather coats at prices ranging from
$10 to $30, and 80,000 goggles at $3.50 a pair reflect the major items
and explain how the government spent some of the money which you paid for
your Liberty Bonds.
* * * * *
Though in this chapter I have attempted to sketch the manifold phases
of America’s preparation for obtaining supremacy in the sky, I have
purposely left until the last the most important phase of all—the
flying-men themselves. The personnel side of the Air Service, including
the selection, training, organization, and operation of the flying
forces, developed, within the year following America’s declaration
of war, into one of the most remarkable educational systems in this
or any other country, with a larger student body and a more diverse
curriculum than any university in the world. Teaching men to fly, to send
messages by wireless, to operate machine-guns in the air, to gauge the
effectiveness of artillery-fire by its bursts, to read and make maps, to
operate gas-engines, and to travel hundreds of miles by compass; teaching
other men to read the enemy’s strategy from aerial photographs, and still
others to repair instruments, ignition systems, propellers, airplane
wings, and motors, required a vast network of schools and flying-fields,
a huge force of instructors, many of whom themselves had to be trained,
and an amazing mass of equipment and curricula.
The pilot is the heart and brain of the whole flying apparatus. Parts of
the airplane may break without serious result, but when the pilot breaks,
even momentarily, nothing is left to direct the flight. The man and the
machine come crashing to the ground. The early view that any one who
“had the nerve” could fly caused hundreds of unnecessary deaths and an
enormous avoidable waste of material. The lesson, for which we paid in
bitter and costly experience, was that it is essential to choose flyers
who are especially fitted for particular work, and then to keep them in
condition to perform their duties at all times by using the same thought
and care which is expended in the feeding, exercising, and conditioning
of a race-horse. Nature, remember, never intended man to fly in the same
sense that she did not intend him for life in a submarine. Conditions are
unnatural from the time he leaves the ground until he returns. There are
countless obstacles which he must overcome. He flies in an atmosphere
deficient in that oxygen which is “the breath of life”; he is subjected
in war to the shell-fire of antiaircraft guns and attack by enemy
aircraft; he travels through space at a speed far exceeding that of the
fastest express-train. In attaining altitudes and breathing rarefied air,
the flyer is shaking his fist in the face of nature.