of which only a few deserve bare mention since, unlike the first, they
taught nothing and achieved little. There was the meeting at Boulogne
late in September of 1909, of which the only noteworthy event was
Ferber's death. There was a meeting at Brescia where Curtiss again took
first prize for speed and Rougier put up a world's height record of 645
feet. The Blackpool meeting followed between 18th and 23rd of October,
1909, forming, with the exception of Doncaster, the first British Flying
Meeting. Chief among the competitors were Henry Farman, who took the
distance prize, Rougier, Paulhan, and Latham, who, by a flight in a high
wind, convinced the British public that the theory that flying was only
possible in a calm was a fallacy. A meeting at Doncaster was practically
simultaneous with the Blackpool week; Delagrange, Le Blon, Sommer, and
Cody were the principal figures in this event. It should be added
that 130 miles was recorded as the total flown at Doncaster, while at
Blackpool only 115 miles were flown. Then there were Juvisy, the first
Parisian meeting, Wolverhampton, and the Comte de Lambert's flight round
the Eiffel Tower at a height estimated at between 1,200 and 1,300 feet.
This may be included in the record of these aerial theatricals, since it
was nothing more.
Probably wakened to realisation of the possibilities of the aeroplane by
the Rheims Meeting, Germany turned out its first plane late in 1909.
It was known as the Grade monoplane, and was a blend of the Bleriot and
Santos-Dumont machines, with a tail suggestive of the Antoinette type.
The main frame took the form of a single steel tube, at the forward end
of which was rigged a triangular arrangement carrying the pilot's seat
and the landing wheels underneath, with the wing warping wires and stays
above. The sweep of the wings was rather similar to the later Taube
design, though the sweep back was not so pronounced, and the machine was
driven by a four-cylinder, 20 horse-power, air-cooled engine which drove
a two-bladed tractor propeller. In spite of Lilienthal's pioneer
work years before, this was the first power-driven German plane which
actually flew.
Eleven months after the Rheims meeting came what may be reckoned the
only really notable aviation meeting on English soil, in the form of the
Bournemouth week, July 10th to 16th, 1910. This gathering is noteworthy
mainly in view of the amazing advance which it registered on the Rheims
performances. Thus, in the matter of altitude, Morane reached 4,107
feet and Drexel came second with 2,490 feet. Audemars on a Demoiselle
monoplane made a flight of 17 miles 1,480 yards in 27 minutes 17.2
seconds, a great flight for the little Demoiselle. Morane achieved a
speed of 56.64 miles per hour, and Grahame White climbed to 1,000 feet
altitude in 6 minutes 36.8 seconds. Machines carrying the Gnome engine
as power unit took the great bulk of the prizes, and British-built
engines were far behind.
The Bournemouth Meeting will always be remembered with regret for the
tragedy of C. S. Rolls's death, which took place on the Tuesday, the
second day of the meeting. The first competition of the day was that
for the landing prize; Grahame White, Audemars, and Captain Dickson had
landed with varying luck, and Rolls, following on a Wright machine with
a tail-plane which ought never to have been fitted and was not part of
the Wright design, came down wind after a left-hand turn and turned left
again over the top of the stands in order to land up wind. He began to
dive when just clear of the stands, and had dropped to a height of 40
feet when he came over the heads of the people against the barriers.
Finding his descent too steep, he pulled back his elevator lever to
bring the nose of the machine up, tipping down the front end of the tail
to present an almost flat surface to the wind. Had all gone well, the
nose of the machine would have been forced up, but the strain on the
tail and its four light supports was too great; the tail collapsed, the
wind pressed down the biplane elevator, and the machine dived vertically
for the remaining 20 feet of the descent, hitting the ground vertically
and crumpling up. Major Kennedy, first to reach the debris, found Rolls
lying with his head doubled under him on the overturned upper main
plane; the lower plane had been flung some few feet away with the engine
and tanks under it. Rolls was instantaneously killed by concussion of
the brain.
Antithesis to the tragedy was Audemars on his Demoiselle, which was
named 'The Infuriated Grasshopper.' Concerning this, it was recorded
at the time that 'Nothing so excruciatingly funny as the action of
this machine has ever been seen at any aviation ground. The little
two-cylinder engine pops away with a sound like the frantic drawing of
ginger beer corks; the machine scutters along the ground with its tail
well up; then down comes the tail suddenly and seems to slap the ground
while the front jumps up, and all the spectators rock with laughter. The
whole attitude and the jerky action of the machine suggest a grasshopper
in a furious rage, and the impression is intensified when it comes down,
as it did twice on Wednesday, in long grass, burying its head in the
ground in its temper.'--(The Aero, July, 1910.)
The Lanark Meeting followed in August of the same year, and with the
bare mention of this, the subject of flying meetings may he left
alone, since they became mere matters of show until there came military
competitions such as the Berlin Meeting at the end of August, 1910,
and the British War office Trials on Salisbury Plain, when Cody won his
greatest triumphs. The Berlin meeting proved that, from the time of the
construction of the first successful German machine mentioned above, to
the date of the meeting, a good number of German aviators had qualified
for flight, but principally on Wright and Antoinette machines, though
by that time the Aviatik and Dorner German makes had taken the air. The
British War office Trials deserve separate and longer mention.
In 1910 in spite of official discouragement, Captain Dickson proved the
value of the aeroplane for scouting purposes by observing movements
of troops during the Military Manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain. Lieut.
Lancelot Gibbs and Robert Loraine, the actor-aviator, also made flights
over the manoeuvre area, locating troops and in a way anticipating the
formation and work of the Royal Flying Corps by a usefulness which could
not be officially recognised.
XV. THE CHANNEL CROSSING
It may be said that Louis Bleriot was responsible for the second great
landmark in the history of successful flight. The day when the brothers
Wright succeeded in accomplishing power-driven flight ranks as the first
of these landmarks. Ader may or may not have left the ground, but the
wreckage of his 'Avion' at the end of his experiment places his doubtful
success in a different category from that of the brothers Wright and
leaves them the first definite conquerors, just as Bleriot ranks as
first definite conqueror of the English Channel by air.
In a way, Louis Bleriot ranks before Farman in point of time; his
first flapping-wing model was built as early as 1900, and Voisin flew a
biplane glider of his on the Seine in the very early experimental days.
Bleriot's first four machines were biplanes, and his fifth, a monoplane,
was wrecked almost immediately after its construction. Bleriot had
studied Langley's work to a certain extent, and his sixth construction
was a double monoplane based on the Langley principle. A month after
he had wrecked this without damaging himself--for Bleriot had as many
miraculous escapes as any of the other fliers-he brought out number
seven, a fairly average monoplane. It was in December of 1907 after a
series of flights that he wrecked this machine, and on its successor, in
July of 1908, he made a flight of over 8 minutes. Sundry flights, more
or less successful, including the first cross-country flight from Toury
to Artenay, kept him busy up to the beginning of November, 1908, when
the wreckage in a fog of the machine he was flying sent him to the
building of 'number eleven,' the famous cross-channel aeroplane.
Number eleven was shown at the French Aero Show in the Grand Palais
and was given its first trials on the 18th January, 1909. It was first
fitted with a R.E.P. motor and had a lifting area of 120 square feet,
which was later increased to 150 square feet. The framework was of oak
and poplar spliced and reinforced with piano wire; the weight of the
machine was 47 lbs. and the undercarriage weight a further 60 lbs., this
consisting of rubber cord shock absorbers mounted on two wheels. The
R.E.P. motor was found unsatisfactory, and a three-cylinder Anzani
of 105 mm. bore and 120 mm. stroke replaced it. An accident seriously
damaged the machine on June 2nd, but Bleriot repaired it and tested it
at Issy, where between June 19th and June 23rd he accomplished flights
of 8, 12, 15, 16, and 36 minutes. On July 4th he made a 50-minute flight
and on the 13th flew from Etampes to Chevilly.
A few further details of construction may be given: the wings themselves
and an elevator at the tail controlled the rate of ascent and descent,
while a rudder was also fitted at the tail. The steering lever,
working on a universally jointed shaft--forerunner of the modern
joystick--controlled both the rudder and the wings, while a pedal
actuated the elevator. The engine drove a two-bladed tractor screw of 6
feet 7 inches diameter, and the angle of incidence of the wings was 20
degrees. Timed at Issy, the speed of the machine was given as 36 miles
an hour, and as Bleriot accomplished the Channel flight of 20 miles in
37 minutes, he probably had a slight following wind.
The Daily Mail had offered a prize of L1,000 for the first Cross-Channel
flight, and Hubert Latham set his mind on winning it. He put up a
shelter on the French coast at Sangatte, half-way between Calais and
Cape Blanc Nez. From here he made his first attempt to fly to England
on Monday the 19th of July. He soared to a fair height, circling, and
reached an estimated height of about 900 feet as he came over the water
with every appearance of capturing the Cross-Channel prize. The luck
which dogged his career throughout was against him, for, after he had
covered some 8 miles, his engine stopped and he came down to the water
in a series of long glides. It was discovered afterward that a small
piece of wire had worked its way into a vital part of the engine to rob
Latham of the honour he coveted. The tug that came to his rescue found
him seated on the fuselage of his Antoinette, smoking a cigarette and
waiting for a boat to take him to the tug. It may be remarked that
Latham merely assumed his Antoinette would float in case he failed to
make the English coast; he had no actual proof.
Bleriot immediately entered his machine for the prize and took up his
quarters at Barraques. On Sunday, July 25th, 1909, shortly after 4 a.m.,
Bleriot had his machine taken out from its shelter and prepared for
flight. He had been recently injured in a petrol explosion and hobbled
out on crutches to make his cross-Channel attempt; he made two great
circles in the air to try the machine, and then alighted. 'In ten
minutes I start for England,' he declared, and at 4.35 the motor was
started up. After a run of 100 yards, the machine rose in the air and
got a height of about 100 feet over the land, then wheeling sharply
seaward and heading for Dover.
Bleriot had no means of telling direction, and any change of wind might
have driven him out over the North Sea, to be lost, as were Cecil Grace
and Hamel later on. Luck was with him, however, and at 5.12 a.m. of that
July Sunday, he made his landing in the North Fall meadow, just behind
Dover Castle. Twenty minutes out from the French coast, he lost sight of
the destroyer which was patrolling the Channel, and at the same time
he was out of sight of land without compass or any other means of
ascertaining his direction. Sighting the English coast, he found that
he had gone too far to the east, for the wind increased in strength
throughout the flight, this to such an extent as almost to turn the
machine round when he came over English soil. Profiting by Latham's
experience, Bleriot had fitted an inflated rubber cylinder a foot in
diameter by 5 feet in length along the middle of his fuselage, to render
floating a certainty in case he had to alight on the water.
Latham in his camp at Sangatte had been allowed to sleep through the
calm of the early morning through a mistake on the part of a friend, and
when his machine was turned out--in order that he might emulate Bleriot,
although he no longer hoped to make the first flight, it took so long
to get the machine ready and dragged up to its starting-point that there
was a 25 mile an hour wind by the time everything was in readiness.
Latham was anxious to make the start in spite of the wind, but the
Directors of the Antoinette Company refused permission. It was not until
two days later that the weather again became favourable, and then with a
fresh machine, since the one on which he made his first attempt had
been very badly damaged in being towed ashore, he made a circular trial
flight of about 5 miles. In landing from this, a side gust of wind drove
the nose of the machine against a small hillock, damaging both propeller
blades and chassis, and it was not until evening that the damage was
repaired.
French torpedo boats were set to mark the route, and Latham set out on
his second attempt at six o'clock. Flying at a height of 200 feet, he
headed over the torpedo boats for Dover and seemed certain of making the
English coast, but a mile and a half out from Dover his engine failed
him again, and he dropped to the water to be picked up by the steam
pinnace of an English warship and put aboard the French destroyer
Escopette.
There is little to choose between the two aviators for courage in
attempting what would have been considered a foolhardy feat a year or
two before. Bleriot's state, with an abscess in the burnt foot which had
to control the elevator of his machine, renders his success all the
more remarkable. His machine was exhibited in London for a time, and
was afterwards placed in the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, while a
memorial in stone, copying his monoplane in form, was let into the turf
at the point where he landed.
The second Channel crossing was not made until 1910, a year of new
records. The altitude record had been lifted to over 10,000 feet, the
duration record to 8 hours 12 minutes, and the distance for a single
flight to 365 miles, while a speed of over 65 miles an hour had been
achieved, when Jacques de Lesseps, son of the famous engineer of Suez
Canal and Panama fame, crossed from France to England on a Bleriot
monoplane. By this time flying had dropped so far from the marvellous
that this second conquest of the Channel aroused but slight public
interest in comparison with Bleriot's feat.
The total weight of Bleriot's machine in Cross Channel trim was 660
lbs., including the pilot and sufficient petrol for a three hours' run;
at a speed of 37 miles an hour, it was capable of carrying about 5
lbs. per square foot of lifting surface. It was the three-cylinder 25
horse-power Anzani motor which drove the machine for the flight. Shortly
after the flight had been accomplished, it was announced that the
Bleriot firm would construct similar machines for sale at L400 apiece--a
good commentary on the prices of those days.
On June the 2nd, 1910, the third Channel crossing was made by C. S.
Rolls, who flew from Dover, got himself officially observed over French
soil at Barraques, and then flew back without landing. He was the first
to cross from the British side of the Channel and also was the first
aviator who made the double journey. By that time, however, distance
flights had so far increased as to reduce the value of the feat, and
thenceforth the Channel crossing was no exceptional matter. The honour,
second only to that of the Wright Brothers, remains with Bleriot.
XVI. LONDON TO MANCHESTER
The last of the great contests to arouse public enthusiasm was the
London to Manchester Flight of 1910. As far back as 1906, the Daily
Mail had offered a prize of L10,000 to the first aviator who should
accomplish this journey, and, for a long time, the offer was regarded as
a perfectly safe one for any person or paper to make--it brought forth
far more ridicule than belief. Punch offered a similar sum to the first
man who should swim the Atlantic and also for the first flight to Mars
and back within a week, but in the spring of 1910 Claude Grahame White
and Paulhan, the famous French pilot, entered for the 183 mile run on
which the prize depended. Both these competitors flew the Farman biplane
with the 50 horse-power Gnome motor as propulsive power. Grahame White
surveyed the ground along the route, and the L. & N. W. Railway Company,
at his request, whitewashed the sleepers for 100 yards on the north side
of all junctions to give him his direction on the course. The machine
was run out on to the starting ground at Park Royal and set going at
5.19 a.m. on April 23rd. After a run of 100 yards, the machine went up
over Wormwood Scrubs on its journey to Normandy, near Hillmorten, which
was the first arranged stopping place en route; Grahame White landed
here in good trim at 7.20 a.m., having covered 75 miles and made a
world's record cross country flight. At 8.15 he set off again to come
down at Whittington, four miles short of Lichfield, at about 9.20, with
his machine in good order except for a cracked landing skid. Twice, on
this second stage of the journey, he had been caught by gusts of wind
which turned the machine fully round toward London, and, when over a
wood near Tamworth, the engine stopped through a defect in the balance
springs of two exhaust valves; although it started up again after a 100
foot glide, it did not give enough power to give him safety in the gale
he was facing. The rising wind kept him on the ground throughout the
day, and, though he hoped for better weather, the gale kept up until
the Sunday evening. The men in charge of the machine during its halt had
attempted to hold the machine down instead of anchoring it with stakes
and ropes, and, in consequence of this, the wind blew the machine over
on its back, breaking the upper planes and the tail. Grahame White had
to return to London, while the damaged machine was prepared for a second
flight. The conditions of the competition enacted that the full journey
should be completed within 24 hours, which made return to the starting
ground inevitable.
Louis Paulhan, who had just arrived with his Farman machine, immediately
got it unpacked and put together in order to be ready to make his
attempt for the prize as soon as the weather conditions should admit.
At 5.31 p.m., on April 27th, he went up from Hendon and had travelled
50 miles when Grahame White, informed of his rival's start, set out to
overtake him. Before nightfall Paulhan landed at Lichfield, 117 miles
from London, while Grahame White had to come down at Roden, only 60
miles out. The English aviator's chance was not so small as it seemed,
for, as Latham had found in his cross-Channel attempts, engine failure
was more the rule than the exception, and a very little thing might
reverse the relative positions.
A special train accompanied Paulhan along the North-Western route,
conveying Madame Paulhan, Henry Farman, and the mechanics who fitted the
Farman biplane together. Paulhan himself, who had flown at a height of
1,000 feet, spent the night at Lichfield, starting again at 4.9 a.m.
On the 28th, passing Stafford at 4.45, Crewe at 5.20, and landing at
Burnage, near Didsbury, at 5.32, having had a clean run.
Meanwhile, Grahame White had made a most heroic attempt to beat his
rival. An hour before dawn on the 28th, he went to the small field in
which his machine had landed, and in the darkness managed to make an
ascent from ground which made starting difficult even in daylight.
Purely by instinct and his recollection of the aspect of things the
night before, he had to clear telegraph wires and a railway bridge,
neither of which he could possibly see at that hour. His engine, too,
was faltering, and it was obvious to those who witnessed his start that
its note was far from perfect.
At 3.50 he was over Nuneaton and making good progress; between
Atherstone and Lichfield the wind caught him and the engine failed more
and more, until at 4.13 in the morning he was forced to come to earth,
having covered 6 miles less distance than in his first attempt. It was
purely a case of engine failure, for, with full power, he would have
passed over Paulhan just as the latter was preparing for the restart.
Taking into consideration the two machines, there is little doubt that
Grahame White showed the greater flying skill, although he lost the
prize. After landing and hearing of Paulhan's victory, on which he wired
congratulations, he made up his mind to fly to Manchester within the
24 hours. He started at 5 o'clock in the afternoon from Polesworth, his
landing place, but was forced to land at 5.30 at Whittington, where
he had landed on the previous Saturday. The wind, which had forced his
descent, fell again and permitted of starting once more; on this third
stage he reached Lichfield, only to make his final landing at 7.15 p.m.,
near the Trent Valley station. The defective running of the Gnome engine
prevented his completing the course, and his Farman machine had to be
brought back to London by rail.
The presentation of the prize to Paulhan was made the occasion for the
announcement of a further competition, consisting of a 1,000 mile flight
round a part of Great Britain. In this, nineteen competitors started,
and only four finished; the end of the race was a great fight between
Beaumont and Vedrines, both of whom scorned weather conditions in their
determination to win. Beaumont made the distance in a flying time of
22 hours 28 minutes 19 seconds, and Vedrines covered the journey in
a little over 23 1/2 hours. Valentine came third on a Deperdussin
monoplane and S. F. Cody on his Cathedral biplane was fourth. This was
in 1911, and by that time heavier-than-air flight had so far advanced
that some pilots had had war experience in the Italian campaign in
Tripoli, while long cross-country flights were an everyday event, and
bad weather no longer counted.
XVII. A SUMMARY, TO 1911
There is so much overlapping in the crowded story of the first years
of successful power-driven flight that at this point it is advisable to
make a concise chronological survey of the chief events of the period of
early development, although much of this is of necessity recapitulation.
The story begins, of course, with Orville Wright's first flight of 852
feet at Kitty Hawk on December 19th, 1903. The next event of note was
Wright's flight of 11.12 miles in 18 minutes 9 seconds at Dayton,
Ohio, on September 26th, 1905, this being the first officially recorded
flight. On October 4th of the same year, Wright flew 20.75 miles in 33
minutes 17 seconds, this being the first flight of over 20 miles ever
made. Then on September 14th 1906, Alberto Santos-Dumont made a
flight of eight seconds on the second heavier-than-air machine he had
constructed. It was a big box-kite-like machine; this was the second
power-driven aeroplane in Europe to fly, for although Santos-Dumont's
first machine produced in 1905 was reckoned an unsuccessful design, it
had actually got off the ground for brief periods. Louis Bleriot came
into the ring on April 5th, 1907, with a first flight of 6 seconds on a
Bleriot monoplane, his eighth but first successful construction.
Henry Farman made his first appearance in the history of aviation with a
flight of 935 feet on a Voisin biplane on October 15th 1907. On October
25th, in a flight of 2,530 feet, he made the first recorded turn in
the air, and on March 29th, 1908, carrying Leon Delagrange on a Voisin
biplane, he made the first passenger flight. On April 10th of this
year, Delagrange, in flying 1 1/2 miles, made the first flight in Europe
exceeding a mile in distance. He improved on this by flying 10 1/2 miles
at Milan on June 22nd, while on July 8th, at Turin, he took up Madame
Peltier, the first woman to make an aeroplane flight.
Wilbur Wright, coming over to Europe, made his first appearance on the
Continent with a flight of 1 3/4 minutes at Hunaudieres, France, on
August 8th, 1908. On September 6th, at Chalons, he flew for 1 hour 4
minutes 26 seconds with a passenger, this being the first flight in
which an hour in the air was exceeded with a passenger on board.
On September 12th 1908, Orville Wright, flying at Fort Meyer, U.S.A.,
with Lieut. Selfridge as passenger, crashed his machine, suffering
severe injuries, while Selfridge was killed. This was the first
aeroplane fatality. On October 30th, 1908, Farman made the first
cross-country flight, covering the distance of 17 miles between Bouy and
Rheims. The next day, Louis Bleriot, in flying from Toury to Artenay,
made two landings en route, this being the first cross-country flight
with landings. On the last day of the year, Wilbur Wright won the
Michelin Cup at Auvours with a flight of 90 miles, which, lasting 2
hours 20 minutes 23 seconds, exceeded 2 hours in the air for the first
time.
On January 2nd, 1909, S. F. Cody opened the New Year by making the first
observed flight at Farnborough on a British Army aeroplane. It was not
until July 18th of 1909 that the first European height record deserving
of mention was put up by Paulhan, who achieved a height of 450 feet on a
Voisin biplane. This preceded Latham's first attempt to fly the Channel
by two days, and five days later, on the 25th of the month, Bleriot made
the first Channel crossing. The Rheims Meeting followed on August 22nd,
and it was a great day for aviation when nine machines were seen in
the air at once. It was here that Farman, with a 118 mile flight,
first exceeded the hundred miles, and Latham raised the height record
officially to 500 feet, though actually he claimed to have reached 1,200
feet. On September 8th, Cody, flying from Aldershot, made a 40 mile
journey, setting up a new cross-country record. On October 19th the
Comte de Lambert flew from Juvisy to Paris, rounded the Eiffel Tower and
flew back. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon made the first circular mile flight
by a British aviator on an all-British machine in Great Britain, on
October 30th, flying a Short biplane with a Green engine. Paulhan,
flying at Brooklands on November 2nd, accomplished 96 miles in 2 hours
48 minutes, creating a British distance record; on the following
day, Henry Farman made a flight of 150 miles in 4 hours 22 minutes
at Mourmelon, and on the 5th of the month, Paulhan, flying a Farman
biplane, made a world's height record of 977 feet. This, however, was
not to stand long, for Latham got up to 1,560 feet on an Antoinette at
Mourmelon on December 1st. December 31st witnessed the first flight
in Ireland, made by H. Ferguson on a monoplane which he himself had
constructed at Downshire Park, Lisburn.
These, thus briefly summarised, are the principal events up to the end
of 1909. 1910 opened with tragedy, for on January 4th Leon Delagrange,
one of the greatest pilots of his time, was killed while flying at
Pau. The machine was the Bleriot XI which Delagrange had used at the
Doncaster meeting, and to which Delagrange had fitted a 50 horse-power
Gnome engine, increasing the speed of the machine from its original
30 to 45 miles per hour. With the Rotary Gnome engine there was of
necessity a certain gyroscopic effect, the strain of which proved too
much for the machine. Delagrange had come to assist in the inauguration
of the Croix d'Hins aerodrome, and had twice lapped the course at a
height of about 60 feet. At the beginning of the third lap, the strain
of the Gnome engine became too great for the machine; one wing collapsed
as if the stay wires had broken, and the whole machine turned over and
fell, killing Delagrange.
On January 7th Latham, flying at Mourmelon, first made the vertical
kilometre and dedicated the record to Delagrange, this being the day of
his friend's funeral. The record was thoroughly authenticated by a large
registering barometer which Latham carried, certified by the officials
of the French Aero Club. Three days later Paulhan, who was at Los
Angeles, California, raised the height record to 4,146 feet.
On January 25th the Brussels Exhibition opened, when the Antoinette
monoplane, the Gaffaux and Hanriot monoplanes, together with the
d'Hespel aeroplane, were shown; there were also the dirigible Belgica
and a number of interesting aero engines, including a German airship
engine and a four-cylinder 50 horse-power Miesse, this last air-cooled
by means of 22 fans driving a current of air through air jackets
surrounding fluted cylinders.
On April 2nd Hubert Le Blon, flying a Bleriot with an Anzani engine,
was killed while flying over the water. His machine was flying quite
steadily, when it suddenly heeled over and came down sideways into the
sea; the motor continued running for some seconds and the whole machine
was drawn under water. When boats reached the spot, Le Blon was found
lying back in the driving seat floating just below the surface. He had
done good flying at Doncaster, and at Heliopolis had broken the world's
speed records for 5 and 10 kilometres. The accident was attributed to
fracture of one of the wing stay wires when running into a gust of wind.
The next notable event was Paulhan's London-Manchester flight, of which
full details have already been given. In May Captain Bertram Dickson,
flying at the Tours meeting, beat all the Continental fliers whom he
encountered, including Chavez, the Peruvian, who later made the
first crossing of the Alps. Dickson was the first British winner of
international aviation prizes.
C. S. Rolls, of whom full details have already been given, was killed at
Bournemouth on July 12th, being the first British aviator of note to be
killed in an aeroplane accident. His return trip across the Channel had
taken place on June 2nd. Chavez, who was rapidly leaping into fame, as
a pilot, raised the British height record to 5,750 feet while flying at
Blackpool on August 3rd. On the 11th of that month, Armstrong Drexel,
flying a Bleriot, made a world's height record of 6,745 feet.
It was in 1910 that the British War office first began fully to realise
that there might be military possibilities in heavier-than-air flying.
C. S. Rolls had placed a Wright biplane at the disposal of the military
authorities, and Cody, as already recorded, had been experimenting with
a biplane type of his own for some long period. Such development as was
achieved was mainly due to the enterprise and energy of Colonel J. E.
Capper, C.B., appointed to the superintendency of the Balloon Factory
and Balloon School at Farnborough in 1906. Colonel Capper's retirement
in 1910 brought (then) Mr Mervyn O'Gorman to command, and by that time
the series of successes of the Cody biplane, together with the proved
efficiency of the aeroplane in various civilian meetings, had convinced
the British military authorities that the mastery of the air did not lie
altogether with dirigible airships, and it may be said that in 1910 the
British War office first began seriously to consider the possibilities
of the aeroplane, though two years more were to elapse before the
formation of the Royal Flying Corps marked full realisation of its
value.
A triumph and a tragedy were combined in September of 1910. On the 23rd
of the month, Georges Chavez set out to fly across the Alps on a Bleriot
monoplane. Prizes had been offered by the Milan Aviation Committee for
a flight from Brigue in Switzerland over the Simplon Pass to Milan,
a distance of 94 miles with a minimum height of 6,600 feet above sea
level. Chavez started at 1.30 p.m. On the 23rd, and 41 minutes later he
reached Domodossola, 25 miles distant. Here he descended, numbed with
the cold of the journey; it was said that the wings of his machine
collapsed when about 30 feet from the ground, but however this may
have been, he smashed the machine on landing, and broke both legs, in
addition to sustaining other serious injuries. He lay in hospital until
the 27th September, when he died, having given his life to the conquest
of the Alps. His death in the moment of success was as great a tragedy
as were those of Pilcher and Lilienthal.
The day after Chavez's death, Maurice Tabuteau flew across the Pyrenees,
landing in the square at Biarritz. On December 30th, Tabuteau made a
flight of 365 miles in 7 hours 48 minutes. Farman, on December 18th, had
flown for over 8 hours, but his total distance was only 282 miles. The
autumn of this year was also noteworthy for the fact that aeroplanes
were first successfully used in the French Military Manoeuvres. The
British War Office, by the end of the year, had bought two machines, a
military type Farman and a Paulhan, ignoring British experimenters and
aeroplane builders of proved reliability. These machines, added to an
old Bleriot two-seater, appear to have constituted the British aeroplane
fleet of the period.
There were by this time three main centres of aviation in England, apart
from Cody, alone on Laffan's Plain. These three were Brooklands, Hendon,
and the Isle of Sheppey, and of the three Brooklands was chief.
Here such men as Graham Gilmour, Rippen, Leake, Wickham, and Thomas
persistently experimented. Hendon had its own little group, and
Shellbeach, Isle of Sheppey, held such giants of those days as C. S.
Rolls and Moore Brabazon, together with Cecil Grace and Rawlinson. One
or other, and sometimes all of these were deserted on the occasion of
some meeting or other, but they were the points where the spade work was
done, Brooklands taking chief place. 'If you want the early history
of flying in England, it is there,' one of the early school remarked,
pointing over toward Brooklands course.
1911 inaugurated a new series of records of varying character. On
the 17th January, E. B. Ely, an American, flew from the shore of San
Francisco to the U.S. cruiser Pennsylvania, landing on the cruiser,
and then flew back to the shore. The British military designing of
aeroplanes had been taken up at Farnborough by G. H. de Havilland, who
by the end of January was flying a machine of his own design, when he
narrowly escaped becoming a casualty through collision with an obstacle
on the ground, which swept the undercarriage from his machine.
A list of certified pilots of the countries of the world was issued
early in 1911, showing certificates granted up to the end of 1910.
France led the way easily with 353 pilots; England came next with 57,
and Germany next with 46; Italy owned 32, Belgium 27, America 26, and
Austria 19; Holland and Switzerland had 6 aviators apiece, while Denmark
followed with 3, Spain with 2, and Sweden with 1. The first certificate
in England was that of J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, while Louis Bleriot was
first on the French list and Glenn Curtiss, first holder of an American
certificate, also held the second French brevet.
On the 7th March, Eugene Renaux won the Michelin Grand Prize by flying
from the French Aero Club ground at St Cloud and landing on the Puy de
Dome. The landing, which was one of the conditions of the prize, was
one of the most dangerous conditions ever attached to a competition;
it involved dropping on to a little plateau 150 yards square, with
a possibility of either smashing the machine against the face of the
mountain, or diving over the edge of the plateau into the gulf beneath.
The length of the journey was slightly over 200 miles and the height of
the landing point 1,465 metres, or roughly 4,500 feet above sea-level.
Renaux carried a passenger, Doctor Senoucque, a member of Charcot's
South Polar Expedition.
The 1911 Aero Exhibition held at Olympia bore witness to the enormous
strides made in construction, more especially by British designers,
between 1908 and the opening of the Show. The Bristol Firm showed three
machines, including a military biplane, and the first British built
biplane with tractor screw. The Cody biplane, with its enormous size
rendering it a prominent feature of the show, was exhibited. Its
designer anticipated later engines by expressing his desire for a motor
of 150 horse-power, which in his opinion was necessary to get the best
results from the machine. The then famous Dunne monoplane was exhibited
at this show, its planes being V-shaped in plan, with apex leading. It
embodied the results of very lengthy experiments carried out both with
gliders and power-driven machines by Colonel Capper, Lieut. Gibbs,
and Lieut. Dunne, and constituted the longest step so far taken in the
direction of inherent stability.
Such forerunners of the notable planes of the war period as the Martin
Handasyde, the Nieuport, Sopwith, Bristol, and Farman machines, were
features of the show; the Handley-Page monoplane, with a span of 32
feet over all, a length of 22 feet, and a weight of 422 lbs., bore no
relation at all to the twin-engined giant which later made this firm
famous. In the matter of engines, the principal survivals to the present
day, of which this show held specimens, were the Gnome, Green, Renault
air-cooled, Mercedes four-cylinder dirigible engine of 115 horse-power,
and 120 horsepower Wolseley of eight cylinders for use with dirigibles.
On April 12th, of 1911, Paprier, instructor at the Bleriot school at
Hendon, made the first non-stop flight between London and Paris. He left
the aerodrome at 1.37 p.m., and arrived at Issy-les-Moulineaux at 5.33
p.m., thus travelling 250 miles in a little under 4 hours. He followed
the railway route practically throughout, crossing from Dover to nearly
opposite Calais, keeping along the coast to Boulogne, and then following
the Nord Railway to Amiens, Beauvais, and finally Paris.
In May, the Paris-Madrid race took place; Vedrines, flying a Morane
biplane, carried off the prize by first completing the distance of 732
miles. The Paris-Rome race of 916 miles was won in the same month by
Beaumont, flying a Bleriot monoplane. In July, Koenig won the German
National Circuit race of 1,168 miles on an Albatross biplane. This was
practically simultaneous with the Circuit of Britain won by Beaumont,
who covered 1,010 miles on a Bleriot monoplane, having already won
the Paris-Brussels-London-Paris Circuit of 1,080 miles, this also on
a Bleriot. It was in August that a new world's height record of 11,152
feet was set up by Captain Felix at Etampes, while on the 7th of the
month Renaux flew nearly 600 miles on a Maurice Farman machine in 12
hours. Cody and Valentine were keeping interest alive in the Circuit of
Britain race, although this had long been won, by determinedly plodding
on at finishing the course.
On September 9th, the first aerial post was tried between Hendon and
Windsor, as an experiment in sending mails by aeroplane. Gustave Hamel
flew from Hendon to Windsor and back in a strong wind. A few days
later, Hamel went on strike, refusing to carry further mails unless the
promoters of the Aerial Postal Service agreed to pay compensation to
Hubert, who fractured both his legs on the 11th of the month while
engaged in aero postal work. The strike ended on September 25th, when
Hamel resumed mail-carrying in consequence of the capitulation of the
Postmaster-General, who agreed to set aside L500 as compensation to
Hubert.
September also witnessed the completion in America of a flight across
the Continent, a distance of 2,600 miles. The only competitor who
completed the full distance was C. P. Rogers, who was disqualified
through failing to comply with the time limit. Rogers needed so many
replacements to his machine on the journey that, expressing it in
American fashion, he arrived with practically a dfferent aeroplane from
that with which he started.
With regard to the aerial postal service, analysis of the matter carried
and the cost of the service seemed to show that with a special charge of
one shilling for letters and sixpence for post cards, the revenue just
balanced the expenditure. It was not possible to keep to the time-table
as, although the trials were made in the most favourable season of the
year, aviation was not sufficiently advanced to admit of facing all
weathers and complying with time-table regulations.
French military aeroplane trials took place at Rheims in October, the
noteworthy machines being Antoinette, Farman, Nieuport, and Deperdussin.
The tests showed the Nieuport monoplane with Gnome motor as first in
position; the Breguet biplane was second, and the Deperdussin monoplanes
third. The first five machines in order of merit were all engined with
the Gnome motor.
The records quoted for 1911 form the best evidence that can be given of
advance in design and performance during the year. It will be seen that
the days of the giants were over; design was becoming more and more
standardised and aviation not so much a matter of individual courage and
even daring, as of the reliability of the machine and its engine.
This was the first year in which the twin-engined aeroplane made its
appearance, and it was the year, too, in which flying may be said to
have grown so common that the 'meetings' which began with Rheims were
hardly worth holding, owing to the fact that increase in height and
distance flown rendered it no longer necessary for a would-be spectator
of a flight to pay half a crown and enter an enclosure. Henceforth,
flying as a spectacle was very little to be considered; its commercial
aspects were talked of, and to a very slight degree exploited, but, more
and more, the fact that the aeroplane was primarily an engine of war,
and the growing German menace against the peace of the world combined
to point the way of speediest development, and the arrangements for the
British Military Trials to be held in August, 1912, showed that even
the British War office was waking up to the potentialities of this new
engine of war.
XVIII. A SUMMARY, TO 1914
Consideration of the events in the years immediately preceding the War
must be limited to as brief a summary as possible, this not only because
the full history of flying achievements is beyond the compass of any
single book, but also because, viewing the matter in perspective, the
years 1903-1911 show up as far more important as regards both design and
performance. From 1912 to August of 1914, the development of aeronautics
was hindered by the fact that it had not progressed far enough to form
a real commercial asset in any country. The meetings which drew vast
concourses of people to such places as Rheims and Bournemouth may have
been financial successes at first, but, as flying grew more common and
distances and heights extended, a great many people found it other than
worth while to pay for admission to an aerodrome. The business of taking
up passengers for pleasure flights was not financially successful, and,
although schemes for commercial routes were talked of, the aeroplane was
not sufficiently advanced to warrant the investment of hard cash in
any of these projects. There was a deadlock; further development
was necessary in order to secure financial aid, and at the same time
financial aid was necessary in order to secure further development.
Consequently, neither was forthcoming.
This is viewing the matter in a broad and general sense; there were
firms, especially in France, but also in England and America, which
looked confidently for the great days of flying to arrive, and regarded
their sunk capital as investment which would eventually bring its due
return. But when one looks back on those years, the firms in question
stand out as exceptions to the general run of people, who regarded
aeronautics as something extremely scientific, exceedingly dangerous,
and very expensive. The very fame that was attained by such pilots as
became casualties conduced to the advertisement of every death, and the
dangers attendant on the use of heavier-than-air machines became greatly
exaggerated; considering the matter as one of number of miles flown,
even in the early days, flying exacted no more toll in human life than
did railways or road motors in the early stages of their development.
But to take one instance, when C. S. Rolls was killed at Bournemouth by
reason of a faulty tail-plane, the fact was shouted to the whole world
with almost as much vehemence as characterised the announcement of the
Titanic sinking in mid-Atlantic.
Even in 1911 the deadlock was apparent; meetings were falling off in
attendance, and consequently in financial benefit to the promoters;
there remained, however, the knowledge--for it was proved past
question--that the aeroplane in its then stage of development was a
necessity to every army of the world. France had shown this by the more
than interest taken by the French Government in what had developed into
an Air Section of the French army; Germany, of course, was hypnotised by
Count Zeppelin and his dirigibles, to say nothing of the Parsevals which
had been proved useful military accessories; in spite of this, it was
realised in Germany that the aeroplane also had its place in military
affairs. England came into the field with the military aeroplane trials
of August 1st to 15th, 1912, barely two months after the founding of the
Royal Flying Corps.
When the R.F.C. was founded--and in fact up to two years after its
founding--in no country were the full military potentialities of the
aeroplane realised; it was regarded as an accessory to cavalry for
scouting more than as an independent arm; the possibilities of bombing
were very vaguely considered, and the fact that it might be possible to
shoot from an aeroplane was hardly considered at all. The conditions of
the British Military Trials of 1912 gave to the War office the option
of purchasing for L1,000 any machine that might be awarded a prize.
Machines were required, among other things, to carry a useful load of
350 lbs. in addition to equipment, with fuel and oil for 4 1/2-hours;
thus loaded, they were required to fly for 3 hours, attaining an
altitude of 4,500 feet, maintaining a height of 1,500 feet for 1 hour,
and climbing 1,000 feet from the ground at a rate of 200 feet per
minute, 'although 300 feet per minute is desirable.' They had to attain
a speed of not less than 55 miles per hour in a calm, and be able to
plane down to the ground in a calm from not more than 1,000 feet with
engine stopped, traversing 6,000 feet horizontal distance. For those
days, the landing demands were rather exacting; the machine should be
able to rise without damage from long grass, clover, or harrowed land,
in 100 yards in a calm, and should be able to land without damage on any
cultivated ground, including rough ploughed land, and, when landing on
smooth turf in a calm, be able to pull up within 75 yards of the point
of first touching the ground. It was required that pilot and observer
should have as open a view as possible to front and flanks, and they
should be so shielded from the wind as to be able to communicate with
each other. These are the main provisions out of the set of conditions
laid down for competitors, but a considerable amount of leniency was
shown by the authorities in the competition, who obviously wished to try
out every machine entered and see what were its capabilities.
The beginning of the competition consisted in assembling the machines
against time from road trim to flying trim. Cody's machine, which was
the only one to be delivered by air, took 1 hour and 35 minutes to
assemble; the best assembling time was that of the Avro, which was got
into flying trim in 14 minutes 30 seconds. This machine came to grief
with Lieut. Parke as pilot, on the 7th, through landing at very high
speed on very bad ground; a securing wire of the under-carriage broke in
the landing, throwing the machine forward on to its nose and then over
on its back. Parke was uninjured, fortunately; the damaged machine was
sent off to Manchester for repair and was back again on the 16th of
August.
It is to be noted that by this time the Royal Aircraft Factory was
building aeroplanes of the B.E. and F.E. types, but at the same time it
is also to be noted that British military interest in engines was not
sufficient to bring them up to the high level attained by the planes,
and it is notorious that even the outbreak of war found England
incapable of providing a really satisfactory aero engine. In the 1912
Trials, the only machines which actually completed all their tests were
the Cody biplane, the French Deperdussin, the Hanriot, two Bleriots and
a Maurice Farman. The first prize of L4,000, open to all the world,
went to F. S. Cody's British-built biplane, which complied with all
the conditions of the competition and well earned its official
acknowledgment of supremacy. The machine climbed at 280 feet per minute
and reached a height of 5,000 feet, while in the landing test, in spite
of its great weight and bulk, it pulled up on grass in 56 yards. The
total weight was 2,690 lbs. when fully loaded, and the total area of
supporting surface was 500 square feet; the motive power was supplied
by a six-cylinder 120 horsepower Austro-Daimler engine. The second prize
was taken by A. Deperdussin for the French-built Deperdussin monoplane.
Cody carried off the only prize awarded for a British-built plane,
this being the sum of L1,000, and consolation prizes of L500 each were
awarded to the British Deperdussin Company and The British and Colonial
Aeroplane Company, this latter soon to become famous as makers of the
Bristol aeroplane, of which the war honours are still fresh in men's
minds.
While these trials were in progress Audemars accomplished the first
flight between Paris and Berlin, setting out from Issy early in the
morning of August 18th, landing at Rheims to refill his tanks within an
hour and a half, and then coming into bad weather which forced him
to land successively at Mezieres, Laroche, Bochum, and finally nearly
Gersenkirchen, where, owing to a leaky petrol tank, the attempt to win
the prize offered for the first flight between the two capitals had to
be abandoned after 300 miles had been covered, as the time limit was
definitely exceeded. Audemars determined to get through to Berlin, and
set off at 5 in the morning of the 19th, only to be brought down by fog;
starting off again at 9.15 he landed at Hanover, was off again at 1.35,
and reached the Johannisthal aerodrome in the suburbs of Berlin at 6.48
that evening.
As early as 1910 the British Government possessed some ten aeroplanes,
and in 1911 the force developed into the Army Air Battalion, with the
aeroplanes under the control of Major J. H. Fulton, R.F.A. Toward the
end of 1911 the Air Battalion was handed over to (then) Brig.-Gen. D.
Henderson, Director of Military Training. On June 6th, 1912, the Royal
Flying Corps was established with a military wing under Major F. H.
Sykes and a naval wing under Commander C. R. Samson. A joint Naval and
Military Flying School was established at Upavon with Captain Godfrey
M. Paine, R.N., as Commandant and Major Hugh Trenchard as Assistant
Commandant. The Royal Aircraft Factory brought out the B.E. and F.E.
types of biplane, admittedly superior to any other British design of the
period, and an Aircraft Inspection Department was formed under Major J.
H. Fulton. The military wing of the R.F.C. was equipped almost entirely
with machines of Royal Aircraft Factory design, but the Navy preferred
to develop British private enterprise by buying machines from private
firms. On July 1st, 1914 the establishment of the Royal Naval Air
Service marked the definite separation of the military and naval sides
of British aviation, but the Central Flying School at Upavon continued
to train pilots for both services.
It is difficult at this length of time, so far as the military wing was
concerned, to do full justice to the spade work done by Major-General
Sir David Henderson in the early days. Just before war broke out,
British military air strength consisted officially of eight squadrons,
each of 12 machines and 13 in reserve, with the necessary complement of
road transport. As a matter of fact, there were three complete squadrons
and a part of a fourth which constituted the force sent to France at the
outbreak of war. The value of General Henderson's work lies in the fact
that, in spite of official stinginess and meagre supplies of every kind,
he built up a skeleton organisation so elastic and so well thought out
that it conformed to war requirements as well as even the German plans
fitted in with their aerial needs. On the 4th of August, 1914, the
nominal British air strength of the military wing was 179 machines. Of
these, 82 machines proceeded to France, landing at Amiens and flying
to Maubeuge to play their part in the great retreat with the British
Expeditionary Force, in which they suffered heavy casualties both in
personnel and machines. The history of their exploits, however, belongs
to the War period.
The development of the aeroplane between 1912 and 1914 can be judged by
comparison of the requirements of the British War Office in 1912 with
those laid down in an official memorandum issued by the War Office
in February, 1914. This latter called for a light scout aeroplane, a
single-seater, with fuel capacity to admit of 300 miles range and a
speed range of from 50 to 85 miles per hour. It had to be able to climb
3,500 feet in five minutes, and the engine had to be so constructed that
the pilot could start it without assistance. At the same time, a heavier
type of machine for reconnaissance work was called for, carrying fuel
for a 200 mile flight with a speed range of between 35 and 60 miles per
hour, carrying both pilot and observer. It was to be equipped with
a wireless telegraphy set, and be capable of landing over a 30 foot
vertical obstacle and coming to rest within a hundred yards' distance
from the obstacle in a wind of not more than 15 miles per hour. A third
requirement was a heavy type of fighting aeroplane accommodating pilot
and gunner with machine gun and ammunition, having a speed range of
between 45 and 75 miles per hour and capable of climbing 3,500 feet in 8
minutes. It was required to carry fuel for a 300 mile flight and to give
the gunner a clear field of fire in every direction up to 30 degrees on
each side of the line of flight. Comparison of these specifications with
those of the 1912 trials will show that although fighting, scouting, and
reconnaissance types had been defined, the development of performance
compared with the marvellous development of the earlier years of
achieved flight was small.
Yet the records of those years show that here and there an outstanding
design was capable of great things. On the 9th September, 1912,
Vedrines, flying a Deperdussin monoplane at Chicago, attained a speed of
105 miles an hour. On August 12th, G. de Havilland took a passenger to a
height of 10,560 feet over Salisbury Plain, flying a B.E. biplane with
a 70 horse-power Renault engine. The work of de Havilland may be said to
have been the principal influence in British military aeroplane design,
and there is no doubt that his genius was in great measure responsible
for the excellence of the early B.E. and F.E. types.
On the 31st May, 1913, H. G. Hawker, flying at Brooklands, reached
a height of 11,450 feet on a Sopwith biplane engined with an 80
horse-power Gnome engine. On June 16th, with the same type of machine
and engine, he achieved 12,900 feet. On the 2nd October, in the same
year, a Grahame White biplane with 120 horse-power Austro-Daimler
engine, piloted by Louis Noel, made a flight of just under 20 minutes
carrying 9 passengers. In France a Nieuport monoplane piloted by G.
Legagneaux attained a height of 6,120 metres, or just over 20,070 feet,
this being the world's height record. It is worthy of note that of the
world's aviation records as passed by the International Aeronautical
Federation up to June 30th, 1914, only one, that of Noel, is credited to
Great Britain.
Just as records were made abroad, with one exception, so were the
really efficient engines. In England there was the Green engine, but the
outbreak of war found the Royal Flying Corps with 80 horse-power Gnomes,
70 horse-power Renaults, and one or two Antoinette motors, but not one
British, while the Royal Naval Air Service had got 20 machines with
engines of similar origin, mainly land planes in which the wheeled
undercarriages had been replaced by floats. France led in development,
and there is no doubt that at the outbreak of war, the French military
aeroplane service was the best in the world. It was mainly composed of
Maurice Farman two-seater biplanes and Bleriot monoplanes--the latter
type banned for a period on account of a number of serious accidents
that took place in 1912.
America had its Army Aviation School, and employed Burgess-Wright
and Curtiss machines for the most part. In the pre-war years, once
the Wright Brothers had accomplished their task, America's chief
accomplishment consisted in the development of the 'Flying Boat,'
alternatively named with characteristic American clumsiness, 'The
Hydro-Aeroplane.' In February of 1911, Glenn Curtiss attached a
float to a machine similar to that with which he won the first
Gordon-Bennett Air Contest and made his first flying boat
experiment. From this beginning he developed the boat form of body
which obviated the use and troubles of floats--his hydroplane became
its own float.
Mainly owing to greater engine reliability the duration records steadily
increased. By September of 1912 Fourny, on a Maurice Farman biplane, was
able to accomplish a distance of 628 miles without a landing, remaining
in the air for 13 hours 17 minutes and just over 57 seconds. By 1914
this was raised by the German aviator, Landemann, to 21 hours 48 3/4
seconds. The nature of this last record shows that the factors in such a
record had become mere engine endurance, fuel capacity, and capacity
of the pilot to withstand air conditions for a prolonged period, rather
than any exceptional flying skill.
Let these years be judged by the records they produced, and even then
they are rather dull. The glory of achievement such as characterised the
work of the Wright Brothers, of Bleriot, and of the giants of the early
days, had passed; the splendid courage, the patriotism and devotion
of the pilots of the War period had not yet come to being. There was
progress, past question, but it was mechanical, hardly ever inspired.
The study of climatic conditions was definitely begun and aeronautical
meteorology came to being, while another development already noted was
the fitting of wireless telegraphy to heavier-than-air machines, as
instanced in the British War office specification of February, 1914.
These, however, were inevitable; it remained for the War to force
development beyond the inevitable, producing in five years that which
under normal circumstances might easily have occupied fifty--the
aeroplane of to-day; for, as already remarked, there was a deadlock,
and any survey that may be made of the years 1912-1914, no matter how
superficial, must take it into account with a view to retaining correct
perspective in regard to the development of the aeroplane.
There is one story of 1914 that must be included, however briefly,
in any record of aeronautical achievement, since it demonstrates past
question that to Professor Langley really belongs the honour of having
achieved a design which would ensure actual flight, although the series
of accidents which attended his experiments gave to the Wright Brothers
the honour of first leaving the earth and descending without accident in
a power-driven heavier-than-air machine. In March, 1914, Glenn Curtiss
was invited to send a flying boat to Washington for the celebration
of 'Langley Day,' when he remarked, 'I would like to put the Langley
aeroplane itself in the air.' In consequence of this remark, Secretary
Walcot of the Smithsonian Institution authorised Curtiss to re-canvas
the original Langley aeroplane and launch it either under its own power
or with a more recent engine and propeller. Curtiss completed this, and
had the machine ready on the shores of Lake Keuka, Hammondsport, N.Y.,
by May. The main object of these renewed trials was to show whether the
original Langley machine was capable of sustained free flight with a
pilot, and a secondary object was to determine more fully the advantages
of the tandem monoplane type; thus the aeroplane was first flown
as nearly as possible in its original condition, and then with such
modifications as seemed desirable. The only difference made for the
first trials consisted in fitting floats with connecting trusses;
the steel main frame, wings, rudders, engine, and propellers were
substantially as they had been in 1903. The pilot had the same seat
under the main frame and the same general system of control. He could
raise or lower the craft by moving the rear rudder up and down; he could
steer right or left by moving the vertical rudder. He had no ailerons
nor wing-warping mechanism, but for lateral balance depended on the
dihedral angle of the wings and upon suitable movements of his weight or
of the vertical rudder.
After the adjustments for actual flight had been made in the Curtiss
factory, according to the minute descriptions contained in the Langley
Memoir on Mechanical Flight, the aeroplane was taken to the shore of
Lake Keuka, beside the Curtiss hangars, and assembled for launching. On
a clear morning (May 28th) and in a mild breeze, the craft was lifted
on to the water by a dozen men and set going, with Mr Curtiss at the
steering wheel, esconced in the little boat-shaped car under the forward
part of the frame. The four-winged craft, pointed somewhat across the
wind, went skimming over the waveless, then automatically headed into
the wind, rose in level poise, soared gracefully for 150 feet, and
landed softly on the water near the shore. Mr Curtiss asserted that he
could have flown farther, but, being unused to the machine, imagined
that the left wings had more resistance than the right. The truth is
that the aeroplane was perfectly balanced in wing resistance, but turned
on the water like a weather vane, owing to the lateral pressure on
its big rear rudder. Hence in future experiments this rudder was made
turnable about a vertical axis, as well as about the horizontal axis
used by Langley. Henceforth the little vertical rudder under the frame
was kept fixed and inactive.[*]
That the Langley aeroplane was subsequently fitted with an 80
horse-power Curtiss engine and successfully flown is of little interest
in such a record as this, except for the fact that with the weight
nearly doubled by the new engine and accessories the machine flew
successfully, and demonstrated the perfection of Langley's design by
standing the strain. The point that is of most importance is that the
design itself proved a success and fully vindicated Langley's work.
At the same time, it would be unjust to pass by the fact of the flight
without according to Curtiss due recognition of the way in which he paid
tribute to the genius of the pioneer by these experiments.
[*] Smithsonian Publications No. 2329.
XIX. THE WAR PERIOD--I
Full record of aeronautical progress and of the accomplishments of
pilots in the years of the War would demand not merely a volume, but a
complete library, and even then it would be barely possible to pay full
tribute to the heroism of pilots of the war period. There are names
connected with that period of which the glory will not fade, names such
as Bishop, Guynemer, Boelcke, Ball, Fonck, Immelmann, and many others
that spring to mind as one recalls the 'Aces' of the period. In
addition to the pilots, there is the stupendous development of the
machines--stupendous when the length of the period in which it was
achieved is considered.
The fact that Germany was best prepared in the matter of
heavier-than-air service machines in spite of the German faith in the
dirigible is one more item of evidence as to who forced hostilities.
The Germans came into the field with well over 600 aeroplanes, mainly
two-seaters of standardised design, and with factories back in the
Fatherland turning out sufficient new machines to make good the
losses. There were a few single-seater scouts built for speed, and the
two-seater machines were all fitted with cameras and bomb-dropping gear.
Manoeuvres had determined in the German mind what should be the uses of
the air fleet; there was photography of fortifications and field works;
signalling by Very lights; spotting for the guns, and scouting for news
of enemy movements. The methodical German mind had arranged all this
beforehand, but had not allowed for the fact that opponents might take
counter-measures which would upset the over-perfect mechanism of the air
service just as effectually as the great march on Paris was countered by
the genius of Joffre.
The French Air Force at the beginning of the War consisted of upwards of
600 machines. These, unlike the Germans, were not standardised, but were
of many and diverse types. In order to get replacements quickly enough,
the factories had to work on the designs they had, and thus for a
long time after the outbreak of hostilities standardisation was an
impossibility. The versatility of a Latin race in a measure compensated
for this; from the outset, the Germans tried to overwhelm the French
Air Force, but failed, since they had not the numerical superiority,
nor--this equally a determining factor--the versatility and resource
of the French pilots. They calculated on a 50 per cent superiority to
ensure success; they needed more nearly 400 per cent, for the German
fought to rule, avoiding risks whenever possible, and definitely
instructed to save both machines and pilots wherever possible. French
pilots, on the other hand, ran all the risks there were, got news
of German movements, bombed the enemy, and rapidly worked up a very
respectable antiaircraft force which, whatever it may have accomplished
in the way of hitting German planes, got on the German pilots' nerves.
It has already been detailed how Britain sent over 82 planes as its
contribution to the military aerial force of 1914. These consisted of
Farman, Caudron, and Short biplanes, together with Bleriot, Deperdussin
and Nieuport monoplanes, certain R.A.F. types, and other machines of
which even the name barely survives--the resourceful Yankee entitles
them 'orphans.' It is on record that the work of providing spares might
have been rather complicated but for the fact that there were none.
There is no doubt that the Germans had made study of aerial
military needs just as thoroughly as they had perfected their ground
organisation. Thus there were 21 illuminated aircraft stations in
Germany before the War, the most powerful being at Weimar, where a
revolving electric flash of over 27 million candle-power was located.
Practically all German aeroplane tests in the period immediately
preceding the War were of a military nature, and quite a number of
reliability tests were carried out just on the other side of the French
frontier. Night flying and landing were standardised items in the German
pilot's course of instruction while they were still experimental in
other countries, and a system of signals was arranged which rendered the
instructional course as perfect as might be.
The Belgian contribution consisted of about twenty machines fit for
active service and another twenty which were more or less useful as
training machines. The material was mainly French, and the Belgian
pilots used it to good account until German numbers swamped them.
France, and to a small extent England, kept Belgian aviators supplied
with machines throughout the War.
The Italian Air Fleet was small, and consisted of French machines
together with a percentage of planes of Italian origin, of which the
design was very much a copy of French types. It was not until the War
was nearing its end that the military and naval services relied more
on the home product than on imports. This does not apply to engines,
however, for the F.I.A.T. and S.C.A.T. were equal to practically any
engine of Allied make, both in design and construction.
Russia spent vast sums in the provision of machines: the giant Sikorsky
biplane, carrying four 100 horsepower Argus motors, was designed by
a young Russian engineer in the latter part of 1913, and in its early
trials it created a world's record by carrying seven passengers for
1 hour 54 minutes. Sikorsky also designed several smaller machines,
tractor biplanes on the lines of the British B.E. type, which were
very successful. These were the only home productions, and the imports
consisted mainly of French aeroplanes by the hundred, which got as
far as the docks and railway sidings and stayed there, while German
influence and the corruption that ruined the Russian Army helped to lose
the War. A few Russian aircraft factories were got into operation as
hostilities proceeded, but their products were negligible, and it is not
on record that Russia ever learned to manufacture a magneto.
The United States paid tribute to British efficiency by adopting the
British system of training for its pilots; 500 American cadets were
trained at the School of Military Aeronautics at oxford, in order to
form a nucleus for the American aviation schools which were subsequently
set up in the United States and in France. As regards production of
craft, the designing of the Liberty engine and building of over 20,000
aeroplanes within a year proves that America is a manufacturing country,
even under the strain of war.
There were three years of struggle for aerial supremacy, the combatants
being England and France against Germany, and the contest was neck
and neck all the way. Germany led at the outset with the standardised
two-seater biplanes manned by pilots and observers, whose training
was superior to that afforded by any other nation, while the machines
themselves were better equipped and fitted with accessories. All the
early German aeroplanes were designated Taube by the uninitiated, and
were formed with swept-back, curved wings very much resembling the wings
of a bird. These had obvious disadvantages, but the standardisation
of design and mass production of the German factories kept them in the
field for a considerable period, and they flew side by side with tractor
biplanes of improved design. For a little time, the Fokker monoplane
became a definite threat both to French and British machines. It was
an improvement on the Morane French monoplane, and with a high-powered
engine it climbed quickly and flew fast, doing a good deal of damage for
a brief period of 1915. Allied design got ahead of it and finally drove
it out of the air.
German equipment at the outset, which put the Allies at a disadvantage,
included a hand-operated magneto engine-starter and a small independent
screw which, mounted on one of the main planes, drove the dynamo used
for the wireless set. Cameras were fitted on practically every machine;
equipment included accurate compasses and pressure petrol gauges, speed
and height recording instruments, bomb-dropping fittings and sectional
radiators which facilitated repairs and gave maximum engine efficiency
in spite of variations of temperature. As counter to these, the Allied
pilots had resource amounting to impudence. In the early days they
carried rifles and hand grenades and automatic pistols. They loaded
their machines down, often at their own expense, with accessories and
fittings until their aeroplanes earned their title of Christmas trees.
They played with death in a way that shocked the average German pilot
of the War's early stages, declining to fight according to rule and
indulging in the individual duels of the air which the German hated.
As Sir John French put it in one of his reports, they established a
personal ascendancy over the enemy, and in this way compensated for
their inferior material.
French diversity of design fitted in well with the initiative and
resource displayed by the French pilots. The big Caudron type was the
ideal bomber of the early days; Farman machines were excellent for
reconnaissance and artillery spotting; the Bleriots proved excellent
as fighting scouts and for aerial photography; the Nieuports made good
fighters, as did the Spads, both being very fast craft, as were the
Morane-Saulnier monoplanes, while the big Voisin biplanes rivalled the
Caudron machines as bombers.
The day of the Fokker ended when the British B.E.2.C. aeroplane came
to France in good quantities, and the F.E. type, together with the De
Havilland machines, rendered British aerial superiority a certainty.
Germany's best reply--this was about 1916--was the Albatross biplane,
which was used by Captain Baron von Richthofen for his famous travelling
circus, manned by German star pilots and sent to various parts of the
line to hearten up German troops and aviators after any specially bad
strafe. Then there were the Aviatik biplane and the Halberstadt fighting
scout, a cleanly built and very fast machine with a powerful engine with
which Germany tried to win back superiority in the third year of the
War, but Allied design kept about three months ahead of that of the
enemy, once the Fokker had been mastered, and the race went on. Spads
and Bristol fighters, Sopwith scouts and F.E.'s played their part in the
race, and design was still advancing when peace came.
The giant twin-engined Handley-Page bomber was tried out, proved
efficient, and justly considered better than anything of its kind that
had previously taken the field. Immediately after the conclusion of its
trials, a specimen of the type was delivered intact at Lille for the
Germans to copy, the innocent pilot responsible for the delivery doing
some great disservice to his own cause. The Gotha Wagon-Fabrik Firm
immediately set to work and copied the Handley-Page design, producing
the great Gotha bombing machine which was used in all the later raids on
England as well as for night work over the Allied lines.
How the War advanced design may be judged by comparison of the military
requirements given for the British Military Trials of 1912, with
performances of 1916 and 1917, when the speed of the faster machines had
increased to over 150 miles an hour and Allied machines engaged enemy
aircraft at heights ranging up to 22,000 feet. All pre-war records of
endurance, speed, and climb went by the board, as the race for aerial
superiority went on.
Bombing brought to being a number of crude devices in the first year of
the War. Allied pilots of the very early days carried up bombs packed
in a small box and threw them over by hand, while, a little later, the
bombs were strung like apples on wings and undercarriage, so that
the pilot who did not get rid of his load before landing risked an
explosion. Then came a properly designed carrying apparatus, crude but
fairly efficient, and with 1916 development had proceeded as far as the
proper bomb-racks with releasing gear.
Reconnaissance work developed, so that fighting machines went as escort
to observing squadrons and scouting operations were undertaken up to 100
miles behind the enemy lines; out of this grew the art of camouflage,
when ammunition dumps were painted to resemble herds of cows, guns were
screened by foliage or painted to merge into a ground scheme, and many
other schemes were devised to prevent aerial observation. Troops were
moved by night for the most part, owing to the keen eyes of the air
pilots and the danger of bombs, though occasionally the aviator had his
chance. There is one story concerning a British pilot who, on returning
from a reconnaissance flight, observed a German Staff car on the road
under him; he descended and bombed and machine--gunned the car until the
German General and his chauffeur abandoned it, took to their heels, and
ran like rabbits. Later still, when Allied air superiority was assured,
there came the phase of machine-gunning bodies of enemy troops from the
air. Disregarding all antiaircraft measures, machines would sweep down
and throw battalions into panic or upset the military traffic along a
road, demoralising a battery or a transport train and causing as much
damage through congestion of traffic as with their actual machine-gun
fire. Aerial photography, too, became a fine art; the ordinary long
focus cameras were used at the outset with automatic plate changers, but
later on photographing aeroplanes had cameras of wide angle lens type
built into the fuselage. These were very simply operated, one lever
registering the exposure and changing the plate. In many cases, aerial
photographs gave information which the human eye had missed, and it is
noteworthy that photographs of ground showed when troops had marched
over it, while the aerial observer was quite unable to detect the marks
left by their passing.
Some small mention must be made of seaplane activities, which, round
the European coasts involved in the War, never ceased. The submarine
campaign found in the spotting seaplane its greatest deterrent, and it
is old news now how even the deeply submerged submarines were easily
picked out for destruction from a height and the news wirelessed from
seaplane to destroyer, while in more than one place the seaplane itself
finished the task by bomb dropping. It was a seaplane that gave Admiral
Beatty the news that the whole German Fleet was out before the Jutland
Battle, news which led to a change of plans that very nearly brought
about the destruction of Germany's naval power. For the most part, the
seaplanes of the War period were heavier than the land machines and, in
the opinion of the land pilots, were slow and clumsy things to fly. This
was inevitable, for their work demanded more solid building and greater
reliability. To put the matter into Hibernian phrase, a forced landing
at sea is a much more serious matter than on the ground. Thus there was
need for greater engine power, bigger wingspread to support the floats,
and fuel tanks of greater capacity. The flying boats of the later
War period carried considerable crews, were heavily armed, capable of
withstanding very heavy weather, and carried good loads of bombs on
long cruises. Their work was not all essentially seaplane work, for the
R.N.A.S. was as well known as hated over the German airship sheds in
Belgium and along the Flanders coast. As regards other theatres of War,
they rendered valuable service from the Dardanelles to the Rufiji River,
at this latter place forming a principal factor in the destruction of
the cruiser Konigsberg. Their spotting work at the Dardanelles for
the battleships was responsible for direct hits from 15 in. guns on
invisible targets at ranges of over 12,000 yards. Seaplane pilots were
bombing specialists, including among their targets army headquarters,
ammunition dumps, railway stations, submarines and their bases, docks,
shipping in German harbours, and the German Fleet at Wilhelmshaven.
Dunkirk, a British seaplane base, was a sharp thorn in the German side.
Turning from consideration of the various services to the exploits of
the men composing them, it is difficult to particularise. A certain
inevitable prejudice even at this length of time leads one to discount
the valour of pilots in the German Air Service, but the names of
Boelcke, von Richthofen, and Immelmann recur as proof of the courage
that was not wanting in the enemy ranks, while, however much we may
decry the Gotha raids over the English coast and on London, there is no
doubt that the men who undertook these raids were not deficient in the
form of bravery that is of more value than the unthinking valour of
a minute which, observed from the right quarter, wins a military
decoration.
Yet the fact that the Allied airmen kept the air at all in the early
days proved on which side personal superiority lay, for they were
outnumbered, out-manoeuvred, and faced by better material than any
that they themselves possessed; yet they won their fights or died. The
stories of their deeds are endless; Bishop, flying alone and meeting
seven German machines and crashing four; the battle of May 5th, 1915,
when five heroes fought and conquered twenty-seven German machines,
ranging in altitude between 12,000 and 3,000 feet, and continuing the
extraordinary struggle from five until six in the evening. Captain
Aizlewood, attacking five enemy machines with such reckless speed that
he rammed one and still reached his aerodrome safely--these are items in
a long list of feats of which the character can only be realised when
it is fully comprehended that the British Air Service accounted for some
8,000 enemy machines in the course of the War. Among the French there
was Captain Guynemer, who at the time of his death had brought down
fifty-four enemy machines, in addition to many others of which the
destruction could not be officially confirmed. There was Fonck, who
brought down six machines in one day, four of them within two minutes.
There are incredible stories, true as incredible, of shattered men
carrying on with their work in absolute disregard of physical injury.
Major Brabazon Rees, V.C., engaged a big German battle-plane in
September of 1915 and, single-handed, forced his enemy out of action.
Later in his career, with a serious wound in the thigh from which blood
was pouring, he kept up a fight with an enemy formation until he had not
a round of ammunition left, and then returned to his aerodrome to get
his wound dressed. Lieutenants Otley and Dunning, flying in the Balkans,
engaged a couple of enemy machines and drove them off, but not until
their petrol tank had got a hole in it and Dunning was dangerously
wounded in the leg. Otley improvised a tourniquet, passed it to Dunning,
and, when the latter had bandaged himself, changed from the observer's
to the pilot's seat, plugged the bullet hole in the tank with his thumb
and steered the machine home.
These are incidents; the full list has not been, and can never be
recorded, but it goes to show that in the pilot of the War period there
came to being a new type of humanity, a product of evolution which
fitted a certain need. Of such was Captain West, who, engaging hostile
troops, was attacked by seven machines. Early in the engagement, one of
his legs was partially severed by an explosive bullet and fell powerless
into the controls, rendering the machine for the time unmanageable.
Lifting his disabled leg, he regained control of the machine, and
although wounded in the other leg, he manoeuvred his machine so
skilfully that his observer was able to get several good bursts into the
enemy machines, driving them away. Then, desperately wounded as he
was, Captain West brought the machine over to his own lines and landed
safely. He fainted from loss of blood and exhaustion, but on regaining
consciousness, insisted on writing his report. Equal to this was the
exploit of Captain Barker, who, in aerial combat, was wounded in the
right and left thigh and had his left arm shattered, subsequently
bringing down an enemy machine in flames, and then breaking through
another hostile formation and reaching the British lines.
In recalling such exploits as these, one is tempted on and on, for it
seems that the pilots rivalled each other in their devotion to duty,
this not confined to British aviators, but common practically to all
services. Sufficient instances have been given to show the nature of the
work and the character of the men who did it.
The rapid growth of aerial effort rendered it necessary in January of
1915 to organise the Royal Flying Corps into separate wings, and in
October of the same year it was constituted in Brigades. In 1916 the
Air Board was formed, mainly with the object of co-ordinating effort
and ensuring both to the R.N.A.S. and to the R.F.C. adequate supplies of
material as far as construction admitted. Under the presidency of Lord
Cowdray, the Air Board brought about certain reforms early in 1917,
and in November of that year a separate Air Ministry was constituted,
separating the Air Force from both Navy and Army, and rendering it an
independent force. On April 1st, 1918, the Royal Air Force came into
existence, and unkind critics in the Royal Flying Corps remarked on the
appropriateness of the date. At the end of the War, the personnel of the
Royal Air Force amounted to 27,906 officers, and 263,842 other ranks.
Contrast of these figures with the number of officers and men who took
the field in 1914 is indicative of the magnitude of British aerial
effort in the War period.
XX. THE WAR PERIOD--II
There was when War broke out no realisation on the part of the British
Government of the need for encouraging the enterprise of private
builders, who carried out their work entirely at their-own cost. The
importance of a supply of British-built engines was realised before the
War, it is true, and a competition was held in which a prize of L5,000
was offered for the best British engine, but this awakening was so late
that the R.F.C. took the field without a single British power plant.
Although Germany woke up equally late to the need for home produced
aeroplane engines, the experience gained in building engines for
dirigibles sufficed for the production of aeroplane power plants. The
Mercedes filled all requirements together with the Benz and the Maybach.
There was a 225 horsepower Benz which was very popular, as were the 100
horse-power and 170 horse-power Mercedes, the last mentioned fitted to
the Aviatik biplane of 1917. The Uberursel was a copy of the Gnome and
supplied the need for rotary engines.
In Great Britain there were a number of aeroplane constructing firms
that had managed to emerge from the lean years 1912-1913 with
sufficient manufacturing plant to give a hand in making up the leeway of
construction when War broke out. Gradually the motor-car firms came
in, turning their body-building departments to plane and fuselage
construction, which enabled them to turn out the complete planes engined
and ready for the field. The coach-building trade soon joined in and
came in handy as propeller makers; big upholstering and furniture firms
and scores of concerns that had never dreamed of engaging in aeroplane
construction were busy on supplying the R.F.C. By 1915 hundreds of
different firms were building aeroplanes and parts; by 1917 the number
had increased to over 1,000, and a capital of over a million pounds for
a firm that at the outbreak of War had employed a score or so of hands
was by no means uncommon. Women and girls came into the work, more
especially in plane construction and covering and doping, though they
took their place in the engine shops and proved successful at acetylene
welding and work at the lathes. It was some time before Britain was able
to provide its own magnetos, for this key industry had been left in
the hands of the Germans up to the outbreak of War, and the 'Bosch' was
admittedly supreme--even now it has never been beaten, and can only be
equalled, being as near perfection as is possible for a magneto.
One of the great inventions of the War was the synchronisation of
engine-timing and machine gun, which rendered it possible to fire
through the blades of a propeller without damaging them, though the
growing efficiency of the aeroplane as a whole and of its armament is
a thing to marvel at on looking back and considering what was actually
accomplished. As the efficiency of the aeroplane increased, so
anti-aircraft guns and range-finding were improved. Before the War an
aeroplane travelling at full speed was reckoned perfectly safe at 4,000
feet, but, by the first month of 1915, the safe height had gone up to
9,000 feet, 7,000 feet being the limit of rifle and machine gun bullet
trajectory; the heavier guns were not sufficiently mobile to tackle
aircraft. At that time, it was reckoned that effective aerial
photography ceased at 6,000 feet, while bomb-dropping from 7,000-8,000
feet was reckoned uncertain except in the case of a very large target.
The improvement in anti-aircraft devices went on, and by May of 1916, an
aeroplane was not safe under 15,000 feet, while anti-aircraft shells had
fuses capable of being set to over 20,000 feet, and bombing from 15,000
and 16,000 feet was common. It was not till later that Allied pilots
demonstrated the safety that lies in flying very near the ground, this
owing to the fact that, when flying swiftly at a very low altitude, the
machine is out of sight almost before it can be aimed at.
The Battle of the Somme and the clearing of the air preliminary to that
operation brought the fighting aeroplane pure and simple with them.
Formations of fighting planes preceded reconnaissance craft in order
to clear German machines and observation balloons out of the sky and to
watch and keep down any further enemy formations that might attempt
to interfere with Allied observation work. The German reply to this
consisted in the formation of the Flying Circus, of which Captain Baron
von Richthofen's was a good example. Each circus consisted of a large
formation of speedy machines, built specially for fighting and manned
by the best of the German pilots. These were sent to attack at any point
along the line where the Allies had got a decided superiority.
The trick flying of pre-war days soon became an everyday matter; Pegoud
astonished the aviation world before the War by first looping the loop,
but, before three years of hostilities had elapsed, looping was part of
the training of practically every pilot, while the spinning nose dive,
originally considered fatal, was mastered, and the tail slide, which
consisted of a machine rising nose upward in the air and falling back on
its tail, became one of the easiest 'stunts' in the pilot's repertoire.
Inherent stability was gradually improved, and, from 1916 onward,
practically every pilot could carry on with his machine-gun or camera
and trust to his machine to fly itself until he was free to attend to
it. There was more than one story of a machine coming safely to earth
and making good landing on its own account with the pilot dead in his
cock-pit.
Toward the end of the War, the Independent Air Force was formed as a
branch of the R.A.F. with a view to bombing German bases and devoting
its attention exclusively to work behind the enemy lines. Bombing
operations were undertaken by the R.N.A.S. as early as 1914-1915 against
Cuxhaven, Dusseldorf, and Friedrichshavn, but the supply of material was
not sufficient to render these raids continuous. A separate Brigade,
the 8th, was formed in 1917 to harass the German chemical and iron
industries, the base being in the Nancy area, and this policy was found
so fruitful that the Independent Force was constituted on the 8th June,
1918. The value of the work accomplished by this force is demonstrated
by the fact that the German High Command recalled twenty fighting
squadrons from the Western front to counter its activities, and, in
addition, took troops away from the fighting line in large numbers for
manning anti-aircraft batteries and searchlights. The German press of
the last year of the War is eloquent of the damage done in manufacturing
areas by the Independent Force, which, had hostilities continued a
little longer, would have included Berlin in its activities.
Formation flying was first developed by the Germans, who made use of it
in the daylight raids against England in 1917. Its value was very soon
realised, and the V formation of wild geese was adopted, the leader
taking the point of the V and his squadron following on either side at
different heights. The air currents set up by the leading machines were
thus avoided by those in the rear, while each pilot had a good view
of the leader's bombs, and were able to correct their own aim by
the bursts, while the different heights at which they flew rendered
anti-aircraft gun practice less effective. Further, machines were able
to afford mutual protection to each other and any attacker would be
met by machine-gun fire from three or four machines firing on him from
different angles and heights. In the later formations single-seater
fighters flew above the bombers for the purpose of driving off hostile
craft. Formation flying was not fully developed when the end of the War
brought stagnation in place of the rapid advance in the strategy and
tactics of military air work.
XXI. RECONSTRUCTION
The end of the War brought a pause in which the multitude of aircraft
constructors found themselves faced with the possible complete
stagnation of the industry, since military activities no longer demanded
their services and the prospects of commercial flying were virtually
nil. That great factor in commercial success, cost of plant and upkeep,
had received no consideration whatever in the War period, for armies do
not count cost. The types of machines that had evolved from the War
were very fast, very efficient, and very expensive, although the bombers
showed promise of adaptation to commercial needs, and, so far as other
machines were concerned, America had already proved the possibilities of
mail-carrying by maintaining a mail service even during the War period.
A civil aviation department of the Air Ministry was formed in February
of 1919 with a Controller General of Civil Aviation at the head. This
was organised into four branches, one dealing with the survey and
preparation of air routes for the British Empire, one organising
meteorological and wireless telegraphy services, one dealing with the
licensing of aerodromes, machines for passenger or goods carrying and
civilian pilots, and one dealing with publicity and transmission of
information generally. A special Act of Parliament 264 entitled 'The Air
Navigation Acts, 1911-1919,' was passed on February 27th, and commercial
flying was officially permitted from May 1st, 1919.
Meanwhile the great event of 1919, the crossing of the Atlantic by air,
was gradually ripening to performance. In addition to the rigid airship,
R.34, eight machines entered for this flight, these being a Short
seaplane, Handley-Page, Martinsyde, Vickers-Vimy, and Sopwith
aeroplanes, and three American flying boats, N.C.1, N.C.3, and N.C.4.
The Short seaplane was the only one of the eight which proposed to make
the journey westward; in flying from England to Ireland, before starting
on the long trip to Newfoundland, it fell into the sea off the coast of
Anglesey, and so far as it was concerned the attempt was abandoned.
The first machines to start from the Western end were the three American
seaplanes, which on the morning of May 6th left Trepassy, Newfoundland,
on the 1,380 mile stage to Horta in the Azores. N.C.1 and N.C.3 gave
up the attempt very early, but N.C.4, piloted by Lieut.-Commander Read,
U.S.N., made Horta on May 17th and made a three days' halt. On the 20th
the second stage of the journey to Ponta Delgada, a further 190 miles,
was completed and a second halt of a week was made. On the 27th, the
machine left for Lisbon, 900 miles distant, and completed the journey in
a day. On the 30th a further stage of 340 miles took N.C.4 on to
Ferrol, and the next day the last stage of 420 miles to Plymouth was
accomplished.
Meanwhile, H. G. Hawker, pilot of the Sopwith biplane, together with
Commander Mackenzie Grieve, R.N., his navigator, found the weather
sufficiently auspicious to set out at 6.48 p.m. On Sunday, May 18th, in
the hope of completing the trip by the direct route before N.C.4 could
reach Plymouth. They set out from Mount Pearl aerodrome, St John's,
Newfoundland, and vanished into space, being given up as lost, as Hamel
was lost immediately before the War in attempting to fly the North
Sea. There was a week of dead silence regarding their fate, but on the
following Sunday morning there was world-wide relief at the news that
the plucky attempt had not ended in disaster, but both aviators had been
picked up by the steamer Mary at 9.30 a.m. on the morning of the 19th,
while still about 750 miles short of the conclusion of their journey.
Engine failure brought them down, and they planed down to the sea close
to the Mary to be picked up; as the vessel was not fitted with wireless,
the news of their rescue could not be communicated until land was
reached. An equivalent of half the L10,000 prize offered by the Daily
Mail for the non-stop flight was presented by the paper in recognition
of the very gallant attempt, and the King conferred the Air Force Cross
on both pilot and navigator.
Raynham, pilot of the Martinsyde competing machine, had the bad luck to
crash his craft twice in attempting to start before he got outside the
boundary of the aerodrome. The Handley-Page machine was withdrawn from
the competition, and, attempting to fly to America, was crashed on the
way.
The first non-stop crossing was made on June 14th-15th in 16 hours 27
minutes, the speed being just over 117 miles per hour. The machine was a
Vickers-Vimy bomber, engined with two Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII's, piloted
by Captain John Alcock, D.S.C., with Lieut. Arthur Whitten-Brown as
navigator. The journey was reported to be very rough, so much so at
times that Captain Alcock stated that they were flying upside down, and
for the greater part of the time they were out of sight of the sea. Both
pilot and navigator had the honour of knighthood conferred on them at
the conclusion of the journey.
Meanwhile, commercial flying opened on May 8th (the official date
was May 1st) with a joy-ride service from Hounslow of Avro training
machines. The enterprise caught on remarkably, and the company extended
their activities to coastal resorts for the holiday season--at Blackpool
alone they took up 10,000 passengers before the service was two months
old. Hendon, beginning passenger flights on the same date, went in for
exhibition and passenger flying, and on June 21st the aerial Derby
was won by Captain Gathergood on an Airco 4R machine with a Napier 450
horse-power 'Lion' engine; incidentally the speed of 129.3 miles per
hour was officially recognised as constituting the world's record for
speed within a closed circuit. On July 17th a Fiat B.R. biplane with a
700 horse-power engine landed at Kenley aerodrome after having made a
non-stop flight of 1,100 miles. The maximum speed of this machine was
160 miles per hour, and it was claimed to be the fastest machine in
existence. On August 25th a daily service between London and Paris was
inaugurated by the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, Limited, who ran a
machine each way each day, starting at 12.30 and due to arrive at 2.45
p.m. The Handley-Page Company began a similar service in September
of 1919, but ran it on alternate days with machines capable of
accommodating ten passengers. The single fare in each case was fixed at
15 guineas and the parcel rate at 7s. 6d. per pound.
Meanwhile, in Germany, a number of passenger services had been in
operation from the early part of the year; the Berlin-Weimar service was
established on February 5th and Berlin-Hamburg on March 1st, both for
mail and passenger carrying. Berlin-Breslau was soon added, but the
first route opened remained most popular, 538 flights being made between
its opening and the end of April, while for March and April combined,
the Hamburg-Berlin route recorded only 262 flights. All three routes
were operated by a combine of German aeronautical firms entitled the
Deutsch Luft Rederie. The single fare between Hamburg and Berlin was
450 marks, between Berlin and Breslau 500 marks, and between Berlin
and Weimar 450 marks. Luggage was carried free of charge, but varied
according to the weight of the passenger, since the combined weight of
both passenger and luggage was not allowed to exceed a certain limit.
In America commercial flying had begun in May of 1918 with the mail
service between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, which proved
that mail carrying is a commercial possibility, and also demonstrated
the remarkable reliability of the modern aeroplane by making 102
complete flights out of a possible total of 104 in November, 1918, at a
cost of 0.777 of a dollar per mile. By March of 1919 the cost per mile
had gone up to 1.28 dollars; the first annual report issued at the
end of May showed an efficiency of 95.6 per cent and the original
six aeroplanes and engines with which the service began were still in
regular use.
In June of 1919 an American commercial firm chartered an aeroplane for
emergency service owing to a New York harbour strike and found it so
useful that they made it a regular service. The Travellers Company
inaugurated a passenger flying boat service between New York and
Atlantic City on July 25th, the fare, inclusive of 35 lbs. of luggage,
being fixed at L25 each way.
Five flights on the American continent up to the end of 1919 are worthy
of note. On December 13th, 1918, Lieut. D. Godoy of the Chilian army
left Santiago, Chili, crossed the Andes at a height of 19,700 feet
and landed at Mendoza, the capital of the wine-growing province of
Argentina. On April 19th, 1919, Captain E. F. White made the first
non-stop flight between New York and Chicago in 6 hours 50 minutes on
a D.H.4 machine driven by a twelve-cylinder Liberty engine. Early in
August Major Schroeder, piloting a French Lepere machine flying at a
height of 18,400 feet, reached a speed of 137 miles per hour with a
Liberty motor fitted with a super-charger. Toward the end of August, Rex
Marshall, on a Thomas-Morse biplane, starting from a height of 17,000
feet, made a glide of 35 miles with his engine cut off, restarting it
when at a height of 600 feet above the ground. About a month later R.
Rohlfe, piloting a Curtiss triplane, broke the height record by reaching
34,610 feet.
XXII. 1919-20
Into the later months of 1919 comes the flight by Captain Ross-Smith
from England to Australia and the attempt to make the Cape to Cairo
voyage by air. The Australian Government had offered a prize of L10,000
for the first flight from England to Australia in a British machine, the
flight to be accomplished in 720 consecutive hours. Ross-Smith, with his
brother, Lieut. Keith Macpherson Smith, and two mechanics, left Hounslow
in a Vickers-Vimy bomber with Rolls-Royce engine on November 12th and
arrived at Port Darwin, North Australia, on the 10th December, having
completed the flight in 27 days 20 hours 20 minutes, thus having 51
hours 40 minutes to spare out of the 720 allotted hours.
Early in 1920 came a series of attempts at completing the journey by air
between Cairo and the Cape. Out of four competitors Colonel Van Ryneveld
came nearest to making the journey successfully, leaving England on
a standard Vickers-Vimy bomber with Rolls-Royce engines, identical in
design with the machine used by Captain Ross-Smith on the England
to Australia flight. A second Vickers-Vimy was financed by the Times
newspaper and a third flight was undertaken with a Handley-Page machine
under the auspices of the Daily Telegraph. The Air Ministry had already
prepared the route by means of three survey parties which cleared the
aerodromes and landing grounds, dividing their journey into stages of
200 miles or less. Not one of the competitors completed the course, but
in both this and Ross-Smith's flight valuable data was gained in
respect of reliability of machines and engines, together with a mass of
meteorological information.
The Handley-Page Company announced in the early months of 1920 that they
had perfected a new design of wing which brought about a twenty to forty
per cent improvement in lift rate in the year. When the nature of the
design was made public, it was seen to consist of a division of the
wing into small sections, each with its separate lift. A few days later,
Fokker, the Dutch inventor, announced the construction of a machine in
which all external bracing wires are obviated, the wings being of a
very deep section and self-supporting. The value of these two inventions
remains to be seen so far as commercial flying is concerned.
The value of air work in war, especially so far as the Colonial
campaigns in which British troops are constantly being engaged is in
question, was very thoroughly demonstrated in a report issued early
in 1920 with reference to the successful termination of the Somaliland
campaign through the intervention of the Royal Air Force, which between
January 21st and the 31st practically destroyed the Dervish force under
the Mullah, which had been a thorn in the side of Britain since 1907.
Bombs and machine-guns did the work, destroying fortifications and
bringing about the surrender of all the Mullah's following, with the
exception of about seventy who made their escape.
Certain records both in construction and performance had characterised
the post-war years, though as design advances and comes nearer to
perfection, it is obvious that records must get fewer and farther
between. The record aeroplane as regards size at the time of its
construction was the Tarrant triplane, which made its first--and
last--flight on May 28th, 1919. The total loaded weight was 30 tons,
and the machine was fitted with six 400 horse-power engines; almost
immediately after the trial flight began, the machine pitched forward
on its nose and was wrecked, causing fatal injuries to Captains Dunn
and Rawlings, who were aboard the machine. A second accident of
similar character was that which befell the giant seaplane known as the
Felixstowe Fury, in a trial flight. This latter machine was intended to
be flown to Australia, but was crashed over the water.
On May 4th, 1920, a British record for flight duration and useful
load was established by a commercial type Handley-Page biplane, which,
carrying a load of 3,690 lbs., rose to a height of 13,999 feet and
remained in the air for 1 hour 20 minutes. On May 27th the French pilot,
Fronval, flying at Villacoublay in a Morane-Saulnier type of biplane
with Le Rhone motor, put up an extraordinary type of record by looping
the loop 962 times in 3 hours 52 minutes 10 seconds. Another record of
the year of similar nature was that of two French fliers, Boussotrot
and Bernard, who achieved a continuous flight of 24 hours 19 minutes 7
seconds, beating the pre-war record of 21 hours 48 3/4 seconds set up
by the German pilot, Landemann. Both these records are likely to stand,
being in the nature of freaks, which demonstrate little beyond the
reliability of the machine and the capacity for endurance on the part of
its pilots.
Meanwhile, on February 14th, Lieuts. Masiero and Ferrarin left Rome on
S.V.A. Ansaldo V. machines fitted with 220 horse-power S.V.A. motors. On
May 30th they arrived at Tokio, having flown by way of Bagdad, Karachi,
Canton, Pekin, and Osaka. Several other competitors started, two of whom
were shot down by Arabs in Mesopotamia.
Considered in a general way, the first two years after the termination
of the Great European War form a period of transition in which the
commercial type of aeroplane was gradually evolved from the fighting
machine which was perfected in the four preceding years. There was about
this period no sense of finality, but it was as experimental, in its
own way, as were the years of progressing design which preceded the war
period. Such commercial schemes as were inaugurated call for no more
note than has been given here; they have been experimental, and, with
the possible exception of the United States Government mail service,
have not been planned and executed on a sufficiently large scale to
furnish reliable data on which to forecast the prospects of commercial
aviation. And there is a school rapidly growing up which asserts that
the day of aeroplanes is nearly over. The construction of the giant
airships of to-day and the successful return flight of R34 across
the Atlantic seem to point to the eventual triumph, in spite of its
disadvantages, of the dirigible airship.
This is a hard saying for such of the aeroplane industry as survived
the War period and consolidated itself, and it is but the saying of a
section which bases its belief on the fact that, as was noted in the
very early years of the century, the aeroplane is primarily a war
machine. Moreover, the experience of the War period tended to discredit
the dirigible, since, before the introduction of helium gas,
the inflammability of its buoyant factor placed it at an immense
disadvantage beside the machine dependent on the atmosphere itself for
its lift.
As life runs to-day, it is a long time since Kipling wrote his story of
the airways of a future world and thrust out a prophecy that the bulk
of the world's air traffic would be carried by gas-bag vessels. If the
school which inclines to belief in the dirigible is right in its belief,
as it well may be, then the foresight was uncannily correct, not only
in the matter of the main assumption, but in the detail with which the
writer embroidered it.
On the constructional side, the history of the aeroplane is still so
much in the making that any attempt at a critical history would be
unwise, and it is possible only to record fact, leaving it to the future
for judgment to be passed. But, in a general way, criticism may
be advanced with regard to the place that aeronautics takes in
civilisation. In the past hundred years, the world has made miraculously
rapid strides materially, but moral development has not kept abreast.
Conception of the responsibilities of humanity remains virtually in a
position of a hundred years ago; given a higher conception of life and
its responsibilities, the aeroplane becomes the crowning achievement
of that long series which James Watt inaugurated, the last step in
intercommunication, the chain with which all nations are bound in
a growing prosperity, surely based on moral wellbeing. Without such
conception of the duties as well as the rights of life, this last
achievement of science may yet prove the weapon that shall end
civilisation as men know it to-day, and bring this ultra-material age to
a phase of ruin on which saner people can build a world more reasonable
and less given to groping after purely material advancement.