The aeroplane is an aerial sailing-ship, its wings are the sails, its
source of power the wind. It can claim to be a direct descendant of the
family of sailing ships whose father was AEOLUS, god of the winds and
the inventor of sails.
Aeroplane, helicopter, ornithopter, rotorplane, and autogiro are
sailing-ships because they all derive lift from sails or aerofoils.
An aerofoil is a structure so shaped as to obtain a reaction from the
wind—a sail is nothing more and nothing less. Whether the wind is
natural or is artificially raised by an engine does not affect the
function of aerofoil or sail.
The heavier-than-air flying-machine, either engineless glider or
power-driven craft, is the true aerial sailing-ship. The prolate
gasbag which is called an airship resembles only one kind of ship,
a sinking ship, because it is totally immersed in the fluid which
supports it. If a sea parallel to the airship is required, that
parallel may justly be said to be the submarine, which is suspended in
the water as the airship is suspended in the air.
Before I deal with the future of the aerial sailing-ship I must define
three aeronautical terms. No excuse is needed for introducing these
apparently elementary definitions since aeronautical terms are almost
as well misunderstood by aviators as by laymen. The three terms are:
Wing
Airscrew
Propeller
The definitions I advance are supported by the Royal Aeronautical
Society’s _Glossary of Aeronautical Terms_ and by the British
Engineering Standards Association’s _Glossary of Aeronautical Terms_
although they are often departed from in official forms and in speech.
_Wing._ A few days ago I read in a newspaper of a “single-winged
airplane”. Accustomed as I am to the aircraft which appear between the
drapers’ advertisements in the daily newspapers, I was startled at the
notion of a “single-winged airplane”. A bird has wings. A single-winged
bird would be a queer creature and would be incapable of flying. A
“single-winged airplane” would be equally queer and equally earth-bound.
The reporter, in trying to hack out an explanatory synonym for
monoplane, docked the aeroplane of one of its wings.
_Airscrew and Propeller._ An aeroplane can have an airscrew yet no
propeller. Most aeroplanes, in fact, are without propellers. In the
interests of differentiation it is worth endeavouring to confine the
word propeller to the thing that propels or pushes the machine, to
use airscrew as a general term, and tractor airscrew when a precise
definition is required for the thing that pulls the machine. The
colloquialism “prop’” may perhaps be allowed to stand for both tractor
airscrew and propeller.
In the following pages I make no attempt to hit upon any sudden
invention which may revolutionize flight. I confine myself to
developing lines of progress which have already given some proof of
practicability. For determining the general trend of progress I rely
upon a utilitarian review of the aeronautical situation. I have avoided
leaping into the distant future. Readers will be disappointed to learn
that things like inter-planetary voyaging are not dealt with in this
booklet.
I am aware that scientists have demonstrated that some of the things
I do mention are impossible. But scientists have demonstrated that
the world is flat, that it is round, and that it is oblong. In the
future they will demonstrate that it is rectangular. It was Mr W. N.
Sullivan, I think, who said that “To judge from the history of science,
the scientific method is excellent as a means of obtaining plausible
conclusions which are always wrong, but hardly as a means of reaching
the truth.” While a few generations can still witness wide variations
of opinion among those who know, I incline to the Pyrrhonic doctrine.
It is impossible to know with certainty what is impossible, and in
attempting a forecast the best that can be done is to take the trend
of contemporary thought and, with that, to build a future upon the
principles of the present.
I deal with the future of three kinds of flying-machine, the civil,
the service, and the lighter-than-air or airship. The type of machine
I say will become popular for short distance air-transport may seem at
first to be too unconventional. But I think the whole trend of advanced
thought (slotted wings, wingflaps, anti-stall gears and differential
ailerons are manifestations of it) is towards the result I suggest.
I
The future of the aerial sailing-ship or heavier-than-air
flying-machine will be affected more by the attitude which the
world adopts towards it than by technical achievement. In England
the national attitude towards machinery is moulded by statesmen and
financiers. Under the guise of preserving the liberty of the individual
that attitude strangles the life out of the machine; it may be
described in the words of the schoolboy who said that _Habeas Corpus_
was a phrase used during the great plague of London meaning ‘Bring out
your dead’.
The statesman has helped to mould the national attitude towards
the motor-car through the medium of laws and the manner of their
enforcement by his servants the police, and the Courts. The history of
the cause and effect of the national attitude towards the motor-car is
being repeated with the flying-machine, and the parallel is close.
Having the safety of the public for its ostensible object, the
Motor-Car Act limits the speed of motor-vehicles to twenty miles per
hour, proclaims it an offence to drive to the common danger and to be
drunk while in charge of a motor-car.
Of the last-mentioned provision I will say nothing beyond mentioning
that there are motorists who are incapable of driving safely except
when they are drunk. Of the other two, the 20 m.p.h. speed-limit for
many years has been generally recognized as having no bearing on safety
or danger, whereas for many years motorists have been condemning
certain manoeuvres on the road as constituting, legally as well as in
truth, driving to the common danger.
The English police, with the connivance of magistrates and Home
Secretaries, have concentrated on enforcing the speed-limit and have
ignored the dangerous manoeuvres.
This pass has been brought about by the statesman, who has no direct
interest in motor-cars or other new-fangled machines (except when
there is a general strike). As a consequence, the car built as a car
for speed and control is becoming an object of general dislike. The
continued insistence that speed of itself is dangerous and the pompous
tyranny of the police (who find motorists tamer and more plastic than
thieves) are gradually engendering in the public fear of and dislike
for the machine-entity. Instead the wheeled furniture-shop is gaining
in popularity. The doctrine of Safety First is threatening initiative
and killing the spirit of adventure, while there is ignorance of how
to attain safety. Road-racing, the only sure means of increasing
car-safety, is prohibited because it is not safe. The result is the
dismal, abysmal mess described as the modern British motor-car, which
is chiefly remarkable for not containing a single original idea.
Now the result of statesmen moulding a similar attitude towards the
flying-machine will be equally dismal. Yet they are already exerting
their influence in that direction.
Instead of employing policemen and Courts to harry and hunt the herd of
aeronauts, designers, and constructors, however, the statesman employs
an army of air-officials. In the world of aeronautics these officials
are all-mighty. The private person has no control over them and no
reply to them. If he goes to Court against them he will lose. If he
appeals against the decision of the Court he will lose again. If he
appeals to public opinion he will lose for the third time. The official
tells the airman what he may not do, warns the designer of the manner
in which he may not design, and informs the constructor how he is
forbidden to construct.
The result of this official attitude towards the flying-machine is
already faintly visible.
At the time I write Britain holds no world’s air-records. For seven
years she has made no great flight. She has three or four commercial
air-lines against Germany’s forty-three. Her fastest aircraft is about
50 m.p.h., slower than the fastest foreign aircraft. Her highest
climbing aircraft cannot attain within thousands of feet of the
altitude attained by foreign aircraft. Her longest range aircraft
can accomplish little more than half the distance covered by foreign
aircraft. Her Air Force can put fewer effective war-machines in the air
than any one of three other countries.
One of our pilots has succeeded in proving that, in an English
aeroplane, you can go from London to anywhere else more slowly, and in
more acute discomfort, than by boat and train.
In one thing only does England excel. She spends more on aviation than
any other country in the world.
I am familiar with the excuses for England’s aeronautical failings. I
know that the House of Commons has been told that there is no object
in England attempting to obtain world’s air-records. I have heard the
claim that the Royal Air Force flies more than any other air force, and
I have heard the Air Ministry refuse to supply any figures in support
of the claim. I know that the French are said to obtain their high
speeds and great distances by cutting down the load-factor of their
machines. I have been told about the theory that we _could_ gain
world’s records, run air-lines, win air-races, and have an effective
Air Force but that we do not want to do so. I am familiar with these
excuses, and, having mentioned some of them, I think I can proceed to
indicate a cure for the failings in British aviation. For some cure
is the essential preliminary to any future for the flying-machine in
England.
The cause of England’s aerial impotence is chiefly official
interference leading to a wrong national attitude towards the aeroplane.
The cure is to give English aviation the freedom of the air.
If the official is given powers to make vehicular transport safe, he
will, as we have seen in the motor-car analogy, infallibly not make
vehicular transport safe and he will stop any mechanical development
in the vehicle itself. Freedom, then, is the essential condition of
aeronautical development.
I said at the beginning of this essay that the financier, as well
as the statesman, helped to mould the public’s attitude towards
the machine. I speak only of the pure financier or business-man who
uses aeroplanes, motor-cars or tin cans with equal indifference
as money-making tools; who has no direct interest in any material
creation; who repeats that honesty is the best policy and hopes the
other man will believe it.
All such business-men in England are humble imitators of American
business men. In their advertisements, offices, talk, and indigestion
they endeavour as closely as possible to copy the Americans. They
therefore believe that, if English people are to produce cars or
aeroplanes, they must produce them in the American way—that is cheaply
and in mass. Standardization has, in their view, taken the place of
craftsmanship and mass-production of hard work.
Already events have shown that the English are incapable of imitating
the Americans well. The reason is that the American mechanic regards
his work as an unpleasant necessity, to be got through as quickly as
possible and to be paid for at as high a rate as possible in order that
he may have time and money for the real purpose of life—doing nothing.
The English mechanic, although the statesman is trying to knock such
foolishness out of him, still expects to find something satisfying in
his work. He still seeks a measure of contentment in the exercise of
skill.
Mass-production fits in well with the American workman’s ideas: it does
not fit in with the English workman’s ideas. The English do not and
will not produce cheap motor-cars or cheap aeroplanes as quickly and as
well as the Americans.
If English flying-machines are to be made capable of competing with
American and others, the English, after being freed from official
interference, must leave standardization and mass-production to
people who are temperamentally suited to them, and instil into
these flying-machines some of the idiosyncrasy of their race. Their
flying-machines must be creations expressive of the characters of those
who design and construct them.
The only English cars having any success in America (and elsewhere) are
those few in which perfection of craftsmanship and idealism in design
are notable. They are the kind of cars English designers and mechanics
are temperamentally able to produce. The mass-produced cheap English
car or flying-machine will remain a feeble imitation of the American.
But the idealistic creation, the machine-entity of the English
artist-scientist in car or flying-machine has a place to itself in the
scheme of things. In its best form it is unique.
The financier’s influence in aviation is not yet so noticeable as
in motoring, but it is becoming stronger. Should the aeroplane pass
entirely into his hands, it will cease to progress as a flying-machine
and will start progressing as a bank-note churn. With the future of
such an instrument I am unable to deal, since I have no personal
experience of either churns or bank-notes.
If it is to make headway as an individual creation the flying-machine
must receive the freedom of the air. It must develop its own
individuality as a machine-entity. Freedom of the air and the
complementary institution of mechanical craftsmanship are the essential
conditions for development of the flying-machine. Without those
conditions I have nothing to write of its future. With those conditions
the flying-machine presents possibilities of development in high-speed
transport that will warrant future generations describing the present
age as the static age.
But I must insist that, for the forecast I am now to make, I postulate
the gagging and binding or otherwise bottling-up of the statesman and
financier.
Only then will this machine-entity, the creation of the
artist-scientist, grow. And that the machine-entity, the car or
aeroplane as a real and living thing exists will be accepted by all who
have spent much time in controlling and looking after high-performance
aeroplanes or racing-cars. These machines, built with a single purpose,
are sensitive to the treatment they receive as the stone is sensitive
to the sculptor’s chisel or the violin-strings to the musician’s bow.
Turn for one moment from the standard cars, the wheeled furniture-shops
“replete with every comfort including cigarette lighter and flower
vase” which make hideous our streets to the other extreme and regard
the finely-wrought, aesthetically satisfying racing-car which is to
be seen in the American and Continental road-races and occasionally
at Brooklands. I do not suggest that racing-cars should be used for
transport even in these “most brisk and giddy paced times”; I merely
refer to the racing-car as indicative of a certain attitude towards
the machine. The makers of flying-machines should be free, if such is
their desire, to aim at the fineness, craftsmanship, and originality in
design exemplified in the racing-car.