covering the period of usefulness of various parts of an airplane.
After fifty hours of flying there should be an inspection of certain
working parts of the engine, certain wires in the body which may be
strained by bad landings, and other wires in the rigging strained by
flying in bad weather. New wires are always sagging and stretching a
bit. Wings will "wash out," lose their usefulness by excessive flying,
and must be replaced. There is a great volume of data on these matters
which should be the basis for laws covering mechanical inspection of
airplanes, and with which the airplane mechanic must become familiar.
For the man who would like to work into the piloting of aircraft there
is a very good opportunity by starting with the mechanical side. Too
many pilots know next to nothing about the construction of their
machines. When an engine goes bad they know that it won't run--that is
all. The pilot who is a good mechanic is a gifted man in his
profession.
There are endless opportunities at flying-fields for mechanics who
want to learn to fly. During the war it became customary to take
mechanics up for flying at least once in two weeks on some fields. It
gave the mechanic an interest in his work and an interest in the life
of his pilot. Perhaps nothing stimulated accurate work by a mechanic
more than the knowledge that at any time he might be called upon to
ride in one of the planes he had helped make or repair.
Some were taught flying by their officers, and later qualified as
pilots. Others went through as cadets and became pilots after the
regular course. The pilot of the future must learn the mechanical
side, and the mechanic should be a good pilot. The two must go hand in
hand to make flying a success.
VI
THE FIRST CROSSING OF THE ATLANTIC
The story of the American triumph in being the first to fly from the
New World to the Old World is a story of careful, painstaking,
organized effort on the part of the American navy. With the flight of
Lieut.-Commander Albert C. Read from Rockaway Naval Air Station to
Plymouth, England, nearly four thousand five hundred land miles, the
navy brought to fulfilment plans which had been maturing for two
years. Since 1917 there have been naval flying-officers anxious to
cross the ocean by air, and their plans have been cast and recast from
time to time. At first there were many reasons why it was impossible
to attempt such a thing while the United States was at war.
Destroyers, busily hunting German submarines, could not be spared for
a feat more spectacular than useful at the time. Pilots and mechanics
could not be spared from the business at hand--training hundreds of
seaplane pilots for service overseas.
American efforts to cross the Atlantic by air date back to the spring
of 1914 when the flying-boat _America_ was built to the order of
Rodman Wanamaker. She was a large seaplane, a new departure in her
time, and represented the combined effort of a number of the best
seaplane designers in the world. Lieut. John C. Porte, of the Royal
Navy, came over from England to be pilot of the boat, and after her
tests in August she was to have made her flight. But Porte was
recalled by his government at the outbreak of war and the project
given up.
In the latter half of 1918 the naval seaplane NC-1 was delivered to
the Rockaway Naval Air Station--the largest seaplane ever built on
this side of the water. She was originally planned, with three sister
ships, as an aerial submarine-chaser. One hundred and twenty-six feet
from wing-tip to wing-tip, she was equipped with three big Liberty
motors--a monster seaplane, ideally suited to the purpose for which
she was designed.
The signing of the armistice interfered with her use as a submarine
scout, and naval plans for crossing the ocean in the air were brought
from their pigeonholes. The NC-1 and her sister ships under
construction appeared to have been built for just such a flight. When
the war ended, the navy as a whole, and the naval air service in
particular, concentrated attention on the possibilities of using the
NC planes for the flight. One of the first decisions made was to
increase the engine power by adding a fourth engine, and to enlarge
the gasolene-tanks for a long flight.
Early in March of this year it became apparent that the spring or
early summer would see several attempts to cross the ocean by air. On
March 19th it was reported from England that the unfortunate Sopwith
machine with its lucky team of Harry G. Hawker and Lieut.-Commander
Mackenzie Grieve had started from England for Newfoundland. At the
same time announcement was made that naval officers had been
conferring over their Atlantic flight plans, and that a start would be
attempted some time in May.
As a matter of fact, a great deal of work had been done in secret by
Commander John H. Towers, Lieut.-Commander Albert C. Read, and
Lieut.-Commander Patrick N.L. Bellinger. As early as February 24th a
conference was held in Washington and a date of May 15th or 16th for
the flight from Newfoundland was set. This date coincided with a full
moon over the North Atlantic, and the machines started May 16th from
Trepassey.
There were really only three routes open to pilots anxious to make the
first crossing of the Atlantic. There was the flight straight from
Newfoundland to Ireland, a matter of about one thousand nine hundred
miles of straight flying, with the possibility of favoring winds.
There was the Newfoundland-Azores route which the Americans took, and
the route from Dakar, French Senegal, to Pernambuco, Brazil, which
French fliers attempted. In addition there was the possibility of
flight from Ireland to Newfoundland, given up by Major Woods, pilot of
the Short biplane, after his forced landing in the Irish Sea.
The great question of a flight straight across the Atlantic was that
of fuel consumption. Could a machine be devised which would carry
enough fuel to fly across one thousand nine hundred miles of water?
The Sopwith Aviation Company designed their machine for such a flight,
but sent it out to Newfoundland to catch and take advantage of the
prevailing west winds across the North Atlantic. The story of the six
weeks' wait for favorable weather, and the desperate take-off to beat
the American plane, the NC-4, at the Azores, make it appear doubtful
whether such winds are to be relied upon.
The American planes took advantage of those winds in their flight to
the Azores, that much is certain. But they were well protected with
destroyers, were not pushing their planes to the limit, and did not
depend upon favoring winds. That the NC-1 and the NC-3 reached the
Azores, but did not make safe landings in the harbor after their long
flight, is one of the fortunes of flying which must not reflect upon
the American effort as a whole.
The French route which Lieutenant Fontan, of the French army, tried
twice, and on which he was twice forced to land because of engine
trouble, was laid to take advantage of favoring winds. Across the
South Atlantic the winds prevail in the spring of the year from east
to west, contrary to the winds on the northern course. A twenty-mile
wind at the back of a flier jumping the one thousand eight hundred
miles across this bit of water would add just twenty miles an hour to
the ground speed of the machine.
Capt. John Alcock and Lieut. Arthur Whitten Brown startled the entire
world on June 15, 1919, with the success of their straight flight
from Newfoundland to Ireland, covering 1,960 land miles in 16 hours
and 12 minutes, at an average speed of 120 miles an hour. Not only was
this the longest non-stop flight over land or water on record, but the
greatest international sporting event. As such, though credit for the
first flight of the Atlantic belongs to the American NC-4, it eclipses
for daring the flight of the American navy. The Vickers-Vimy plane
left St. John's, Newfoundland, on June 14th, at 4.29 P.M., Greenwich
mean time, and landed at Clifden, Ireland, on June 15th, at 8.40 A.M.,
Greenwich mean time. The machine was equipped with two 375-horse-power
Rolls-Royce Eagle engines, and had a wing span of 67 feet and measured
42 feet 8 inches over all.
The start of the American fliers was made after a series of tests of
the seaplanes which covered a period of almost two months. At the
outset it was decided to fly three out of the four NC planes, on the
theory that one of the machines would probably prove to be weaker or
less easy to handle than the others. The NC-2 proved to be the
unfortunate sister in this case, and because of some defects in the
arrangement of her engine-bearing struts she was dismantled and left
behind.
With the decision to start three planes simultaneously, the navy made
it clear that, although it hoped all three seaplanes might complete
the trip, allowance was made for one or two machines to give up the
flight if they found themselves in trouble.
The NC-1, and NC-3, and the NC-4 all proved to be up to expectations,
and, with increased engine power, showed that they could take-off the
water with a load of twenty-eight thousand five hundred pounds. After
the necessary tests had been made on Jamaica Bay, Commander Towers
said on May 4th that the start would be made a little after daybreak,
May 6th. There remained only the task of filling their hulls with one
thousand eight hundred gallons of gasolene.
Early in the morning of May 5th, while mechanics were pumping gasolene
into the tanks of the NC-1, a spark from an electric pump fell into a
pool of gasolene and set fire to her whole right side. In a moment the
heavily "doped" linen wings, with seasoned spruce spars, were a mass
of hot flame. The sailors at work on the machine, with complete
disregard of their personal safety, ran for fire-extinguishers, and
with the fire burning around the mouth of the open tanks, confined it
to the right wings of the machine and to the elevators of the NC-4
standing close by. No one believed that the NC-1 could be made ready
in time for the flight twenty-four hours away.
She was ready the next morning, with fresh wings from the discarded
NC-2, but the flight was postponed on account of a heavy northeast
wind, reported all the way to Halifax. The machines made their start
from Rockaway on the morning of May 8th, at ten o'clock, and two of
them, the NC-1, with Lieutenant-Commander Bellinger, and the NC-3,
with Commander Towers, arrived at Halifax after nine hours' flying.
The NC-4 proved to be the "lame duck" on the first leg of the flight,
and came down at sea a hundred miles off Chatham, because of
overheated bearings. Some alarm was felt during the night by the
failure of destroyers to find her. She appeared the next morning off
the Chatham breakwater, "taxi-ing" under her own power.
While her sister ships, the NC-1 and the NC-3, were flying to
Trepassey the NC-4 waited at Chatham. Even after the repairs were
made, it seemed impossible for the NC-4 to catch up with the other
two machines, and she was held stormbound for five days. On May 14th
she finally got away from Chatham, and, with her new engines, made the
fastest time over the short course to Halifax recorded since the
beginning of the flight. Her average for the 320 miles was 85 nautical
miles an hour, about 20 miles an hour faster time than either of the
other two machines had made.
Four days later she left Halifax for Trepassey in a last-minute effort
to catch her sister planes. It seemed certain that she could not get
there in time and would be forced to follow on the course a day later.
Just as she flew into Trepassey Bay, on May 14th, the NC-1 and NC-3
were preparing to take-off. They postponed their start until the next
day. In the mean while repairs were rushed and adjustments made, and
she was ready to start the next afternoon, when all three planes
started a little after six o'clock.
From the beginning of the flight from Trepassey the NC-4, thought to
be the "lame duck" of the squadron, ran away from the other two
machines. She lost contact with them very quickly and plowed through
the night alone, laying her course by the line of destroyers lying
beneath her. She was about half an hour ahead of the NC-1 at daybreak
the next day and within an easy run of Horta, Fayal.
The half-hour lead gave the NC-4 a chance to get through a fog which
was coming up over the Azores ahead of the other machines. She held a
little above it until she thought she was in the right position. Then
she came down through the mist. As it happened, she landed in the
wrong harbor, but picked herself up and found Horta a few minutes
later. She landed in Horta after fifteen hours and eighteen minutes of
flying, in which she averaged 78.4 nautical miles an hour for the
flight.
The machine was nearly five hours ahead of the schedule laid down by
the Navy Department.
Both the other planes were forced to land at sea, the NC-3 after 1,250
miles of flight--the longest ever made over water up to that time--and
the NC-1 after more than 1,100 miles in the air.
The NC-1 with Bellinger and his crew was picked up on the morning of
Saturday, May 17th, by a Greek steamer, the _Ionia_, and brought into
Horta. Towers with the NC-3 tossed about for nearly sixty hours at sea
and was not picked up until the following Monday, when the public had
begun to fear for his safety.
On Tuesday, May 20th, the NC-4 hopped off for the shortest leg of the
flight, 150 miles from Horta to Ponta Delgada, where the fuel and
supplies for the machines were. With favoring winds at her back, and
with the lightest load she had carried, she covered the distance in
one hour and forty-four minutes, an average speed of 86.7 nautical
miles an hour, or more than 99 land miles. This was a new record for
the seaplanes on the ocean flight.
Meanwhile Harry G. Hawker and Lieut.-Commander Mackenzie Grieve, the
Sopwith team waiting so long at St. John's for a chance to fly,
stimulated in their daring attempt by reports of American successes at
the Azores, took-off on their flight straight across on the afternoon
of Sunday, May 18th. All through that night he flew, when his engine
began to give signs of overheating, due to a clogged water-filter.
Early the next morning, about half-way across, Hawker decided that
there was no chance to make the land, and began looking through the
fog for a chance for a safe landing.
By zigzagging on the steamship courses for about two hours, with his
engine hot but running well, he picked up the Danish steamer _Mary_,
and pancaked on the water about two miles ahead of her. Because the
little tramp steamer had no wireless, the world was kept waiting a
week, before word was signaled to land that Hawker and Grieve were
safe.
With the Sopwith team out of the race, it became evident that
Commander Read and the NC-4 would actually win the honors for the
first flight. On the morning of May 27th he started over his
well-patrolled course of eight hundred miles, and, after a little less
than ten hours of flight, brought his machine into the harbor before
Lisbon, Portugal. Americans had crossed the ocean in the air, and the
enthusiastic Portuguese capital turned out to do them every honor.
Read, however, rather than linger, pushed on again May 30th, in the
midst of the celebration for his triumph on the last leg of his course
to Plymouth, seven hundred and seventy-five nautical miles. Engine
trouble, the first since the machine had left Chatham, developed, and
at the end of two hours he was forced to land at the mouth of the
Mondego River, about a hundred miles on his way. The trouble was a
water leak. It was quickly repaired, and he started again, but
decided to put up at Ferrol, Spain, two hundred miles farther on the
course, for the night.
Early in the morning of May 31st Commander Read started from Ferrol
for Plymouth, and at the end of seven hours and six minutes of flight
came down in the harbor, where a warm reception was waiting for him.
The actual flying time since leaving the Rockaway Naval Air Station
was fifty-seven hours and sixteen minutes, and the average rate of
flight was at a speed of sixty-eight nautical miles an hour.
VII
LANDING-FIELDS--THE IMMEDIATE NEED
The immediate need, to establish aviation throughout the entire
country, is a series of landing-fields from the Atlantic to the
Pacific coast. These landing-fields should not be designed primarily
for transcontinental flying-stations, but for city-to-city flying.
There is going to be a great amount of aerial traffic from New York to
San Francisco, to be sure, but the future of flying is in the linking
up of cities a few hundred miles apart. The War Department has already
taken steps, and will establish thirty-two fields in the country to
encourage flying. Many more are needed.
Atlantic City is apparently the pioneer air port of the country, and
for many reasons this is natural. There are political and social
advantages which make Atlantic City ideal. Rules have been laid down
for the coming and going of airships, and a field for land machines
and water space for seaplanes have been laid out. A large
aeronautical convention has already been held there.
Every city in the United States will have a landing-field and hangars
for airplanes, as well as mechanics to care for them. Whether this is
to be a private or public enterprise lies in the hands of the people
handling such things. Much could be said for either type of
establishment. The thing must come; it is as logical as one, two,
three. There are some, perhaps, who remember the roars of derision
which went up when the first automobile garage was established in
their town. Such a thing was visionary-there would never be enough
machines to make it pay!
There are many reasons why it is impossible to consider the use of
city roofs, for the present, as suitable landing-places for airplanes.
In fact, the first successful landing on a roof made by Jules Vedrines
last January was hailed as a feat of almost unparalleled daring. He
flew and landed on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, and
won a prize of $5,000 for doing it. The police of Paris refused to
allow him to fly off the roof, and he was compelled to take his
machine apart and lower it in an elevator.
The theory of flight, the laws which make it possible apparently to
defy all laws of gravitation, make it impossible for us to depend on
the roofs of buildings in large cities and landing-places. It will be
a long time before the dreams of men who would establish
landing-places on hotel roofs can come true. The progress of
aeronautical development has been great enough so that there is no
need to overemphasize it--to set ridiculous tasks which cannot be
accomplished.
We shall not see the business man flying to his office in the city
from his country estate--unless some landing-field is built on the
lower end of Manhattan Island as has been proposed. The Chamber of
Commerce of the State of New York has taken up the matter of
legislation to make landing-fields possible, and it must go through.
The business man ought, in the near future, to be able to use the
airplane for quick trips to Albany. It would save hours over rail
time, and here the airplane has a wonderful field of usefulness.
Airplanes have made the trip from Washington to New York in very quick
time, only to have to go on to Mineola to land on the airdrome there.
It takes nearly an hour to come in from Mineola, but even at that the
saving of time is still considerable. The speed and efficiency of
airplane travel to and from New York and other cities is materially
affected by the lack of landing-fields close to the business section
of the city.
There must be a large field, broad in every dimension, to permit the
landing and taking-off of airplanes. A machine must get up flying
speed running across the ground before it gets into the air. The
flying speed varies with the type of machine, and it may be estimated
that most machines take-off and land at a speed of from forty-five to
sixty miles an hour. The air must be passing through their planes at
this speed before they will begin to fly, and it takes a little run to
get up flying speed. Similarly, when an airplane lands, it must lose
its flying speed gradually. It may glide to within a few feet of the
ground, and then "flatten out" just off the ground and run along until
it loses its speed, the air no longer passes over its planes fast
enough to support it, and it drops to the ground.
Such are the limitations which the necessity for speed in airplane
flight imposes. Compare the paper dart flying through the air. As long
as it moves quickly it will fly. Or a kite, that will fly when the
wind is strong enough. The airplane creates its own wind to support
itself.
There are four forces acting on an airplane in flight, and they must
be properly overcome and balanced. There is lift, the upward force
exerted on the planes by the passage of air over their surfaces; and
drift, the resistance to the passing of an airplane, the retarding
force acting opposite to the direction of motion. Then thrust, the
forward effort of a machine exerted by a propeller pushing or pulling.
And finally gravity.
The primary conditions of flight are that lift made by the planes
shall be equal to the force of gravity, and that the forward thrust
must be equal to the drift. At that point a machine will sustain
flight--a fairly simple thing on paper. But the times that machines
have stalled in the air, with their motors full on because their
pilots have failed to sustain flight, have let the force of gravity
overcome lift, are too numerous to mention.
That dart, if pointed at a proper angle and let loose, will fly; its
lift will overcome the force of gravity, even though it has no motive
power of its own. An airplane without an engine could be pushed off
the Palisades at flying speed, and a skilful pilot could bring it to a
reasonably safe landing at the foot. Flight does depend on motion,
but motion does not depend on motive power. Given a sufficiently high
altitude, the mere act of dropping through the air creates motion, and
this motion will sustain flight.
An airplane is in no particular danger in the air if the motor
stops--provided it is in an open stretch of country with plenty of
fields. Instinctively the pilot will nose down and glide, and on that
glide he will find himself maintaining flying speed. He can turn and
maneuver his machine, and pick out almost any field near at hand. The
only limitations are that he cannot glide more than five times his
height, and when he comes down to the ground he must stop gliding and
land. He must land on anything that presents itself, a field if he has
good judgment; if not, then a barn or swamp or woods. He must land
when the end of his glide brings him to the ground.
This is commonly termed a "forced landing," and in every sense of the
word it is one. There is no pilot of any extensive flying experience
who has not had to make a forced landing. Ninety out of a hundred are
perfectly orderly safe landings; the odd ones are occasionally
crashes. Incidentally it may be said that forced-landing practice by
flying pupils is the most beneficial which may be imagined. It teaches
control over a machine as nothing else will. It may be carried out
from any height, shutting off the motor, picking out a field, gliding
for it, turning and twisting to get into proper position as regards
the wind, and "giving her the gun" just at the fence and flying on.
A forced landing over the country is safe, but over a city it is the
most deadly thing imaginable. For a machine caught with a "dud" engine
over New York there is no escape but a terrific crash in the city
streets, against the side of some building, with danger to the pilot
and the people in the street below. There has been no motor made by
the hand of man which would not let a pilot down at some unexpected
time. The instance of Major Woods, starting on his flight across the
Atlantic, and forced to come down to the Irish Sea is one example. The
NC-4, American naval seaplane, had a forced landing at sea, a hundred
miles from Chatham, Massachusetts, on the first leg of the Atlantic
flight from this side. Its engines had been carefully cleaned and
tested, and yet they failed. Harry G. Hawker's engine failed him
half-way from Newfoundland to Ireland and let him down into the sea,
from which he was picked up by the greatest good luck.
That is one of the most exasperating and human things about a
gasolene-engine. It is efficient, but not thoroughly dependable. The
best of them are liable to break down at the most needed moment, due
to a hundred causes outside of the control of a mechanic or pilot.
Care and rigid inspection will reduce the possibilities, but engine
failure cannot yet be eliminated.