COMMERCIAL FLYING
BUSINESS POSSIBILITIES OF THE AEROPLANE—SOME CELEBRATED AIR
RECORDS—GERMANY’S INITIAL ADVANTAGE—A HUGE INVESTMENT—CAUSES OF
ACCIDENTS—DISCOMFORTS OVERCOME—INEXPENSIVE FLYABOUTS—THE SPORTS
TYPE—ARCTIC FLIGHT—NO EAST OR WEST
In the face of the extraordinary development of the aeroplane and what
it has accomplished in the Great War, both for the Hun and the Ally,
it seems almost incredible that it was only as recent as December 17,
1903, that the Wright brothers made man’s first successful sustained
and steered flight in a heavier-than-air machine driven by a gas-engine
over the sand-dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina! Upon that historic
occasion Wilbur Wright flew 852 feet in fifty-nine seconds, and his
four-cylinder gas-engine could generate only 12 horse-power!
Since then an aeroplane has carried an aviator from Paris via
Constantinople to Cairo, Egypt; a biplane driven by a 300 horse-power
gas-engine has climbed to an altitude of 28,900 feet; another with a
450 horse-power engine has ascended with two men to an altitude of
30,500 feet; still another, with a wing spread of 127 feet, propelled
by four twelve-cylinder motors developing 450 horse-power each, has
lifted forty people to an altitude of 6,000 feet for an hour’s cruise
over London. Still another machine of the same type, but with only 100
feet of wing spread, and propelled by only two 400 horse-power engines,
has transported five men and a useful load of a ton all the way from
London to Constantinople and back to Saloniki, a distance of more than
2,000 miles, and has carried six people from London via France, Italy,
Egypt, Palestine, Arabia to Delhi, India, a distance of over 6,000
miles. A two-seater, with a pilot and mechanic, has flown from Turin to
Naples and back, a distance of 920 miles, without stopping! On April
25, 1919, an F-5 U.S. Naval seaplane, carrying four aviators, flew
1,250 miles in twenty-four hours and ten minutes without stopping. A
late report from Italy says that a huge triplane, measuring 150 feet,
weighing many tons, and driven by three 700 horse-power engines has
taken seventy-eight people up for a ride at one time. A piano has been
freighted in another aeroplane from London to Paris. The Alps, the
Pyrenees, and the Taurus Mountains have been aerially transnavigated
by aeroplane. The Sahara Desert, the Pyramids, the English Channel,
the Mediterranean and the Adriatic Seas have been flown over in
heavier-than-air machines.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Flying Magazine._
Interior view of the Graham White twenty-four-seater aeroplane in
flight.
The sound of the motors is shut out by padding. The room is
electrically heated.]
In the war zone the aeroplane has been put to the most astonishing
uses. It has spied out the most hidden secrets of the enemy; it
has dropped spies behind his lines; it has photographed thousands
of square miles of European and Asiatic terrain; it has directed
the fire of artillery and the march of hundreds of thousands of
troops; it has scattered cigarettes over advancing soldiers; it
has dropped cans of tomatoes to thirsty and hungry men in isolated
stretches of the desert; it has carried food to besieged camps; it
has bombed trains, concentrations of soldiers, ammunition-dumps and
ammunition-factories, gas-plants, and innumerable other military and
manufacturing objectives. It has performed more manœuvres in the air
than the tumbler pigeon. It has fought the most extraordinary battles.
It has descended so low as to rake soldiers in the trenches, transports
on the highways, trains on the railroads, and even officers in their
automobiles. Indeed, by bombing manufacturing cities over a belt of a
hundred miles along the Rhine it has done more to break down the morale
of the German people than any other factor. Truly this new engine of
man has developed, under the intense necessity of war, farther in this
short space of time than any other mechanical device—not excepting the
automobile—which man has ever invented or fostered.
But with all the wonderful things the aeroplane has accomplished
and with all the stupendous advance it has made as a carrier of man
and his chattels, even though it does travel the shortest distance
between any two points on this planet with the greatest speed,
nevertheless, much must yet be done to make the aeroplane a safe,
comfortable, popular, and inexpensive means of aerial transportation.
Therefore, before we attempt to demonstrate how this fastest engine
of flight can be made to do man’s will as easily and comfortably
as the powerful steam-engine, the mysterious electric dynamo, and
the subtle gasoline motor, let us first examine in detail what has
already been accomplished in aeroplane transportation. Then, with our
feet firmly planted on the ground but with our heads up in the clouds
so that we may see over the highest mountains, let us look down the
corridors of the ages and discern through the mists of time some of
the transportation feats which this new invention of man will most
certainly perform.
From the time of the first flight of the Wright brothers till the
beginning of the Great War, owing to the lack of commercial incentive,
the development in aviation was similar to that of any other science
that involved some physical dangers. It is true that M. Bleriot had
flown across the English Channel on July 25, 1909; that Jules Vedrines
had been carried in an aeroplane from Paris via Vienna, Sofia, and
Constantinople to Cairo, Egypt; and that Roland Garros had flown 500
miles across the Mediterranean Sea from St. Raphael, France, to Tunis,
Africa; but these facts were regarded as sporting events or stunts that
could not be regularly performed by aeroplanes without great loss of
life. For that reason practically no commercial interest was taken in
aviation, and very little military—except by Germany, which was ready
to seize upon and develop anything that would help her to realize _Der
Tag_ when she would be conqueror of the world.
Indeed, few people outside of those connected with aeronautics know
that one of the chief reasons why the Potsdam gang made the Sarajevo
murders a pretext for hurling the whole world into war was the firm
belief that Germany had at that time the complete supremacy of the
air. She had constructed a fleet of twoscore Zeppelins, some measuring
710 feet in length and being buoyed up by over 2,000,000 cubic feet of
hydrogen gas, driven by six Maybach gas-engines, each developing 250
horse-power, and carrying a crew of forty-eight men and a useful load
of four tons.
What destruction those fleets of lighter-than-air machines wrought upon
the open villages, towns, and cities of England, Scotland, France,
Belgium, Rumania, and Russia—not to mention the part they played in
the naval battle of Jutland—constitutes another chapter in the history
of German aerial preparedness and sky-line transportation that is
told in the chapter on the commercial Zeppelin. But just as Germany
seized on the submarine and developed it for polemic purposes, so
she saw the possibilities of the aeroplane as a scout, fighter, and
bombing subsidiary to the Zeppelin. With the object of developing the
aeronautic branch of the service beyond any other country the German
Government gave every encouragement to aviation. In 1914 the Huns
offered the sum of $55,000 to be awarded for the best water-cooled
and air-cooled aeromotor of 80 to 200 horse-power. Among the points
to be avoided in its construction was the “use of material from any
other country than Germany.” Under the auspices of the Aerial League
of Germany the Kaiser also put up fifty thousand marks in prizes
for the best altitude, cross-country, and non-stop records made by
standardized aeroplanes taken from stock. Subsidized as the German aero
manufacturers were by their government, it was not difficult for their
flyers to carry off all the prizes at this meet, so that before the end
of July, 1914, they had made the following new world’s records:
Otto Linnekogel on July 9 climbed to 21,654 feet, breaking Roland
Garros’s record of 19,032; on July 14 Heinrich Oelrich reached 26,246
feet; and Reinhold Boehm flew for twenty-four hours and two minutes
without stopping his engine!
Those who realize how much time, money, and energy have been expended
by this country during the time we were in the war in getting quantity
production of aeroplanes and aeromotors will appreciate what it meant
to Germany in July, 1914, when she declared war on the world, to have
all her experimentation done and her aeronautical factories tuned up
and nearly a thousand standardized planes equipped with standardized
Benz, Mercedes, and Maybach motors while England had barely 250
planes of almost as many different types, and France was in a similar
condition with about 300 aeroplanes and engines!
With command of the land and the air Germany felt she could neutralize
or overcome Britain’s command of the sea by overrunning France, seizing
the Channel ports, and by flying over the British fleet land an army
in England and conquer the “tight little isle.” Indeed, for three years
after the first battle of the Marne the fear of just such a contingency
compelled England to keep a large standing army at home while Germany
with her Zeppelins and aeroplanes, even from distant Belgium,
terrorized Scotland and England with almost daily bombing air raids.
But as soon as the war broke out the governments of the world began
to appreciate what could be accomplished by these little toys of
sportsmen, and to realize that the side which built and equipped the
largest and fastest fleet of scouts and fighters could put out the
eyes of his opponent and win the gigantic struggle; for an army or a
navy cannot feel its way forward like a worm without being destroyed!
This precipitated an enormous economic and manufacturing race to make
enough aircraft and to train enough skilful aviators to drive the enemy
from the air and get control of the third dimension. The fighting and
bombing possibilities of the aeroplane were not then fully appreciated;
that came afterward. Consequently the two objectives first sought in
the actual designing and building of the aeroplanes were manœuvring
ability and speed, and later bombing capacity. Inherent stability and
sufficient factors of safety, the two chief considerations in peace
construction of aircraft, were only secondary or entirely neglected.
For nearly four years this war of tools and this war in the air went on
with fluctuating vicissitudes for Hun and Ally. First came the German
scouting and fighting Fokkers equipped with motors which owing to their
superior horse-power made them faster and more easy to manœuvre than
anything the Allies had until the famous French Baby Nieuports with
110 horse-power Le Rhone engines appeared in 1916 and began to equal
the Boche in those two prime requisites. Then, owing to the number of
machines shot down or forced to land through engine trouble, neither
side could long keep any secret of aeromotor construction or aeroplane
design from an opponent. Therefore the struggle for quantity production
began. In the meantime the huge bimotored Caudrons, Voisins, Breguets,
Handley Pages, and Capronis began to be built in large numbers by the
French, British, and Italians, and the Gothas by the Germans. Each
year saw an increase in the horse-power of the motors and in the size
of the aeroplanes; and still, owing to the infinite area of the skies
to manœuvre in and the lack of large aerial fleets flying as a unit,
neither side could prevent the scouting-machines or the bombing raiders
from spying out or bombing any objective within a flying radius of two
hundred miles of their aerodromes.
With the advent of the United States into the struggle it became more
and more apparent to the German military leaders that they must win the
war before the tremendous manufacturing and aviator resources of this
country could be felt on the West Front. That, of course, was one of
the cardinal reasons for the series of great German drives beginning
with March 21, 1918.
The Allies, too, now fully realized that the Great War would be won
in the air, so they expended every effort and resource to build
aeroplanes to clear the German machines from the skies and to bomb
Germany from the air. How much these raids behind the Boche lines had
to do with the breaking down of the morale of the German people and
Teuton soldier cannot yet be properly estimated. However, to give an
idea of the severity of this war in the air and destruction wrought
by bombing-machines in Germany we know that the British Independent
Air Force sent out over the enemy territory squadrons of five to
one hundred aeroplanes, which dumped daily, rain or shine, sixty
to one hundred tons of high explosives on military objectives and
manufacturing plants scattered over a belt a hundred miles wide all
along the Rhine Valley. These raids penetrated as far as Essen and
Heidelberg. They destroyed ammunition-dumps, railroad-yards, chemical
and gas works. By blowing up railroad communications with the rear
they virtually cut the arteries of the German army. Moreover, by their
repeated excursions into Holland they disrupted the sleep, the rest,
and the working capacity of the people in the manufacturing towns and
cities in southern Germany.
In the battles in the air, too, the Allies were rapidly becoming
supreme. On October 18, 1918, the British air force alone destroyed
sixty-seven Hun machines and brought down fifteen more out of control,
losing only fifteen machines themselves. Thus these fliers blinded
the German artillery, and in contact patrol swept the Teuton trenches,
bombed their motor and rail transports, and dispersed concentrations of
their troops. Indeed, the only place to escape these relentless dragons
of the air was actually under ground.
Meanwhile, after much delay and many mistakes, American-built
aeroplanes were beginning to appear in quantity on the West Front. Here
is the record of what the Americans accomplished during the short time
in which they had machines: 926 German aeroplanes and 73 balloons were
destroyed. The Americans lost 265 aeroplanes and 38 balloons.
Finally, in October, 1918, 350 American-built aeroplanes in one single
formation dropped thirty-two tons of high explosives on Wavrille. When
the armistice was signed, there were actually engaged on the West Front
740 American aeroplanes, 744 pilots, 457 observers, and 23 aerial
gunners. Of these, 329 were pursuit machines, 296 observation machines,
and 115 were bombers.
How much damage the French and Italians did to German aerial supremacy
and manufacturing efficiency is difficult to summarize. It was very
considerable and, taken in conjunction with the others, sufficient
to convince the German military leaders that the Allied production
of aircraft was so rapid that within less than a year at most the
Allies would sweep the Huns from the skies and not even Berlin would
escape the fate the Huns had so often visited upon London, Paris, and
Bucharest. Finally the plea issued by the German Government to the
Allies, about a month before the end, to confine air raids to within
a fifty-mile zone of the fighting-line was a complete confession that
the Allied supremacy of the air was one of the most deciding factors in
causing Germany to surrender.
But though the primary uses of the aeroplanes during the last four
years were polemic, nevertheless, several of the startling new feats
demonstrate clearly what may be expected when the same aircraft
manufacturers design and construct machines for the avowed purpose
of commercial aerial transportation. Here are only a few of the most
startling world’s records that suggest these possibilities:
On August 29, 1917, Captain Marquis Giulio Laureati flew in an S. I. A.
from Turin to Naples and return, a distance of 920 miles, establishing
a new non-stop flight world’s record, and a month later he and his
mechanic flew from Turin to London, crossing the Alps at an altitude of
12,000 feet and negotiating a distance of 656 miles at an average speed
of 89 miles an hour. The speed, however, was not remarkable, for 100
miles an hour is the average speed for big machines, and 150 miles was
made by scouting-machines on the West Front during the war. On April
19 Captain E. F. White, U. S. A., in a DH-4, flew from Chicago to New
York, 727 miles, without stopping, in six hours and fifty minutes.
On April 25, 1919, four naval aviators, in a seaplane of the F-5
type, Serial No. 3589, made a new world’s record for an endurance
flight when they flew, officially, 1,250 miles in twenty hours and ten
minutes. The record was made during a continuous flight from 11.42 A.
M. April 25 until 7.52 A. M. April 26. Throughout the entire afternoon
and night, and often bucking a strong breeze over the Chesapeake Bay
and the Virginia Capes, the F-5 described a great circle, extending
northward to the mouth of the Potomac River and then eastward to the
Atlantic Ocean, sweeping over the Capes and then inland to the naval
station.
The four men in the machine ate three meals during the flight.
The machine left the naval base with 850 gallons of gasoline. When it
landed there was scarcely two gallons in its tanks.
The F-5 is an improved type of flying-boat that the Navy Department
intended using in patrol duty for war purposes. It has a wing spread
of 105 feet. The machine was built by Curtiss, and is known as a “kite
boat,” equipped with twin Liberty motors.
At Wright Field, near Dayton, Ohio, on September 18, 1918, Major R.
W. Schroeder, of the United States Air Service, in an American-built
aeroplane driven by an American-made Hispano-Suiza motor, climbed to
a new world’s altitude record of 28,900 feet, only 102 feet short of
the highest peak of the Himalaya Mountains. In December, 1918, Captain
Lang and Lieutenant Willets claimed to have ascended to 30,500 feet in
a Bristol aeroplane, but the record has not been homologed. On November
19, 1918, an aeroplane flew from Combes la Villa to Paris and return, a
distance of eighty miles, carrying thirty-eight passengers. Two days
before a Handley Page, with a wing spread of 127 feet and a fuselage
measuring sixty-five feet, propelled by four motors and piloted by an
American, carried nine women and thirty-one men to a height of 6,000
feet during an hour’s cruise over London, England. A year ago another
type of this same machine, but with only a 100-foot wing spread and
driven by only two 275 horse-power motors and carrying five men, flew
across country from London to Constantinople, dropped bombs on the
German cruiser _Goeben_ anchored there, and then flew back to Saloniki,
covering a total distance of more than 2,000 miles and remaining in the
air a total of thirty-one hours. The flight was via Paris, Lyons, and
Marseilles—in order to avoid the Alps—and from there to Pisa, Rome,
Naples, and then across 250 miles of mountainous country, often at a
height of 10,000 feet.
Near the close of the year a huge triplane Caproni, with its 150-foot
wing spread, driven by three 700 horse-power Fiat motors, developing a
total of 2,100 horse-power, has carried seventy-eight people in trial
flights at the factory!
A Model F-5 flying-boat, with a wing spread of only 102 feet, driven
by two Liberty motors, and lifting a 50-foot boat, has carried 12,900
pounds over many hundreds of miles looking for German submarines, and
another flying-boat, with 123 feet of wing spread, carried fifteen
officers and a pilot from Washington, District of Columbia, to Newport
News, Virginia.
On November 27, 1918, a Curtiss N C 1 carried fifty people for a short
flight at Rockaway Beach, New York. It was drawn by three Liberty
motors. The flying weight of the machine was 22,000 pounds, and the
machine had a wing spread of 126 feet, and the NC-3 and NC-4, which
flew from Rockaway, New York, to Halifax, 520 miles for the first leg
of the transatlantic, weighed 28,000 pounds, and were driven by four
Liberty motors.
The War Department on December 23 also announced that a squadron
of four army training-machines flew from San Diego, California, to
Mineola, Long Island, a distance of 4,000 miles, in the actual flying
time of fifty hours.
The infamous German bimotored pusher Gothas, measuring 78 feet, driven
by six-cylinder Mercedes 260 horse-power engines, and carrying three
men and five hundred pounds of explosives, flying by night from the
aerodromes near Ghent, Belgium, a distance of nearly two hundred miles,
have raided London more than a hundred times despite the opposition
of fleets of British aeroplanes and seaplanes and thousands of
antiaircraft guns.
For some time aerial mail has been carried from London to Paris in two
and a half hours. Mail is also being transported by air route regularly
between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, and between Rome and
Turin. Mail was carried through the air from Chicago to New York in ten
hours and five minutes; and Second Assistant Postmaster-General Praeger
says the sky-line mail will be extended to the Pacific coast, and in
the year 1919 fully fifty aero mail routes will be in operation.
How many aeroplanes that might be used for peace purposes were
completed by all the Allies and in service of some kind at the end
of the war is problematic. Judging by the Allied demand that Germany
surrender 1,700 aeroplanes, the Allied military authorities surely
estimated that Germany must have had far more than that number in
active service on the West Front. Counting the training-machines
necessary to teach enough aviators to fly and the planes discarded
as unsafe for battle flying, Germany must have had 8,000 or more
heavier-than-air machines. The British surely had close to 5,000 of all
kinds on the different fronts, with possibly 10,000 used for training
and other purposes. Indeed, Britain was making over 4,000 a month, or
50,000 a year, when the war ended, according to the statement made by
General Seely in Parliament in April, 1919. Perhaps the French and
Italians combined did not have so many as the Germans because of the
physical limitations on their manufacturing facilities. The Americans,
we know, had nearly 2,000 on the front when the war ended. A thousand
De Havilland 4’s had been delivered up to October 4, and more than
6,000 training-machines had also been constructed. We were just getting
into a factory production of about 1,200 a month when the war ended.
Indeed, to be exact, on November 11, 1918, a total of 33,384 planes had
been ordered; subsequent to that date 19,628 ordered were cancelled,
and up to December 27, 1918, a total of 13,241 planes had been shipped
from United States factories.
With the exception of the training-machines and the two-seater
fighters, like the De Havilland 4’s, most of these American machines
could hardly be used for anything except aero mail service. The large
Caproni and Handley Page bombers will do some passenger carrying.
Indeed, the peace planes, unlike the war planes, are constructed with
stability, safety, capacity carrying, and comfort as the chief factors.
At the close of the Great War, fortunately for the aeronautic
industry, approximately ten billion dollars has already been invested
by European, American, and Asiatic countries in aeronautics. Part of
this has been expended in constructing aircraft factories, aeronautic
engines, aeroplanes, dirigibles, hangars; in obtaining raw materials
and landing-fields; in training aviators and mechanics, and in
making aeronautic machinery, equipment, and accessories. Thousands
of furniture and piano factories, boat-building shops, and similar
establishments have been manufacturing propellers, struts, ribs,
pontoons, flying-boats, and so on; and hundreds of automobile-makers
and engine manufacturers have given over their plants, or a goodly
portion of them, to making motors, spars, and tools.
Varnish, linen, cotton, castor-oil, goggles, clothes, and a hundred and
one other things have also been used either in the direct manufacture
of aircraft or in the equipment of the aviators or mechanics, so that
there are to-day tens of thousands of skilled and unskilled artisans,
aviators, mechanics, who are wondering how far the aeronautic engine,
with its remarkable development from 16 horse-power, which the Wright
brothers used, to the 700 horse-power of the Fiat, will be used in
commercial aeronautics and how far the frail little Wright glider,
which has grown into a machine weighing six tons, can be made a
profitable means of aerial transportation.
Moreover, all the scientific knowledge, trained technic, all the
enormous investments in fixed property, and the tens of thousands of
aircraft built or building is being turned to commercial purposes.
They were not, and everything is being done to make the aeroplane do
man’s bidding as easily and as readily as the steamboat, electric car,
steam-engine, and automobile.
Even though the aeroplane does travel the shortest route in the
shortest time between any two given points, before a sufficient number
of passengers can be induced to travel via the aerial line to make it
financially profitable to the transportation company the public must be
assured that it is reasonably safe; that they can fly in comfort; and
that the price is reasonable. So let us first see what has been done
and what is being done to satisfy those three requisites.
The dangers of aeroplane flight have been grossly exaggerated by
newspapers, which record only the unusual. Moreover, flying in the
war zone was done under the most adverse and dangerous circumstances.
Also the machines were built for manœuvring ability and speed, and
not for stability and safety factors. Furthermore, all the scouts and
most of the reconnaissance and battle planes were driven by only one
motor, so that if engine trouble developed they had to volplane to the
ground at the mercy of the antiaircraft guns and the aerial fighters.
Finally, they often had to land in shell-scarred terrain. Naturally the
casualties were high. Indeed, the war in the air was meant to be as
perilous and dangerous as it could be.
Nevertheless, in spite of these hazards it is remarkable how many
machines, even when shot down with some vital part out of commission,
in many cases falling several thousand feet, have righted themselves
before reaching the ground and made a safe landing, due to the
precision and accuracy of construction with regard to lateral and
longitudinal balance. And all in all, judging from the wonderful
records already made by aeroplanes, even the single-motored machine is
very reliable.
With the bimotored plane, of course, casualties were not so high, for
even if one motor was put out of commission the other could bring the
aviators back to the aerodrome. Major Salonone, the Italian ace, on
February 20, 1916, flew a hundred miles back to his own lines with one
of the motors on his Caproni shot out of commission!
On the aviation training-fields, owing to the novices who were
learning to fly, the natural recklessness of youth, and sometimes the
faulty construction of planes—hastily built and often superficially
inspected—the casualties were higher. Stunting too near the ground
and in machines constructed primarily for straight flying so that the
stresses should come from only one flying angle, enemy treachery, and
the absolute necessity of discovering the best manœuvres and newest
types of aeroplanes also augmented the honor roll. But stunting
eliminated, with machines equipped with two or more reliable aeronautic
motors built according to standardized specifications as to materials,
methods, stability, and the required number of safety factors, steered
by tried and true pilots, flying between regular landing-fields and
aerodromes and directed in the dark and in foggy weather from the
ground by radiotelephones, such as flight commanders used in giving
instruction to the members of the flying squadron, the dangers of
flying can be reduced to proportions commensurate with the desire
of the public to get from place to place in the quickest and safest
vehicle.
Of course, the present high landing speed of an aeroplane is the
cause of many accidents. Thirty-five miles an hour, except where the
head resistance is great, is the slowest speed now made in landing a
heavier-than-air machine. The invention of a device or the discovery
of a means of reducing the speed to ten miles an hour when touching
the ground, though still only in the realms of the probable, is by no
means diametrically opposed to the inherent laws of the aeroplane. This
accomplished, the danger of flying in an aeroplane will be reduced to
infinitesimal proportions—at least to a degree no more precarious than
riding in an automobile.
Already the War Department has ordered flyers to map the country, and
large stretches of the United States have already been mapped. The
Wilson Aerial Highway, from New York to Chicago and San Francisco, has
been laid out. Aerial transportation companies have been formed to
provide planes. Thousands of skilled pilots have secured jobs; many
chambers of commerce have built landing-places near their towns and
cities. Needless to say, aerial laws will be passed to prevent stunting
with passengers and requiring machines to fly at the altitude necessary
to glide to the nearest aerodrome in case a motor stalls. Already a
dozen different aeronautical motors have been developed which will run
twenty-four to one hundred hours without stopping. Recently the Caproni
biplane at Mineola, Long Island, climbed to 14,000 feet with one of the
three motors completely shut off all the way.
On August 9 the Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio flew from Venice to
Vienna via the Alps with his motor wide open all the way. Indeed,
thousands of equally sensational flights have been made, in all kinds
of weather and under the most adverse circumstances of a great war. Of
the hundred-odd air raids on London by the Gothas some were conducted
in broad daylight, when the Germans had to fly through squadrons of
British scouts and fighters, through or over three barrages in order to
get to the metropolis; and yet seldom more than one or two Hun machines
out of the thirty usually constituting the squadron were forced to land
or were shot down. The same thing was true of the British Independent
Air Force in the raids they made over the German cities, citadels,
factories, ammunition-dumps, and other military objectives, though they
often flew in fleets of fifty to a hundred.
Of the 350 machines constituting the American air raid on Wavrille in
October, 1918, only one aeroplane failed to return, though twelve Hun
machines were shot down. The German flying-tank which shot down Major
Lufbery, the most famous American ace, was driven by five engines,
which were protected, as well as the fuselage, with bullet-proof steel
three-eighths of an inch thick. Major Lufbery emptied his machine-gun
against this aerial monster from close range and from many angles
before his gas-tank was pierced and his machine went down in flames.
Therefore a bimotored machine, flying under peace conditions, should be
able to make its aerodrome safely nearly every time.
There were three discomforts of air travel—the cold, the noise of
the motor, and the lack of room in moving about. Electrically heated
clothes eliminate the cold; ariophones, which shut out the noise of
the motor but permit the passengers or aviators to converse together,
are in universal use on aeroplanes. With the increase in the size
of the aeroplanes and the number of motors, the nacelles and the
enclosed roomy cabins can be constructed as they were on the famous
Sykorsky aerobus, which was built in Russia before the war. This
aeroplane carried twenty-one people to an altitude of 7,000 feet. On
this trip they had ample room to move about and to observe the sky
and the landscape. On Thanksgiving Day, 1917, a half-dozen guests of
an American aircraft factory had their turkey dinner served in a huge
aeroplane above the clouds.
The Handley Page and Farman aerial transport busses now flying between
London and Paris carry the passengers entirely housed in.
It is true that owing to the cost of the aeroplanes and the aeromotors,
their upkeep and the number of skilled men required to fly and maintain
them, all aerial travel is expensive. The two-seater training-machines,
equipped with one motor, cost five to seven thousand dollars, and
the huge bimotored bombing-machines averaged forty to sixty thousand
dollars. This price was due to the necessity for hurried construction.
For everything that went into the building of the aeromotor and the
machine itself and also for the labor the very highest price had to
be paid. Tools, machinery, factories, fields, hangars, and a thousand
other things had to be purchased, and a great body of skilled workmen
had to be trained before aircraft could be turned out in quantity.
Now all this skill and billions of money have been invested in the
industry so that the plants in this country have the capacity to
manufacture nearly two hundred a day. With this nucleus to start a
peace-construction programme the price of even the biggest machines
must soon shrink to that of a high-priced automobile or private yacht.
Plenty of sporting machines with a small wing spread and a two-cylinder
motor that will sell for five hundred dollars are now being made;
and since these machines can average twenty-two miles on a gallon of
gasoline the expense of maintaining one of these will not be out of the
means of hundreds of the young flyers who have returned from flying on
the West Front. Moreover, since there will be no maintenance of roads,
rails, live wires, and so on, such as there is in the railroad and
electric road industries, the cost of aero maintenance is infinitely
smaller, so that aerial travel may become cheaper than any other known
to man.
Fundamentally, the hydroaeroplane is the same as the aeroplane except
that pontoons instead of wheels are used to land upon. The cost of
these airships over the land machines is noticeable only where boats
are used instead of pontoons. Consequently, their price above the
aeroplane will depend on the size and the kind of furnishings used in
the boat. Owing to the fact that no landing-field has to be bought
and maintained and that the flying-boat can come down on a river or
a lake with comparative ease, and also the fact that altitude does
not have to be maintained in order to glide to an aerodrome or a safe
landing-field, this type of aerial navigation bids fair to be fast,
cheap, and absolutely safe. Moreover, the size and passenger-carrying
capacity of these flying-boats will be limited only by the construction
of wings strong enough to maintain them in the air, for the size of the
hulls and the number of motors can be increased indefinitely.
Perhaps the best indication of what we may expect of the aeroplane
as a commercial carrier is embodied in the present plans of
the manufacturers of aircraft. Using the past history of the
heavier-than-air machines’ performance and their own experience and
the experience of tens of thousands of flyers under all imaginable
circumstances and conditions as a basis, they are building various
types of aircraft. More than a score of American and British firms have
already built and are putting upon the market large numbers of sports
models. These machines are single and double seaters after the type of
the famous Baby Nieuports, Spads, and British Sopwith Pups. They have
a wing spread of anywhere from seventeen to thirty feet. The fuselage
measures between ten and twenty feet. Some are equipped with one small
motor generating from twenty horse-power up to ninety horse-power. Most
of these motors are upright, like the ones used on motorcycles, and
range from two to four cylinders. The whole machine will not weigh more
than five hundred pounds and these models are able to fly at eighty
to one hundred miles an hour and make an average of twenty miles or
more on a gallon of gas. The price of these will depend on the demand,
but most manufacturers believe they will sell for five hundred to a
thousand dollars. These machines are so small that they can be landed
on any road or field. Besides, the small amount of space they occupy
will make it possible to house them inexpensively, and they can be used
for any kind of cross-country flying or sporting purposes.
The second type of the sports model has a wing spread of twenty-six
to thirty-eight feet. These wings can be folded back so that the
aeroplane can be housed in a hangar ten by thirty feet with ample
room for the owner to work indoors on the machine. The fuselage is
proportionately larger than that on the smaller machine. This aeroplane
is equipped with a four-cylinder upright motor or an air-cooled rotary
motor of the Gnome style with nine or eleven cylinders, generating up
to ninety horse-power. Some also have two small twenty horse-power
engines geared to the one propeller so they can be throttled down, or
in case one stalls the other can take the flyers to their aerodrome
without being forced to land. Some models have two motors on the
smaller machines. These aircraft will sell for about the price of a
medium-cost automobile.
The two-passenger models are similar in design to the army
training-machines. They have more powerful upright and V-type four or
eight cylinder motors and generate two to three hundred horse-power.
The fuselage is built so that the pilot sits in front of or beside
the passenger. The control is dual. The machines are mostly tractors,
but in a few cases the nacelle is built in front of the plane like a
bomber, and the propeller and engine are behind. These pusher types
obviate all the blind angles and afford an excellent unobstructed
range of vision. They are especially good for hunters, who desire
no obstruction in gunning for birds. In case of a crash, however,
there is the added danger of having the motor crush the passengers
underneath. The Canadian Government has sold over ten thousand of their
training-machines to an American company, which is reselling them at a
low price to men who wish to own an aeroplane.
The aero-mail type is about the same as the two-passenger model in
wing spread and fuselage, but the motor is a twelve-cylinder V type
and generates anywhere from 250 to 450 horse-power. Cost is not so
much a consideration here as carrying capacity. Most of the two-seated
fighting-machines built for war purposes can be adapted by the
Post-Office Department for this purpose, and plans are afoot to extend
the service all over the United States.
The big bombing bus type is designed for carrying great numbers of
people from one aerodrome to another. These machines are biplanes
and triplanes with a wing spread of anywhere from 48 to 150 feet.
They are driven by V-type, twelve-cylinder engines generating 400
to 700 horse-power. They have one or two fuselages in the centre
but the nacelles are usually forward of the wings, so that nothing
obstructs the vision of the passengers. These machines will be sold to
transportation companies, which will make a business of carrying people
from aerodrome to aerodrome. They are so large and are equipped with so
many motors that they are not intended to be landed anywhere except on
properly prescribed flying-fields. Several transportation companies are
already organized for that purpose.
All the above types of aircraft are so designed that pontoons or
flying-boats can be substituted for wheels and landing-gear, and so
that most aircraft manufacturers can make both. Of course, in most
cases the boats and the motors are made by different manufacturers.
Several companies, however, construct aeroplanes complete with motors.
Naturally no manufacturing industry can exist without a potential
market. Aircraft manufacturers are sure the majority of the twenty
thousand flyers and hundred thousand aero mechanics who have learned
their trade in the Great War will want to fly either machines of
their own or of somebody else or of some transaerial company. The
aeronautical engineers have, therefore, designed the sports type for
the young fellows who wish to race in the air, travel from country
town to country town, from lake to river, or to commute from country
to city. Since these machines fly faster than the fastest bird or the
fleetest animal, they will afford great sport for gunners. Indeed, the
machines have already been used with such disastrous effects upon the
bird that many hunters say it is not good sportsmanship to hunt from
them. In that case, perhaps, the farmers will hire the daring young
aviators to hunt down the crows and hawks with these dragons of the air.
Be that as it may, this sports type is a great convenience for a
person who works in a city located on a large lake or on a river and
who wishes to live far in the country. Indeed, he may live a hundred
miles up or down that body of water and in less than an hour he can
fly to or from his work. If it is cold he can put on his electrically
heated clothing and keep as warm as in a limousine. If he has engine
trouble he can land anywhere and fix his machine and then fly on. Since
air resistance is much less than road resistance he can traverse the
distance much cheaper than in an inexpensive automobile. If there is no
body of water near his place of business he can land his cross-country
flier in the park or flying-field just as easily as on the water. This
same machine will lend itself to all kinds of pleasure flying, and no
other sport gives so much exhilaration, scenic view, and adventuresome
excitement as the aeroplane; and the price will be within the means of
many young men.
The two-passenger models are being sold to persons of means who
have flown or wish to fly and take up friends. After a few years
the manufacturers expect there will be a considerable body of these
enthusiasts. The greatest sale of these machines, however, will be to
the government for the aero mail service. At first two machines will be
necessary for every flier in that service, and one in every aerodrome
for every one in the air, so with fifty established routes we shall
require several hundred machines. Moreover, the manufacturers expect
that these machines fitted with either a fuselage or a boat will be
employed very extensively by mining companies for carrying precious
metals in South America and Alaska. At the present time llamas are
used to carry copper down from the Andes. They are so slow and have
to descend to the smelters by such devious routes that valuable time
is lost in the transportation. By loading the ore into the hold of a
flying-boat, which can land on the lakes and ponds in case of engine
trouble, the time will be so materially diminished as to reduce the
cost of the metal very considerably. Besides, flying in a straight
line as the bird flies, at a speed of not less than a hundred miles an
hour, will expedite the work of the engineer and the surveyor over the
jungles and unexplored and inaccessible portions of South America and
Africa, as well as in other distant countries.
The conditions in Alaska are analogous, though the climate is
different. Dogs and sleds are now used, and they, too, have to travel
roundabout routes from mine to town. Of course, an aeroplane fitted
with skids or runners can be landed on snow or ice as easily as on
land. It now takes two days to sled gold down from one mine in the
Yukon to Nome, which could be brought out in three hours by aeroplanes
flying over the tops of the mountains.
At the time this goes to press Captain Robert Bartlett is so convinced
of the feasibility of flying in the arctic regions that he plans to try
to fly across the north pole in an aeroplane. During the summer months
there are plenty of open spaces on which seaplanes can land in the
arctic regions, and flying at 100 miles an hour, it would not take many
hours to cross the ice-bound region of the pole itself.
Already on the plains of the West and Southwest this type of aeroplane
has been found to be more serviceable than the horse in discovering the
whereabouts of lost cattle or sheep, because of the range of vision it
gives to the shepherd or cowboy and because of its speed and the short
distance it covers in reaching its objective.
The big bombing bus type is being built primarily for companies or
clubs intending to carry passengers from city to city or for cruises
from the club-houses.
General Menoher, director of military aeronautics, has announced that
the army will co-operate with the aero mail department in developing
municipal aerodromes in thirty-two different cities in the United
States, extending from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico.
Meantime the aircraft manufacturers are contemplating establishing a
line of huge flying-boats between New York and Boston, carrying fifty
people each way. The distance of two hundred miles could be covered
in two hours, or less than half the time taken by train. Only four
machines will be used at the beginning, one leaving Boston early in the
morning and the other early in the afternoon. Two will leave New York
at the same time. Four more will be kept in reserve, and as the traffic
increases more will be added. The total investment will not require a
million dollars, and the aero mail between the two cities has already
set the pace for this passenger line.
The manufacturers also expect that every life-saving station along the
entire coast of the United States and its possessions will be equipped
with at least one seaplane with which to carry out a life-line to a
ship wrecked on the beach or to rescue any one in distress within
a hundred miles of the station, because these flying-boats can be
launched in any kind of weather and can travel faster than anything
that moves on the water.
The keenest aeronautic interest at the present time is centred in the
aerial crossing of the Atlantic Ocean between America and Europe.
Two possible routes are proposed for the flight. Both start from St.
John’s, Newfoundland, but one stretches from there to Ireland and the
other via the Azores to Portugal. The northern route is 1,860 miles
from land to land, and the other 1,195 miles to the Flores, which is
the nearest one of the Azores. From there to Ponta Delgada to Lisbon
is 850 more. The southern route is preferable because the first leg
is shortest from land to land. Also, less fog prevails in the south
in all seasons of the year. Captain Laureati has already flown in a
single-motored machine 920 miles without landing. The United States
Naval F-5 flying-boat has flown 1,250 miles. Undoubtedly a flying-boat,
equipped with four or more motors, could carry enough gasoline to cover
the 1,200 miles on the Atlantic without stopping. Indeed, only half
the number of motors need be running at one time if necessary, and
since the large bimotored machines make a hundred miles an hour the
flight could be negotiated within the twelve hours of day-light in the
summer-time.
Just before the war broke out Mr. Glenn Curtiss, the inventor of
the flying-boat, was building for Mr. Rodman Wanamaker the seaplane
_America_ with which Captain Porte was to try to fly across the
Atlantic. The beginnings of hostilities terminated the project. The
_America_, however, did cross the Atlantic, but in the hold of another
boat, and it performed very good service in British waters chasing Hun
submarines.
During the four years that have elapsed since the breaking out of the
Great War the construction of aeronautic motors, aeroplanes, and the
science of aviation have advanced at least a quarter of a century,
so that if the proposition was feasible before the war it ought
certainly to be very practicable to-day, as many authorities have
testified. The _Daily Mail_ prize of $50,000 is still beckoning to the
adventurous spirit. The Martinsyde two-seater land-machine and the
two-seater Sopwith have already established themselves at St. John’s,
Newfoundland, to begin the flight to Ireland. The United States Navy
NC-1, NC-3, and NC-4 have flown from Rockaway by the southern route
to the Azores. Once the first flight is negotiated, the aircraft
manufacturers are convinced there will be a greater demand for flying
seaplanes than for ocean liners, for they feel sure that most of the
people going to and coming from Europe would prefer to travel in that
way, and in less than half the time now taken by the fastest ocean
greyhounds.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Flying Magazine._
The Vickers-“Vimy” bomber.
This plane carried Captain J. Alcock and Lieutenant A. W. Brown from
Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours and 12 minutes.]
In conclusion, then, it may be safely laid down as an axiom that the
conveyance which reduces man’s time in travelling from one place on
this globe to another will sooner or later be adopted by him. No matter
what the discomforts or the dangers or the expense may be in the
beginning, he will eventually find a way to change the inconvenience
into the greatest luxuries, the expense will be reduced to within the
means of all, and the dangers will be diminished to infinitesimal
proportions. It was so in the beginning, it is so now, and it will
be so till the end of recorded time. It was so with the recalcitrant
camel, the ponderous elephant, the wild horse. It was thus that man
transformed the floating log, which he propelled with his feet, into
a floating palace, driven thousands of miles across the greatest of
oceans. Likewise he metamorphosed the puny stationary steam-engine into
a demon that is more powerful than a thousand horses, and that rushes
him across the broad spaces of the earth faster than the fastest deer.
Indeed, with the aeroplane, man has already done what was considered
for countless ages as the acme of the impossible—he has learned
to fly; and in the short space of a decade and a half he has flown
faster, farther, and he has performed more convolutions than the
noblest birds of prey—yes, it may safely be said that he has made the
once marvellous imaginary flight of the magic carpet of the Arabian
Nights—when compared with the aerial exploits of the fliers in the
Great War—fade into the most diminutive insignificance and the tamest
fiction.
Before long then we may reasonably expect that all the capitals of the
world will be connected by air lines. Already regular landing-places
have been established from London via Paris, Rome, and Constantinople
to Bagdad and Cairo. Peking and Tokio will next be added. The flight
from London to New York will also soon be an accomplished fact. Then
all the capitals of Central and South America will be joined up.
The distance from South America to Africa is about the same as that
between America and Europe. By reducing the time of travel between all
those places to hours the aeroplane will make mountains dwindle into
ant-hills, rivers to creeks, lakes to mud-holes, and oceans and seas
to ponds. The globe will be aerially circumnavigated. Tokio and Peking
will be as accessible to New York as London now is, and vice versa.
Then there will be no east or west and with the new aerial age will
come a new internationalism founded on speedy intercommunication and
good-will toward all man-kind.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Aerial Age Weekly._
The C-5 leaving its hangar at Montauk Point en route to accompany the
NC’s on their trans-Atlantic flight.
After reaching the vicinity of Halifax the “Blimp” broke away from her
moorings and was blown out to sea. The Blimps are equipped with one
Hispano-Suiza motor. They measure 200 feet.]