WIRELESS, LIFE-SAVING, AND OTHER SPECIAL USES
Many will be the future uses of the aeroplane; special uses not
necessarily dependent on speed.
Sportsmen are likely to find in the aeroplane, especially in the hydro,
an admirable vehicle for hunting, aside from their interest in its
racing capacity. Already there is pending in the California legislature
a bill designed to regulate shooting from an aeroplane, intended as an
addition to the California aeroplane traffic regulations, described
later. While this bill is probably intended as more or less of a joke,
it has been thoroughly demonstrated that it is possible to shoot wild
ducks from an aeroplane. Hubert Latham proved this fact in his
Antoinette monoplane at Los Angeles.
Latham flew from Dominguez Field to the Bolsa Chica Gun Club on the
shore of the Pacific, ten miles away, and chased wild ducks for thirty
minutes, finally bagging one. The sportsmen of California thought they
saw in this feat of Latham's the near approach of a time when the
aeroplane would be utilised for exterminating game, and seemed much
exercised over the incident. The newspapers saw only the humour of the
incident, however, and the sportsmen were quickly reassured.
Latham, not content with this achievement and thirsting for new thrills,
said that he was going to fly up into the Rocky Mountains and shoot
grizzly bears. His last undertaking was to take his aeroplane with him
to the Congo where he went to hunt big game and to use the aeroplane in
this novel and sensational sport. Strange to relate, after having braved
all the dangers of the air, he met his fate by being gored to death by a
wounded and infuriated wild buffalo, in July, 1912.
Some ranchers out west have clubbed together to purchase an aeroplane
for hunting wolves which have been killing their cattle, and four
aviators flew over San Fernando Valley in California recently, eagerly
watching the underbrush for a sight of two fugitive bandits who for two
days had eluded a large sheriff's posse after attempting to hold up a
railway agent and mortally wounding a deputy at San Fernando. Each
aviator was sworn in as a deputy and carried with him an observer
provided with a powerful field glass. They reported that they could see
objects very clearly below.
In scouring the hills one of the observers thought that he had surely
spotted his man and the plane was dipped abruptly toward the ground. On
returning he said, "It was a dog I saw and I'll bet that dog is running
yet."
I have heard on the best of authority that an aviator in this country
chased a buzzard until it fell exhausted and that in Europe this same
game was played by a German aviator upon a large stork.
AERIAL BIRD-NETTING
On my practice flights in a hydroaeroplane over San Diego Bay, I noticed
on several occasions that pelicans and sea gulls and even wild ducks got
in my path, and I was sometimes obliged to change my course in order to
avoid the slow-flying fowl. It occurred to me that with a net affixed to
the forward part of the planes it would have been an easy matter to run
down and bag a pelican, and possibly a sea gull. The ducks are too quick
to be caught by an aeroplane, as yet. Chasing ducks in an aeroplane and
catching them in a net would be about as thrilling a sport as one can
imagine. Perhaps when the killing of wild fowl with guns shall have
palled on sportsmen, we shall see the method of "netting" them with an
aeroplane come into use. Something after the manner of scientists who
hunt the lepidoptera.
Mrs. Lillian Janeway Platt Atwater, of New York, while taking
instructions in the operation of the hydroaeroplane at North Island,
early in 1912, tried my new method of catching seabirds. She asked
Lieut. J. W. McClaskey, instructor at the Curtiss school, to take out
the hydroaeroplane, with her as a passenger, and attempt to catch a
pelican or gull with a net. The instructor promptly agreed and for
almost half an hour the big hydroaeroplane with Lieut. McClaskey and
Mrs. Atwater chased pelicans and sea gulls up and down the bay. They
discontinued the hunt only when a large pelican barely escaped becoming
entangled in the propeller, which would have smashed it and possibly
caused an accident. On another occasion Mrs. Atwater did actually
succeed in catching a gull while flying with her husband.
Shooting rabbits from an aeroplane would be comparatively easy. I came
to this conclusion while flying over North Island, which is covered with
weeds and sagebrush for the most part, with hundreds of jack-rabbits and
cottontails living there. At first these rabbits were terribly
frightened by the aeroplane and ran in all directions to escape. They
soon became used to the sight, however, and would watch the aeroplane
with a great deal of curiosity. One of the big jack-rabbits, either from
fright or curiosity, waited too long to get out of the way of Harry
Harkness in his Antoinette, when he made a rather abrupt descent, and it
was cut in two by the propeller.
MAIL-CARRYING
One of the most important special uses to which the aeroplane is
particularly adapted is for carrying the mail. Royal mail was first
actually handled at Allahabad in India last summer, during which over
6,000 letters were transferred. This service was planned to prove the
great value of an aeroplane post during war time to a besieged town. A
mail route via aeroplane was established on trial between London and
Windsor in England, which carried several tons of mail matter. And in
this country last fall Postmaster-General Frank H. Hitchcock and Captain
Paul Beck, U. S. A., inaugurated the first aerial postal service
regularly established in the United States, over a route between the
Aero Club of America's flying grounds at Nassau Boulevard on Long
Island, and Mineola, L. I. A picturesque account of this little episode
is given by Frank O'Malley, who wrote:
"The flying events of the day at the Nassau Boulevard aviation meet came
to an end in a hubbub of joyousness among 1,500 spectators on the
grounds.
"Lieutenant Milling had busted the American record and was still flying
for the world's record when a tall, youngish man decked out in a blue
serge suit, and a gray cap, climbed into the Curtiss machine driven by
Captain Paul Beck of the army.
"'The Hon. Frank H. Hitchcock, Postmaster-Gen'rul of the whole United
States,' the megaphone man began to holler,'will now fly to Mineola with
Captain Beck to deliver the mail. Postmaster-Gen'rul Hitchcock of the
United States will carry the mail-bag on his knees and drop the bag at
Mineola into a circle in which will be the Postmaster-Gen'rul of I mean
the Postmaster of Mineola. Ladies and gentlemen, Postmaster-Gen'rul
Hitchcock.' (Much applause.)
"Mr. Hitchcock wasn't around to hear all this and so didn't lift his
gray cap in acknowledgment. He was far out on the field with
Attorney-General Wickersham and Captain Beck. Post Office Inspector
Doyle handed the Postmaster-General a mail bag containing one thousand,
four hundred and forty postcards and one hundred and sixty-two letters,
and Captain Beck and the Postmaster-General hiked off in a northerly
direction for the high spots,
"The Curtiss circled three-quarters of the field and then climbed
rapidly until it was three hundred or four hundred feet above the south
end of the track. Ovington, who had also got under way with a second bag
of mail in his monoplane, shot up into the same acre of sky occupied by
Captain Beck and Mr. Hitchcock and shot eastward as a track finder for
Captain Beck's machine.
"The field could see the two machines almost all the time during the
cross-country flight. The way the biplane with a passenger pegged along
just behind the monoplane with only a pilot aboard was a caution. Over a
big white circle painted on the Mineola real estate, Ovington from his
monoplane and the Postmaster-General from Captain Beck's machine,
plumped down to Mineola the two pouches and hit within the circle in
each case.
"The biplane teetered slightly as the mail bag was released and then the
two machines made a circle and spun back to where the crowd stood on
tiptoe peering over fences at Nassau Boulevard.
"'I was up once before,' the Postmaster-General said after he had shaken
hands all around upon his return to earth.' That was at Baltimore with
Count de Lesseps in his Bleriot. The biplane to-day I found was much
steadier.
"'Fly again? I hope so, because I like the experience very much. My trip
to-day was especially enjoyable because at Baltimore I could see very
little of the ground below, owing to the closed-in construction of a
monoplane. To-day from the biplane all this end of Long Island was
stretched out to be looked at.
[Illustration: CARRYING THE MAIL–NASSAU BOULEVARD, 1911]
Right to left: Attorney-general Wickersham, Captain Paul Beck,
Postmaster-General Hitchcock, with mail-bag.
[Illustration: STUDENTS OF AERIAL WARFARE]
Beck, St,. Henry, and Curtiss studying a flight by Kelley
Military pupils. Left to right: McClaskey, Curtiss, Beck, Towers,
Ellyson
"'Yes, air-routes are all right for practical mail-carrying,' Mr.
Hitchcock continued, in answer to a question.'I mean,' he smiled,'the
air is all right, but the vehicles must continue toward perfection. But
even with the aeroplane as it is now it would be very useful to us,
particularly in some parts of the country.
PRACTICAL VALUE TO-DAY FOR MAIL-CARRYING
"'Take along the Colorado River in the canon district of Yuma, for
instance, or in parts of Alaska. Along the Colorado there are places
where detours of fifty miles out of the way are made in mail routes to
get to a bridge. An aeroplane could hop right across the river.
"'The expensiveness of maintaining an aeroplane service is an obstacle,
but that will diminish. I would like to see the Post Office Department
do something definite in this direction for the good effect it would
have in stimulating the development of the machine. Fliers at present
have many lean months between the meets.'"
Ever since Postmaster-General Hitchcock made this trip he has been an
enthusiastic advocate of the aeroplane as a means of transporting mail
over difficult routes. During the next few months he granted permission
to a number of aviators, including Ovington, Milling, Arnold, Robinson,
Lincoln Beachey, Charles F. Walsh, Beckwith Havens, Charles C. Witmer,
and Eugene Godet, all of whom fly Curtiss machines, to act as special
mail carriers, and these men have carried mail bags in similar
exhibiting tests from aviation fields to points near the Post Office.
Among the cities where such tests have been officially made are
Rochester, N. Y.; Dubuque, Iowa; Fort Smith, Ark.; Temple and Houston,
Texas; Atlanta, Savannah, Columbia, and Rome, Ga.; and Spartanburg and
Salisbury, N. C.
The record for long-distance mail carrying is held by Hugh Robinson, who
took a bag of mail at Minneapolis, Minn., and carried it on his long
flight down the Mississippi River in a hydroaeroplane as far as Rock
Island, Ill. The distance covered by Robinson was 375 miles on this
trip, and letters and first class mail matter were put off and taken on
at Winona, Minn.; Prairie du Chien, Wis.; Dubuque and Clinton, Iowa; and
Rock Island, Ill.
Of course the aeroplane is, at present, best suited for carrying mail in
localities where the weather is equable; in such places it offers a
speedy, direct, and dependable service. These numerous experiments in
mail-carrying by aeroplane have brought about the urging of an
appropriation by Congress for this purpose. The second Assistant
Postmaster-General, who is in charge of mail transportation, in a report
that has just been made public at the time I am writing this, asks for
$50,000 for the transportation of mails by aeroplane. Part of this fund
may be devoted to mail routes in the Alaskan interior. One government
has actively entered on practical mail-carrying by aeroplane. Belgium
has voted a fund to establish routes across seven hundred miles of
impenetrable Congo jungle.
WIRELESS
The aeroplane is ideal for use with wireless telegraphy and the
combination of the aeroplane's ability to obtain information and the
ability to transmit it by wireless will be one of its most important
future developments in practical usefulness.
Wireless experiments do not involve any great problem, as messages have
been successfully transmitted from an aeroplane to land stations many
times. The receiving of a wireless message by an operator in an
aeroplane from a land station or from a warship involves considerable
difficulty because of the noise and vibration of the motor, but it is
expected, however, that this will be soon entirely overcome and that it
will be possible to transmit or receive telegrams in an aeroplane to or
from distant points with the same ease and accuracy that it is now seen
on the ground or on the water.
The telegraph seems to be the companion of the locomotive, the telephone
of the automobile, and now wireless has its side-partner in the
aeroplane!
Important experiments are being carried on by the signal corps of every
army with various methods of communication with an aeroplane in flight
and by the aviator with those on the ground. They have tried an
instrument for making smoke signals, with large and small puffs,
reviving a method used by the American Indians in the pioneer days and
quite familiar to all boys who have played Indian in the country.
FORESTRY SURVEY
The supervisor of the Selway forest, consisting of 1,600,000 acres,
which was formerly part of the Nez Perces reserve in Idaho, predicts
that aeroplanes and wireless telegraphy will be important factors in
forest fire prevention before a far distant date. He believes that a man
in an aeroplane could do more accurate and extensive survey work in the
forests of the Pacific slope country in a few hours when forest fires
are raging than is usually accomplished by twenty rangers in a week.
With wireless stations installed on peaks in the chief danger zones, he
believed it would be a comparatively easy task to assemble men and
apparatus to check and extinguish the flames and prevent fires from
spreading.
MOVING PICTURES
Aeroplanes have already been used for purposes of photography and moving
picture machines have also been attached to them and some remarkable
pictures taken. One of the large moving picture magnates said, "Now, Mr.
Curtiss, if you can take a series of moving pictures showing a trip
across the United States, I do not care if it takes you a year to get it
and even though it is taken piecemeal, or one section at a time over the
main cities on the way, I will pay you well for it. We will take the
film, trim it down, and run it through at lightning speed taking our
audience from New York to San Francisco 'as the bird flies' in twenty
minutes."
The value of moving pictures taken from above and from a swift
low-flying machine is apparent at a glance. The contour of the country
is shown as in no other way, and now that warfare is going to have a
quite different point of view, even a different range of action, it is
important that schools, and especially military schools, should be made
familiar with this aspect of the land. The flat map is superseded by
such a panoramic view. In time of actual war, moving pictures taken in
this way will have a unique value.
In photographing reviews of troops, public celebrations, lines of
battleships, or any scenes that require a panoramic representation, the
aeroplane has been used with success. It can also be of great service in
photographing animals and rare birds which may inhabit regions otherwise
inaccessible. With the advance of nature study and the steady
development of "camera hunting," the aeroplane will be used more and
more for such purposes as well as for photographing mountain tops and
other insurmountable or dangerous places to reach.
Robert G. Fowler has had some surprisingly good motion pictures taken
from his machine during his cross-continent flight, by an operator
sitting beside him, his camera placed on a temporary stand.
Mr. Frank W. Coffyn took a most interesting series of moving pictures of
New York City from the water front, portraying the Battery, the Brooklyn
Bridge, and the famous Statue of Liberty in the harbour. Mr. Coffyn used
a hydroaeroplane for this purpose, which made his flights comparatively
safe. In fact, such a feat would have been well nigh impossible for a
machine that could not land on the water, for there are no places where
an aeroplane can land in the business section of New York unless the
aviator should land on one of the large buildings, and then he would
have great difficulty in getting away again.[6]
Great care has to be exercised to keep the machine on an even keel, so
that the operator can manage the roll of film.
LIFE-SAVING
Another branch of the government service that will no doubt be greatly
aided by aeroplanes are the Life Saving Stations along the coast, whose
regular equipment might well include an aeroplane to fly to wrecks and
carry a line from shore to ship when the high seas make it impossible to
launch a lifeboat. It might be impracticable to go out during the period
of severe storm, but there is always a calm in the air after a storm, as
well as the proverbial calm before one, while the high seas in which a
lifeboat cannot live are still running. The aeroplane or the
hydroaeroplane, dashing through the air, even through high wind, would
bring the line that means life to helpless men clinging to a wreck.
I am awaiting with earnest expectation the first time that an aeroplane
actually saves a life; when that takes place, it will have conquered the
heart of the people as well as fascinated its intellect, aroused its
awe, or compelled its admiration. The first period of enthusiastic
acceptance of the new machine has been succeeded in the mind of the
general non-flying public by an admiration not at all like affection.
Realising how many lives have been given to its development, feeling
that the aviator takes, as they call it, "his life in his hands," the
crowd at a flying-meet feels with all its great and growing interest, an
attraction in which figures not a little fear and distrust. The first
time that an aeroplane saves a life as it can and will do many times it
will have begun to conquer this public distrust. That is why the exploit
of the hydroaeroplane already described, in coming first to the aid of
the aviator in the water, had a value far greater than its apparent
importance.[7]
EXPLORING AND ESCAPE FROM DANGER
The aeroplane will find one of its important uses not only in taking
pictures of inaccessible spots, but also in crossing otherwise
impassable places, especially in times of pressing need when fire,
earthquake, volcanic eruptions that leave beds of molten lava,
explosions, pestilences, floods, or other devastations occur, and quick
assistance is necessary.
In engineering and mining matters, the aeroplane may be of assistance in
exploring the best places to locate the route for railroads through
mountain passes and into such places as "Death Valley" where the salt
deposits are located.
TRAVEL
An important field in the sporting world of aviation of course will be
carrying passengers and initiating novices into the mysteries of the air
lanes and into the pleasures of aerial touring.
In this delightful method of travel the panorama below is equal to any
of the magnificent landscapes which may be seen from high mountains and
besides, the view is attended by most delicious thrills and sensations,
and when a good pilot is in control of the machine the passenger is sure
of a pastime absolutely unequalled for mere joy, aside from further use
or benefit it may have.
While travelling over torrid places like deserts and arid wastes, as
well as burning prairies, the aviator can fly high where the air is cool
and clear and escape the great humidity and the deadly alkali dust.
As for mountain climbing, it will have lost its peculiar fascination
when the aeroplane will be to mountains what the elevator is to high
buildings. The landscape has a greater, far greater beauty; for an
aviator can see a great distance over a level plane. At the height of
one mile you can, theoretically, see ninety-six miles in every direction
and as you ascend the distance to the horizon becomes greater. In hilly
country, one hill hides another when you look from the ground, but when
you are high up in the sky, like the eagle, the mountains all seem to
lose their height and appear flat and naturally your view is
unobstructed.
At great altitudes the sky becomes very deep blue and if you kept going
up you would reach a point finally where the sky became black and the
sun appeared like a ball of fire all by itself as a candle flame does in
the dark.
FOR HEALTH
In these regions there is no dust in the air to diffuse the light and
the air is dry and consequently excellent for persons with lung trouble.
There is even a possibility that physicians will advise patients
suffering from tuberculosis to ascend to these high altitudes, and it is
a fact that Hubert Latham was threatened with this disease, yet enjoyed
good health after taking up aviation, only to be killed by a wild
buffalo, as related. Perhaps this is one of those cases I was looking
for where the aeroplane has saved a life.
METEOROLOGY
An aeroplane will bring quick reports of changes in the weather. Rapid
investigations of conditions which exist in the strata of air at varying
altitudes above the surface of the earth, made by the use of flying
machines, may lend us material aid in understanding those conditions
which are closer to earth.
The study of the weather and meteorological conditions becomes of
greater and greater importance as the progress in the science of
aviation advances. The currents of air that are regular in their
direction of movement, like the trade winds, must be mapped and charted,
for with the aid of a strong wind an aviator can make marvellous speed,
as the speed of the wind is added to the speed of his machine and with
an aeroplane capable of making one hundred miles an hour a favourable
wind of fifty miles an hour would increase the total speed by one half.
For the wind is now no longer an obstacle to flight, and as I have
already noted at the beginning of this chapter, this is one of the most
noticeable advancements in aviation, one that can readily be seen,
understood, and appreciated even by the uninitiated.
THE TENDENCY TOWARD HYDROS
There is always more or less danger in flying over land, and the rougher
its surface the more difficult and dangerous the matter of landing. The
safest place and the most uniform surface is to be found over the water,
and there is much less danger to the aviator flying there than over the
land. The strength of the wind can be easily judged by the height of the
waves, and squalls and puffs can be seen coming so that if they seem to
be very bad you can come down on the surface of the water or skim along
very near it with the greatest safety, if you are in a hydroaeroplane.
Rivers will no doubt become the favourite highways of travel for the
airman, as they were once the only great avenues for the march of
civilisation when the canoe or the rude boat was the only vehicle of
transportation. This brings us naturally to another consideration of the
air-land-water machine.