The most interesting type of flying machine for sport and pleasure is
the hydroaeroplane, and this is undoubtedly the machine with the
greatest possibilities for the future. Indeed, it opens up an entirely
new region of activity, as boundless as the ocean itself, and as various
as the different bodies of water. Built along the lines of a motor boat
with the addition of aeroplane surfaces or horizontal sails, this craft
will be used for much the same purposes as motor boats are now, but in
ways immeasurably more varied and more effective.
The boat portion will be made large and comfortable for pleasure trips
and will be a veritable sportsman's machine which can be run up to a
dock where it can make an easy landing and be tied up when not anchored
out from shore. There will be a comfortable cabin, with cushioned seats
for the navigators, and celluloid windows will be placed in the planes,
so that the view below will not be obstructed. It will be handled in
heavy seas without difficulty.
With such an air and water craft you can go off hunting or fishing; you
can shoot ducks and you will not have to wait until Mr. Duck comes by
but you will be able to reverse the present custom and chase him in his
native element and overtake him, too, as you would a fox on horseback.
By rising to a good height you can see schools of fish or good places on
the bottom to cast your lines for fishing.
Inland lakes will be just the place for the water machine and even among
the mountains the surface of lakes will offer ideal places for landing
and starting, even where the shores are quite out of the question for
safe flying ground.
The construction of the hydroaeroplane, while keeping on the same
general lines of development, will adapt itself to the exigencies
arising from its extended uses. The propeller or propellers will be
protected from the flying spray which might break them for small drops
of water are like bullets out of a gun when hit by the rapidly revolving
blades of the propeller which travel so fast that water might just as
well be solid matter as far as getting out of the way is concerned.
Spray will chip pieces right out of a wooden propeller. Propeller blades
are now covered with tin on the tips for use on the water, and even
metal blades may be better in some respects for this purpose. The
control and rudders are placed on the rear of the long light boat, which
extends further to the rear to accommodate them.
The radius of action in the hydroaeroplane is now from four hundred to
five hundred miles, for the machine can carry a barrel of gasoline, or
fifty-two gallons, and as the engine uses about seven gallons an hour
this would mean about seven hours running at from fifty to sixty miles
an hour in still air; if the wind were blowing twenty-five miles an hour
in the direction in which the machine was flying it would add two
hundred and fifty miles to the distance covered in ten hours.
These machines can be equipped with more surface and they can be
specially built to carry as much as two barrels of fuel, which would
enable them to fly nearly twelve hundred miles if the wind were steady.
They can also fly in very high winds up to almost one hundred miles an
hour, which is the speed at which some of the higher air currents flow,
as proved by the flight of balloons. This would of course tremendously
increase the distance covered. All this is possible to-day and it seems
that the aeroplane has already done every thing possible to be done on
land. Bleriot crossed the English channel, Chavez crossed the Alps, and
Rodgers crossed the American continent, passing over the Rocky
Mountains, and making over four thousand miles in the air.
The only thing now left is to cross the ocean. An attempt has been made
to cross the Atlantic in a dirigible balloon. You all remember how
Walter Wellman flew out over the ocean from Atlantic City in one of the
largest dirigible balloons ever constructed here, the "America,"
remained three days in the air, and covered over twelve hundred miles,
even though his motors were running only a part of the time.
He was fortunate enough to be rescued and brought back to land by the
steamer Trent. And nothing daunted, his chief engineer Melville Vaniman
constructed another large dirigible the "Akron," on which he met such an
untimely end.
Another entrant in the world race to cross the ocean is Dr. Gans who,
with the backing of the German government, plans to start in his
dirigible balloon the "Suchard" from the Island of Teneriffe, one of the
Azores, to attempt the crossing of the Southern Atlantic. He will
endeavour to be the "Columbus of the air" and be wafted above the waves
by the selfsame winds which always blow in that part of the ocean to the
West Indies, just as the first man to accomplish this passage was driven
over the surface of the sea with his small ships. Such great enterprises
bid fair to embolden aviators in their aeroplanes to try to win the
laurels due the first to be successful.
Many aeronauts and aviators seem to be focussing their minds at the
present moment on this great problem. It seems always a condition
necessary to precede the accomplishment of any great thing that popular
thought should be centred upon it; then some one rises to the occasion
and the thing is done. There is no doubt that such a flight is possible
to-day, just as the flight across the United States was possible in even
the early stages of aviation. For the machine and motor which actually
accomplished this trip were almost the same as the very first models;
but it took the man to do it.
It will no doubt necessitate a double machine, and will need two pilots,
one to relieve the other, and possibly several engines to ensure against
stopping of the motor. Mr. Grahame-White has predicted that within
twenty years we will be flying across the Atlantic in fifteen hours upon
regular schedule between London and New York. Mr. Grahame-White once
even went so far as to say that the ocean in a few years would only be
used "to bathe in" but I think he might have added "and to fish in," and
left us that consolation!
Perhaps, backed by government aid, and with the co-operation of their
naval vessels, a chain of ships could be stretched across the ocean,
which would make it possible even now to fly with safety over the
distance between Nova Scotia and Ireland, about two thousand miles.
Already, Mr. Atwood who flew from St. Louis to New York, and Mr. James
V. Martin, have seriously planned such a trip. Mr. Martin has submitted
his plans to the Royal Aero Club of England. He proposes to keep in the
track of steamers and to endeavour to secure the most favourable wind
conditions possible. His machine is designed to have large floats and
five powerful engines.
Storms pass across the ocean with great rapidity and a
fifty-mile-an-hour wind would so increase the speed of an aeroplane as
materially to help it on its journey.
The accomplishment of this great flight over the ocean will no doubt
mean great things for the progress of the world but it also will require
further development along the lines of a flying boat, where a
substantial vessel will be provided, able to stand rough sea and yet
able to rise and skim the surface of the water.
Following up the success of my new hydroaeroplane, I have taken great
interest in the idea of a flight across the Atlantic Ocean by aeroplane.
I consider the flight possible, and I am willing to undertake the
construction of a machine for the purpose, provided any of the aviators
now considering flight wish me to do so. I am not prepared to give the
details of such a machine as would be required to make the flight, but I
simply express the opinion that the feat is possible and that under
certain conditions I will undertake to furnish the equipment.