Air power, naval, military, commercial

Frontispied

CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE

Elliot & Fry.

AIR POWER

NAVAL, MILITARY, COMMERCIAL

BY

CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE
11

AND

HARRY HARPER

AUTHORS OF

'THE STORY OF THE AEROPLANE," "THE AEROPLANE, PAST, PRESENT, AND
FUTURE," "HEROES OF THE AIR," "WITH THE AIRMEN," "THE AERO-
PLANE IN WAR," "AVIATION," "THE AIR KING'S TREASURE,"

"AIRCRAFT IN THE GREAT WAR," "THE INVISIBLE WAR-
PLANE," "LEARNING TO FLY," ETC.

TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD

1917

<\

PRINTED IH GREAT BKITAIM B*
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,

BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E.,
AND BUNOAY, SUFFOLK.

PREFACE

THE greatest lesson of the war is this:
that in the future a nation which dominates
the aerial highways will dominate also those
of the land and sea ; that a dominion of the
air must mean, ultimately, the dominion of

the world.

CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE.
HARRY HARPER.

London,

February 23, 1917.

372881

CONTENTS

PART I
THE WAR BY AIR I

PART II
PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 51

PART III
OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR . . . . lig

PART IV
FACTORS OF SAFETY 136

PART V
POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR . . - 1/7

PART VI
LAWS OF THE AIR 197

PART VII
THE COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT . . . .238

VI

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Depicting various stages in the construction of a modern-type aeroplane,
secured specially for this book from photographs taken in the factory of the
Grahame-White Aviation Company, Ltd., The London Aerodrome, Hendon,
N.W., by Mr. F. N. Birkett, 97 Percy Road, Shepherd's Bush, London, W. The
frontispiece by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.]

Facing
tare
CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE . . . Frontispiece

IN THE LABORATORY—

1. A MICROSCOPIC TEST 12

2. A GENERAL VIEW 30

3. A TEST TO DESTRUCTION ..*... 48

THE WOOD-WORKING DEPARTMENT—

1. A GENERAL VIEW 64

2. SAWING A LENGTH OF SILVER SPRUCE . . . 78

3. THE SPINDLING MACHINES 90

4. THE FRAMEWORK OF A WING Io8

THE METAL-WORKING SHOPS—

1. WELDING THE STEEL FRAME OF A TAIL-PLANE . 122

2. SOME OF THE LATHES 128

THE ERECTING SHOP—

1. A GENERAL VIEW 138

2. MACHINES PARTLY ASSEMBLED 154

DOPING AND VARNISHING A MAIN-PLANE . . -172
THE NACELLE OR BODY OF AN AEROPLANE . . 186

A GRAHAME-WHITE TYPE 18 BIPLANE—

1. SIDE VIEW 204

2. VIEW FROM THE REAR, WINGS FOLDED . . . 2l8

vii

viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Facing page

A SINGLE-SEATED SCOUTING-TYPE BIPLANE . .224
AN INHERENTLY-STABLE BIPLANE (THE B. E. 2C) . 240

A RAIDING-TYPE MACHINE—

1. SIDE VIEW 252

2. SEEN FROM THE FRONT 258

AIR POWER

PART I

THE WAR BY AIR

SOME CONCLUSIONS, WITH THEIR PROBABLE
INFLUENCE ON THE FUTURE

I

The Offensive

IN viewing the lessons of this war, as they are
likely to throw light on the future of the aero-
plane, either as a vehicle for transport or as a
weapon, it must be understood that this cam-
paign by air, in the sequence of its phases, offers
little or no guide to the trend of an air war of
the future. The next great war, should it come,
will begin by air where this leaves off; and all
its subsequent stages, so far as any one air service
is concerned, must be governed by the success or
failure of that service in its first offensive by air —
an offensive which, following instantly on a com-
mencement of hostilities, will need to be delivered
with a maximum possible force and speed.

"Strike quickly; strike hard" — this must be
B

2 AIR POWER

the watchword in aerial war. There can be no
question of playing a waiting game, of staving
off an enemy's offensive while one is making
preparations which should have been made before
a war. Everything must be staked on a rapid
blow — a blow so staggering that the enemy
cannot recover from it.

It was not until after two years of fighting, not
until the summer campaign of 1916, that this
war by air reached definitely the phase which,
in theory, should have marked its commence-
ment. This was the stage in which one frying
corps, by constant fighting, was able to force its
opponent to act constantly upon the defensive —
driving and keeping him behind his own lines;
attacking his machines with armed patrols as
they rose from their aerodromes and before they
could gain altitude; breaking up his squadrons
of scouting and fighting craft when they at-
tempted a reconnaissance in force : securing for
themselves, indeed, such a mastery of the air,
not only above their own lines but also above
those of the enemy, that they were able to carry
out without more than spasmodic interference,
thanks to the screens provided by their fighting
craft, all those daily tasks which form the routine
of flying in war — scouting, strategical and
tactical ; the photographing from above of enemy
positions ; the constant range-finding for the
artillery; and the formation of machines into
squadrons, for bomb-dropping raids, so as to
ttack the communications of the enemy, where-

THE WAR BY AIR 3

ever such an attack may prove most damaging
to him.

The air service which can do all this work
successfully from day to day, and at the same
time prevent the enemy's fl>ing corps from doing
likewise, is carrying out in actual practice what
was no more than a theory before the war : to
blind your opponent, that is to say, by air, while
retaining yourself the power of aerial vision —
the power to scout constantly over and beyond
his lines, and the power also of dropping bombs
on his railways, supply depots, and munition
factories.

II
An Incomplete Power

But in this war, at the moment it began, no
decisive action was possible by air. There were
not sufficient pilots or machines — to say nothing
of the land personnel and general organisation —
to permit aerial fighting on anything save a
haphazard and inconclusive scale. No fighting
aeroplanes, of anything like an effective type,
existed indeed at the outbreak of war ; though the
courage and ingenuity of individual pilots, who
went up in scouting machines and fought with
rifles and revolvers, enabled them to wage a
sporadic and guerilla form of war; in which,
occasionally, when they could get to sufficiently
close quarters, they crippled and brought down
enemy machines. There was no possibility, how-
ever, in this first and critical stage of the war,

4 AIR POWER

when the armies were mobilising and taking up
their positions, of one air service being able to
blind the other, and so rob the enemy head-
quarters of its news by air. Save for haphazard
contests, and the occasional bringing down of a
machine by land-fire, the air lay free and un-
contested to both the flying services; to the
aeroplanes of the Germans, that is to say, as
well as to those of the Allies. Hostile scouts
watched, and reported from day to day, the chief
movements of our armies; and the airmen of
the Allies did the same, in regard to the main
dispositions of the enemy. Both sides scouted.
Neither could prevent the other from scouting.
Thus we, and the enemy, were robbed at the
beginning of this war of that full and complete
power which should result from the use of air-
craft— the power first to defeat your enemy by
air, to scatter and disorganise his service, to
blindfold him right at the outbreak of hostilities ;
and then to profit, all over the field of war, and
in the movements and dispositions of your
troops, by your power to see constantly by air,
and as constantly to prevent the enemy from
seeing.

It is difficult enough, with the comparatively
slow movement of a vast modern army, to strike
any blow that is in the nature of a complete surprise.
But all hope must be abandoned of so doing if
your enemy is free to send his aeroplanes above
you, wherever and whenever he chooses. If you
can prevent him doing this, if you can establish

THE WAR BY AIR 5

such a screen — after a first victory by air — as he
finds it impossible to penetrate, and if your cavalry
screen on the land is effective also — then, and then
only, can one hope to effect a surprise.

The factors which governed the use of aircraft
as scouts were, in the opening stages of the war,
such as to prevent one from forming any very
definite conclusions. Owing to a lack of craft,
scouting was more or less intermittent, instead
of being regular. In areas where a number of
machines had been concentrated, the troop move-
ments of the enemy were reported admirably;
but in other districts, owing to the fact that
flying could not be systematised, movements
were made which escaped detection by air.
Where country is wooded, or otherwise difficult
from the point of view of the observer, it may
be necessary to send several machines over some
given route before information is obtained which
is adequate and reliable. To trust to one pair
of eyes is often inadvisable — especially when the
owner of these eyes has, through an insufficiency
of aircraft, to make a long and tiring observa-
tion over a wide tract of land. And there is
the human element to be reckoned with. Some
men are by instinct observant; they see just the
things it is important for them to see. Others,
though lacking nothing in training, are less suc-
cessful : they remain mediocre^ that is to say.
Even if you send a man up in an aeroplane, and
give him the view as though from a mountain-
top, he must have the instinct and keenness

6 AIR POWER

of a scout if he is to make the best use of his
opportunities.

Aircraft as machines for reconnaissance were
on their trial in this war — the first big war in
which they had been employed. And though
they suffered in the early stages from a lack not
only of numbers but of organisation, they did
work which was invaluable, and which showed
what they could accomplish when machines were
available in more adequate numbers (as they
were later in the campaign) and when their use
had been systematised by experience.

Ill
Aerial Fighting

It will not serve our purpose, here, to examine
in detail, or in chronological order, the progress
of the campaign by air. We are concerned merely
with large general issues, and more particularly
with the influence on the future of such lessons
as may be learned already from this campaign.
One may, for example, take the question of speed
in flight, which is of outstanding importance, and
trace its influence in aerial fighting.

It was shown, even in the earliest stages of the
war, that aerial fighting was to be something more
than a mere figment of the imagination ; and
this even though experts had contended it would
not be worth while for hostile air services to
fight each other; that, in the vastness of the air
space, such contests would prove inconclusive;

THE WAR BY AIR 7

and that the main business of the aviator was,
after all, to scout and not to fight.

Before the war, aerial fighting had been con-
sidered no more than speculatively ; in the ab-
stract rather than in the concrete. It had been
argued that it would be years before aircraft would
gain sufficient power, either in engine-power or
armament, to render them in any way formid-
able as aerial fighters. And another fact — one
which helps to explain the unpreparedness of the
flying corps for fighting — was that the military
conditions which have actually prevailed during
this campaign, and which have affected so pro-
foundly the use of aircraft, had not been accurately
forecasted. Armies were regarded, before this
war, as being essentially mobile forces; and it
was assumed that aircraft, when on reconnais-
sance, would be engaged mainly in long-distance
flights over wide areas — work which would not
bring hostile machines into more than occasional
contact, and which would be unlikely to cause
any general fighting. The long periods of trench
warfare which have been a feature of this cam-
paign, with armies immobile from month to
month, and with aircraft working ceaselessly
over the same restricted areas, being brought thus
into daily conflict with enemy machines, had not
been in any way foreseen. Nor, for the matter
of that, had the influence on aerial fighting of
artillery-control by aeroplane.

The Germans, owing to an initial superiority
in numbers, and to diligent practice before the

8 AIR POWER

war, were able to institute immediately, and very
appreciably to the advantage of their artillery-
fire, a system of co-operation between their air-
craft and the batteries behind their lines. Hostile
aeroplanes, flying in constantly over our trenches,
signalled their positions to the German gunners.
In its early form, this method of co-operation
was effected by the dropping of smoke bombs
from aeroplanes when they were above the target
to be fired upon. Another method was for the
pilot to make his machine turn or dive in some
unmistakable fashion, and thus convey a signal
to those who were watching him. Messages, from
an observer to his battery, were also dropped in
bags, to which coloured streamers were attached so
that they might be easily seen. But the method
of communication which gave best results — and
was adopted as soon as specially-equipped craft
were available — was by wireless telegraphy.

It was the artillery control of the German
airmen, which they persisted in despite the land-
fire that was directed against them, which led to
the first of the aerial fighting.

IV
Guerilla Tactics

Our aviators, as well as those of the French,
undeterred by the fact that there were prac-
tically no armed aeroplanes, at this early stage of
the war, which were in any way worthy of the
description, ascended without hesitation in scout-

THE WAR BY AIR 9

ing machines, taking up as their weapons rifles
and revolvers, and attacked at close quarters the
range-finding German aeroplanes ; seeking, indeed,
to do what the land-guns had failed to do, and
this was either to destroy these range-finders or
drive them away. And these pilots of ours, by
their courage and promptitude in this emergency,
were able to give an indication — the first of
many, as time was to prove — of the capacity for
improvisation, and the spirit of adaptability
which, apart from any question of bravery, have
been displayed so conspicuously by the air services
of the Allies.

Lack of Armed Machines

The lack of fighting aeroplanes was due mainly
to the fact that, before the war, designers and
builders had been concerned mainly with scouting
craft. And why this was so may be readily under-
stood. Here, in reconnaissance, la}7 the first and
most important use for aeroplanes ; one the value
of which could be gauged accurately. Peace
manoeuvres, for instance, as well as a tentative
use of aircraft under war conditions in Tripoli and
the Balkans, had left no doubt as to the value
of aerial scouting. But no light at all had, as
yet, been shed on the question of aerial fighting,
which was regarded indeed as a problem of the
more distant future. Constructors were, besides,
in the period just before the war, occupied mainly

10 AIR POWER

in building scouting machines. What was revealed
by such experiments as were made with armed
craft in the years which preceded the war, stating
the case generally, was that an aeroplane when
it was equipped with a gun lost so much of its
speed, owing to the extra weight it had to carry,
and the added head resistance, that it would have
little chance of overtaking, or engaging effectually,
the machines which it would be one of its chief
duties to attack ; the scouts, that is to say, which
an enemy would send in reconnaissance above its
lines. This is an important point. Armed craft
must have speed and must be built to manoeuvre
rapidly. If they are rendered slow-flying and
sluggish by a weight of armament, their pilots
may be unable to get them into the position
from which their gunners can do effective work.

The inability, at this period, to build armed
aeroplanes which should be fast in flight, was,
apart from the fact that no very vigorous efforts
were made to grapple with the question, due chiefly
to a lack of aero-engines of sufficient power.

VI
Fast Graft for Fighting

Our aviators, undeterred by the want of aero-
planes built specially for fighting, chose light,
single-seated scouting craft, and used these in
their attacks on the enemy's artillery-control
machines. These single-seated aeroplanes, set-
ting aside for the moment the skill and courage

THE WAR BY AIR 11

of their pilots, played an important part in our
first successes by air. And the chief value of
such aeroplanes, of which we should have had
more, lay in the rapidity of their flight. They
were, indeed, the fruit of our having realised —
though realisation had not been followed by a
sufficiently vigorous action — the main qualities
of an aeroplane for use in war, which are speed
in flight, allied to a power for rapid climbing and
manoeuvring.

One should mention that these single-seated
machines had been designed not for fighting, but
for rapid, general reconnaissance; to fly over
some enemy territory, gain a general impression
as to positions and numbers, and then to return
quickly to headquarters. Speed, in obtaining
news by air, is frequently of extreme value.
Speed, also, enables a scout to elude the enemy's
armed patrols. Speed renders it a more difficult
target, also, for land guns, and enables it to run,
with the least risk of injury, the gauntlet of an
enemy's fire. Speed, too, permits a machine to
make such headway against an adverse wind
that it can carry out some errand even when
conditions are unfavourable; while, in an aerial
combat, the pilot whose craft has the greater
speed can manoeuvre most successfully for position,
and can force an enemy to conform to his tactics
— choosing his own moment and method for a
swift, accurately-timed blow. Individual pilots,
the men who have to run the risks of war, prefer
almost always a fast machine. This is what they

12 AIR POWER

ask for — speed. They know, from experience,
its value when they are above the enemy's lines.
But in writing thus of speed one should not, of
course, decry the value of such slower-flying
machines as are employed for various forms of
detailed observation. They, like other craft, play
their useful part. Certain tasks must be under-
taken for which high speed would prove un-
suitable; but in the main it is speed which is
invaluable, and must be striven for.

Our aviators, flying their single-seated machines,
found themselves opposed, as a rule, by German
aeroplanes carrying two occupants ; machines
which had been built not for speed, but for re-
liability and safety. The Germans, in the years
just preceding the war, had occupied themselves
in creating as large a service as possible of purely
scouting-type machines. They had endeavoured,
more or less, to standardise aeroplanes which
would fly for considerable distances without
alighting, and which were inherently stable. And
such stability meant that they could be flown,
even in high winds, by pilots of no more than
average skill. These machines were admirable
for their purpose ; but they were distinctly slower
in flight, and less easily manoeuvred, than the
fast, single-seated machines in which our aviators
attacked them.

Germany had been slow in a sense to recognise
the value of the aeroplane; she was more con-
cerned in pioneer days with the construction
of large airships. It was not really until the

THE WAR BY AIR 13

autumn of 1909, when aeroplanes were used
with success in the French manoeuvres, and pilots
made long flights across country, that the German
authorities began to interest themselves keenly
in the heavier-than-air machine. And, even so,
it was not until a year or so before the war
that high-pressure measures were adopted which
began to produce aeroplanes in hundreds, and
which sent large batches of young officers to the
schools. Travellers who returned from Germany,
particularly during 1913, brought striking tales
of the rate at which aeroplanes were being built
and delivered, and of the pressure which was
being maintained at the schools. This increase
of activity was significant : it showed that
military and political Germany, seeking to read
the course of events within the next few years,
had decided that at almost any moment their
chance for a blow might come.

Deliberate aerial fighting, persisted in from day
to day, was a surprise undoubtedly to the Ger-
mans, as it was to others. And it was surprising,
too, in its results. Though many combats were
inconclusive, still our aviators, out-manoeuvring
their antagonists as their machines drew together,
managed to cripple or shoot down an appreciable
number. And even in cases where they could
not damage an enemy craft, or cause it to descend,
they so harassed its occupants with their bold
attacks that they were prevented frequently from
co-operating with their guns, or from securing
any information in their scouting flights.

14 AIR POWER

VII
Superiority of our Pilots

One should note, at this juncture, a fact which
became significant. Having once been out-fought,
though only in guerilla fighting, and on no scale
that could be described as decisive, the German
air service — when viewed as a certain number of
human units, rather than as an organisation —
appeared unable to throw off the influence of these
first and unquestioned reverses. The aviators
of the Allies were able in fact to establish, almost
at once, a marked ascendancy. Not that the
German air service had been rendered impotent ;
such was far from being the case. But their
operations by air ceased in a general sense to be
offensive.

Our preliminary advantage in fast machines
was not sufficient in itself, though in the early
stages it was extremely useful, to account for
the success of our pilots in such a large propor-
tion of their contests. That the superiority of
our aviators was human, indeed, and not me-
chanical, was shown when the Germans, quick to
realise the necessity of providing themselves with
fast-flying armed machines, reaped the reward
of a pre-war encouragement of their engine in-
dustry. What the Germans had actually done,
for several years prior to the war, had been to
adapt, and render suitable for use in aeroplanes,
the racing motor-car engines of which they had
developed several very well-known types. And

THE WAR BY AIR 15

as a consequence of this forethought they were
able to obtain, immediately they required them,
motors that permitted them to build aeroplanes
which were for a time formidable; machines
which, thanks to the power of their engines, and
even when carrying a pilot and two passengers
— both of whom operated machine-guns — would
fly rapidly and climb fast. But even with such
machines as these, which were for a time superior
to any we possessed — and this through our lack
of high-power motors — the Germans waged what
was essentially a defensive form of warfare;
patrolling mainly behind their own lines, and
penetrating far less frequently above ours than
we over theirs. Our pilots, indeed, though they
were called on frequently, during the time the
Germans had some advantage in fighting machines,
to attack craft armed more powerfully, and in
some cases flying more rapidly, than their own,
still managed to win combats and to carry out
their daily work by air; though the Germans,
operating as they were defensively with their
patrols, inflicted for a time many casualties among
our scouting craft.

It should be remembered that an air service,
if it is to work with high efficiency, must do the
greater part of its flying not over its own territory
but above that of the enemy. When scouting,
photographing, range-finding, or dropping bombs,
aircraft must run the risk of flying constantly
above hostile ground. This means that casualties
are unavoidable, and that they may occasionally

16 AIR POWER

be heavy. The point of view from which they
must be regarded is this : does the work that is
being done by air justify the losses which are en-
tailed— every effort having been made, naturally,
to minimise them? One can scarcely expect re-
sults of a high military significance without having
to pay some price for them.

The advantage of the human factor, of the
skill and initiative of the men in the machines,
was ours from the first; and this will be an
advantage for us, too, not only in this war, but
in any future war, and also in the commercial
development of the aeroplane. The Briton has
taken to the air, and to the handling of aircraft,
with an altogether remarkable facility — with a
facility so inherent, and at the same time so
exceptional, that it won the admiration, away
back in pioneer days, of such a fine judge of an
aviator as the late Wilbur Wright.

VIII
Temperament and Tradition

The temperament of the Briton, which has
sent him adventuring through the world for
centuries, and combines judgment and shrewd-
ness with a spirit that is unquenchable, proves
almost ideal for flying. It contains, for instance,
an extremely rare mingling of those two qualities
which are more valuable than any others — courage
and caution. The Englishman, one should note,
makes a fine horseman; and horsemanship and

THE WAR BY AIR 17

airmanship have certain points in common. The
fine horseman, for example, is conspicuous in
his riding for what is called " hands " — for the
suppleness and power with which he controls his
horse; and in the manipulation of an aeroplane
there is a constant need for delicacy and for
strength, for precision and for swiftness of action,
and yet not for abruptness — for a hand of steel
in a velvet glove.

It is a fact also that the Briton, when flying
either in peace or war, does so with a personal
and sporting zest which is almost unknown, for
instance, to the German. The latter — one writes
of course generally — flies in a spirit of duty. But
the young Englishman flies an aeroplane as he
would ride a horse to hounds or in a steeplechase,
or sail a yacht in a freshening wind. It is sport
to him — an adventure; something to be enjoyed
rather than to be done as a duty. And it is this
spirit, allied to his temperamental advantages —
to the caution and judgment that leaven his
daring — which render him invincible in the air;
as he has been, for centuries, on the sea.

The Briton has qualities, innate in him for
centuries, which have rendered him supreme as
a seaman. He is a born sailor, and has the
traditions behind him of a seafaring ancestry.
And much that appertains to the sea appertains
also to the air — a knowledge of winds and weather,
a faculty for navigation, an instinctive alertness
of mind, and the power of a quick, unflurried
decision. Flying is ideal work for sailors. There-

18 AIR POWER

fore the whole tradition of the British nation,
with its great sea history, tends to produce fine
airmen. And it should be gratifying to us to
think that, however keen may be the race for
aerial supremacy in the future, we shall be able
to produce men of the best kind to handle the
machines which will be built by our constructors.
Our ocean supremacy is due largely to our magnifi-
cent seamen ; and we shall be able to find the men
who will give us the supremacy of the air.

IX
The German

As to the German aviator, one may say that
his military training, with its rigid discipline and
suppression of individuality, is adverse to the
production of a really first-class pilot ; one who
must, above all else, be a man of individuality,
ready to act promptly in an emergency, and to
rely on his own judgment. The German system
has produced a large number of aviators who
have shown a high average of skill, and who
have been thoroughly competent both as pilots
and observers when on reconnaissance. And if
nothing more than this had been required of
them, they would have emerged with entire credit
from the ordeal of war. But under the test of
aerial fighting, a test as severe as one can imagine
both of brain and nerve, they have been found
wanting not in courage but in initiative ; in that
mental elasticity which, even in moments of the

THE WAR BY AIR 19

acutest strain, has rarely failed the British or
the French. Exceptions to this rule, as in the
case of the German champions Immelmann and
Bolcke, go merely to prove it. The German has
shown himself a good pilot, but nowhere near as
good a fighter.

X
The Struggle for Supremacy

As operations by air, in common with those
by land, became steadily more intensive, fighting
grew daily more frequent ; and this being so our
superiority in men, in the human factor, became
more and more conspicuous — particularly when,
as time went on, we were better provided with
machines, and with the ground organisation and
personnel which go so far towards victory in
modern war. It was not, however, until the
summer campaign of 1916 that the Allies were
able to concentrate successfully on a struggle for
air supremacy — for a supremacy, that is to say,
which should be constant rather than inter-
mittent, and should extend over the whole of
the battle area.

In this air offensive, pursued as indefatigably
as that on land, we attacked the enemy in
squadrons, giving him as little rest as possible
from day to day. Such machines as he en-
deavoured to send in reconnaissance above our
lines we engaged promptly ; while our own patrols,
flying above his lines, swooped down on enemy
craft which could be seen ascending. We also

20 AIR POWER

dropped bombs constantly on German aerodromes,
destroying sheds and war material.

What this offensive yielded, in our power to
invade the enemy's air space, and to prevent
him from invading ours, may be gauged from a
short and yet significant extract from the Head-
quarters report of September 18, 1916 —

" During the past week, in the battle area, only
fourteen hostile aeroplanes have been reported as
crossing our lines, while our machines have made
between 2000 and 3000 flights across the enemy's
lines."

XI
Speed and Striking Power

What needs emphasis is the fact that such a
result, amounting from the military point of view
to a mastery of the air, had been achieved only
by the fiercest and most protracted aerial fight-
ing ; also that the aeroplane which proved of most
value, during this determined offensive, was the
machine which combined successfully the attri-
butes of speed and striking power. In aerial
warfare, already, a lesson is being taught which
is familiar to naval strategists. In the naval
actions of this war, for instance, the vessels which
have proved most effective are those which have
been able to steam fast, and, when they have
brought their enemy to action, deal rapid and
heavy blows.

But in designing any war craft which shall be

THE WAR BY AIR 21

both powerful and mobile, a very careful dis-
crimination is required. Armament spells weight,
and weight tells against speed. The necessity for
combining these two qualities must, therefore,
result in a compromise. A certain amount of
speed must be sacrificed to armament, and a
certain amount of armament to speed — the aim
being to have vessels which at any given time
are faster, and are armed more powerfully, than
those possessed by an enemy. That is the naval
ideal; and it must form also, in the future, the
ideal of the air service.

XII
One Machine, One Task

In designing aeroplanes for use in war it is
unwise, as it would be in naval construction, to
endeavour to produce one craft which shall carry
out a number of separate tasks. A machine so
designed, though it may be generally efficient in
a moderate sense, will not prove particularly good
in any of its roles. In this war, for example, there
has been a tendency, with theoretical science play-
ing so large a part in design, to seek to embody too
many different qualities in one machine. What
one requires in war is not an aeroplane which will
do a number of things fairly well, but a craft
which will do one thing superlatively well — a
craft so specialised for its task that, when it is
brought into conflict with some machine built
by the enemy for this particular purpose, it will

22 AIR POWER

be certain of a definite superiority. It is un-
reasonable, for instance, to expect that a machine
which acts as a scout should prove also a good
fighter. It should not, as a matter of fact, be
necessary for the scout to fight at all. The
fighting machines which co-operate with the
scouts, and act as escorts for them, should so
clear the air that the observing machines can
do their work uninterrupted; or, assuming that
a scout is on occasion attacked by a hostile armed
patrol, it should be able to escape by reason of
its speed.

The policy of an air scout, as of a scout on
land, must be to work quickly and unobtrusively ;
and when the air scout is detected, and things
become too hot for him, he must trust mainly to
his speed to extricate himself — as the land scout
trusts to the speed of a car or of a horse, or of his
own legs. The air scout, if he waits to fight, may
be winged and brought to earth; and then the
news he may have gleaned will be lost to his
headquarters. His purpose must be first to
obtain news, and then to get back with it : he
must run away rather than fight.

The aim in the construction of war craft should
be to design one given machine for one given
task, and to make it as efficient as is humanly
possible for that one task. It is not feasible
now, nor will it be in the future, to produce any
machine which shall represent the ideal, or any-
where near the ideal, in more than one respect.
In a modern navy there are dreadnoughts, battle-

THE WAR BY AIR 23

cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers, torpedo-boats,
and submarines, and each of these craft has its
specified task.

XIII
Aerial Scouts, Cruisers, and "Dreadnoughts"

In an air fleet, so far as the immediate future
is concerned, the need is indicated for several
machines of a specialised type. Importance
should be attached always, of course, to the
production of high-speed scouts — machines cap-
able of flying considerable distances without
alighting, and at high average speeds. It should
be the aim of each great nation to make their
machines of this particular type the most efficient
in the world. Observing machines are also needed,
of course, for detailed reconnaissance; and for
co-operating with artillery.

Then machines will be required of what may
be called the cruiser type, in which speed and
radius of action are prime considerations, but
which are sufficiently well-armed in addition
to render them formidable. Probably several
machines of this type will need to be developed,
differing in speed, radius of action, and armament.

Sound discernment will be required in deciding
the compromise which shall be arrived at between
the claims of speed, armament, and radius of
action. A machine will have to fly so many
miles without need for alighting; it will require
to maintain a high average speed ; and, when the

24 AIR POWER

moment for striking comes, it will have to hit
hard and often, and at long range.

There must be special coast-defence craft;
machines which, seeing that their radius of
action can be limited, should be armed very
powerfully, and should prove dangerous adver-
saries, owing to their speed and power, for any
raiding or invading craft — heavily-loaded as these
would need to be in order to travel long distances
to and from their bases.

And from such machines one moves, naturally,
to the battle-plane proper ; an aircraft which is
as powerful as it is possible, at any given time,
for science and construction to make it; in fact
an aerial super-dreadnought.

XIV
Safety and Efficiency

There is a point in this connection which should
be noted specially. A desire to build machines
which have high factors of structural safety must
not obscure the prime need of obtaining the
greatest possible war efficiency. Here we may
learn a lesson from the war. A tendency has
existed, undoubtedly, to insist on factors of
structural safety so high that dead weight has
had to be carried to such an extent that it has
prejudiced the speed and manoeuvring capacity of
the machine, and also its load-carrying capacity ;
to say nothing of the head resistance which is
caused inevitably by a large amount of wiring.

THE WAR BY AIR 25

A constructional strength many times greater
than is needed to withstand the ordinary strains
of flight can only be secured, in fact, at the
expense of weight and speed. Such a safeguarding
of the aviator, when he is flying in peace, is of
course admirable. The disadvantages it entails —
a certain loss of speed, of general efficiency, and
of ascensional and carrying power — may under
conditions of peace flying be very reasonably
incurred. In ordinary flying, in fact, the first
consideration should be the safety of the aviator.
But it is quite another thing in war. One might,
for example, have the safest machine in the
world, one so strong that it would survive any
structural strain, no matter how abnormal; and
yet this machine, meeting in combat some craft
which, though its inferior in structural strength,
was capable of flying a certain number of miles
an hour faster, might be out-manoeuvred and
shot down, and its occupants killed, simply
through its failure to fly sufficiently fast, or to
manoeuvre with sufficient rapidity.

War flying is essentially dangerous, and can
never be anything else. This fact, though a
platitude, needs constantly to be remembered.
An aviator must be willing to take risks in war,
and do so constantly, that would be altogether
unreasonable in times of peace. His dominant
thought is not his own safety. He flies with the
desire to strike down an antagonist, to hit if
possible the first blow, to make his onslaught
with the maximum possible effect. If a gain in

26 AIR POWER

structural safety, in the mere passage of a machine
through the air, and in relation to the strain
imposed on it by the wind, or by the handling of
its pilot, depreciates the efficiency of the machine
as a fighting craft, then some of this margin of
safety must be sacrificed.

What must be striven for is a machine which,
while it is not heavy, will still be sufficiently
strong — owing to the skill employed in its design
and construction, and to the care taken in the
choice of materials — to withstand only such
strains, under war conditions, as experience proves
it essential to guard against.

The governing aim, always, must not be to
save men's lives but to win the war. With air-
craft, for example, the vital consideration is not
so much to protect a machine or its occupants
against an enemy's fire, as so to equip the craft
that it will out-manoeuvre an antagonist, and hit
him with a shell before he can retaliate.

XV
Armoured Craft

The armouring of aircraft, to protect them
against hostile fire, involves questions of con-
siderable difficulty, remembering how weight tells
in the air. Until experience had been gained in
this war, little or nothing was done to armour
machines. What was found, when practical ex-
perience had been obtained, was that aviators
who had to pass through zones of fire were killed

THE WAR BY AIR 27

sometimes, or wounded, by bullets which struck
upward through the floor-boards of their machines.
On reconnaissance, for example, when there was a
mist, or low-lying clouds, pilots needed to descend
so near the ground when they were scouting that
they came within range of rifles and machine-
guns. Bullets through their planes were ineffec-
tive, unless spars were so weakened by punctures
that they collapsed. The sustaining surfaces
themselves — the fabric of the planes — might be
riddled with shot without bringing a machine to
earth. But hits in the mechanism might stop
the motor, pierce a petrol tank, or sever control
wires; and there was also the definite risk that
a bullet, or bullets, penetrating the hull, might
reach the occupants as they sat in their seats.

What this led to was the introduction of thin
sheets of bullet-proof steel below the seats of the
pilot and observer. And after this, as aeroplanes
became available — owing to increases in engine-
power — which had a greater weight-lifting capa-
city, the armouring was continued up round the
sides of the hull, so as to protect the occupants
of a machine, when they were fighting in the air,
from bullets fired at them horizontally.

The aeroplane is, however, an essentially vulner-
able machine — to any direct hit, that is to say,
from a shell or heavy missile; and it is never
likely to be anything else. All that it seems
possible to do, either now or in the future, is to
take what may be called the vitals of a machine —
its occupants, engine, fuel tanks, and controls —

28 AIR POWER

and protect these from anything save direct hits
from shells. It will not be feasible, even in the
future, to build aeroplanes which are armoured
heavily. In the air, a medium of such small
density, light systems of construction are essential
if craft are to remain efficient.

An aeroplane, when it is hit direct by a shell,
may generally be reckoned out of action. It
is unreasonable to expect that a machine with
widespread, delicately constructed wings, can be
rendered invulnerable to shell-fire. One may,
for example, take the case of a direct hit from a
shell on the wing of a machine. Such a wing,
even when metal takes the place of wood, must
remain vulnerable ; its construction cannot make
it otherwise. But even when one of its planes
was hit and damaged it might be possible, of
course, for a machine to continue in flight. What
is more probable, though, is that if one plane was
damaged at all seriously this would involve injury
also to struts and other gear, imperilling thereby
the strength of other planes, and rendering a
machine uncontrollable.

In aerial battles of the future, when machines
attack each other with powerful guns, it is reason-
able to assume that a large percentage of craft
will be put quickly out of action. A vessel on
the water, even when it is badly hit, or its
machinery so damaged that it loses the power
of movement, can still put up something of a
fight. But an aircraft when winged at all seriously
is likely to become uncontrollable; and this will

THE WAR BY AIR 29

mean that it must abandon the conflict and
descend.

A protective measure it is very necessary to
take — one which, while implying no great weight,
must add appreciably to the safety of an airman
when he is under fire — is to duplicate his con-
trols. Machines will fly on, often, when struts
have been broken : even when main spars have
been shot through. But if a pilot's controls
are severed, and they are not in duplicate or
triplicate, then he is helpless.

Apart from the duplication of wires, a factor
which spells safety is the arrangement of the
controls of a two-seated aeroplane so that either
the pilot or passenger can take charge of it in-
dependently of each other. In war flying, when a
pilot is killed or wounded while above hostile
territory, and the craft has dual control, the
observer can place himself in command, and bring
it back to the safety of his lines.

There has been a tendency among pilots to
object to dual control, mainly on the ground
that a passenger might take it into his head to
interfere at some critical moment with the flying
of the machine, with an accident as the possible
result. But the system can be arranged in such
a way that the pilot, by the movement of a lever,
can render inoperative the passenger's controls,
and prevent any interference with the handling
of the machine should he consider this unnecessary
or likely to cause an accident.

In cases where dual control has not been fitted,

30 AIR POWER

and in craft in which pilot and passenger sit some
little distance apart, the death or injury of the
pilot may cause the machine to fall, involving
the passenger as well as the pilot in disaster. It
is possible for a passenger who has exceptional
nerve and agility (and who has learned to fly),
to make his way from his own seat to that of the
pilot, even while a machine is falling, and to take
over the controls in time to prevent the machine
being wrecked. Dual control is, nowadays, a
standard fitting of the fighting machine.

XVI

Offensive Armament

What we have written, so far, goes mainly to
prove the value of speed. But another question
of supreme importance is that of offensive arma-
ment. A machine such as the aeroplane, fast in
flight but vulnerable, must be given weapons so
powerful that it will be able to engage opponents
at long range, relying on rapid and accurate
gunnery to cripple these adversaries before they
can come within a range that will permit them to
use with effect their own guns. The success of
such tactics, given an aerial gun of a specialised
type, would depend of course on the skill of the
gunner — not forgetting the co-operation of the
pilot. The task of gunners in the future, as they
are called on to use heavier guns, and are required
to hit enemies at long ranges, will be one of
exceptional difficulty, needing incessant practice,

THE WAR BY AIR 31

and also a natural aptitude. From a machine
moving at high speed they will fire at some hostile
craft, also in rapid motion, which may not only
be a considerable distance away from them
horizontally, but which may also — during the
time it is under fire — be ascending rapidly, or
diving to reach a lower altitude; and this will
introduce complications, in finding a range and
getting quickly on to a target, with which naval
gunners, difficult though their task is, have not
at the moment to contend.

XVII
Land-Fire

In the early stages of the war the guns carried
by aircraft, and also those used against aircraft
from the ground, were not only insufficient
numerically, but inadequate in their power and
range. In regard, for instance, to land-fire against
aeroplanes, the few anti-aircraft guns which were
available threw small shells at comparatively
short ranges; with the result that the early
scouting by air was done without any great
interference from the ground.

But more guns were soon provided, and guns
also of a higher power, which threw shells to an
altitude greater than that at which an aeroplane
would need to fly when the observer in it was on
reconnaissance. And this meant that aviators
were compelled to fly through, and not above,
such areas of land-fire. But the aeroplane, by
reason of its small size and the speed at which it

32 AIR POWER

flies, is an elusive target ; and it may be rendered
more so by rapid changes of altitude and direc-
tion, as effected by its pilot when he finds he is
under fire. And there is also the point that,
even if a shell bursts near a machine, and it is
struck, say, by shrapnel, this may cause no vital
injury. The case may be cited of one machine,
in the vicinity of which a shell burst ; but though
the craft was pitted with holes, several hundred
punctures being counted on its planes and hull,
the pilot managed none the less to fly back to his
starting-point. In another case a machine was
hit by the base of a bursting shell. This tore a
large hole in one of its planes, and then went
through the hull, just behind the pilot's seat.
But by skilful flying, though his machine threat-
ened to collapse at any moment, the aviator was
able to regain his base.

What one may say by way of summary, in
regard to land-fire against aeroplanes, is that
while a certain number of machines have been
hit — and winter with its fogs and mists, necessi-
tating flights at low altitudes, has brought the
gravest risks — this land-fire has never proved
sufficiently effective to curtail, in any material way,
the work of the air services in reconnaissance.

XVIII
Guns in Aeroplanes

As to the guns fitted in aeroplanes, and used
by aviators against each other, there soon came

THE WAR BY AIR 33

a stage, after the first impromptu use of rifles,
revolvers, and automatic pistols, when machine-
guns were employed. The machine-gun enables
an aviator, by allowing him to fire a stream of
bullets at an enemy, to make more certain of
hitting, at any rate with some of these bullets,
the rapidly-moving target at which he aims.
But still a machine-gun, using rifle ammunition,
remains a weapon far from the ideal; and for
the reason that, even if a number of hits are
made on a hostile craft, most of the bullets which
do reach their mark, passing harmlessly through
the planes, or some other yielding surface, of the
machine, will have no effect.

By degrees, however, as the campaign ad-
vanced, and as more powerful engines were
used in aeroplanes — permitting machines to carry
heavier loads, and to be built to withstand greater
structural strains — guns of a higher calibre began
to be fitted ; guns which would throw small shells
instead of ordinary rifle ammunition; and these
shells, when they struck enemy craft, proved
naturally more destructive.

But the science of aerial gunnery is still in its
infancy; and it is one which must be studied
with the utmost care. The production of guns
for use in aircraft must be the subject of con-
tinuous experiment and research, for which money
must be forthcoming in adequate sums. A
weapon that seems to approach the ideal is a
quick-firing gun which will throw a stream of

shells at a fairly long range, each shell being
D

34 AIR POWER

fused so sensitively that it will detonate even when
in contact with a light and yielding surface.

Modern warships, with their batteries, seek to
overwhelm an opponent right at the beginning
of an action, and strike so hard and so often
that this opponent is crippled and demoralised
before he can retaliate effectually. And in the
air, when large craft are in action, the value of
the first blow, or blows, will be even greater.

XIX
Land Defences

A factor that must be reckoned with, on look-
ing into the future, is that land defences, by
guns and other means, will be improved very
greatly against air attack.

We have seen, for instance, in this war, what
can be done against airship raids by an organised
defensive — incendiary shells being used from guns,
and bombs dropped on airships from aeroplanes.
But one must remember, in this regard, the
vulnerability of an airship such as the Zeppelin.
Apart from its immense size, it carries its own
destruction within its hull in the form of vast
quantities of a highly inflammable gas. It also
flies comparatively slowly — for an aircraft, at
any rate.

There are possibilities, in land defence against
aircraft, which still need the test of practical
experiment. It may be found possible, for in-
stance, to cause atmospheric disturbances, very

THE WAR BY AIR 35

prejudicial to aircraft, by the discharge on a
large scale of high explosives; while the possi-
bility has been discussed, scientifically, of so
charging the air with electricity, over certain
areas, that an interference would be caused with
the electrical ignition on the engines of hostile
aircraft.

Though it is too soon to discuss such schemes
more than generally, it may be taken for granted
that, in the future, earth folk will protect them-
selves more effectually against air attack. And
they will certainly need to do so. The raids of
this war are nothing to what they may be in the
future.

XX

Long-Distance Raids

In making a long-distance raid by aeroplane,
under present conditions and with existing-type
machines, there are several factors to which
attention must be directed. The aeroplane has,
of course, certain definite advantages. It flies
fast and it offers a difficult mark for hostile gun-
fire. But until designers have had time to over-
come the difficulties which face them in convert-
ing aeroplanes from small light craft into large
weight-carrying machines, driven by engines de-
veloping thousands of horse-power, the airship
will be able to raise a heavier load of bombs than
the aeroplane, and carry its load a greater distance.
But against the weight-lifting capacity of the large
airship must be set its extreme vulnerability.

36 AIR POWER

It is possible, already, to build large aeroplanes
driven by several engines; and these machines,
even when they carry fuel for a long flight, can
still raise bombs of a sufficient weight to cause
considerable damage when they are dropped on
suitable targets. But at the present time, and
until construction enters an improved phase, a
heavy load can be carried only at a sacrifice of
speed. Under peace conditions this means, of
course, nothing worse than delay in reaching some
destination; but in war, if a machine which has
had its speed reduced is sent over hostile terri-
tory, this loss of speed may lead to its destruction.

The main factor which has to be remembered,
when long-distance raids are in contemplation,
is that when an aeroplane has to carry bombs for
a considerable distance without alighting, it needs
to be burdened so heavily — with its crew, fuel, and
load of explosives — that its flying speed is very
much less than that of any defending craft which
is required only to make a short flight, and which
can therefore be lightly loaded.

The heavily-laden bomb-dropping machine,
when it passes in above enemy territory, is liable
of course to attack from hostile craft; and here
lies its danger. The raiding machine, weighted
with a heavy load, cannot fly so fast or manoeuvre
so quickly as the lightly-laden craft which attack
it, and which have no long distance to fly, for
they are operating above their own territory.
The defensive machine, in fact, which may re-
quire only to ascend and patrol in the neighbour-

THE WAR BY AIR 37

hood of its own aerodrome, is at a very consider-
able advantage. It can be built for speed; it
needs only a minimum of fuel; what weight it
does carry can be devoted mainly to its offensive
armament. And so the heavily-loaded bomb-
dropping craft, while on a long-distance raid over
enemy territory, may be engaged at any moment
by machines which are quicker probably in flight,
and also in manoeuvring ; and such an advantage
is of course of the utmost importance.

What it is possible to do, and what is done,
to minimise the risks of the bomb-dropping
machines, is to escort them, when they set out
on a raid, with a certain number of fighting
aeroplanes. But these fighting machines, if they
are required to make a long non-stop flight while
acting as escorts, must have a heavy load of fuel,
in addition to the weight of their crew, guns, and
ammunition; and thus the problem which arises
is to give them their proper equipment and still
ensure that, when they reach their objective in
enemy territory and are engaged by hostile craft,
they shall be on a reasonable equality with the
latter in speed.

Another difficulty which is encountered when
bomb-dropping and fighting machines are sent
on a raid which entails a very long non-stop
flight, is that of keeping the machines together
during their flight, and in effective touch with
each other should an attack be made upon them.
Weather conditions may be met with, for in-
stance, which cause machines to become scattered

38 AIR POWER

or lose their position. Grave anxiety must attach
itself, in fact, to the sending of aeroplanes on long-
distance raids. Such raids can be made, of course,
and are made ; but the question which has to be
considered very seriously is whether the losses
in men and machines are not greater than the
damage which is inflicted by the dropping of
bombs.

It is quite possible to use aeroplanes in night
raids : the airship has no monopoly of night
flying. But the difficulty with an aeroplane,
when it has to fly a long distance by night, is
to steer an accurate course, and also to identify
the target on which bombs are to be dropped.
This may lead to a haphazard and ineffective
bombardment, such as has occurred when raiding
airships have failed to pick out any definite
mark, and have dropped bombs at random.

In a short-distance aeroplane raid, when no
excessive loads of fuel have to be carried, and
the machines of a squadron are better able to
keep in touch with each other, the risks and
difficulties are reduced. Even in long-distance
raiding the problems encountered are no more
than temporary. With engines of greater power
becoming available, and with design and con-
struction improving, it is possible to increase the
speed of raiding machines. But such improve-
ments tend to cut both ways. Defending craft
can also be rendered more efficient.

THE WAR BY AIR 39

XXI
Silence and Invisibility

Developments are possible, in the construction
of raiding craft, which will aid them materially
when attacking land positions. The raiders of
the future are not likely, for instance, as has been
the case in this war, to herald their approach by
a heavy drone of engines. Their motors will be
so silenced that at anything like a high altitude
the machine will be inaudible from the ground.
It may be found possible also — though problems
of complexity are involved — to treat the surfaces
of a machine so that, when it is at any distance
from the ground, it is practically invisible against
the background of the sky.

If raiding machines which are both silent and
invisible can be produced — and it would be
foolish to use the word impossible in any such
connection — then the destructive power of an
air attack, if made ruthlessly by numbers of
machines, operating in squadrons over an enemy's
territory, is better imagined than described.

XXII
Safeguarding the People

It is interesting to note, in this regard, that it
has been suggested already, as a precautionary
measure against the air attacks of the future, that
Government and administrative buildings, to-
gether with arsenals and large stores and factories,

40 AIR POWER

should be housed below ground; also that by
degrees, and as opportunity offers, most of the
other important buildings in large cities should
follow this example, and go underground. The
suggestion has been made, too, that large
underground shelters should be provided, in all
thickly-populated areas, where people could seek
protection when an air raid was in progress.

This whole question, as a matter of fact,
which concerns not only the safeguarding of the
populace but the protection also of vital means
of communication, will need the closest study.
The main purpose is to obtain an efficient de-
fensive organisation, both by air and on land.
But in addition to this, and as a further safe-
guard against the penetration by surprise of
hostile craft, favoured perhaps by atmospheric
conditions, it has been suggested that certain
vital means of communication — such for example
as lines of railway which have a strategic and
military value — should be rendered immune from
air attack by being run below-ground.

XXIII
The Problem of a Quick Decision

The aim in future must, beyond all else, be
to win a war quickly. The burden of conflicts
on a vast scale becomes insupportable if they
are long-continued, with the result that the
victor may emerge as badly off, economically,
as the vanquished. A way will have to be found,

THE WAR BY AIR 41

if war on the vast modern scale is to be worth
while, of gaining rapidly some unqualified suc-
cess ; a success so decisive that even the most
stubborn of enemies must realise that it is fatal
to him. Where lies the hope of speedy victory?
Can it be gained, say, on land ?

In this war we have seen a military machine,
the greatest in the history of the world, strive
month after month, even year after year, to gain
a signal victory somewhere — to put at least one
of its adversaries out of action. And we have
seen victory elude it, not once but time after
time. And there is no ultimate value in a paper
victory, or in a strategic or political success,
if the army of the enemy is still in existence as
a fighting organisation and is ready to carry on
the war. In warfare, if one's enemy is deter-
mined, one cannot win on " points/' as a boxer
may in the prize ring. There is nothing to be
done, in fact, but to go for a " knock-out/' But
when your adversary is equipped properly, and
his forces are led with even moderately good
generalship, and remembering the comparatively
slow movement of vast masses of men, this much-
desired knock-out appears extremely difficult to
obtain.

What, as a matter of fact, does such a victory
imply ? It implies nothing less than the decima-
tion of a huge and well-armed force ; the scatter-
ing of it in confusion ; the stamping out from it,
while it is in flight and in disorder, of any such
spirit of resistance or of cohesion as will lead to

42 AIR POWER

its re-formation as a fighting force. Can this
be done? It would be unwise, naturally, even
after what we have seen in this war, to state
definitely that it cannot. But it is reasonable,
certainly, to assume that any great struggle of
the future, if it is waged on land, may be so long-
drawn-out, each army and each nation fighting
to the point of exhaustion, that the victor will
be robbed of the fruits of his victory.

Obviously there is the factor of generalship
to be reckoned with. It may happen in the
future that a super-Napoleon will arise — a man
towering, in the power of his strategy, above all
others. But such a great commander would be
faced, inevitably, by this difficulty : that whereas
Napoleon achieved his coups with armies of
moderate size, moving these rapidly to the con-
fusion of his opponents, any commander of the
future will find himself embarrassed — as has been
more or less the case in this war — by the need to
manipulate vast masses of troops, which cannot
be moved with rapidity ; and whose movements,
when they are made, may be watched from day
to day by enemy aircraft, and so become known
to an enemy staff. And such conditions do not
favour a great or surprising coup — the arrival,
say, on an enemy's flank, as in Napoleonic times,
of some attacking force which, after days of
forced marching, appeared apparently from no-
where, and proved sufficient in itself to turn the
tide of battle.

As regards the future of naval warfare,

THE WAR BY AIR 43

the factors seem more obscure. It appears cer-
tain, however, that, if a fleet which is superior
numerically, and in weight or armament, can
once come really to grips with an antagonist,
and can prevent that antagonist's retreat into
protected waters should he attempt to break
action, then a blow can be struck which is de-
cisive. But if one fleet does not choose to give
action, if it is content to seal itself up within
protected waters and to conduct a guerilla war
with the object of weakening its opponent's
forces, then sea warfare, like land warfare, may
enter on a phase which offers no hope of a quick
and telling blow.

XXIV
The Medium for a Decisive Blow

This brings one to the fact that there is another
element, the air, which an ambitious nation may
seek to dominate, and in which, if its desires are
not realised by peaceful means, it may endeavour
to gain that quick, crushing victory which can
no longer be relied upon by land or sea.

The aim of the future will not be so much to
strike at a nation through its fleets or armies as
to strike directly at the nation itself; to strike
a blow, so to say, at its very vitals ; paralysing
its nerve centres, and robbing it of its power of
internal action. And here lie the possibilities of
an air attack, unhampered by the natural barriers
either of land or sea.

44 AIR POWER

With aircraft, remembering the huge speeds
they will attain, and the almost unlimited power
of destruction which they will possess, there lies a
very clear promise in the future — granted the use
of machines in sufficient numbers — of being able
to force a speedy victory. Once having gained by
aerial fighting some initial superiority, an enemy
will endeavour to make life intolerable in the
country with which it is at war. It will deliver
attacks constantly by air, seeking to harass and
confuse its adversary in all his warlike opera-
tions ; in the mobilisation and movement of his
troops, or in the transport of his supplies. It
will endeavour also to cause such damage, by
the constant dropping of incendiary bombs and
high explosives, as will cripple and disorganise
the civilian activities of the nation which is
attacked. The powers of perfected aircraft, when
such machines are employed mercilessly, may
grow, indeed, so terrible that they will seem
almost superhuman. A ruthless enemy, waging
war without mercy, may seek to spread pestilence
by aeroplane; or he may endeavour to destroy
the inhabitants of an enemy country by means
of poisonous or suffocating gases, released from
raiding craft. And such death from the air,
sweeping a country from end to end, may come,
perhaps, without a formal declaration of war.
The blow may be struck suddenly by an enemy
who attacks at night, using thousands of machines,
and seeking to lay waste a country between dawn
and dusk. The fate awaiting a nation which lags

THE WAR BY AIR 45

behind in the race for aerial power may, indeed,
prove terrible. It may find itself ravaged, de-
feated, and rendered helpless, in a conflict which
lasts not a year, or a month, or even a week,
but as the result of a blow which is struck and
completed within a few hours.

The point has been raised that the aeroplane
should be regarded as having an extraordinary
power only so long as it remains a new weapon ; or
so long, say, as one antagonist, having a superi-
ority in men and machines, can strike against an
opponent a bold and successful blow. But what
about the future ? Will it not be the case again,
one is asked, of move and counter-move; of one
weapon being forged only to be negatived by
another; with the result that in time, even in
the air, something approaching stalemate may be
reached ?

Here, though, there are factors which need
remembering. In the next great war the rival
air fleets, though they may be numerically large
— with little to choose between them, perhaps,
in this respect — will be embarking on a form of
organised war which will be new to them. Their
strategy and tactics, when large squadrons of
fighting craft have to be manoeuvred in action,
will be based on theory and not on experience.
They will be using, also, new forms of armament.
And under conditions such as these, with so
much that is experimental to be reckoned with,
there is naturally a far greater risk of error, of
things happening not as they were expected to

46 AIR POWER

happen, than there is, say, with the well-matured
plans, based on years of experience, which are
employed in land or sea warfare. It is reasonable
to argue, in fact, that in any war of the future,
when aerial forces meet for the first time in action
on a grand scale, one such air fleet, handledf per-
haps more dexterously than its rival, or with its
armament more destructive, may inflict on its
opponent a defeat which is conclusive.

One should bear in mind that in this war,
though there has been organised aerial fighting,
with machines operating in squadrons, all such
actions and formations have been on a small
scale. Machines and weapons, too, have been
of low power; while strategy and tactics have
been elementary.

XXV
The Handling of Air Fleets

In the future the commander of an air fleet
will, of course, have a large number of machines
under his command; big, heavily-armed craft,
flying at high speeds, and capable not only of
manoeuvring either to and fro, or from side
to side, as on the sea, but capable also — say
prior to an action — of ascending to high altitudes,
or of diving at immense speeds to gain a tactical
advantage. The handling of an air fleet, extra-
ordinarily mobile, and moving at speeds unknown
on land or sea, must introduce problems of
strategy and tactics which will prove difficult of

THE WAR BY AIR 47

solution even by the most ingenious brains. On
sea or land, strategy seems to have been worked
almost threadbare. But in the air, should some
struggle of the future come, there will be oppor-
tunities that are vast and far-reaching for the
commander of genius ; for the man who, adapted
temperamentally to these new conditions, and
with a mind capable of making rapid, un-
swervingly accurate decisions which will be neces-
sary in the air, has been able to grasp also, more
completely than any opponent, the first main
principles which will govern the use of aircraft
in fleets rather than in units or squadrons.

The nation will be fortunate and also well-
advised which, having found such a man, gives
him the amplest resources and the fullest scope.

One may assume, for the sake of argument,
that two nations each equip themselves, after a
determined effort, with large and efficient air
fleets. What will prove decisive, should these
fleets meet in action, will be the way in which
they are handled in what must prove, from the
point of view either of strategy or tactics, a new
and highly complicated form of war. It will be
the mental dexterity behind an air fleet which
will prove important. To concentrate forces, to
have them in the right place at the right time,
when there is the vastness of the air space to be
reckoned with, will be in itself a problem of
immense difficulty. There will be questions of
speed, too, which will require exhaustive study.
When oceans can be crossed by an air fleet in a

48 AIR POWER

matter of hours instead of days, the minds which
plan a campaign, and estimate with accuracy
these new problems of time and distance, will
need an exceptionally rapid grasp of the situation.
It will be necessary, as a matter of fact, in the
first great battle of the air, to grasp these new
factors by intuition rather than by experience.

XXVI
Troop Transport

A matter that needs attention is the possi-
bility, in the future, of transporting troops by
air — the bringing of reinforcements, for instance,
to any line that is hard pressed, or the landing of
bodies of troops for a flanking movement. By
using air transport it might be possible to turn
an enemy position in a way that would be im-
possible by any movement on land. It should
be possible, also, to transport machine-guns and
light artillery by air. This war has come too
soon for aviation in many of its aspects.

The problems of an air invasion, of an army
landed by aircraft in a hostile country, duplicate
in some respects those of an invasion by sea.
But an invading force, when it comes by air,
is not restricted to a landing along any specific
stretch of coast, or on any particular beach. The
invading aircraft could land troops at any point
within an enemy's territory which might appear
most suitable, and which was least defended;

THE WAR BY AIR 49

while the lines of communication of these troops,
and their supplies, could be maintained by air.

But aircraft which act as transports must suffer
from much the same vulnerability as do transport
vessels on the sea. If they are to raise a number
of men, they will be comparatively slow-flying;
and, in order to carry a maximum of useful load,
they cannot be armed more than superficially,
or their hulls protected. They must therefore
be susceptible to attack, and might fall easy
victims to hostile warplanes, unless guarded
effectually by a screen of fighting craft.

A point to be considered, when studying the
tactics of defence, is the speed at which aircraft
will fly. Learning, for instance, by wireless that
a surprise landing was being attempted on any
part of its territory, the country which was
menaced could send fighting aircraft to the spot
with great rapidity; and the aerial transports of
the enemy, while alighting and discharging their
troops, might run a heavy risk of destruction,
even when there was an effort to screen them by
means of armed escorts. To land in an enemy's
country by air would be all very well if that
country was weak in its defences. But in future
contests between nations, each provided ade-
quately with aircraft, it would seem necessary for
one or the other to win an aerial victory before
attempting an invasion by air — any invasion, that
is to say, which was on a large or definite scale.
Isolated raids there have been, and will be, aircraft
being ideal weapons for such guerilla operations.

50 AIR POWER

But in any world campaign, with countless
millions being spent, and blows planned and de-
livered on a shattering scale, all minor forms of
offence must lose their significance. It will not
be sufficient to harass an enemy, or wait for his
exhaustion : he must be hit so hard that he will
collapse quickly.

PART II
PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

The Initial Problem

THERE were, in the evolution of the aeroplane,
three main problems to be solved —

1. To obtain wings, or planes, which would
bear through the air the weight of a man, and of
the engine which drove his machine.

2. To control and balance such an apparatus
when it was in flight.

3. To discover some form of engine which
should be sufficiently light, and at the same time
sufficiently powerful.

Nature gave men guidance in the building of
sustaining planes. The wing of a bird arches
upward from front to back, most of the curve
taking place near the forward edge. The effect
of such a curve, when a plane shaped on Nature's
model is moved rapidly through the air, is two-
fold. The plane, as it moves forward, divides
the air which impinges on it into two currents.
One sweeps above the plane, and the other below.

51

52 AIR POWER

The current that passes below, following the
curve of the plane, is thrust downward, and,
while being so acted on, imparts an upward lift
to the plane. The air current which moves above
the plane, rushing up as it does over the arch we
have mentioned — and which occurs, it must be
remembered, near the forward edge — is deflected
upward with such force that it cannot descend
again immediately, or follow the downward curve
which takes place towards the rear of the plane.
What happens, therefore, is that, between this
current of air and the curve of the plane, a
partial vacuum is formed; and this vacuum
draws upward on the plane, which gains support
not only from the air passing below, but also
from that which sweeps above it, the latter
influence being the more powerful.

II
The Power of the Air

Such a plane is inoperative unless it is in fairly
rapid motion, or unless a current of air is blowing
on it. The air, being an element of such small
density, will yield support only when it is struck
quickly by some large, light surface which has
been built specially to act upon it. If you stand
and open an umbrella on a calm day, and hold
it above your head, you feel no aerial influence
at work at all : neither the umbrella nor the air
is moving. The power which lies in the air when
it is in motion, or when some object is moved

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 53

through it, is in this case dormant. But if you
run forward with the umbrella, even on a calm
day, you soon feel the drag of the air upon it;
or the effect will be the same, on a windy day, if
you stand still, and the air itself beats on the um-
brella. In the one case you provide the motion
which allows the air to act on the umbrella; and
in the other the wind itself, owing to the fact that
it is in motion, reveals its hidden power.

This power, what one might call the unsus-
pected solidity of the air, intangible though it
seems, one can gauge when one stands on a hill, in
a sixty-mile-an-hour wind, and feels the striking
power of gusts which, though they are invisible,
drive one a step backward. At such a moment,
if one imagined oneself holding in the stream of
the wind a large curved surface such as we have
described, it would not seem difficult to believe
that this surface, acted on powerfully by the
wind, would bear one upward. What happens
with the aeroplane, what explains the fact that
it flies, is that the engine and propeller of the
machine, driving it forward through the air at,
say, sixty miles an hour, create a pressure on its
planes just as powerful as one may feel when
standing on a hill-top in a gale of wind. In one
case it is the air that is in motion, in the other
the machine; but the resulting pressure is the
same. And it is this air pressure, converted into
a lifting influence by the curve of the planes,
which supports an aeroplane in flight. It is the
speed of the machine, the forcing of its planes

54 AIR POWER

against the air, which enables it to support itself.
It must preserve this forward motion, the pres-
sure on its planes must be maintained, or else it
will cease to bear its load.

The weight that any given plane surface can
carry through the air will vary according to the
speed at which it is moving, the curve that is
imparted to it, and the angle at which the plane
strikes the air. In the earliest gliding machines,
in which men passed down through the air from
the tops of hills, using gravity as their motive
power — " coasting on the air/' Wilbur Wright
called it — the planes bore a load of not more than
about a pound per square foot. Then, with
power-driven aeroplanes, moving more quickly
through the air and with their surfaces more
skilfully designed, it became possible to carry a
load of two or three pounds per square foot.
And this was soon improved on. Nowadays the
load that each square foot of surface will raise is,
say, six, seven, or eight pounds. The lift that
can be obtained from the air, small as its density
is, has been shown by the fact that the planes of
racing monoplanes, machines flying at a very high
speed, have borne through the air a load of nearly
twenty pounds per square foot.

Ill
British Pioneers

More than a hundred years ago a British
engineer, Sir George Cayley — one of the great

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 55

pioneers of flight — was explaining the lifting
power of curved surfaces. More than sixty years
ago Stringfellow, another Englishman, had built
a model aeroplane, driven by steam, which em-
ployed such curved planes and which actually
flew — proving beyond question the support that
could be obtained from the air. And String-
fellow did more than this. He had sought and
found — apart from the building of a tiny steam-
engine which weighed about thirteen pounds and
which would develop one horse-power — a means
of employing this power effectually in driving his
model through the air.

Here it should be explained that, while men
can imitate successfully the wing-curve of a bird,
they cannot, or at any rate they have not so far,
found it practicable to imitate the wing-flapping
method by which the bird moves through the
air. To obtain this wing movement, which is
so powerful and at the same time so supple, the
bird has been given by Nature a wonderful
system of muscles — delicate, perfect for their
purpose, light and yet tremendously strong. To
make the wings of an aeroplane flap like those of
a bird has been found so complicated, owing to
the mechanism necessary, and the difficulty of
transferring the power from the engine to the
wing-gear, that much of the power is wasted.
This does not mean, though, that any such system
is abandoned finally; further experiments should
prove interesting and instructive. Wing-flapping
systems have, however, proved themselves so far

56 AIR POWER

to be unsatisfactory. The wings of an aeroplane
are therefore built rigidly, being outstretched like
those of a bird when it is in soaring flight; and
the machine is driven forward through the air,
not by any wing movement such as a bird employs,
but by means of revolving propellers, which act
on the air like the propellers of a ship in water.

Stringfellow, in his model which was so im-
portant a link in the chain of progress, used a
couple of two-bladed propellers. They were very
large, remembering that the density of the air is
small; and it was necessary to drive them at
high speeds before their blades would act with
sufficient power on the air. Each of the curved
blades of an aeroplane propeller may be likened,
in a sense, to the sustaining planes which support
the machine. Whereas the sustaining planes,
when they are moved rapidly through the air,
bear the weight of the machine, so the blades of
its propellers, revolving at high speed, act on
the air powerfully owing to their scientifically-
designed surfaces, and screw forward as they turn,
like those of a ship's propeller in water ; or of a
gimlet as you twist and force it into a piece of
wood. And so the propeller or propellers of an
aeroplane, their curved blades boring their way
into the air, either draw or push the machine
forward, and maintain that constant pressure
under its sustaining planes which supports it in
flight. The engine and propeller of an aeroplane
are likened to the string of a kite. Only when
its string is pulled, and the air made to act on

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 57

its surfaces, will the kite rise and hold itself in
the wind. If the string is cut, the kite drifts
away before the wind, and sinks quickly. And
the sustaining surfaces of an aeroplane, unless its
engine and propeller drive it forward through the
air, or its pilot — deprived perhaps of his engine-
power through a breakdown — brings gravity to
his aid and maintains the speed of his machine
by a glide earthward, have no power of continuous
flight.

Stringfellow, in his famous model, did even
more pioneer work than we have described. He
showed, for instance, how an aeroplane could be
steered from side to side, when it was in flight,
by the movement of a vertical rudder, in the
same way as a ship is steered in water. And he
showed also how a horizontal tail surface, placed
behind the sustaining planes of the machine,
would tend to give it stability when in flight by
checking any pitching or diving movement.

IV
Factors which Delayed Progress

Here, indeed, more than sixty years ago, though
in no more than a model form, was a machine
which anticipated, in many ways, the modern
man-carrying, mechanically-propelled aeroplane.
Stringfellow's machine, if it had been built on a
large scale, and if it had been fitted with a suffi-
ciently powerful engine, and if a man had been
found who could control it in flight, and take it

58 AIR POWER

into the air and alight again without accident,
might undoubtedly have flown. But these "ifs"
were very important ; so important, indeed, that
more than fifty years had to elapse between the
flights of this model machine and the first ascent
of a practicable, man-carrying aeroplane.

Hampering progress, for one thing, was the
lack of a suitable motor. The petrol engine,
perfected subsequently at the expenditure of
many thousands of pounds for use in the motor-
car— and developing, as the late Sir Hiram Maxim
put it, " the power of a horse with the weight of
a common barnyard fowl " — was still a thing of
the future. The steam-engine, it is true, when it
became available, was seized upon eagerly by cer-
tain of the pioneers. Sir Hiram Maxim, building
a large experimental aeroplane at Baldwin's Park
in 1893 — a machine which he confessed after-
wards was too large, in view of the limited
manoeuvring space at his disposal — employed two
light compound steam-engines, developing a total
of 362 h.p. But the quantity of water consumed
was so great that the machine could not have
remained in the air more than a few minutes.
This machine, however, before it was destroyed
in an accident, proved on a large scale what had
been demonstrated previously with models. By
the use of check rails, mounted above those on
which the machine ran, and permitting a certain
upward movement, Sir Hiram Maxim had been
able to gauge the lifting power exercised by the
planes of his machine when it was in rapid motion.

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 59

And it was found that at a speed of about forty
miles an hour the machine would lift not only its
own weight, and that of its engine and fuel, but
also that of three men.

V
The Problem of Equilibrium

But in the building of such a large machine
Sir Hiram Maxim — and Clement Ader also in
France, who was experimenting at about the
same time with steam-driven aeroplanes — was
faced by a problem even more grave than that
of getting a machine to leave the ground. What
the inventor had to do, to use Sir Hiram Maxim's
own words, was " to learn the knack of balancing
it in the air/' Here, indeed, was a difficulty
which appeared for a time insuperable. There
was no man living who, even if this machine had
flown, as it showed itself capable oi doing, would
have been able to control it in flight. To place
in charge of such a craft a man who knew nothing
of the navigation of the air would have been
worse even than putting a man who knew nothing
of steam-engines in charge of an express train.

It is not difficult to imagine the perils which
would have faced a man who attempted to take
this big machine into the air. It would have
risen, no doubt ; but how could a man who had
never flown before gauge with precision the angle
of his ascent, and prevent his craft from rising,
say, so steeply — as an aeroplane may unless well

60 AIR POWER

handled — that it checks its own speed by the
heavy pressure on its planes, with the result that
it may come to a standstill in the air instead of
moving forward, and then fall backwards towards
the ground? And even if he had risen success-
fully and made a flight, the pilot would have
been faced — a complete novice — by the task of
bringing his craft back to earth, of making that
contact with the ground which, even to-day,
requires constant practice before a pupil can
master it. Apart from this, too, the pilot would
have been faced while in flight by the effect on
his machine of sudden wind-gusts. These, striking
against his planes and causing unequal pressures,
would have threatened to swing over his craft
and rob it of equilibrium. And, remembering
his inexperience, he would have known none of
the correcting movements which would have been
necessary.

This problem of learning to balance an aero-
plane, and bring it safely to earth when it had
made a flight, seemed for a time so hopeless of
solution that it threatened to check all progress,
and bring experiments entirely to an end. And
the difficulty was rendered all the greater, in
view of the fact that the air is in constant and
sometimes violent motion ; is full, indeed, of such
gusts, and eddies, as imperil constantly the
balance of any machine that is moving through
them. And such gusts are invisible. Unlike an
ocean wave, which he can see bearing down upon
him, the navigator of the air is struck constantly

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 61

by waves the approach of which he has no chance
of detecting.

VI
Gliding

How, then, were men to learn to fly? They
could only do so, certainly, in the air. Yet to
launch themselves boldly, handling levers in the
use of which under flying conditions they were
unfamiliar, meant nothing less than the wreckage
of their machine, and perhaps the loss of their
own lives. And to build a series of machines,
one after another, until at last a pilot became
proficient, was, even granted he escaped from his
accidents with his life, a proposition so costly
that it was impracticable.

Common sense, allied to the power of observa-
tion, solved this problem. Otto Lilienthal, a
German engineer who from his youth had studied
the flight of birds, saw that even when provided
by Nature as they were with a perfect flying
apparatus, the birds had still to learn patiently
to use this apparatus. They could not merely
leap into the air and fly. Lilienthal, watching
young storks on his lawn, saw how they practised
from day to day in the use of their wings, running
forward a little way into the wind, flapping their
wings rapidly once or twice and skimming a
short distance forward, then losing their balance,
perhaps in a sudden gust, and reaching down
quickly to the ground with their long, cautious
legs.

62 AIR POWER

Could not a man learn thus to balance himself
in the air, using some apparatus in which he
could skim close to the earth, and in which, even
if he lost control, he would be so near the ground
that he would be able to alight without injury?
This was the question Lilienthal asked himself,
and he answered it by building a machine which
we now know as a glider. It consisted of two
light wings, resembling those of a bird, and con-
taining sufficient surface to bear its owner's
weight through the air. At the rear of the
machine was a tail, again in imitation of the
bird, which would tend to prevent it from pitch-
ing or diving. So light was this apparatus that
Lilienthal, taking his place between the wings,
could lift it to the level of his shoulders and run
forward with it. His method of practice was to
stand on the top of a hill, and run against the
wind. The speed of his own movement, and the
thrust of the wind, soon brought a pressure under
the wings of the machine which was sufficient to
support the weight of the man and the apparatus.
Lilienthal would then draw up his legs and glide
free of the earth, gravity providing him with his
motive power, and permitting him when con-
ditions were favourable to move through the air
down the side of the hill, only a few feet from
the ground, and yet in actual flight, and with an
opportunity of practising those balancing move-
ments which it was his aim to acquire.

For five years, before he met with his death
through a fall, Lilienthal practised the art of

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 63

balancing himself in the air. And he learned,
merely by movements of his body as he passed
through the air — inclining his weight either for-
ward or backward or from side to side — to combat
the overturning influence of wind-gusts, and to
glide without losing his balance for distances that
sometimes reached 1000 feet. He showed indeed,
for the first time, that a man who was patient
and willing to learn might make himself at home
in this element, the air, and might acquire the
art — though his mechanism was crude in com-
parison with theirs — of balancing himself in flight
even as did the birds.

VII
The Wrights

There were other pioneers who carried on
Lilienthal's work : Pilcher, for instance, in Eng-
land; Chanute in America; and Ferber and
others in France. And then in 1900, after study-
ing the experiences and the writings of the earlier
pioneers, came Wilbur and Orville Wright. They
built gliders larger than had been used before, in
order to pass longer distances through the air;
and these gliders being too large to be balanced
by the simple method Lilienthal had adopted —
that of swinging his body to and fro or from
side to side — the Wrights made use of a system
of auxiliary surfaces and flexible plane-ends by
means of which the operator of the machine,
remaining himself motionless, might steer up and

64 AIR POWER

down or from side to side, and also prevent his
craft from heeling too far sideways under the
influence of wind-gusts. To make their craft
rise or descend they fitted in front of it, on out-
riggers, a small horizontal plane, which was so
pivoted that it could be held either in a hori-
zontal position or inclined upward or downward,
presenting its surface at either a steep or a
moderate angle to the air.

The operation of this elevating-plane — which is
now adopted universally, being fitted either in
front of or behind the sustaining-planes — was as
follows : when the pilot tilted the plane upward,
to ascend, the pressure of the air on it caused
the whole of the front of the machine to assume
a steeper angle to the air; with the result that
the main sustaining-planes, assuming also a
steeper angle, had their lifting power increased
accordingly. Whereupon, at an angle determined
by the inclination of the elevating-plane, the
machine would rise into the air. A reverse
movement of the plane, tilting the machine down-
ward, would cause it to descend. Of course an
elevating-plane, like any other of the surfaces of
a machine, is operative only when a stream of air
is acting on it; when the machine, that is to
say, is in forward motion. The action of the
controlling surfaces of an aeroplane may be
likened, in a sense, to the action of the rudder
of a ship. Unless a ship has steerage-way — is
moving, that is to say, at a pace which allows
its rudder, when shifted over, to act with sum-

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 65

cient power on the water streaming past it — the
vessel is not controllable. And it is the same
with the governing surfaces of an aeroplane.

Steering from side to side the Wrights achieved
by means of a vertical rudder, such as we have
mentioned already; while for maintaining the
lateral balance of their machine they devised a
system — imitating so far as was possible in wood
and canvas the delicate movements of a bird's
wing — whereby the rear extremities of their
sustaining-planes could be warped, or rendered
flexible, and could be moved a certain distance
up and down. The effect of such an action, which
is obtained more generally to-day by a movement
up and down of auxiliary surfaces at the rear
edges of the main-planes, which are known as
ailerons, may be described thus : should a wind-
gust swing the machine over sideways, the pilot
warped down his plane-ends on the side of the
machine which was tilting downward. The result,
seeing that the movement caused the plane-ends
to assume a steeper angle in their relation to the
air, and exercise thereby a momentarily greater
resistance, was to raise the side of the machine
which had been tilted down, and restore the
craft to a normal position. By inter-connecting
the control wires, this balancing action could be
exercised with a double force : when one wing
was warped down the opposite one could be
warped up ; and so, while the side of the machine
that had been tilted down was caused to rise, the
opposite plane-ends, which had risen, were acted

66 AIR POWER

on reversely, and a forcing-down pressure applied
to them. To facilitate turning also, and to
correct the drag or resistance to forward motion
which might be caused by the action of the wing-
warp, the Wrights inter-connected this warp with
the control actuating the rudder, and were able to
operate both by a movement forward or sideways
of a single lever.

The general system of control is worth remem-
bering, because it forms the basis of operation
of the aeroplane to-day : the elevating-plane for
rising or descending; the vertical rudder for
steering from side to side; the wing-warp, or
ailerons, for preserving lateral balance. These
actions, with an engine and propeller to drive the
machine, and give its sustaining-planes their lift,
comprise indeed the equipment of the aeroplane;
not forgetting, of course, the human element, the
guiding hand which controls and steers the
machine when in flight, and brings it safely to
earth again when its journey is done.

VIII
The First Practicable Aeroplane

For three years, without serious accident, the
Wrights practised the art of gliding flight, learn-
ing to control a machine even in high winds, and
with perfect ease. Then, the development of the
motor-car having brought a petrol engine within
the bounds of possibility as a motive-power for
aeroplanes, they built themselves a light, four-

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 67

cylinder motor in their own workshop, and fitted
it to one of their gliders so that it would drive
two propellers by chain gearing. And here one
reaches a salient point. Thanks to their expe-
rience with gliders, and the knowledge they had
gained, the Wrights were able to take this power-
driven machine into the air — piloting it in turn —
and to make a series of short flights entirely
without accident. It was in December, 1903,
that the first power-driven flight was made; and
a couple of years later, in 1905, the Wrights were
flying for more than half an hour without alight-
ing, during which they climbed, dived, and circled
in the air, showing indeed that they had a complete
control over their machine.

And so now the three main problems were
solved. Men had wings that would bear them
through the air; they had motors which were
sufficiently light, and sufficiently powerful, to
propel their machines; and they had learned,
when such machines were in the air, and were
being driven by their motors and propellers, to
guide them in any direction they wished, to resist
the influence of gusts, and to make a landing
safely.

Not that the conquest of the air was as yet
complete. It had, in fact, only just begun. The
first aeroplanes were frail and low-powered. They
flew too slowly, and needed too constant a
manipulation by their pilots, to enable them to
combat high winds. The engines, too, which
drove them, being crude and purely experimental,

68 AIR POWER

and needing to run at high speeds, delivering
their full power in order to keep a machine in
the air, were breaking down constantly. It was
also a fact that the aviators who were then
flying, having had so little experience, and being
as yet uncertain in the handling of their machines,
felt justified only in ascending when weather
conditions were favourable.

But, the main problems once solved, the rest
was a question of development and refinement :
of an assiduous perfection of detail, and of
that gradual gaining in experience, obtained by
constant flying, which brought aviators an in-
crease not only of skill but of personal con-
fidence. Machines were built more strongly;
motors were rendered not only more reliable but
were given a greater power, and this enabled men
to fly faster, and to combat higher winds.

IX
Wind Flying

To fly, though, for several hours, under adverse
conditions, was found to entail for the pilot,
apart from any question of nerve strain, a con-
siderable physical effort. He had to make a
constant and rapid use of his controlling sur-
faces; and the movement of these surfaces,
effected by hand or foot levers acting through
wires, might need in a heavy wind a strong
muscular effort. Pilots found indeed, often, after
an hour or so's flying in bad weather, that it

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 69

was physical exhaustion which compelled them to
alight, rather than their inability, at any given
moment, to resist the attacks of the wind.

In early-type aeroplanes, it should be noted,
the comfort of the pilot was not studied as it is
now, and he had to sit often in such a cramped
position that, quite apart from any muscular
effort he might have to make, he soon felt stiff
and fatigued ; while if the weather was cold, and
even granted he was warmly clad, his hands and
feet became painfully numbed. His controls
were not placed so accessibly as they are to-day ;
while his compass and other instruments were
fitted wherever it might be convenient to fit
them, and not where it was most easy for him
to see them. All such disadvantages as these,
though they were minor ones, proved detrimental
to the making of long cross-country flights.

X
Inherent Stability

It was found possible, in order to render aerial
navigation generally more safe (and with the
greater engine powers which became available
giving considerably higher flying speeds), to design
aeroplanes which had an inherent stability. One
reaches, here, a question which is interesting,
and at the same time technical and somewhat
involved. It is possible, however, to attempt an
explanation in this form. First one must bear in
mind that an aeroplane which is not inherently

70 AIR POWER

stable, which cannot adapt itself automatically to
such fluctuations in air pressure as it may en-
counter, needs the personal manipulation of its
pilot to maintain it in equilibrium when it is
passing, say, through a gusty wind. And it may
happen that such a machine, if struck by an
exceptionally heavy gust, swings over so far side-
ways— failing to respond to its pilot's controlling
movements — that it assumes an angle so acute
it begins to side-slip, skidding in a sense like a
motor-car instead of continuing to move forward.
The pilot, should this happen, is for the time
being helpless. His controls are only operative
so long as his machine is moving forward through
the air in normal flight. While it is side-slipping,
its forward speed gone, he can exercise no effective
controlling influence. All he can hope for is that,
during its fall, and before it strikes ground, the
craft may attain such a momentum that its
controlling surfaces will again become operative.
He may be able to convert the side-slip into a
dive, and this will restore power to his controls.
But unless the machine is flying fairly high at the
moment it side-slips, there is a risk that while
still out of hand it may strike the ground and be
wrecked.

Science, after a study of wing-shapes, with
their curves and angles, and of such methods of
gaining stability as result from a tiltihg up or
sloping back of planes, can indicate now how
planes may be built which, even without any
controlling movements on the part of a pilot,

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 71

will themselves resist while in flight the tendency
to lose equilibrium which may be set up by wind-
gusts and eddies.

To describe minutely the theory of inherent
stability, remembering we are writing for general
readers, would be to enter into questions of an
abstruse technique. But this much may be said.
It is possible, merely by shaping and placing
at certain angles of the sustaining-planes of
a machine, and by a scientific and carefully
studied relation between these main-planes and
their subsidiary surfaces, to produce an aeroplane
which, when a wind-gust strikes it and it threatens
to heel over, will itself apply, by aid of the positive
and negative pressures which are set up auto-
matically on its surfaces owing to their change of
angle and relative position as the machine begins
to roll, a self-righting influence which is inherent
and unfailing. A wing that is tilted upward by
the wind may for instance have imparted to it,
solely by the way in which the air now impinges
on it, a distinctly negative or down pressure,
instead of a lift — and this will tend, naturally,
to force it back to a normal position ; while a
wing that has been depressed may, on the other
hand, just through its being in this position, and
through the action of the air on it while it is tilted
downward, be given such an enhanced lift as will
tend to thrust it upward.

It is in this way that compensating or opposite
forces, derived from the action of the air striking
at various angles on specially-designed surfaces,

72 AIR POWER

may permit a machine when it is in flight, and so
long as it is moving at a pace which renders its
surfaces operative, to preserve constantly its own
stability; not only laterally or sideways, but
also — owing again to the shaping and placing
of its surfaces — in a longitudinal or fore-and-aft
direction.

To obtain such aeroplanes, inherently stable, is
a step, naturally, of the highest importance. It
means that once a machine is free of the ground,
and at a fair altitude, it may be flown without
danger of becoming uncontrollable, and steered
through any wind, no matter how violent, that
its engine gives it the power to make headway
against. Such a result may also be obtained, it
is true, with an aeroplane that is not inherently
stable, granted its pilot is sufficiently skilled, and
can himself apply unerringly, in his own con-
trolling movements, what the craft that is in-
herently stable will do without assistance. But
even so, and assuming his skill, one must remem-
ber the fact that, owing to the fatigue of his
constant movements, the pilot in the machine
which is not inherently stable may be able to fly
for only a few hours before he is obliged to
descend. In an inherently stable machine, on
the other hand, an aviator of no more than
average skill will be able to make a long flight
in even a high and boisterous wind without any
fatigue, or need for alighting.

It is possible for the pilot in an inherently
stable machine, having gained a sufficient alti-

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 73

tude, to take his hands from the controls, and
allow his machine to fly itself ; provided he keeps
it on its compass course by an occasional touch
on the rudder, and attends also to the running
of his motor.

The value of inherent stability, in reducing the
risks of flying, and apart from special problems
which are introduced by the use of machines in
war, can scarcely be over-estimated. The fact
that such stability cannot as a rule be gained,
at any rate in our present stage of knowledge,
without entailing for various reasons some slight
loss of lifting power or speed, or both, is not a
drawback that is vital in peace flying, though it
may be in war. The advantages of stability, in
ordinary flying, may be said to outweigh any of
its disadvantages ; and even these disadvantages,
which are purely technical, may, it is reasonable
to assume, be eliminated as time goes on.

People who have no more than a nodding
acquaintance with aviation imagine often, when
they see an aviator aloft in his machine, that he
can only maintain himself in flight, and prevent
his machine from overturning, by a constant
action of his controlling levers. They regard him
indeed as a sort of aerial gymnast, a man whose
skill alone, as he balances his craft, stands between
him and a fall. Yet how different is the reality.
A modern-type aeroplane, inherently stable, will
recover itself from any position in the air, no
matter how abnormal, and resume of its own
accord its ordinary flying path. If such a machine

74 AIR POWER

was launched, say, from a height, upside down, it
would swing over and assume its proper position
in the air. If the pilot, by way of testing its
stability, should deliberately force it over side-
ways until it began to side-slip, the machine would
yield for a moment only to bring itself back to a
safer angle. If the aviator drove it up so steeply
that it lost forward speed, and began to fall
tail-first, it would come to a momentary stand-
still in the air, and then, inclining its bow down-
ward, would begin to move forward again in a
dive which, as soon as the machine had gathered
sufficient pace, would be converted automatically
into horizontal flight.

It is, in a word, impossible for the wind, or for
a pilot even by a deliberate mishandling, to force
such a machine more than temporarily from its
normal flying position. Given only sufficient air
space, the craft will recover itself. But when in
a heavy and dangerous wind, with its equilibrium
assailed constantly, the machine may yield for a
moment, heeling or diving under the onslaught
of an abnormal gust, before its self-righting power
can be exerted. And this is due to the fact that,
unless a machine is in forward motion, flying at
approximately the speed at which it was designed
to fly, its inherent stability and self-righting power,
generated by its planes when the air is acting
on them, cannot be exercised properly. If, for
example, a machine is robbed for the time being
of its forward speed, and is forced over at the
same time to a criticaTangle, it may need to drop

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 75

some short distance through the air, recovering
thereby its momentum, before the ^ir pressure on
its planes is sufficient to allow tnem to reassert
their stabilising function.

XI
Safety in Altitude

Height is essential to safe flying, even with an
inherently stable machine. And here another
comparison is possible between the navigation of
air and sea. It is when he is near a coast-line
that the sea-captain posts his outlook men, and
has his moments of anxiety. Not until he is
well away in mid-ocean does he feel really com-
fortable. And with the aviator, when he sets
out on a flight, the farther he leaves the earth
below, the more secure he feels.

It is at the moment after leaving the ground,
or just before alighting, should the wind be heavy
and fluctuating, that a pilot runs most risk.
While still near the ground, in ascending, if his
machine is caught by a rush of wind which has a
downward trend, he may be swept back to earth
with a damaging impact, before the stabilising
action of his machine has had time to be effective.
And when descending after a flight, should he
come suddenly within the influence of a heavy
air trend, he may be carried abruptly to earth —
again before his machine can recover itself — and
with injury perhaps to himself and his craft.
But with machines having ample engine-power,

76 AIR POWER

and when flying is conducted from large aero-
dromes, free so far as is possible from awkward
ground currents, even this danger is practically
eliminated.

Descending into a small landing-ground with
an aeroplane, when the wind is high, is like
trying to bring a ship, during bad weather, into
a small and awkward harbour; and one should
not forget that even to-day, after years of organi-
sation and a perfection of detail, it happens not
infrequently — owing to stress of weather — that
large and powerful steamships are unable to
enter the harbours for which they are bound.
It is scarcely surprising therefore that, in high
and gusty winds, and with machines small and
low-powered, and with landing facilities imperfect,
risks should have to be run at the moment of
rising and alighting — though skilled piloting will
do much to avert them.

There are certain conditions, during heavy
gales, when it is impossible to get an aeroplane
from the earth into the air; impossible, that is
to say, without grave risk for the pilot. One
may, perhaps, though the simile is not perfect,
liken the position to that in which it is sought
to launch a small boat on a rough sea. The
moments of peril for the boat, as for the aero-
plane, come just after it has left the one element
and before it has embarked fairly on the other.
The boat, lifted on some wave before it is in deep
water, may be dashed down again, and brought
into a violent contact with the beach. And the

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 77

aeroplane, rising through a heavily-disturbed air,
may be caught by one gust, only to be swept back
to the ground again by another, before it can
gain an altitude which would spell safety. The
boat, once free of the breakers, may ride out the
waves that lie beyond. And with the aeroplane,
once given height and an engine of sufficient
power, running well, there is practically no wind,
however strong, that it cannot weather in safety ;
though of course, if the speed of the wind is
greater than that of the machine, it may be
forced backwards through the air instead of
making progress towards its destination.

So long as aeroplanes remain small, and with
low engine-power, they cannot be said to have
conquered the wind, even though they have
reached, as they have, the stage at which, once
well aloft, the wind has lost its power to rob them
of equilibrium. The criterion by which they
must be judged is their ability to travel from
point to point against the wind. One might, for
example, have a small boat which was so sea-
worthy it would ride out any amount of rough
water ; but such a boat, if its motive power was
so low it could make no reasonable headway
against wind and sea, would not be much use,
say, for crossing the Atlantic. Aeroplanes of
to-day, even the largest, represent nothing more,
if contrasted with machines of the future, than
the smallest of steam-tugs, when seen in com-
parison with one of the largest of ocean-going
liners. The ability, however, to render machines

78 AIR POWER

inherently stable, even the small and compara-
tively slow-flying machines of to-day, strengthens
our confidence in the machines of the future.
The large, high-powered aeroplane we shall have
in a few years' time, with its inherent stability
and the speed at which its motors will drive it
through the air, will be able not only to resist
but to make headway against even the strongest
of gales.

XII
The Increase of Speed

In the work of the immediate future, so far as
naval and military aeroplanes are concerned, a
machine which will require skill in its design and
construction is the high-speed scout.

In future, should nations meet in war, rapid
aerial scouting will have an importance even
greater than has been the case in this campaign.
An air fleet, ascending for action after a declara-
tion of war, and seeking an immediate engagement
with the fleet of the enemy, will send out in
advance of it a number of these high-speed scouts.
They will have to fly long distances without
alighting, each of them following some specified
route. In this way it should be possible, within
a few hours, to obtain news of an enemy's move-
ments over a wide area of land or sea.

These scouts will require a wireless installation
of high power, capable of sending messages a
distance of hundreds of miles to a receiving station.
Their crew need not comprise more than one or

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 79

two men ; the fewer the better, because all weight
thus saved would mean an increase of speed and
of radius of action. The machines might carry
perhaps three occupants — two pilots, both skilled
in observation, and a wireless operator. Such
scouts would be the eyes of a nation when at war.
On their preliminary scouting — on their success
in locating and keeping in touch with an enemy's
air fleet — the success of an action might depend.

The importance of speed in such machines
would lie in the fact that it would be their speed,
and their speed alone, which would permit them
to penetrate above hostile positions when on a
scouting flight, and return with their news to
headquarters without being intercepted and shot
down by hostile patrols, or hit by enemy land-
fire. The faster the machines are, the greater
boldness they will be able to display in passing
over enemy territory; and this will mean, of
course, that their news is so much the more
valuable. Their policy will not be to fight, but
to run away. Immediately hostile patrols sight
them, and begin to close in on them, they will
have to rely on their speed to keep them beyond
the range of the enemy's guns.

By building scouts purely for speed, and by
studying every factor which may increase this
speed, it should be possible to have machines
capable of dashing in above an enemy's territory,
eluding his patrols, making a rapid, general
observation, and escaping again without being
brought to earth. Great personal skill will be

80 AIR POWER

necessary in handling these machines, and the
observers in them will require to be picked men,
capable of gleaning a maximum of information
during the short time they will be over an enemy's
lines. Such men and such machines will not, of
course, be risked indiscriminately, or without
good purpose. The gauntlet of fire they may
have to run, both from earth and air, will be so
severe on occasions that some of them will fail
to return. It will only be when important news
is urgently required that these high-speed scouts
will be called on to run the gauntlet, penetrating
above positions which are defended heavily.
Atmospheric conditions may of course help them
considerably. They may be able to approach
their objective hidden by cloud, and then dive
suddenly into clear air, making a quick survey
and then ascending again to the shelter of the
clouds.

A question arises whether it is possible, in
designing such scouts, and other machines also,
to increase to any material extent the speeds
obtained to-day. Of course the faster the
machines could be made to fly, the more valuable
they would be. In this war there are single-
seated machines in use which fly at more than a
hundred miles an hour — some, indeed, at speeds
which are reported to be as great as 150 and even
160 miles an hour. But under present systems
of construction such very high speeds can be gained
only by building a machine which requires such
dexterity in handling it, particularly in effecting

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 81

a landing, that only a pilot of exceptional skill
can be placed in charge of it; and even then,
unless he has a surface of an almost billiard-table
smoothness on which to alight, the speed at which
he has to make his contact with the ground may
cause his machine to overturn, or may break
some portion of its landing gear.

Scouting and fighting machines are in daily
use at the front, and can be landed on an ordinary
aerodrome surface with a fair amount of safety,
which reach flying speeds of slightly more than
100 miles an hour. And this represents a limit,
with machines constructed as they are to-day,
unless a landing can be made on a specially pre-
pared surface, and one which offers also a large
and unobstructed space.

When a flying corps is on active service, under
present conditions, it is not possible to obtain
specially prepared aerodromes for the alighting
of high-speed machines. As an army moves,
during, say, an advance, the flying corps bases
have to be moved with it. And this means that
there can be no special aerodromes. What is
done is to select the largest and smoothest field
which can be found in the neighbourhood where
a landing-place is required. But the surface of
such a field is, of course, in the majority of cases,
far less suitable for the alighting of high-speed
machines than would be that of a permanent
aerodrome.

82 AIR POWER

XIII
Flying Speed and Landing Speed

An aeroplane is not in the position of a ship,
which, once it is launched on the water, lives on
that element continuously, except for brief periods
when it may be docked for repairs. An aeroplane,
having risen into the air for flight, must return
again to earth when its journey has been made,
alighting at a pace which — at the present time
and with present methods of construction — is
governed by the maximum speed at which it
flies. Aeroplanes have to be built for use not in
one element, as with the ship : they must be able
to manoeuvre on the land as well as fly through
the air. This means that they must be given a
landing-chassis, with its supporting struts, shock
absorbers, and pneumatic-tyred wheels. And the
aeroplane, apart from using this chassis when it
is moving along the ground, or is in the act of
ascending, must carry it up with it when in flight
— in spite of the fact that it spells weight and
wind resistance — in order to be able to alight
on the chassis again when the aerial journey is
at an end.

Aeroplanes, when they are designed and built,
are given a certain amount of wing-surface ac-
cording to the loads they will have to carry at
the speeds they are designed to attain. A machine
flying at say 100 miles an hour as its maximum
speed will alight (to state an average) at about
40 miles an hour. What this means is that 40

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 83

miles an hour is the slowest pace at which the
planes of the machines will bear their load through
the air. If the pilot reduces his speed below this
point the machine may dive or side-slip, passing
out of control.

When its normal flying speed is greatly reduced,
an aeroplane becomes what is called " sloppy "
on its controls. The machine is designed so that
its control surfaces are efficient when it is in flight
at its maximum speed, and any reduction of this
maximum speed impairs the efficiency of the
controls, because the air is striking on them at a
lower velocity, with the result that they exercise
a less perceptible influence on the course of the
machine. With well-designed surfaces, there is
naturally an appreciable latitude. An elevating-
plane which gains its maximum efficiency at 100
miles an hour will still be sufficiently operative,
for all practical purposes, when a pilot is making
a landing at 40 or 50 miles an hour. Its move-
ments at the slower speeds will naturally require
to be accentuated. Whereas at high speed the
very smallest movement up or down will affect the
flight of the aeroplane, the pilot will find it neces-
sary, after he has slowed up his machine, to push
or pull over his lever much further in order to
gain a corresponding result.

There are machines to-day which are perfectly
satisfactory in their control when they are moving
at high speed. But when you try to land them
slowly they are dangerous. They have not enough
aileron or elevator surface to give their pilot a

84 AIR POWER

proper control over them when he attempts to
alight slowly.

There are other factors which govern the
alighting speed of a fast machine. If such a
machine is lightly loaded with fuel, say for only
an hour or so's flying, this has a favourable
influence on its landing speed. The lighter the
weight it carries, the slower the speed at which
it can be landed. But if a high-speed scout is
loaded heavily with fuel for a long flight, and if
the pilot has to bring it back to the ground for
some reason within a few minutes of starting out,
and before his fuel load has been lightened, he
may have to make a landing at a dangerously
high speed.

Then there is the individual skill of the aviator
to be reckoned with. There is a certain small
scouting craft, of a type used at the front, which
attains a maximum speed of 120 miles an hour.
This machine, when in the hands of an expert
pilot, can be landed at a speed of 30 or 40 miles
an hour. The pilot lets the tail of his machine
down, just before landing, and presents his main-
planes at a steep angle to the air — checking for-
ward speed in the same way that a bird may be
seen to employ, turning back its wings and making
them act as a brake, when it wants to bring
itself to rest quickly on some given spot. But
the percentage of very highly-skilled pilots — men
able to land fast machines at slow speeds — is
small. A pilot of ordinary skill, in alighting with
the I20-mile-an-hour machine we have mentioned,

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 85

might perhaps make contact with the ground
at about 60 miles an hour, and this might prove
a dangerous speed if the landing took place on
any average surface.

The aim with aeroplanes for use in war should
not be to obtain a machine which will do wonder-
ful things in the hands of a specially-skilled man,
but one which will yield good service when flown
by an average pilot. An aeroplane which can
only be handled successfully by one man in a
hundred is not the machine that is wanted on
active service.

It should be understood that an aeroplane, when
it alights, does not do so with anything in the
nature of a dead-weight impact : if such was the
case, no chassis would stand the strain. What
happens is that the aviator, when he decides to
alight, switches off his motor, and then begins
to glide down at a gently-sloping angle. A well-
designed machine, when it is gliding, will descend
on a gradual path say of one foot in six or one foot
in eight — that is to say, it descends one foot
perpendicularly for every six or eight feet that it
moves forward horizontally.

Just before his eye tells him that the landing-
wheels of his machine are about to touch ground,
the aviator makes a movement of his elevator
which checks the downward glide of his machine,
and causes it to move through the air in a hori-
zontal position, the landing-wheels being only
a few feet above the surface of the ground. The
forward speed of the machine now lessens appre-

86 AIR POWER

ciably, its dive having been checked, with the
result that its planes begin gradually to lose their
lifting power, and allow the machine to sink until
its landing-wheels make their first contact with
the ground. In this first impact only a small
percentage of the total weight of the machine
has to be borne by the wheels. The machine is
still moving forward at some speed; therefore
its sustaining-planes are still bearing a large
proportion of their load. At this first impact the
wheels should touch so lightly that they seem
merely to skim the ground. As soon, however, as
the wheels are in definite contact with the ground,
the machine begins rapidly to lose its forward
speed, with the result that the total weight of the
machine is soon transferred from the planes to
the landing- wheels. But this transference is
sufficiently gradual to prevent there being an
abrupt shock. It is difficult sometimes for a
passenger to judge the precise moment at which
the machine in which he has made a flight actually
touches ground. His first indication that he has
landed is often the up-and-down motion of the
machine as it runs forward on the ground after
the moment of contact, and before it comes to a
standstill.

To learn to make a smooth and correct landing,
and to do so time after time without error, repre-
sents one of the most difficult stages in the in-
struction of a novice. Sometimes a man will
" flatten out " his machine quite correctly; but
instead of being just on the point of touching

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 87

ground when he does so, he will still be at some
little altitude. This is due, of course, to an
error on his part in judging distance. He sees
the ground nearing him as he descends, and —
often from nervousness more than anything else —
brings up the front of his machine a second or so
too soon. What happens, as a result, is generally
disconcerting. The machine, having been checked
in the glide which is preserving the lifting in-
fluence of its planes, comes almost to a standstill,
and then drops perpendicularly on to its chassis,
which suffers as a rule — as well perhaps as the
propeller and other parts. The pilot, however,
escapes generally with nothing worse than a
shock; and the remonstrances of his instructor.

Occasionally, instead of being too soon to
check his glide, a pupil will be a second or so too
late. Remembering his instructor's warning to
keep his machine well down after he has shut off
his engine, and to glide at a speed which will
ensure him a full control, the pupil will delay too
long the moment when he draws back his lever
slightly and changes the vertical descent into a
horizontal glide. The result may be that the
machine strikes ground heavily while still moving
at some speed, and breaks its alighting gear.

But the remarkable fact in connection with
the flying schools is not the accidents which
happen, because these are extremely rare, but
the fact that thousands of men can be trained to
fly, as they are, with nothing more than an
occasional breakage of some part of a machine.

88 AIR POWER

Fatalities among pupils are very rare indeed;
even a trifling personal injury is unusual. This
immunity from accident is due mainly to the skill
and thoroughness of instructors, and also to the
fact that the pupil passes through a carefully
graduated series of tests, and is not allowed to
handle a machine alone until he has become
thoroughly accustomed to being in the air.
Accidents which happen during the early career
of a pilot occur as a rule after he has left the care
of his instructor and has begun to fly on his own
account — making journeys across country from
point to point, and facing such risks as were
absent entirely from his trips above the aerodrome.
It is in this stage, when he is free from the advice
and control of an instructor, that the tempera-
ment of the young pilot may begin to reveal itself
strongly. If he is cautious in a reasonable way,
remembering his own lack of experience, all may
be well; but if he is hot-headed and impatient,
and if he fails to appreciate how little he knows,
then a smash may lie in wait for him.

Perfect landings are only possible at reasonable
speeds. In the case of a racing monoplane, built
to take part in an international contest, the wing
surface of the machine had been so curtailed that
the pilot found he had to alight at a speed of
nearly ninety miles an hour. And though the
landing was made on the smooth surface of a
carefully-prepared aerodrome, the machine sprang
upward again after the first impact, and moved
on through the air for some distance before it

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 89

lost its impetus sufficiently to bring its wheels in
contact with the ground again. And even then,
though the aeroplane was flown by a pilot who was
an expert in handling high-speed machines, it
made another leap upward before coming to rest.
The chief difficulty of alighting, in one of these
high-speed racing machines, is that their wing
area, being heavily loaded in the endeavour to
use a minimum of surface, gives a very small
latitude in flying speed. The machines will bear
their loads only so long as a high speed is main-
tained. In alighting, when a pilot attempts to
slacken speed, the wing-lift diminishes so rapidly
that the machine may tend to drop like a stone,
and has no such gliding angle as is the case with
a machine the planes of which are lightly loaded.
If a pilot in a fast machine should encounter any
furrow, or inequality in the ground, when he
attempts to alight, his machine may spring into
the air again after its first impact. And what he
has to fear, then, is that the speed of the machine
will have become so reduced, by the time it has
exhausted the momentum of this upward spring
and the moment comes for a second contact with
the ground, that its wings will be bearing so little
of the weight of the machine that this contact
will be made heavily, with the result that the
chassis of the machine may collapse. It happens
often, when a pilot tries to alight with a racing
aeroplane, that the machine springs again into
the air in the manner we have described. Where-
upon, rather than wait for a second and more

90 AIR POWER

violent impact, -the aviator will switch on his
engine again and make another circuit of the
aerodrome. Then, when he makes another at-
tempt at landing, he may be fortunate enough to
encounter an absolutely smooth piece of surface,
with the result that he will be able to keep his
machine on the ground after its first contact,
and prevent a dangerous rebound.

An aviator who flies a very fast machine across
country, and has to descend involuntarily on a
surface that is not perfectly smooth, may find it
almost impossible to make a safe landing. If
the wheels of his aeroplane encounter any furrow
or roughness in the ground either at the moment
of alighting or just afterwards, the machine may
pitch forward on its nose, or perhaps turn right
over in a somersault ; and this will mean, at the
speed at which it is travelling, that it is badly
damaged or perhaps completely wrecked; while
the pilot will be lucky if he escapes unhurt.

The problem of the relation between the flying
and landing speed of an aeroplane is one of the
utmost importance. Unless a machine can be
made to alight slowly, as well as to fly fast, it
will be impossible in the future to attain speeds
as high, say, as 200 or 250 miles an hour — though
these should be possible if only a slow landing
speed can be made to accompany a high maximum
speed.

An aeroplane with a fixed amount of plane
area, built for a certain maximum speed, cannot
reduce its alighting speed beyond a certain limit ;

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 91

and if its maximum speed is high, then (one writes
of present conditions) its landing speed must be
high also.

XIV
The Variation of Plane Surface

To overcome this difficulty, aeroplanes may be
designed which have the power of altering the
area of their wings while they are in flight.

An alternative method, which has already been
tried but which can hardly be expected to give the
wide variations in speed which will be required
in the future, is to alter the angle of incidence of
the planes. This means that the sustaining-planes
are attached to the hull in such a way that the
pilot can alter the angle at which they present
themselves to the air. The planes, that is to
say, can be constructed so that they will rock
slightly, presenting themselves either at a steep
or a fine angle to the air. When at a high speed,
the planes are set so that they have a very fine
or flat angle, thus reducing their lift, and also
their drift or head resistance, so as to meet the
conditions which exist at high speed. When he
wants to fly slowly, say at the moment of alighting,
the pilot can arrange the planes so that they are
at a steep angle to the air. This gives them more
lifting power, and enables them to bear the weight
of the machine at a reduced speed; while the
resistance they offer to the air, when at a steep
angle, makes them act in the same way as would
an air brake, slowing up the speed of the machine.

92 AIR POWER

To alter the angle of incidence of a plane is more
simple, mechanically, than to devise a means of
varying the amount of surface which it presents
to the air. But, when very high speeds are con-
templated, to alter the angle of incidence is not
likely to provide a sufficiently wide variation
between high speeds and low.

If a successful method of varying plane area can
be obtained, it will mean that in ascending, as
an aeroplane moves forward across the ground
at moderate speed, it will present its full wing
surface to the air — gaining in this way a maximum
lift, and leaving the ground quickly and climbing
fast. Then, when the aviator has gained his
required altitude, and wishes to fly forward at a
high speed and not to climb, he will begin to reef
or furl his wing-surface, reducing gradually the
full area which had enabled him to ascend quickly
— but some of which is now superfluous, and is
hindering the rapid movement of the machine.
In this way, as his craft begins to move forward
more quickly through the air — its ascent having
given place to horizontal flight — the pilot will
continue to reduce his plane area until he reaches
the point when the machine is exposing just
sufficient surface, and no more, to bear it through
the air without any tendency to lose altitude.
And when this point is reached it will mean that
the machine has attained a maximum speed,
having regard to its engine-power and load.

With machines which have no power to vary
their wing area, and which must sustain them-

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 93

selves in flight with one given surface, whether
they are flying rapidly or at only a moderate
speed, it means that when a very high speed is
attempted the planes of the machine exercise
such an increased lift — owing to the action on
them of the more rapid air stream — that their
tendency is to force the machine upward rather
than to bear it forward horizontally. This ten-
dency to rise a pilot must check by setting his
elevating-plane so as to keep the machine down.
But this action sets up friction and unnecessary
resistance, and robs the machine of speed.

When the pilot in a variable-surface aeroplane
has reached the end of his journey and wishes to
alight, he will begin to throttle down his engine
and unfurl again his wing-surface, exposing more
and* more surface as the speed of the machine
slackens. By obtaining a large wing area again,
when he needs it, he will be able to make contact
with the ground at a speed slow enough to permit
him to land without accident in a restricted space,
or on rough ground.

An aeroplane which had the power to vary
its wing area might attain, say, a maximum speed
of 150 miles an hour, and yet be able to land at
20 or 25 miles an hour.

XV
Steel Construction

With present systems of aeroplane construction
it would be difficult in the extreme, if not im-

94 AIR POWER

possible, to provide any successful method for
varying wing surface. The wings of the present-
type aeroplane are built up as a rule with long,
light wooden spars, across which wooden ribs are
fixed, the framework thus formed being covered
by a tightly stretched surface of cotton fabric.
In the case of biplanes or triplanes, these planes
are fixed one above another in a box-girder method
of construction, being connected by a system of
inter-plane struts and bracing wires. To adopt
reefing or telescoping in planes of this construction,
and to maintain at the same time rigidity and
strength, would be a matter of almost insuperable
difficulty.

Before a practical system of wing variation
can be designed, it seems necessary that metal,
instead of wood, should be used in construction.
The main-spars of a wing, instead of being of wood,
must be hollow tubes of high-grade steel, which
can of course be made immensely strong. These
tubes would be telescopic, one section moving
within another. The surface of the wing would
comprise a number of light metal plates which,
in the outer sections which would need to contract
or expand with the movement of the telescopic
spars, would be made to slide one within another.
The main-spar tubes would be so strong that
towards the extremities of the planes, where the
reefing of the surface would be effected, neither
inter-plane struts nor bracing wires would be
required.

Through the sliding of one section into another,

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 95

when the main-spars were being telescoped, they
would have a maximum strength, in their resist-
ance to the pressure of the air, just when the
machine was moving at its highest speeds, and was
being subjected to the heaviest strains.

In front of the machine, projecting from the
hull, a spar might be needed which would be the
equivalent of the bowsprit of a ship. Cables
would run from this spar to the extremities of
the wing-spars, so as to take the drift or backward
strain on the wings when the machine was at high
speed. These cables would adjust themselves
automatically to the moving in or out of the
plane-ends, so that they would always be in
tension.

In the pioneer days, sufficient attention was
not paid, sometimes, to the drift or backward
strain on a plane which is set up when it is in rapid
motion. Constructors were more concerned with
giving planes strength to meet the air pressures
on them from above and below. But after acci-
dents had happened in which planes had folded
back and broken, a system of drift wiring was
adopted. These wires, extending from the front
of the machine on either side, and being attached
to the wings at their forward edge, took up the
drift strains. But such wiring should be elimin-
ated, if possible, owing to the fact that it sets up
resistance to forward progress when a machine
is flying fast. To-day, with a greater science in
wing construction, these drift-wires may be dis-
carded without risk of structural weakness. In

96 AIR POWER

the design of a wing, and in its internal construc-
tion, an allowance can be made for drift strains,
so that the wing will withstand such strains with-
out the assistance of external wiring. But with
the extremely high speeds of the future, and
with the use of movable extensions unsupported
by inter-plane struts, it may be found necessary
to employ drift wires, passing from the front of
the machine to these extensions.

When the sustaining planes of a machine are
reefed it will be necessary, in order not to impair
the equilibrium or controllability of the craft,
to vary either the surface of its subsidiary planes,
or to alter their angle of incidence. The control
surfaces of a machine, if designed to be efficient
when the craft was flying fairly slowly, and with
its full wing area exposed, would exercise too
powerful an influence — when the machine had
reefed its main surfaces and was at high speed —
unless they could be moderated either in surface
or angle. It will probably be found convenient,
and sufficiently effective, to alter the angle of
incidence of these control surfaces. To attempt
to vary their area, in conjunction with that of
the main-planes, might prove too complicated.

In varying the area of sustaining-planes, it may
be possible to perfect some system on which the
machine itself should, by an automatic action,
expose just what surface was required for any
given speed. As speed increased, for example,
and the pressure of the surfaces grew heavier,
these might be constructed so that they would

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 97

reduce themselves automatically, adapting them-
selves to the higher rate of speed, and providing
only just sufficient surface to maintain the
machine in horizontal flight. And by a reverse
action, when the motors were throttled down and
the speed began to lessen, more surface could
be exposed, automatically, so as to sustain the
machine when it was making, say, a slow descent
on to a small or roughly-surfaced alighting
ground.

XVI
Variable Pitch Propellers

In order that the propellers of an aeroplane
should be efficient, when they are required to
drive a machine at widely varying speeds, it will
be necessary to give their blades a variable pitch,
or angle, in relation to the air stream in which
they work. A propeller with blades having one
fixed or given pitch must be designed specially
for the speed at which the aeroplane to which it
is fitted is intended to fly. The designer of a
propeller, being acquainted with the horse-power
of the engine which will drive it, and the number
of revolutions per minute made by the engine
(say 1200), designs the blades of the propeller in
such a way that, absorbing this engine-power
when turning at 1200 revolutions a minute, they
will screw themselves forward through the air
a certain number of feet a second — this rate of
forward travel represents the speed that has

been chosen for the aeroplane. In the case of a
H

98 AIR POWER

tractor propeller, the machine is drawn forward
by its propeller, which is placed in front; while
in the case of a pusher, the screw is at the rear of
the machine, and forces it forward.

A propeller designed to deal with the air
efficiently, when revolving at a given speed, and
moving through the air also at a given speed, will
churn up the air and slip, without dealing with it
efficiently, when moving at a speed which is much
less than its designed speed. It is the same with
the propeller of a ship. When a ship is moving
slowly through the water, at far short of its full
speed, the propeller churns and beats up the water,
instead of dealing with it smoothly. But as the
speed of the ship increases, and the blades of the
propeller begin to work through the water at more
nearly their designed speed, this turbulent and
slipping action ceases.

It is not difficult to construct propellers with
variable-pitch blades; but mechanism is of
course necessary to gain the movement required,
and this mechanism entails weight. And at the
present time, when there is no extreme variation
in the flying speeds of aeroplanes, the disadvantage
of the additional weight, in using a variable-pitch
propeller, more than outweighs the advantages.
The use of a variable-pitch propeller, in place of
one with an unvarying pitch, may add a few miles
an hour to the speed of an aeroplane; but the
difference is not sufficient to justify the additional
weight and complication of mechanism. In the
future, when speeds are increased, and there is

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 99

a wide variation between high speeds and low,
it may become essential to have variable-pitch
propellers.

XVII
One Propeller behind Another

Much more needs to be known about propeller
design, though scientific research is constantly
bringing facts to light. It used to be considered
that one propeller, if placed behind another, and
revolving in the air stream thrown back by the
propeller in front, would have its efficiency pre-
judiced owing to the fact that it had to work in
a disturbed air stream. But experiments have
shown that a propeller, provided that it is designed
specially to work under such conditions, may be
placed behind another — granted it is not imme-
diately behind it — and still remain efficient.

The factor which has to be considered is that
the first propeller, acting on the air its blades
encounter, accelerates this stream of air until it
is travelling at a high rate of speed. And it is in
this accelerated air stream that the second pro-
peller has to operate. What is done is to calculate
the rate of acceleration of the air, as between the
speed at which it meets the first propeller — this
speed being the flying speed of the aeroplane — and
the speed at which the first propeller throws it on
the second. The blades of the second propeller
are then given a pitch different from those of the
first, so that they may work efficiently in an air
stream which corresponds not with the speed of

100 AIR POWER

the aeroplane, whatever this may be, but with the
additional speed imparted to the air by the action
on it of the first propeller.

It may prove convenient, in building large
aeroplanes, to be able to place one propeller
behind another, and to do so without any appre-
ciable loss of efficiency. It would be possible,
for instance, to have one screw, working as a
tractor, in front of a plane, and another one
behind, at the rear edge of the plane, operating
as a pusher, the two being divided by the chord
or width of the plane, which might be assumed to
be, say, ten feet.

XVIII
Future Speeds

If a successful method for varying plane area
can be devised, and when variable-pitch pro-
pellers are employed there seems no reason why
future speeds by air should not reach 200, 250, or
perhaps even 300 miles an hour. At such speeds,
with machines rushing through the air like pro-
jectiles, a very small amount of sustaining surface
would be required. Machines would reduce their
wing area gradually, as they increased their speed,
until they were flying, so to say, almost under
bare poles.

The question of wind resistance at high speeds —
the resistance the machine itself offers to its own
passage through the air — requires to be studied
very closely. By a careful stream-lining or taper-
ing of hulls, and the reduction so far as is possible

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 101

of inter-plane struts and wires, wind resistances
have been lessened already to a marked degree.
But here there is an important field still for
laboratory research. The aim, in the words of
a constructor, is to build the hull of an aircraft
of such a shape that " the air does not know how
big it is."

XIX
Alighting Gear

The landing-chassis of an aeroplane, which
cannot be discarded, will have to be improved
considerably in the future ; and the improvement
must lie in simplifying the construction of the
chassis, so that it represents a minimum of dead
weight when a machine is in the air, and in
arranging it so that it offers the least possible
head resistance.

It may be assumed that the machines of the
future which are intended to be flown from one
country to another, passing above stretches of
water while in flight, will be amphibious. They
will, that is to say, be given a chassis comprising
wheels and floats, so that they can alight either
on the ground, or support themselves on the
water. A chassis of this type offers no great
difficulty. The aim must, of course, be to keep
down weight and head resistance. In one design
the landing wheels are made to disappear inside
the floats when the machine is in flight, or is about
to descend on the water; the pilot being able to
lower the wheels into position, by a lever action

102 AIR POWER

from the driving-seat, when he needs to make a
landing on the ground.

In the system of construction most general to-
day, a machine must be given a chassis which
allows it to stand up fairly high off the ground,
this being necessary to provide clearance for the
propeller, which is coupled directly to the engine,
the engine being placed within the hull of the
machine. To obtain this clearance entails the
use of long chassis struts projecting below the
machine, and these struts have to be braced with
wires. The result is that, when a machine is in
flight, there is a structure projecting below its
hull, comprising struts, wires, and wheels, which
is not only so much dead weight, but which offers
also a constant head resistance.

If the chassis could be brought close up under
the hull, eliminating struts and wires, then head
resistance as well as weight could be lessened;
but, as it is, the difficulty is that of propeller
clearance. In large machines of the future,
however, which will have duplicate engines driving
propellers through gearing, it will be possible to
raise these propellers higher above the ground;
and this will mean that the landing wheels, instead
of projecting some distance below the hull to
give propeller clearance, can be brought close up
under the hull.

In this way, when a machine is in flight, nothing
more than the lower half of the landing-wheels
need be exposed to the air, and this will mean a
considerable lessening of resistance.

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 103

It should be possible also to devise a form of
disappearing chassis, should this be found neces-
sary. The landing-wheels could be attached to a
lattice-girder structure, which could be made to
close up under the machine when it was in flight
on a system similar to that of a lift gate. But
with a chassis so simplified that nothing except
the lower portions of the wheels projected below
the hull, it would hardly be found necessary to
have disappearing mechanism. One might have
a hull with, say, four wheels placed close up under
it, more or less like the wheels of a motor-car :
these wheels would be well sprung, of course, and
would be fitted with large pneumatic tyres.

XX
Air and Ground Brakes

When a low landing speed is possible, as with
a variable-surface machine, the chassis can be
greatly simplified. And to obtain landings at
slow speeds it is possible to use a form of air brake,
in addition to the reduction in speed which can
be gained by an increase in wing surface. These
air brakes are obtained by hinging rear sections
of the main-planes so that they may be tilted
upward. As a machine glides down, and just
before its contact with the ground, the hinged
rear surfaces are tilted up so that they act on the
air, causing a drag or resistance which slows up
the machine; and, when a machine has once

104 AIR POWER

touched ground, the brakes tend to hold it
on the ground, checking any tendency to rise
again.

An air brake is useful also, on occasion, when an
aviator in a machine with a fine gliding angle
requires to alight quickly on some suitable ground
which he sees almost immediately below. It
may happen, for instance, that a motor fails
suddenly, and that a pilot sees a field just below
which is the only one in the neighbourhood
offering a safe landing. With a machine which
glides at a fine angle, the aviator might run the
risk of over-shooting this mark, or of having to
make circles above it as he descended, with the
result that the wind might carry him away side-
ways and prevent him from reaching it. But with
an air brake, once the pilot has his position in
relation to the landing-place below, and has
measured the distance with his eye, he can slow
up with his brakes the forward motion of his
machine, and land just at the point he has decided
on. Such air brakes require skill in their applica-
tion : the speed of the machine must not be
reduced to such an extent that its planes threaten
to become inoperative.

To check the run of an aeroplane along the
ground, after it has alighted, brakes can be
operated on its wheels, in the same way as on the
wheels of a land vehicle. It should be possible
with variable surface, and with the use of air and
wheel brakes, to alight not only at a slow speed
in a small space, but also to prevent a machine

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 105

running forward any appreciable distance after it
has made contact with the ground.

A number of accidents have been caused by
aeroplanes running forward after they have
alighted and colliding with some obstruction.
Unless a pilot has a brake which he can apply to
the running wheels, it is impossible for him to
check this forward run. In a case which illus-
trates this risk a pilot landed in a field with a
decided slope, which he had been unable to detect
from the air. What happened was that the
aeroplane ran down the slope after it had landed,
the aviator having no brake with which he could
check it, and crashed into a wall, though the
pilot escaped unhurt. A brake will only come
into effective operation when the planes of a
machine have ceased to lift, and its weight is
bearing on its wheels. A special form of chassis
needs to be used, also, to prevent a machine pitching
forward on to its nose when the brake is applied.

XXI
Engines

The motor which drives an aeroplane has been
described as the heart of the machine. It will be
essential in the future, when large weight-carrying
craft are designed, that their motors should give
more power for a given weight than is the case
to-day. In the improvement of aero-engines, and
in the construction and testing of new designs,
lies a most important field for research.

106 AIR POWER

The first engines used in aeroplanes may be
described as motor-car engines which had been
robbed of most of their strength, and of their
reliability, in order to gain lightness. And these
motors, after having been thus weakened, were
subjected to strains of a severity which no motor-
car engine could have been expected to survive.
In order to maintain in flight the aeroplane to
which they were fitted, the motors which had been
adapted to flying needed to run continuously
at high speeds, with no slackening or respite;
working in fact under conditions which were the
equivalent of driving a motor-car at high speed
up a never-ending hill. It is not surprising
therefore that these first aero-motors should have
broken down constantly. Parts which had been
lightened collapsed, while engines over-heated
and lost their power. No motor-car engine is
expected, hour after hour, to develop its maximum
power. In going down-hill you take out your
clutch; while during an average run, on an
ordinary road, the engine is slowed down for one
reason or another say twenty times an hour. To
transform a motor-car engine into an aeroplane
engine it is necessary — in view of the strains to
which the latter is subjected — to devise among
other things a new method of lubrication, and to
adopt bearings of a special type.

Matters became better certainly for the pioneer
aviators when they were given a rotary, air-cooled
motor, which was not a lightened motor-car engine,
but one designed specially to meet the conditions

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 107

of flight. This engine, however, had its draw-
backs ; but it ran with sufficient reliability to allow
long flights to be made, and considerable experi-
ence gained. This engine, indeed, gave pilots the
chance of becoming acquainted with the air.

XXII
Breakdown

One of the troubles with aero-engines has been
caused by coupling them direct to a propeller,
with no system of gearing between the two ;
with the result that the motor has had to be run
always at high speeds, throwing a heavy and
continuous strain on its reciprocating and other
parts.

In the past there has, of course, been much to
commend the direct coupling of a propeller to
the engine. Engine-powers have been so low
that it would have been a serious matter to have
been deprived of even the small percentage of
power which might have been lost in the use of a
gear. By a direct coupling, also, the weight of a
gearing was saved. But the drawback of direct
coupling lay in the fact that a motor was expected
to run, perhaps for a number of hours, at a very
high speed, delivering its full power under con-
ditions which were most exacting. To turn an
aeroplane propeller hour after hour at say 1000
revolutions a minute, with the propeller blades
acting on the air in a way which calls for a constant

108 AIR POWER

and heavy output of power, throws on an engine
a very severe and continuous strain. It is scarcely
surprising, therefore, that breakdowns have been
frequent. What has been surprising has been
the reliability which engines have actually shown,
even when required to work under such adverse
conditions.

Some pioneer aviators, realising the strain
which was imposed on their engines, and desiring
to lessen this as far as possible, were in the habit
of " nursing " their engines with assiduous care —
and with results, it may be mentioned also, very
satisfactory to themselves. In one of the early
contests, a long-distance flight across country,
practically all the competitors were using water-
cooled motors of a certain type. One aviator,
whose machine was a lightly-built biplane which
had a large plane-area, found after a series of
experiments with propellers that he could main-
tain himself in flight, though at no great speed,
when his motor was throttled down to about
900 revolutions a minute. Other competitors,
flying machines of different types, were running
their engines at full throttle and at 1200 or 1400
revolutions a minute. The aviator who was able
to throttle down and " nurse " his engine made a
cross-country flight lasting more than three hours
— a record at the time. None of the other com-
petitors did anywhere near so well, their motors
giving constant trouble. The pilot who made
the long flight, and won the prize, attributed his
success almost entirely to his ability to relieve

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 109

his motor of the heavy and incessant strain of
running for hour after hour at full throttle.

In motor-boating in its early stages, as in aero-
planing, engines were coupled direct to propellers
and run at high speeds, with the result that they
were frequently breaking down. But when gears
were introduced between the engine and the
propeller, permitting engines to run at more reason-
able speeds, a greater reliability was at once
obtained. And with aeroplanes it promises, under
certain conditions, to be the same — though of
course the last thing one should do, in the light
of our present knowledge, is to dogmatise.

XXIII
Petrol Turbines

Aero-engines in use to-day, greatly though they
have been improved, do not represent anything
like a limit of efficiency in the power which they
develop for any given weight. New systems are
already being experimented with, among them
being that of the high-speed petrol turbine ; and
there seems nothing, in the process of time, to
prevent this being developed successfully. A
great deal of experimental work still needs to be
done, however, and for this large sums of money
are required. It is very costly to produce and
perfect a new type of engine.

The turbine principle should be one of the
most suitable for driving an aeroplane propeller,
imparting a smooth, even thrust ; exerting a con-

110 AIR POWER

tinuous impulse instead of a series of impulses,
as with a four-cycle motor. With a turbine, also,
it should be possible to obtain high power for a
very small weight. At the present time, with
one of the lightest four-cycle aeroplane engines,
a horse-power of energy is obtained for a weight
of about two pounds. With the turbine it may
be possible to get the weight down as low as
half a pound per horse-power.

XXIV
Weight-carrying Aeroplanes

The war has brought designers and constructors
face to face, for the first time, with the structural
problems which are involved in changing the
aeroplane from a small, light machine, raising
one or two occupants, into a large, heavy craft,
capable of lifting weights which would have been
almost undreamt of before the war. And as a
definite instance of what war can do to stimulate
constructional progress, it may be mentioned that
there are machines in existence already which
have engines developing hundreds of horse-power,
and which have been proved capable, when carry-
ing fuel for short flights, of ascending with a pilot
and more than twenty passengers.

It is possible, to-day, to build large aeroplanes
and to make them efficient for a few hours' flying ;
but it is another matter to design large machines
which shall fly for a number of hours without

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 111

alighting, carrying a heavy load of fuel in addition
to their crew, and being loaded also perhaps with
guns or bombs. The difficulty is not the actual
building of a large aeroplane, or in making it fly,
but in rendering it efficient when it is in the air.
It must carry fuel to enable it to fly long distances ;
it must raise the weight of a crew ; it must, if it
is a war machine, carry in addition the weight of
certain war material. And it must be able to
ascend rapidly, even when so loaded, and to fly
fast.

XXV
Strength and Efficiency

The chief problem, in the construction of very
large aeroplanes, is to obtain an adequate struc-
tural strength without the weight which this
entails rising to such a point that it impairs the
flying efficiency of a machine ; that is to say,
its speed, radius of action, and weight-carrying
power. But this problem is by no means in-
surmountable. It represents merely the difficulty
of the moment in moving from small aeroplanes
to large. It would be altogether absurd to say,
as is said sometimes, that aeroplane construction
has reached anything like a final stage. On the
contrary, it is just beginning, and has all its
important work before it; and there are no
problems, in the building of large machines, that
time and experiment will not solve.

In spite of heavy drawbacks, and of a lack of

112 AIR POWER

support both official and public, the aviation
industry in this country went ahead with remark-
able strides before the war — thanks to the in-
domitable spirit of those who were associated with
it, and to whom time and money meant nothing
so long as they could forward the science to which
they were content to devote their lives. If such
progress was possible before the war, when the
industry was badly organised, and without any-
thing like adequate funds, we may anticipate
extremely rapid developments after the war —
when the industry will not only be organised, but
will possess a financial strength which should
permit machines to be built which would have
been impossible, owing to their cost, before the
war.

Aeroplanes in use to-day are generally in the
form of biplanes, one wing being fitted above
another. This is an advantageous form of con-
struction, for many reasons, when building
machines of moderate size. But when a large
aeroplane is designed, a machine capable of raising
a heavy load, the extra lifting surface which must
be provided may mean that the span of the wings
has to be increased to such an extent — assuming
the machine to be a biplane — that adverse factors
are introduced. It should be explained that, in
disposing of a large amount of additional plane-
area, it is not possible to increase beyond a
certain definite limit the chord of a plane, or its
width from front to back. Therefore the main
increase must be in span, or width from side to

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 113

side. It is because the chief lifting power of a
plane is obtained near its forward, or entering
edge, that it is necessary to use planes which have
a narrow chord : if they were built wide from
front to back, in order to dispose of additional
surface, their rear sections would be inefficient.

With planes of a wide span it is necessary to
use heavy spars, in order to obtain strength ; and
it may be found necessary, with planes of a very
wide span, to employ some cantilever system of
construction. This means not only an increased
weight, but an added head resistance. Heavier
construction, all round, is in fact entailed by the
use of wide wing-spans. And the trouble is that
this factor of increased weight, which must be
incurred to gain strength, may rise at such a ratio
that it impairs seriously the efficiency of a large
machine when it is in flight.

XXVI
Multiple-Plane Machines

Several new methods of construction, by which
the drawbacks of a wide wing-span may be
obviated, already suggest themselves. Design and
construction must, indeed, now enter on a new
phase. Present systems of construction have
reached almost a limit, so far as the size of a
machine is concerned. They were conceived and
adopted for the building of small aeroplanes,
with everything on a small scale ; but now we are

114 AIR POWER

faced by the problem of designing and constructing
really large aeroplanes, and new methods must be
adopted for meeting new difficulties.

In making any radical departure from methods
which have been proved successful in small
machines, the designer of a large aeroplane may
be faced by a whole series of new problems — the
disposition of the load the machine must carry;
the placing of the motors ; the system of gearing
between these motors and the propellers; and
then the placing of these propellers themselves.
All these problems have not only to be considered
afresh when a large multiple-engined machine is
designed, but the advantageous settlement of one
question may react disadvantageously on another.
In the end, of course, there is a compromise, the
best all-round result being obtained. But to reach
this point of equilibrium, when one factor is
balanced as well as it can be against another,
may represent in the evolution of a new machine
not only a period of delay, but an expenditure of
a very large sum of money on the construction
of experimental types.

One way of overcoming the drawback of wide
wing-spans is to employ a system in which a
number of sustaining-planes are used, each of them
being of a moderate span, and superposed one
above another in a manner rather suggesting a
Venetian blind. This is not a new idea; it was
suggested and discussed in the pioneer days.
But in those days, when small machines were being
built which had no great amount of surface, the

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 115

idea had not so much to commend it as is the
case now.

Already, in the design and construction of
triplanes — machines which have three surfaces
one above another — one sees the tendency to
adopt a multiplane system. In the use of the
triplane, another idea is revived from pioneer
days. But in the early triplanes, which were
crude machines, there were certain constructional
difficulties which could not be overcome. Now-
adays, however, owing to the increase of know-
ledge, both theoretical and practical, such dis-
advantages as exist in this method of construction
may be very greatly minimised.

The interference between planes when they are
one above another is an objection which has been
raised to the triplane or multiplane construction.
A plane, in order to gain its full efficiency, must
act in a uniform, smoothly-flowing stream of air.
If the air-stream is disturbed, or broken up, a
plane cannot extract from this air-stream its full
amount of lift. Planes which are placed only a
short distance apart, and directly one above
another, do interfere with each other, with the
result that there is a loss of efficiency.

But steps can be taken to lessen this inter-
ference. The planes of a machine may, for
example, be set some distance apart when they
are superposed; or they may be staggered —
which means that one is set some little distance
in front of the other. In a triplane of modern
design, for example, all three planes are so

116 AIR POWER

staggered that not one of them is immediately
above or below another. By such means, while
interference is not altogether eliminated, any
disadvantage it entails is outweighed by the
convenience of this system of construction.

Here one has a case, again, of the compromise
which is essential in designing an aeroplane, or
almost any other piece of mechanism. The
designer of an aircraft has to choose, often, the
lesser of certain evils. When he is told that his
machine must carry more and more weight, and
must fly longer distances without alighting, and
yet must attain a high average speed, he has to
work patiently in order to get the best concrete
result from these requirements, conflicting as
they often are.

A point of distinct value, in the use of a number
of planes, is that each of them can be given a
narrow chord; and this, as has been explained,
is a definite aid to efficiency.

The main fact, in regard to multiplane machines,
is that this method allows a large amount of plane
area to be used without an unwieldy wing-span,
and that it tends to keep weight within a reason-
able limit, and to provide a rigid construction.
Space is saved, also, in housing machines.

XXVII
Metal v. Wood

By the time we are using large multiplane
machines, metal will be used in construction

PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTION 117

instead of wood — a high-grade steel, built in the
form of hollow tubes, and shaped specially for
use in aircraft. With a fine, high-grade steel,
when it is used in the form of a specially-designed
hollow tube, one could obtain great strength for
a comparatively low weight.

The designing and building of aeroplanes will,
in future, become one of the most highly specialised
and technical of engineering enterprises. The
construction of an aeroplane will, indeed, become
an engineering job, just as is the building of a
motor-car.

Metal is not used to any great extent in present
construction because the aeroplanes built to-day,
becoming so rapidly obsolete, are not required to
last any length of time. A month or so, per-
haps, represents the life of a machine on active
service. If it has not been destroyed in that
time, or lost its efficiency through wear and
tear, it will probably have become out-of-date.
Constant changes are being made in design, and
this renders wood more suitable at the moment
than steel : wood is also less expensive to work
than metal. If a machine was required to last
a long time, metal would of course take the place
of wood. But the position to-day is that the life
of a machine is not sufficiently long to justify the
use and extra cost of metal. War machines at
the present time require only such a constructional
strength as will allow them to be used with safety
during the short period that will elapse before
they are superseded by something better : to

118 AIR POWER

build them so strongly that they would survive
a long period of active service would be a waste of
time and material.

In aeroplanes for use in tropical countries metal
has taken the place of wood because wood is eaten
into by worms and insects, and is warped also by
extreme heats.

The use of metal, instead of wood, in building
the nacelles or hulls of aeroplanes, offers a greater
safety for the pilot in the case of accident. Wood
may break and splinter, and perhaps penetrate
the pilot's body; but with metal, while it will
kink or bend, it is not so likely to break and form
jagged projections.

PART III
OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR

Britain to Lead the World

THE war will have a vast influence on the
future of flight — not only constitutionally and
financially, but in the attitude of nations
towards aviation, and also in the outlook of
individuals. Mental sluggishness, after the war,
should have to a great extent departed. The
ordinary citizen, after the awakening which has
come to him, should be quicker to see a new
idea; and after the organising we have had to
do in the war, under extreme difficulty, it should
be possible to improve very greatly our methods
in the encouragement of new industries. There-
fore the path of aviation should be far easier,
when we have passed through these times of
crisis, than it would otherwise have been.

Immediately the war is over, and the pres-
sure in maintaining the supply of present-type
machines has decreased, it must be the task
of the aviation industry in this country to make
the fullest possible use of the lessons which have
been taught by the war. Large multiplane

119

120 AIR POWER

machines must be designed and experimented
with, and the closest attention paid to the fitting
of several motors in a machine, and the trans-
mission of the power from these motors to the
propellers — the aim being of course to obtain
gearing which shall transmit the power from
the engines to the propellers with the smallest
percentage of loss.

The ambition we must set ourselves is to lead
the world in aerial progress. Our science and
constructional: skill, as well as the natural apti-
tude of our aviators, must be given the fullest
possible scope. The war has shown us what
fine pilots we have, and that the aeroplanes
we are building now are. second to none. All
that we must make sure of doing, particularly
in the next few years, is to .avail ourselves of
the talent of the nation in research or designing,
and in the construction and flying of machines.

As soon as the war is over, and the lessons it
has taught can be studied more fully than is
possible to-day, it will be realised that aeroplane
construction stands, so to say, at a parting of the
ways. It will be seen that the day of the small,
low-powered machine is gone (except for scouting
or pleasure flying), and that dominion of the air
will go to the nation which can develop large aero-
planes, capable of flying thousands of miles instead
of hundreds without alighting, and of carrying
such loads, and at such speeds, as will make them
of immense importance commercially, as well as
weapons of war.

OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR 121

II
Subsidising the Industry

The aircraft industry will be unable to advance
with sufficient rapidity, in the period of experi-
mental construction which should follow the
war, unless it is subsidised by the- Government :
some Government subsidy will, indeed, be abso-
lutely essential. The next few years of develop-
ment will be most critical ; on them will be based
the future progress of the industry — the evolu-
tion of the large war machine, as well as the
building of craft for carrying passengers and
mails. Unless we progress rapidly, and at the
same time surely, from small aeroplanes to large,
we shall find ourselves left behind in that race
for aerial power which will follow the war.

It cannot be expected that the aviation in-
dustry should bear by itself the whole cost of such
experimental construction as will be necessary.
To design, build, test, and gradually improve a
new type of aeroplane is a most expensive under-
taking : a series of machines may have to be
scrapped before anything like an efficient model
is produced. And during the next few years,
until something more like standardisation is
possible, a constructor who has built a new
machine which does what he claims for it cannot
hope to recoup himself, merely by the sale of
this machine, for all the time and money he has
devoted to its production : the orders he will
obtain will not prove Sufficient. In years to come,

122 AIR POWER

when certain types of proved efficiency are
standardised, it will of course be different. But
for some time to come, until machines can be
produced in quantities without any fear of their
becoming quickly obsolete, it will not be good
policy for War Departments (we are writing now
of times of peace) to buy more than a certain
limited number of any one make of machine.
And this is of course all the more reason why the
Government should subsidise the industry. They
will reap the advantage of the experimental work
which is done by private constructors, and they
should be prepared to pay for the privilege. It
is found advisable to subsidise the shipbuilding
industry ; and it should be even more necessary,
during a period of experiment and research, to
subsidise the aircraft industry.

The German Government was sufficiently
astute, before the war, to see the necessity for
an encouragement of its aviation industry. The
financial assistance it extended to aircraft con-
structors, and also to the constructors of aero-
engines, enabled the Germans to go into the war
with an industry which was on a sound and
practical footing, capable of turning out numbers
of machines, not only to put in use at the com-
mencement of the war, but also to replace the
machines which were destroyed or rendered use-
less while on active service. In England, on the
contrary, owing to the fact that the authorities
had left aircraft constructors to struggle along
as best they could, no organised industry existed

OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR 123

at the outbreak of war. When aeroplanes were
required urgently, in the critical days immedi-
ately following the outbreak of war, they could
not be obtained; while the aero-engine industry
had been so neglected that it was a long time
before the navy or army could secure, even in
small quantities, the high-powered motors which
the war showed to be essential. Our unpre-
paredness showed itself, also, and in an even
more critical sense, in our lack of pilots. To
train an aeroplane pilot so that he shall be
thoroughly competent when on active service,
and ready and able to carry out any task that
may be assigned him, is a matter of time — and
also of money. The period of training cannot be
hurried or curtailed. A couple of months should,
as a rule, be set aside to learn to handle an aero^
plane. And after he has completed this stage,
being able only to make simple evolutions above
an aerodrome, a naval or military pilot has further
stages through which he must pass before he is
considered ready for active service.

Ill
Lessons from the Past

Our general attitude as a nation, before the
war, was shown by the way in which we treated
aviation. Aeroplanes were regarded as ingenious
toys : their inventors and users were considered
harmless cranks, whom it was thought might
have been better employed doing something

124 AIR POWER

useful. The public went as an amusement, and
out of curiosity, to see aeroplanes fly; but the
nation as a whole was almost completely in-
different when those who had realised our peril
urged the Government to recognise the important
part that aircraft would play in any European
war, and to develop and foster the industry before
it was too late.

We did not seem so much to lack imagination
as to be the victims of a persistent mental lazi-
ness. The ordinary citizen put a certain amount
of energy into -the task of earning his living :
afterwards his main desire was to be amused.
To speculate on the future of aviation, or to
attempt to master even the rudiments of this
new science, was too much like work to find
favour with him.

We lulled ourselves into a false sense of security
by believing that no great war was coming; and
this idea we were all the more ready to accept
because of our antipathy towards problems which
may call for initiative. It was impossible, in
fact, in view of the complacent attitude which
existed almost everywhere, to arouse any sus-
tained interest as to the use of aircraft in war;
or, for the matter of that, in a discussion of any
instrument which was intended for use in war.
People simply did not want to talk about such
things, much less believe in them as realities.

Britain as a nation was engrossed before the
war with questions of home comfort — of amelio-
rating the general conditions of life; questions

OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR 125

which were national, not imperial. Our attitude
might be likened to that of a prosperous business
man who, after years of competition, finds him-
self at the head of some great organisation.
Whereupon, human nature being what it is, he
turns his attention to life in its pleasanter and
less strenuous aspects — to the decoration, say, of
his home, or to such details of his affairs as he
would have passed over without comment in
days of ambition. But as a disturbing note in
this placid atmosphere there is the existence of
rival concerns — organisations of a steadily growing
power which are restless for achievement, and
bent upon extending their influence and trade.
But the controller of the business which has suc-
ceeded, and who has little more to hope for in
his extension of trade, is loath to turn his mind
again to those old ruthless days, when he was
ceaselessly plotting and scheming. He does not
want to sit in his office again, late at night, and
work out some plan to cut the feet from under a
competitor. So he prefers to make light of the
determination of his rivals ; he refuses to look at
things from their point of view ; he blinds himself
deliberately to their strength and power.

This was the attitude of Great Britain. We
did not want war ; we did not want to talk about
war. The problem of the aeroplane, and the
whole question of aerial navigation in its relation
to war, was regarded as one of those disturbing
topics which misguided enthusiasts were trying
to thrust between us and our enjoyment of all

126 AIR POWER

that centuries of conflict had obtained. It seemed
to the majority of people most inconsiderate,
most unjust in fact, that there should be any
nation which was not content to let things be
as they were; which wanted to disturb and
upheave the balance of power, and which was
unwilling to settle down quietly and cease to envy
its neighbours.

We are writing, of course, in no way as a pallia-
tion of German brutalities. They are inexcusable
— world-condemned. The Germans have chosen
to blacken their hands ; and they themselves can
see, already, the penalty they will pay for ignor-
ing treaties and the rules of war. But if a nation,
having ambition for world power, cares to saddle
itself with the burden of armament which this
must entail, other nations cannot very well
complain. None of the nations inherit the earth,
or have a right to any part of it save their power
to hold what they possess. The world has seen
a succession of efforts for dominion, and it will
no doubt see more. It is the penalty of any
great nation, having achieved conquests, and
owning possessions which are coveted by others,
that it may have to hold itself ready, at any
time, to fight for its ownership of these posses-
sions. The struggle for world dominion is not a
struggle that can be made to cease automatically
as soon as one or other of the competitors has
secured what he desires. It is a continuous
struggle, and will last probably as long as the
world lasts; and a nation cannot, as can an

OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR 127

individual, invoke any law which shall prevent
its property from being taken from it by a stronger
rival. Each nation must, in the world struggle,
hold its possessions by force ; or, if it is a small
nation, by the favour of some friendly power.
Force is, in the end, the determining factor.

We have made this point because it explains
our pre-war attitude towards flying. When the
idea of war is repugnant to an entire nation one
cannot very well expect a Government which has
been put into power by the nation, and represents
its views, to betray lively interest in a new weapon
of war, or to be prepared to vote large sums of
money for the development of such weapons.
That we had such aircraft as we did possess, when
the war came, was due solely to the ceaseless
efforts of a few enlightened men.

A contrast may be drawn, to our detriment,
between our attitude towards flying and that of
the French. Everywhere throughout France, in
the years prior to the war, a keen and intelligent
interest was taken in aviation, not only among
cultured people but among all classes. Even the
humblest of people had a good general notion of
the problems of flight, and of the main difficulties
and risks which had to be encountered. But in
England it was no uncommon thing before the
war — or even to-day — for people to be ignorant
of the difference between a biplane and a mono-
plane, or to regard all machines which fly as
" airships/' whether they are lighter than air or
heavier than air. And it was an utterly thank-

128 AIR POWER

less task, before the war, to endeavour to combat
such ignorance, because it was based on the idea
that a study of any such new-fangled subject as
flying was a waste of time. When questions were
raised whether we were spending sufficient money
on aircraft, the general attitude was that it did
not matter much one way or the other.

As a contrast to this there was the action of
the French people, who, besides giving their
authorities the most enthusiastic encouragement
in all their plans for an air service, subscribed
promptly and willingly to funds which were
started so that machines might be purchased to
amplify the official programme.

Another contrast to our indifference was pro-
vided also by the enthusiasm of the German
public in the development of large airships. When
after a series of disasters Count Zeppelin was on
the point of abandoning the construction of the
rigid-type airships which bear his name, the
German public subscribed for him £300,000 ; and
the German Government, when it decided a year
or so before the war to increase by millions of
pounds the vote for naval and military aircraft,
had behind it the wholehearted support of the
people.

IV
Military and Other Views

Our military attitude towards aircraft, in years
preceding the war, was conservative and un-

OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR 129

imaginative. There was the feeling, from the
first, that nothing should be added to the im-
pedimenta of war unless it could prove its value
to the hilt. But with the aeroplane in its pioneer
days there was a very obvious need to take it a
little on trust; to judge not so much by its per-
formances at the moment as by its future promise.
This, however, our military authorities — with
certain exceptions — were unwilling to do. What
was said in effect to the struggling inventor
was this : Bring us finished machines, perfectly
reliable and capable of flying in high winds,
and we will buy some of them. But this was
not a reasonable attitude. The industry, such as
it was, was starving; it needed support before
it was in a position to produce a perfected
machine.

To make matters worse, there was a reluctance
to spend money on any such new and untried
weapon. This attitude was illustrated by the
experience of one pioneer who, carrying out some
tests under Government supervision, asked that
the low-powered motor which had been lent him
might be exchanged for one of a considerably
higher power. He was told, however, that if
aeroplanes required such expensive engines as
these, there would be very little chance of their
adoption on an extensive scale. And yet only
a few years were to elapse before the authorities
were searching the country in an endeavour to
obtain engines of many times greater power, and

infinitely greater cost, than this pioneer had asked
K

130 AIR POWER

for. The few men who, in the early days, were
allowed to work with Government funds were
brought constantly to a standstill, or had to
modify or partially spoil their schemes, owing to
the fact that money was begrudged always, and
that they were given sixpence, so to say, when
they asked for a shilling.

The industry in this country laboured under
the further disadvantage that the majority of
business men could see no future for flying, and
were unwilling to invest money in it. In France,
as a contrast, there were financiers who were
perfectly willing to assist experiments and tests;
while wealthy sportsmen came forward and helped
enormously with the construction of experimental
craft. Here, however, in this country, even among
people of intelligence, the attitude was one of an
amused scepticism.

In this war we have been shown the folly of
being indifferent to great issues and new ideas.
And we must disabuse our minds of the notion
that we can afford to neglect flying again, after
the war, as we neglected it before. Unless we
keep abreast of development from year to year
we shall find ourselves in a condition of extreme
peril, with enemies only too ready to take ad-
vantage of our weakness. Money, even when at
a crisis it is spent like water, cannot buy experi-
ence— cannot create at a moment's notice a great
and smoothly-working organisation, operated by
a trained personnel. This is a work not of weeks
or months, but of years. Who can estimate the

OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR 131

millions that our unpreparedness has cost us in
this war?

From the Sunday morning in July 1909, when
Bleriot flew from Sangatte, a few miles from
Calais, to the cliffs by Dover Castle, Britain was
no longer from the military point of view an
island : the twenty-one miles of water had been
crossed by the airman in his flight from France
to England, just as easily as though they were
dry land. But there is a difference, obviously,
between the peaceful arrival on one's shores of a
small monoplane, and the coming of a fleet of
hostile airships, each carrying with destructive
intent a ton or more of bombs. The first makes
its appeal only to the imagination — a quality
which has been shown in the mass of men, and
particularly in the mass of Englishmen, to be
varying and uncertain. But when airships ap-
pear on a raid, and civilians are killed and houses
blown to pieces, then a universal and a very
startled interest is aroused. Here is something
tangible ; something threatening which needs to
be combated. The sense of security possessed
by non-combatants, so long as their country
escapes invasion by land or sea, has already in
this war been very rudely dispelled.

To Britain this new menace has been
peculiarly disturbing, remembering that there
is an instinct which has come down to its in-
habitants as islanders, from the days when they
were raided cruelly by barbarians, that they
should be prepared at all costs against invasion.

132 AIR POWER

Hence, naturally, the strengthening and render-
ing dominant of the British navy. And until
the advent of this war the enemies of Britain, if
they sought to invade her, had no choice but to
come at her across the water, with the barrier
of a great sea fleet lying between them and their
goal. But now, and the peril must grow inevit-
ably from year to year, and affect not only Britain
but every other nation, there are enemies to be
resisted who approach in numbers by the aerial
highway. And so defence must be carried, quickly
and efficiently, into a new element.

No Slackening of Effort

After the war, no matter how we may be
engrossed for a time by national problems and
readjustments, and no matter how loud may be
the cry for retrenchment, we must provide without
hesitation every penny of the money which will
be necessary for the development of aviation.
We are reminded constantly that we are fighting
this war not only for ourselves but for posterity;
and this should be our view-point, also, when we
spend the money of the nation on the perfection
of the aeroplane : the future security of the
Empire rests on our energy in developing flying
within the next few years.

The industry must have funds which will per-
mit it to experiment freely. Each of the chief
firms must maintain a well-staffed experimental

OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR 133

department ; and here designs must be prepared
for machines which are outside the routine pro-
duction of the moment, and which embody such
improvements as experience may suggest from
day to day.

There should be a closer co-operation in the
future between private constructors and the
National Physical Laboratory. The valuable re-
search work of this laboratory must be available
for the constructor with less delay than has been
the case in the past. And apart from our own
national research work we must be in a position
to know constantly, and by means of some re-
liable organisation, what other nations are doing
in the perfection of the aeroplane. Information
of this nature during the next few years, when
great nations are endeavouring to profit by the
lessons of the war, will be of special importance
to the industry in this country, which should have
full access to the data which the authorities may
obtain.

The research work of science, in a struggle for
command of the air, will, when such research
is continuous and well directed, play an unusually
important part. The science of flying, still of
course in its infancy, has developed hitherto on
fairly well-anticipated lines ; and it may con-
tinue to do so in the future. But there are many
possibilities which, scientifically, are still un-
exploited. It is conceivable that some discovery
might, entirely without warning, revolutionise
the problem of aerial navigation : no country,

134 AIR POWER

therefore, though its machines may to-day be all
they should be, can rest secure unless its scientists
are constantly at work.

VI
The Air Age

Another task, in some respects the greatest we
can undertake, is to teach the rising generation
the importance of flying. The youth of the
nation must be made to understand, by methods
which cannot fail to impress them, that not only
our prosperity, but also our security, depend on
our obtaining a dominion of the air. A national
institution should be formed, after the war, to
further the interests of this great movement.
Art and music have their national organisations
and headquarters ; and aviation must have some
central rallying point — a centre from which know-
ledge must be made to radiate among the people,
and which shall ensure that public opinion keeps
abreast of development, instead of lagging far
behind, and hampering our progress.

A general knowledge of aviation, and of its
growing importance in the world's affairs, should
be taught in our schools, and prizes and scholar-
ships should be given to promote knowledge of
this, the greatest of the achievements of man-
kind. Grown-up men and women, whose minds
have lost their elasticity, find it hard to realise
that the aerial age is just about to dawn; but
the children, familiar as they are becoming

OUR POLICY AFTER THE WAR 135

already with the sight of aeroplanes overhead,
have no mental inertia to overcome. And it is
the young people of to-day who will, to-morrow,
be using the air as a regular highway. We should,
therefore, do everything we can to stimulate their
interest in flight ; while parents, seeking some
career for their sons which offers a rapid progress,
and a wide scope, should remember that the
industry of aviation, developing so enormously,
is crying aloud for men of initiative and ability —
and particularly for young men who will throw
themselves heart and soul into the movement,
and devote all their thoughts and energies to its
advancement.

PART IV
FACTORS OF SAFETY

I
Organisation

IN the old coaching days a business man who
wished to travel from Edinburgh to London was
able to make the journey in eight days : this was
considered a fast piece of travelling, and could only
be hoped for — in the words of an old poster — " if
God permits/' To-day, when made by express
train, the journey lasts about eight hours. Beau-
mont and Vedrines, flying from London to Edin-
burgh in the Circuit of Britain race in 1911,
covered the distance in less than six hours ; and
in the future, by passenger air service, the journey
should be done in less than three hours.

But we cannot hope to pass at once into the
aerial age. The inauguration of regular passenger
services by air will be possible only as a result of
experiment, experience, and organisation. It is
only after years of experience, and by a very
gradual development of their organisation, that the
railways have attained such efficiency as they can
boast of to-day ; and they still have ample room
for improvement. It is not reasonable, therefore,

136

FACTORS OF SAFETY 137

to expect that air travel can become possible, on
any extensive scale, without painstaking effort
and the most careful organisation.

At a London terminus, recently, one of the
earliest railway carriages run by the company
owning this station has been on exhibition. The
carriage is small, cramped, and uncomfortable,
with springs in their crudest form; and it would
have been impossible to have run it at anything
like high speed. An instructive contrast may
be drawn, in a study of railway progress, between
this first carriage and one of the dining-car or
sleeping-car coaches which this same company is
running on its express trains to-day. And in the
future, when people see in some museum an early-
type aeroplane, and compare it in their minds
with the great aerial liners which will then be in
operation, they will have an illustration even more
striking of our progress towards an ideal form of
transit.

Greater experience is what is required in avia-
tion, also a steadily improving organisation. Or-
ganisation tends always towards safety. In the
early days of railway travelling risks were run
from horses and cattle straying on the line in
front of the trains — which had not then been
protected, as of course they were later, by an
adequate fencing. This point is a small one, but
it shows the risks that may arise from an imper-
fect organisation. The safety of railway travel
has been made what it is to-day as a result of
experience. And aerial safety will be a very

138 AIR POWER

different matter when the organisation of air
traffic has reached the point that has been attained
by railway traffic. At present air travel is almost
completely without organisation; or it would be
more accurate perhaps to say that its organisation
is not as yet linked up in any way or rendered
complete. There may be organisation in one place,
but not in another ; efforts are spasmodic and not
properly unified.

The risks of flying are nowhere near so grave
as people are apt often to imagine. The earliest
of the pioneers, men using the crudest of apparatus,
and navigating an element which was unknown to
them, managed to fly thousands of miles without
losing their lives — such men as the Wright brothers,
Farman, and Bleriot. A distance of more than
30,000 miles was flown by air, with the first
experimental aeroplanes, at a loss of only three
lives. The idea that flying must always be unsafe,
because a machine is passing through the air at
some height above the ground, and is not in
contact with the surface of the earth as a train
would be, arises from a lack of knowledge.

A large proportion of the accidents which have
marred the progress of flight have been due to the
fact that men have not taken their task seriously
enough; that they have failed to realise — as the
great pioneers realised — that one cannot afford
to make mistakes in the air, and that a foolish
action may cost a man his life. The pioneers,
who perfected at extreme peril to themselves the
machines with which they were at length able to

FACTORS OF SAFETY 139

fly, learned in the school of experience to respect
the air. They learned to fly cautiously, and yet
with determination — to take no risks that it was
possible to avoid. But the men who came after
them, and found they had not to design and build
an aeroplane, but could buy one ready-made, did
not pass through any of the phases which imbued
the pioneers with their caution. And so they
made flights which the pioneers would have con-
demned as dangerous — and which led in fact to
accidents.

But there were other factors, besides human
error or indiscretion, which led to a growth of
accidents in the stage which followed that of the
first pioneer flying. Men of all types began to
take to aviation; machines of many different
makes were put on the market; and the fact
which was perhaps most significant of all was that
aviators began to desert the neighbourhood of
aerodromes, where the early flying was done, and
to make flights across country from point to point.
And to the risks of such cross-country flying, with
the necessity perhaps of descending involuntarily
on dangerous and unsuitable ground, were added
those of a sudden-arising wind, or those incurred
by ascending deliberately when atmospheric con-
ditions were unfavourable. But the silver lining
to the cloud, even at a time when accidents were
so frequent that people began to wonder whether
the conquest of this new element was not costing
us too much, was that experience was being bought,
and that it was being profited by ; that the skill

140 AIR POWER

of designers and constructors, and the growing
knowledge of the pilots, were tending always to
reduce the elements of risk.

II
Air Travel and Land and Sea Travel

It will be some time, naturally, before people are
accustomed in their minds to the idea of using the
air as a regular medium through which to travel.
One needs to recall the timidity of the first travel-
lers on the sea, also the risks of ocean travel in its
early days. Ships were frail, then, and at the
mercy of storms instead of being superior to them :
but in ocean travel, as in travel by land, the factors
of safety were constantly increased.

Air travel in the future will become safer in
certain respects than land or sea travel. An air-
craft when high above the earth does not run the
risk, as does a ship, of colliding, say, with some
drifting iceberg, or of encountering some derelict
floating awash, or of being driven on a dangerous
shore. Nor will there be the risk with a high-
speed aircraft, as with an express train, of an engine
or coaches leaving the line when running at high
speed, or of being derailed through encountering
some obstruction on the line. With a high-speed
aircraft, also, seeing that it moves entirely free
of any earth contact, there will not be the risk,
as with high-speed vehicles on the earth, of a wheel
or axle giving way, under the strain of speed, and
leading perhaps to a disaster.

FACTORS OF SAFETY 141

The risk of collision, when large numbers of
aircraft are in use, will be rendered negligible by
the adoption and enforcement of a series of rules
of the air, to which we shall refer later ; also by
the fact that on the main aerial routes machines
travelling in one direction will fly at a certain
given height, while craft on the same route, but
travelling in an opposite direction, will fly at a
different altitude.

With land and sea travel the existence of fogs
is a frequent cause of accident, and also of delay ;
but aircraft will be able to ascend above fog-belts,
and pursue their course in clear air without any
slackening of speed or risk of accident. There
will be rules as to changes of altitude, when
weather conditions demand them, so as to avoid
any risks of collision. Aircraft will of course be
in wireless communication with each other.

In discussing the safety or peril of aerial naviga-
tion, it is necessary to approach the question
logically, and without any preconceived notions
or prejudices. What are the perils of the air,
compared with those of land or sea? An aero-
plane gains no support from the air unless it is
in motion through the air. But as long as it is
in motion it is fully and perfectly supported —
supported just as safely and surely as is a railway
train on its metals. This fact must be borne in
mind. The wings of an aeroplane, designed to
carry through the air a certain given load, can be
relied on without fail to support that specified
burden, in the same way as the axles of a train

142 AIR POWER

or motor-car are designed to carry whatever may
be the weight and load of the vehicle.

The aviator in his aeroplane, passing high above
the heads of spectators on the ground, and through
a medium so impalpable, is borne forward on a
cushion of air which is supporting the weight of
himself and his machine just as effectually as
would the wheels of a land vehicle by their contact
with the surface of a road. It is only if the for-
ward speed of the machine should (say as a result
of engine failure, or perhaps through some error
of judgment on the part of the pilot) fall below the
minimum at which its wings will bear their load
that it fails to gain a full support from the air;
and even then there is no question of the machine
falling. Inherently stable aeroplanes, such as are
already in use, and will become universal, will
themselves restore their requisite flying speed,
should this fall for any reason below the minimum
required for horizontal flight.

Ill
Engine Failure

A misapprehension one finds often in the minds
of those who are not fully conversant with the
conditions that govern the flight of an aeroplane,
is that when the engine of the machine fails, the
craft must fall helplessly to the ground. This idea
has become fixed in the public mind very largely
through brief and inaccurate newspaper reports

FACTORS OF SAFETY 143

of aeroplane accidents. When the motor fails
there is no need whatever for an aeroplane to fall,
or for its pilot to be in any way endangered. So
long as the machine is in forward motion it is
supported by the air. And when his motor fails
there is another force that a pilot can bring to
his aid to permit him to maintain his forward
speed, and thus preserve the lifting power of his
machine; this force is that of gravity. The
aviator inclines his machine downward when his
engine fails, and begins to glide towards the
ground; and that this descent need not be pre-
cipitate is shown by the fact that a pilot who is a
mile high when his motor fails will be able to glide
a distance of eight or ten miles before he reaches
the ground. He can circle while descending, or
steer from side to side : he is, in fact, in perfect
control of his machine, except for the fact that he
has to descend gradually all the time, in order to
maintain the support of his planes.

There may be a danger for the aviator in unduly
prolonging a glide. A machine moving through
the air so slowly that its planes only just prevent
it from falling is sluggish in its response to the
movements of its control surfaces. It is suscep-
tible to the sudden impact of a wind-gust, or to
any upward or downward trend in the air. An
instance may be cited of an aviator who, after the
failure of his engine, was prolonging his glide to
its utmost in order to pass over some trees and
reach an unobstructed stretch of ground which
offered the only landing-place in the vicinity.

144 AIR POWER

After the aeroplane had passed over the trees, and
was gliding so slowly that the pilot barely had
control of it, it came under the influence of a
heavy downward trend of wind, and was swept
to the ground and wrecked.

Though engine failure while in flight entails as
a rule nothing worse than a compulsory descent,
it does happen occasionally that a machine gets
out of control, and is wrecked, owing to the
stoppage of its motor. But in such cases there
is usually some special reason which explains the
accident. Pilots have taken the risk, sometimes,
of ascending when their engines were not running
well ; then, while they are in the act of climbing,
and while still near the ground, their motors have
stopped suddenly, and the pilot has found it im-
possible, with the machine pointing upward, to get
it forward and downward into a glide. The result
has been that the machine has stood still in the
air, and has then fallen to the ground either in a
side-slip or a tail dive. Errors have been com-
mitted also by pilots who have not been quick
enough when their engines have failed, and before
the machines have lost flying speed, to incline
them downward in a glide. With certain early-
type biplanes, which had large and heavy tail
surfaces, the air stream thrown back by the pro-
peller, acting on these rear surfaces, helped materi-
ally to keep them at a proper flying angle. But if
the motor failed suddenly, and this propeller-blast
on the tail-planes ceased, they were apt to droop
suddenly, and place the machine at a critically

FACTORS OF SAFETY 145

dangerous angle. The pilot moved over his
elevator and tried to get the machine into a glide ;
but the droop of the tail-planes prevented this;
while the main-planes, being now at a steep angle
to the air, brought the machine very quickly to
a standstill — with the result that it became
uncontrollable and fell.

The fact was that some of these machines were
not balanced properly for gliding : their tail-
surfaces were over- weighted. The late Cecil
Grace, while making trials with such a machine at
Leysdon in the Isle of Sheppey, had his motor
stop suddenly while he was in flight. He found
it impossible to get the machine forward into a
glide : it slowed up, came to a standstill, and
then fell. Luckily it was at a low altitude.
The chassis and other gear were smashed, but the
pilot escaped injury.

When there is only one engine in an aeroplane
there is always the risk of some breakdown,
though improvements in construction have de-
creased this risk very considerably. One may
instance the amount of cross-Channel flying that
has been done in single-engine machines since
the outbreak of war. Constant flights are taking
place, as a matter of routine, between England
and France, and it is a rare thing for an engine
to fail while the cross-Channel passage is being
made. Yet in early days the cross-Channel flight
was regarded as an undertaking of the greatest
danger. Bleriot, with his little 25 h.p. air-cooled
motor, considered himself extremely lucky when

146 AIR POWER

this motor worked uninterruptedly for thirty-six
minutes, and carried him from Calais to Dover.
It may be remembered that Latham, his rival, fell
twice into the sea through engine failure.

The chief risk with single-engine machines is
that some quite trifling breakdown of the engine,
something that can be repaired in a few minutes
when the machine is on the ground, will occur at
an awkward moment during a flight, and compel
a pilot to descend when he is above bad country,
or over a thickly-populated area.

IV
Multiple-Engines

Machines are in use in the war which are driven
by two or more engines ; but the system is still so
experimental that the best results cannot as yet
be expected. An instance, however, will show
how valuable a twin-engined machine may be
when it is flown in war. A French aviator was
piloting a biplane so equipped above the German
lines when the machine was hit in several places
by shrapnel, and one of the engines so damaged
that it stopped at once. But the second motor
still ran on, and the pilot was able to get his
machine back to its base, flying, of course, at a
reduced speed. In this case, if the machine had
been fitted with only one motor, the aviator would
have been obliged to descend in enemy territory
and be made a prisoner.

FACTORS OF SAFETY 147

Risks of Engine Failure in War

How serious may be the result of engine failure,
when it takes place in war above hostile territory,
has been shown by the fact that it has lost the
Allies some of their finest aviators. There is the
case, for example, of the French airman Garros, one
of the most expert monoplane pilots in the world.
After an arduous spell of active service in the
French air corps, during which he flew high-speed
fighting monoplanes, and brought down a number
of German aeroplanes which ventured over the
French lines, Garros was dispatched one day on a
bomb-dropping raid within the enemy's territory.
After attacking a train, on which he dropped his
bombs, he was returning in the direction of his
base when his motor failed suddenly and refused
to start again. Garros was too far from the French
lines to reach them in a glide ; so there was nothing
for him to do but descend in German territory.
This he did, and after destroying his machine he
attempted to hide and wait for darkness. But he
was discovered by German soldiers and made a
prisoner.

Another well-known French aviator, Gilbert,
after dropping bombs on the German airship
factory at Friedrichshafen, was returning to his
base near the French frontier when engine failure
brought him down in Swiss territory. Nobody
was in the neighbourhood where he landed, and

148 AIR POWER

he tried to get his engine going again, and re-
ascend. But before he could do this a party of
Swiss soldiers came up, and the aviator was taken
prisoner and interned. His attempts to escape,
in the third of which he succeeded in getting across
the frontier, were typical of the ingenuity and
determination which have been shown by aviators
whose misfortune it has been to have their
engines fail. On one occasion Gilbert, having
disguised himself in woman's clothes, had actually
reached the frontier and was about to cross it,
when his walk aroused the suspicions of a sentry,
and his identity was discovered.

Guidner, another French pilot who fell into
German hands, lowered one of the windows of
the train in which he was being taken from Lille
into Germany, and managed to slip down on
to the permanent way, during a moment when
the train came to a standstill, without being
detected. Then, hiding by day and travelling
by night, he succeeded in regaining the French
lines.

Pracomtal, another French aviator, after having
been wounded in the leg, was captured and taken
into Germany. He escaped once, but was re-
taken, being tracked by police dogs. After this
he was moved to another fortress, and placed for a
time in solitary confinement. In company with
three companions, however, he managed to escape
again. But there was an unfortunate accident in
connection with this escape. One of the party,
while crossing a moat, fell and broke his leg, and

FACTORS OF SAFETY 149

had to be abandoned. Pracomtal and the others,
walking across country by night, and hiding by
day, travelled a distance of 180 miles before they
reached neutral ground. They were able after
this to make their way to Paris.

Didier and Martini, two other Frenchmen who
were compelled to alight on ground that was in
German possession, managed to escape and to
elude recapture for thirty days, during which they
made their way back by slow stages to the French
lines.

There is the case also of the late Captain Mapple-
beck, R.F.C., who was forced to alight behind the
German lines. He managed to conceal himself
so that the German soldiers could not find him,
and afterwards spent nearly three weeks in a house
in Lille, being sheltered by a Frenchman whose
chivalry and kindness cost him his life, the Ger-
mans finding out subsequently what he had done,
and causing him to be shot. Captain Mapplebeck,
awaiting a favourable opportunity, and aided by
this Frenchman, managed to regain the British
lines. A rather similar experience was that of the
aviator Freville. He lost his way while in a fog,
alighting inadvertently behind the German lines
and being made a prisoner. About a week after
he had been captured he succeeded in eluding his
guards and making his way to the shelter of a
friendly farm-house, situated in a village which
was in German hands. The plans he made to
steal back from this village to his own lines were
anticipated by the fact that the French, in a

150 AIR POWER

sudden advance, recaptured the village, with the
result that Freville was able to regain his comrades
without further risk.

VI
The Elimination of Breakdown

In the future, when it is probable that a series
of engines will constitute the power-plant of
large machines, any one engine which breaks down
or gives trouble will be cut out temporarily from
the series, and repaired by mechanics, while the
machine continues its flight under the power of
its remaining engines. The passengers on a
modern Atlantic liner, having become accustomed
for these great ships to run with the regularity of
an express train, would be surprised and indignant
if they found that a vessel was brought to a stand-
still in mid-ocean by any complete breakdown of
its machinery.

In the early days of the steamship, craft were
built with one shaft and propeller ; and if anything
broke they were helpless. But as design and con-
struction improved vessels were given two, three,
or four propeller shafts ; and in this way they were
able to steam on, and reach their destination,
even after suffering a partial breakdown of their
machinery. It happens not infrequently that one
of the propeller shafts of a ship will seize and stop.
What the engineers of the ship do in such a
case is to cut out temporarily the unit which is
giving trouble, and run on with the other engines

FACTORS OF SAFETY 151

until, say, a hot bearing has cooled. All that
this means is a somewhat reduced speed. The
passengers would hardly notice that anything had
happened — except that perhaps, for a time, there
might be a little more vibration.

The motive power of the aeroplane of the future
will be as reliable as that of a steamship, or of a
railway engine. It will be impossible, of course,
to eliminate completely the risk of breakdown.
Even after years during which its machinery has
been perfected, a ship's engines still fail it at times ;
while occasionally a railway engine comes to a
standstill. Even a motor-car engine of the best
type, though it may run thousands of miles
without needing repair, may develop suddenly
some small defect which will bring it temporarily
to a standstill. One cannot obtain absolute de-
pendability with any mechanism; but a break-
down can be rendered so unlikely that the risks
attached to it are negligible.

If it is assumed for the sake of argument that
the entire motive power of a passenger aircraft
should fail suddenly, while the machine is in
flight, the passengers need be in no danger. All
that would happen, if the defect could not be
remedied quickly, would be that the machine
would glide to the nearest aerodrome and alight
for repairs.

152 AIR POWER

VII
Landing- Grounds

One takes it for granted that a machine would
be flying high enough at such a moment to permit
it to travel some distance in a glide after its engines
had failed; also that by the time passenger air-
craft are in regular operation there will be landing-
grounds within a short distance of each other all
over the country. The provision of such aero-
dromes will form an important part of the organ-
isation which will add so greatly to the safety as
well as to the convenience of flying. No such
organisation of landing-grounds exists to-day,
though the naval and military authorities have
increased very considerably, since the war began,
the number of their air stations in various parts
of the country. But the aviator who is on a cross-
country flight at the present time, and whose
engine fails him, may be unable to reach any land-
ing-ground before he is compelled to alight, even
though he may have been flying high at the
moment his motor stopped. In such a predica-
ment, when the aviator has to pick out the most
likely-looking spot for a landing on the country he
sees below, the question is one largely of luck, and
also, of course, of personal skill. In the majority
of cases the pilot should make a safe landing, even
when he is unable to reach an aerodrome. But it
may be his misfortune to be over very rough or
broken country at the moment his engine fails,
and then it may be difficult for him to find, even

FACTORS OF SAFETY 153

within an area of a number of miles, any reason-
ably smooth spot on which to bring his machine to
earth. A field which looks suitable from a height
of a thousand feet or so may be found to have an
awkward or uneven surface when the pilot actually
makes contact with it.

In the future we shall have main flying routes —
north, south, east, and west. And along these
routes or airways, every few miles, there will be
landing-grounds. Some of them, those in the
neighbourhood of important towns or cities, will
be large and well-equipped aerodromes. Others,
acting merely as links in the chain of landing-
grounds, and being near no large centre of popula-
tion, will need only a simple equipment — a suffi-
ciently large and open space, well situated and
with a smooth surface; sheds in which aircraft
may be housed ; and mechanics and a machine-
shop so that repairs can be effected in the case
of any craft which may need them. Telephones
and other such facilities would be required also;
and there would need, of course, to be supplies
of petrol and oil.

VIII
Night Signalling

At night-time the stations along the airways,
being illuminated, would act as a guide for the
pilots of aircraft.

Lighthouses will be used probably along the
airways, showing revolving coloured signals with
so many flashes indicating certain points. The

154 AIR POWER

system adopted, with modifications, will no doubt
be that which is used to indicate land positions to
a seaman. The navigator on the sea, approaching
a coast, may see perhaps two flashes in four
seconds, then a pause of five seconds, and then two
more flashes. Turning to his log-book, he will
look up this sign, and identify the place on the
coast he is approaching. And the aviator of the
future, as he nears some town or city, will look
down and identify it by the number and timing
of the flashes he sees below.

The blending of coloured lights will be used, no
doubt, for purposes of identification. One might,
for instance, have a green and a red flash, then
a certain number of seconds interval, and then a
blue and a white one. Various combinations will
be required to identify different points on the air-
ways. The landing-grounds will be illuminated
in a way which will make it easy for pilots to glide
down and land on them, and it is probable that
each aerodrome will have an illuminated identify-
ing number, displayed so conspicuously that it
will be possible to see it distinctly from the air,
even when at a considerable distance. There will
be a system of night signals, also, between aero-
dromes and machines above, so that the latter
may be notified when all is clear for them to make
a landing.

A great element of safety, in cross-country
flying, would be introduced by the existence of
landing-grounds. An aviator who is in any trouble
with his mechanism will always be in a position

FACTORS OF SAFETY 155

to glide down to one or other of these aerodromes,
and make a safe landing on a smooth and unob-
structed surface. The organisation of such a
system of aerodromes will, in fact, eliminate the
risk, which exists to-day and is serious, of a pilot
making an involuntary landing on bad ground,
wrecking his machine and perhaps losing his life.
It is not difficult to see how, by the improve-
ments in organisation we have mentioned, and
also by such mechanical improvements as the use
of multi-engined machines, the factors of safety
in flight can be increased very considerably.
To-day, if a single-engined machine breaks down,
an accident may follow through a bad landing.
But the use of duplicate engines will render im-
probable any breakdown in flight ; while, if such
a breakdown should occur, owing to some quite
unusual cause, it will mean nothing more for the
aerial traveller of the future than the delay of
gliding to the nearest aerodrome and waiting for
repairs.

IX
Amphibious Graft

Large aircraft which are built to fly above
oceans will be either flying ships, with hulls
resembling those of sea-going craft, or will be
fitted with a system of floats, which will permit
them, when necessary, to descend on, and ride
upon, the surface of the water. Such machines,
if brought down by mechanical trouble while on
an ocean flight, and if it is found that repairs

156 AIR POWER

cannot be effected quickly by the mechanics on
board, will send out a wireless message for assist-
ance ; and, in view of the fact that over-sea flying
will be made along specified routes, it may be
assumed that there will be some other craft within
no more than a short flying distance, which will
come up and take off, if necessary, the passengers
of the crippled machine. But, as we have said,
it will be a very unlikely thing for there to be a
breakdown of the whole of the plant of a large
multi-engined machine. In the majority of cases,
when mechanical trouble of any kind develops, the
mechanics in charge of the engines will be able to
deal with it successfully without there being any
need for a machine to descend, and with no more
inconvenience than a temporary loss of speed, due
to losing for the time being the power of one or
other of the motors.

It seems probable that the large naval aeroplane
of the future, a machine developing thousands of
horse-power, will be a veritable flying ship, dis-
carding any system of floats, and having a hull
substantial enough to enable it to withstand heavy
seas when it is on the water. Such craft may be
built with wings on either side of the hull which
can be made to telescope completely within the
hull when the machine is on the water. In this
way, after it has drawn its wings within its body,
the machine should be able to navigate and make
headway against heavy seas. When it requires
to take the air again, its planes will be moved out
from the hull until a sufficient surface is exposed

FACTORS OF SAFETY 157

to lift it into the air. By a development of such
a system we might obtain large, powerful, sea-
going aircraft, capable of making long voyages,
and of remaining away from their bases even in
bad weather.

X
The Influence of the Wind

It has often been declared that the wind, and
particularly the sudden springing up of a high
wind, will be a peril always for the aviator. But
an important safeguard in this respect is, as we
have explained, the ability to construct machines
which are stable and fast-flying. In the early
days, when aeroplanes were in use which were
far from stable, a machine might be forced to such
a critical angle under the pressure of a wind-
gust that its pilot lost command of it, and was
unable to regain control, even if the craft was at a
high altitude and had a long way to fall. One
may instance the case of a military pilot who,
while flying an early-type biplane over the eastern
counties, was assailed by a whirlwind and had his
machine overturned. This occurred at an alti-
tude of about 1500 feet — a height which would
have provided ample air space, with an inherently
stable machine, for the craft to have regained
its equilibrium. But in this case the machine
remained uncontrollable. It descended, upside-
down, in a series of zig-zag curves. The pilot,
who did not lose his presence of mind, jumped
clear of the machine just before it struck a field,

158 AIR POWER

and escaped with nothing worse than bruises and
a general shock. With an inherently stable bi-
plane, had it been overturned by any abnormal
rush of wind, the machine would have righted
itself immediately, even without aid from the
pilot.

Though it is a fact that high and gusty winds
have already lost their peril for the aviator, except
when he is near the ground, there still remains
the need for a more accurate knowledge of the
structure and trend of winds, and of the general
condition and movement of the air in its relation
to navigation. The air is far from being a smooth
or evenly-flowing element. It contains gusts,
eddies, and upward and downward trends. The
sun, drawing moisture off the land, causes gusts
and eddies ; while the configuration of the earth's
surface, with its hills and valleys, sets up aerial
disturbances which, when a high wind is blowing,
may extend to a considerable height above the
ground. Aviators have found, when flying daily
over the same districts, that eddies and disturb-
ances in the air are to be encountered regularly
above certain spots, these being due to the motion
imparted to the wind by its contact, say, with
some hill or valley.

XI
Meteorological Investigation

In the future it will be necessary to have an
organisation which will supply frequent weather

FACTORS OF SAFETY 159

forecasts to all aerodromes throughout the
country. In this way, when an aviator is about
to make a long cross-country flight, it will be
possible for him to learn beforehand whether he
is likely to pass through any area of disturbance ;
while by means of foreign meteorological stations,
acting in conjunction with our own, it will be
possible to give a warning to aerial travellers
when some gale threatens to sweep over England,
say, from the Atlantic.

By a study of storm stratas, and of the areas
in which they occur, it may be possible for the
aerial travellers of the future, even though they
may enter some such disturbed area when on a
long flight, either to ascend higher and pass out
of it, or to descend lower and find themselves in
a normal stratum of air. This ability of an
aviator to seek favourable conditions either high
or low is one that will be of immense value to
him ; and it is one that cannot be claimed either
for land or sea travel.

The importance of collecting meteorological
information, in connection with aerial navigation,
and of studying and classifying such data, has
been recognised by the Royal Flying Corps,
which has appointed an officer (Major G. I.
Taylor) specially for this duty. Military pilots
who encounter in flight some unusual atmo-
spheric condition will report their experience to
this officer, who will be able in course of time to
amass data which should prove of considerable
interest.

160 AIR POWER

It will not be possible in the future, any more
than it is at present, to navigate small, light,
pleasure types of aircraft through extremely bad
weather. The speed of such machines will not
be sufficient to enable them to make headway
against the heaviest gales. One would not think
of putting out to sea in a small light boat when
there was really heavy weather; and it will be
the same with small aircraft. But with large
high-speed machines, no wind, not even a gale,
will have any more influence on them than a
certain reduction in their speed when they are
moving against a head- wind. The wind will have
no perils for such machines, and will be unable
to rob them even temporarily of their equilibrium.
They will be able to weather the heaviest gales
without need for alighting. An unusual spell of
bad weather will of course delay a cross- Atlantic
aircraft, as it would a cross-Atlantic liner, but
not to the same extent, because the aircraft will
have such a greatly superior speed.

XII
Sea Sickness and Air Sickness

Travellers by air, in bad weather, will suffer
far less personal inconvenience and discomfort
than is the case with ocean travel. A ship rides
on the water and is subjected to all its surface
disturbances. But an aircraft may be likened to
a submarine. It does not ride on the air but

FACTORS OF SAFETY 161

in it ; and the large aircraft of the future, flying
fast and at high altitudes — avoiding thereby the
fluctuations in pressure which are more liable
to occur at low elevations — will pass through
gales of wind without any of the heavy rolling
and pitching which is so distressing for passengers
in a vessel on the sea.

Variable surface machines such as we have
described, when they are at their highest speed,
will have reefed their wing area to such an extent
that there will be only a very small amount of
surface on which the wind can act. There will,
therefore, be little to set up any oscillating move-
ment. The speed and momentum of a big ocean
liner, when it is steaming fast, help to drive it
through the waves instead of yielding to them,
in the same way that a torpedo-boat destroyer,
when at full speed, cuts through waves instead
of rising to them. And the high-speed aircraft,
moving at a pace greater than that of wind-gusts
it may encounter, will drive through them without
a tendency to swing or dive.

It is a fact to be remembered, that with
aeroplanes which are small, and of a low power,
a high wind may cause them to pitch and toss
so badly that the pilot or passenger suffers
occasionally from air sickness, which is quite as
unpleasant as the nausea caused by the motion
of a ship.

In this connection a story is told. An aviator
on a long cross-country flight, having lost his

way, descended near a village to locate his
M

162 AIR POWER

position. But the instructions of the villagers,
who were endeavouring to tell him how to steer
in order to reach the town which was his objec-
tive, were so incoherent that the aviator could
not understand them. The rustics were in fact
so excited by the arrival of the aeroplane that
they were plunged in a state of mental confusion.
At last the aviator, impatient of delay, picked
out the most intelligent-looking of the men who
surrounded him, and asked him if he would
ascend with him as a passenger in the aeroplane,
so as to be able to point out, from the vantage-
point of a higher altitude, the actual line of
country over which the aeroplane should fly.
The rustic agreed with alacrity, proud of the
distinction of making an aeroplane flight.

As it happened, however, a gusty wind had
sprung up, and the machine rocked and swayed
as it climbed. The higher it ascended the rougher
became the wind, and ' the more disconcerting
the motion of the machine. At length, having
gained what he considered a sufficient altitude,
the aviator turned to his passenger and asked
him to point out the route. But the unfortunate
villager, huddled in his seat, and clasping the
nearest struts with the desperation of a drowning
man, was in the throes of such a violent attack
of air sickness that the aviator could get nothing
from him at all, and was in fact afraid every
moment that the man would collapse and fall
out of the machine. All the pilot could do,
indeed, was to glide down as quickly as he

FACTORS OF SAFETY 163

could, and place the sufferer once again on solid
ground.

The aerial passenger of the future need fear
no such discomforts as these. The machines
then in operation, large and metal-built, will
move at such speeds that their weight and
momentum will carry them through the heaviest
winds without the inconvenience to their occu-
pants of any perceptible oscillation. Machines
will in fact drive through gusts and eddies with a
momentum like that of some huge projectile.

XIII
The Luxury of Air Travel

A fact which has not yet been realised is that
the air travel of the future will have a luxury
and comfort which are unknown, and indeed
impossible, on either land or sea. We have not
yet realised, in fact, a hundredth part of the
benefits and conveniences which the conquest of
the air will bring. One may take, for the pur-
poses of comparison, the present-day form of
travel by means of an express train. With a
train when it is at high speed there is a percep-
tible and sometimes unpleasant oscillation, even
in the case of the best-constructed rolling stock.
There is also the constant grind and roar of the
wheels in their contact with the metals; while
the coaches swing and lurch when they round a
curve.

164 AIR POWER

In air travel there will be none of this. The
passengers will, in the first instance, be so placed
in a machine that there will be no vibration from
the machinery.

Even nowadays, when a 250 h.p. fixed-cylinder
engine is running at high speed in a machine
in flight, and no absorbers are used, there is an
almost total absence of vibration. And in the
large passenger aircraft of the future, when
turbines or other improved types of engine are
in use, running in an engine-room isolated from
the passenger saloons, vibration will be elimi-
nated completely. The power plant will be so
silenced, also, that no sound from it will reach
the passengers' ears.

The noise made by the air, as it rushes past
the polished hull of a machine when it is at high
speed, will be sufficiently deadened not to prove
irritating. It will be possible, for example, to
have layers of felt or other sound-absorbing
material between the outside hull and the pas-
senger saloons. In this way the noise of the
wind, even when a machine is travelling at high
speed, will be so deadened that it will reach the
ears of a passenger as a faint, continuous drone
which will pass unnoticed after the machine has
been for some time in flight.

There will, of course, be no feeling whatever
of earth contact, as is the case with a train
on its metals. An aircraft moves on a cushion
of air so perfectly resilient that its contact with
the machine gives no suggestion whatever of any

FACTORS OF SAFETY 165

such friction as is the case with a vehicle on
land.

With an aircraft at high speed there will be no
grinding of wheels, or clamour and roar of passing
under bridges or through tunnels : the aircraft
will rush through the air with a perfect steadi-
ness, and there will be no tiring sense of move-
ment for the eyes, as in the case of trains, when
objects are seen streaming constantly past the
windows. Flying at high altitudes when on long
journeys, passenger aircraft will often be at an
altitude greater than that of the clouds, and
there will be nothing of the earth to be seen
below — nothing in fact which will tell the eye
that the craft is in motion. The machine will
seem under such conditions to float in pure
space, and it will be difficult for its occupants to
appreciate that they are moving swiftly from
point to point.

XIV
Structural Breakage

A danger in flying to which an exaggerated
importance has been attached is that of the
breakage of a machine when in the air. Some-
times, for example, one hears it said —

"In a motor-car or train, when something
breaks, people are at least on solid ground; but
in the air, if anything goes wrong, there is nothing
below but so many thousand feet of empty space ,
and you have no chance at all."

166 AIR POWER

Such a view shows a misapprehension, however,
of certain essential facts. To be moving across
the surface of the ground in any vehicle, when
something breaks, is a disadvantage often rather
than an advantage — as the occupants of any
such vehicle may find when, a wheel or axle
breaking and the vehicle overturning, they come
into a sudden and violent contact with the un-
yielding surface of the ground, breaking perhaps
a limb or sustaining injuries even more severe.
The breakage of any essential part of a land
vehicle, if such a vehicle is moving at the moment
at anything like high speed, will in fact in the
majority of cases cause injuries to its occupants.
With a motor-car, for example, the steering-gear
may possibly go wrong. Whereupon the machine
may swerve off the road and crash perhaps into
a wall, or overturn in a ditch. A railway engine,
breaking an axle or a connecting-rod, may be
the means of bringing a whole train off the line,
with the result that there will be a disaster. The
risk in land travel, when some essential part of a
vehicle collapses, is not only that the occupants
of the vehicle may be brought into a violent
contact with the ground, but that the vehicle
itself, passing out of control, may crash into some
obstruction.

An aeroplane, if it develops some defect which
places it temporarily out of control, may swerve
or dive some distance through the air without
sustaining any damage, or endangering its occu-
pants. There are no obstructions in the air with

FACTORS OF SAFETY 167

which it can come in contact; nothing which
can damage it as it swerves or falls. And it
would be unusual, even when some part of a
machine broke in the air, for a pilot to be unable
to regain some sort of control over it during a
fall, say, of several thousand feet — a control
sufficient, that is to say, to enable him to land
the machine without injury to himself or his
passengers. It is certainly not the case, as has
been imagined, that if some small structural
breakage takes place in an aeroplane, the machine
will fall at once, completely beyond control. The
war has disproved this on many occasions.
Machines, even when they have been badly
damaged by shell-fire, have remained sufficiently
under control to allow their pilots to get them
back to the ground without a smash; or, even if
the landing has been a bad one, the occupants of
the machine have escaped unhurt. It has been
remarkable, in fact, the amount of damage a
machine can sustain and still remain navigable.

A fact which has prevented many aeroplane
accidents from having serious consequences is
that a machine may strike the ground when
moving at high speed, and damage itself very
badly, without its occupants sustaining injury.
This is due to the light materials of which the
machine is constructed, and to what may be
called its natural elasticity. When the machine
comes in contact with the ground there is no
violent, unyielding shock, as there would be if
the machine was a solid construction, with no

168 AIR POWER

" give " in it. What actually happens is that
one part after another breaks, each absorbing
something of the shock, and lessening the main
force of the impact. One may take the instance
of a machine which side-slips and falls on one
wing. The wing has to break up completely, or
telescope, before the shock of the fall reaches
those in the hull. And if a machine should dive
to the ground there is the landing chassis and
other gear which must break before the force of
the impact is communicated to those in the
hull.

This absorption or deadening of the first impact
with the ground, when a machine falls, has saved
the life of many pilots. The death-rate in avia-
tion would, in fact, have been much higher than
it is were it not for this. Pilots have emerged
with nothing more than shock from accidents in
which, to an onlooker, it appeared certain that
the occupants of the machine had been killed.
From machines which have fallen to the ground
from some altitude, and have been so badly
damaged that they were complete wrecks, aviators
have managed to crawl with nothing worse than
cuts and bruises.

The value of this cushioning effect, in a fall, is
that the bodies of the occupants of a machine are
not brought suddenly and violently to a stop, after
moving at high speed, as they might be if the
machine struck the ground with a dead, heavy
impact. The sudden bringing of the human body
to a standstill, after it has been moving at high

FACTORS OF SAFETY 169

speed, may have fatal consequences even if there
is no actual impact. If a man is strapped in a
machine so that he cannot be flung out of it, or
against any obstruction, and this machine comes
into a violent and unbroken impact with the
ground, the immense strain thrown on the human
tissues by the sudden arresting of the forward
motion of the body, may set up internal hemor-
rhages which prove fatal. It happens sometimes
that a pilot who is strapped in his machine,
and who makes a bad landing, or who may have
his machine nose-dive and alight heavily, suffers
severely from pains and swellings in his neck
muscles — due to the fact that when his body is
brought to a standstill, after moving at high
speed, his head jerks forward in a way which, if
the force of the impact is sufficiently violent, may
lead to a dislocation of the neck.

People generally imagine, owing to their un-
familiarity with the conditions which actually
govern flight, that the chief peril lies in a machine
being high in the air. But altitude, instead of
being a danger, constitutes one of the chief
elements of safety. One may mention the case of
an aviator in the war who was shot and rendered
unconscious when the machine he was piloting
(which had not dual control) was at a height of
about 10,000 feet. The aeroplane began to fall,
its descent accelerated by the fact that the pilot
had been unable to switch off his engine before
he lost control. The machine fell several thousand
feet in an uncontrolled dive ; but then the observer,

170 AIR POWER

managing to move back to the pilot's seat and
reach the controls, switched off the motor and
was able to get the machine into a normal glide,
with the result that a descent was made safely.
In the case of a motor-car moving at high speed,
assuming the driver has suddenly lost control,
through some indisposition, there is no such element
of safety, no such latitude for a swerve and fall,
as exists in the air. One swerve, after the driver's
hands have left the steering-wheel, and the car
will run off the road and probably overturn ; and
it is hardly likely that any of the passengers will
be able to get to the steering-wheel, and check
the swerve, in time to prevent an accident.

Naturally, when one puts such a machine as an
aeroplane into the hands of a pilot, one has to
reckon with the human element — with the various
temperaments and inclinations with which men
are endowed. One of the difficulties of men who
have gained experience in flying is to induce
young aviators to curb their ambition, and to
proceed cautiously in that critical stage which
follows their first handling of an aeroplane, and
before they have learned to appreciate the dangers
which lie hidden in the air. Learning to fly is
in a sense too easy. Nowadays, in favourable
weather, and with a suitable machine, the novice
finds everything so simple that he may feel
tempted to emulate some crack pilot who knows
every "trick of the trade." And then, while he
may be in perfect control of his machine one
moment, and with the fullest confidence in his

FACTORS OF SAFETY 171

powers, he may overstep an instant later the
hidden danger-line, placing his machine at such
an angle that it side-slips, perhaps when near the
ground, with the result that he finds himself
involved in what may prove a serious accident.

In this question of the temperamental balance
of a man, of his judgment and discretion, there
exists, of course, all the difference between safety
and peril. A man can go into a shop and buy
a gun, and there is nothing on earth that will
prevent him from shooting himself with it. A
man can go into a shop, also, and buy a fast
motor-car which will kill him just as surely as a
gun, if he persists in taking risks. A man who
is not evenly balanced, mentally, and who cannot
be made to realise the risks he runs by doing
foolish things, may kill himself with an aeroplane,
just as he might with a motor-car or a gun; but
a man of sound judgment will, in the future, be
able to fly an aeroplane with the same absence
of risk as he drives a car.

The breakage of any part of an aeroplane when
it is in flight is a risk which has already been
obviated very largely ; and in future, with steel
construction, aided by the data gained from
experience, the risk will be lessened still further.
There is no reason why a properly constructed
aeroplane should collapse, any more than one would
expect the collapse of a well-built vehicle on
the land. For certain reasons, indeed, among
them being the fact that an aircraft escapes the
constant earth vibration and friction which affects

172 AIR POWER

any land vehicle, an aeroplane should be less
likely to develop flaws which might lead to a
breakdown.

XV
In Early Days

An aircraft when it is travelling at high speeds
is subjected, of course, to the heavy strains of air
pressure; but the extent of these strains is no
longer uncertain. Designers are able to calcu-
late them accurately, and to allow a sufficient
margin of structural safety to meet the strains
imposed by any given speed. It was the accidents
which occurred in the early days of flying which
gave the public an exaggerated notion of the
perils of a structural breakage or collapse. These
early accidents were due often to the fact that
constructors, having as a rule only low-powered
engines with which to drive their machines, and
desiring to gain the maximum speed possible for
any given power — so that they might win the
races which were then the vogue — were apt some-
times to reduce the strength of their machines
until a dangerous point was reached. The com-
petitions to encourage flying were generally in
the form of races, the winning machine being the
one which flew fastest, irrespective of any other
quality or defect which it might possess. Regret
has been expressed that so many of the valuable
prizes in the early days were given merely for
races from point to point, which meant the use
of aeroplanes in which the speed at which they

FACTORS OF SAFETY 173

would fly was the main consideration; and to
obtain this speed the weight had to be so cut
down that the machines had only a small margin
of strength available with which to withstand
any of the abnormal strains to which they might
be subjected. It would have been better, it has
been argued, if more of the money prizes had been
offered to encourage stability, reliability, and
general efficiency. Had more prizes been offered
to encourage structural safety, the list of early
fatalities might, it is contended, have been far
less heavy than it was. But in the case of
newspapers, which offered handsome prizes for
aeroplane races, something spectacular to interest
their readers was of course required; and a race
proved more exciting than a reliability contest,
or one for stability.

One must remember that the universal cry to-day
on land and sea, and in the air, is for speed ; also
that these great races, stimulating as they do
both design and construction, and making it
imperative to build machines which will survive
the heaviest possible strains, have an important
influence on the development of an industry.
One may take as an example the motor-car.
Here the great road races which were organised,
and which were so often condemned for the loss
of life they entailed, had an enormously beneficial
influence upon the improvement of cars. As
many as half a dozen men were, it is true, killed
in one of these races, and the fact should be
deplored; but on the other hand we have the

174 AIR POWER

fact that the motor-car industry could never
have developed at the rate it did had it not been
for the stimulating effect of these contests. And
with flying races it was much the same. They
led to accidents, but they led also to rapid pro-
gress. There might not have been so many
deaths, had there not been this era of races,
with the types of machine which were encouraged ;
but if it had not been for these races, even though
they meant accidents, the industry could not have
gone forward so quickly.

That heavy risks were run sometimes in such
contests cannot, of course, be denied. One
actual occurrence may be cited. A monoplane
which had been entered for one of the early
races was found on the day of the contest to be
a certain number of miles an hour slower than a
rival craft against which it would have to fly.
Whereupon, before the race began, the con-
structor reduced still further the already small
wing area of the machine, hoping that the speed
would be increased in consequence — as in fact it
was. The monoplane certainly flew faster ; but
by the clipping of its wings it had been rendered
almost uncontrollable. While rounding a pylon
at a low altitude, it side-slipped and struck the
ground with great violence. But the pilot, thrown
out across one wing and rolling clear of the
wreckage, escaped any serious injury.

That the risks run by pioneer aviators were far
greater than is the case to-day might be proved
by many instances. There is, for example, the

FACTORS OF SAFETY 175

case of an early-type machine which, after having
been built to carry a low-powered engine, was
fitted with one of a considerably higher power,
so as to increase its speed. The aeroplane was
strengthened in certain ways to bear the strain
of the higher speed; but this strength proved
insufficient. While the machine was being flown
in a gusty wind, one of its wings collapsed, with
the result that it fell, its pilot being killed.

The pioneer aviators ran heavy risks also
when flying machines of an entirely new or
experimental construction. The designers of such
machines, proceeding often by rule of thumb, and
having no very great knowledge or appreciation
of the strains on a machine when it was in flight,
provided factors of safety which were insufficient.
There is the case of an experimenter who built a
light type of single-seated biplane, and was told
by experts that the strength of his main-planes
was inadequate. The machine flew safely, how-
ever, on several occasions when the weather was
calm ; but one day, when at some altitude, it was
caught in a gusty wind; and, as had been pre-
dicted, one of the main-planes broke and the
machine fell, its pilot being killed.

It is encouraging, as a proof of the structural
strength which may be imparted already to an
aeroplane wing, that a plane which is built of
such far from perfect materials as wood, wire, and
cotton fabric can be made to withstand the
strains imposed by a speed through the air of
more than a hundred miles an hour. If such a

176 AIR POWER

strength can be obtained with flimsy materials,
there is little need to fear the future, when
extremely light, high-grade steels take the place
of wood. The aeroplane may be said, indeed, to
have passed through its dangerous stage, so far as
structural weakness is concerned.

PART V
POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR

I
Touring

AN important task after the war, for those
interested in aviation, will be the popularising
of flight. The war, with its gallant aerial exploits,
and the important and continuous influence which
aviation has had on strategy and tactics, has
led the public to become far more interested
in flying than was the case before. This interest
must be stimulated in every possible way. It
will be most necessary, for example, after the
war, to encourage aerial touring and the purchasing
of aircraft by private owners.

A promising fact which must be recorded is
that a large number of passengers have come
forward, since the beginning of the war, to book
flights in aeroplanes at the London Aerodrome,
Hendon; and these passengers, apart from en-
joying their flights, show a distinctly clearer
grasp of the importance of aviation, and are
eager to discuss its future. Since the war began,
in fact, there has been a rapidly widening in-
terest in flight. Apart from the admiration

N I77

178 AIR POWER

which has been aroused by the work of our
naval and military pilots, it must be remembered
that flying is becoming familiar in thousands of
homes throughout the country owing to the fact
that one or other of the sons of the house has
joined the air service, and writes to his relatives
telling them of his experiences and adventures.
It is in this way that people who had no more
than a vague interest in flying before the war
are now keenly alive to its possibilities, and are
eager themselves to make a flight, in order that
they may enjoy the sensations which are de-
scribed by the sons, brothers, nephews, or cousins
who are in the air services.

Each of the thousands of young men who have
come forward to serve their country in the air
are spreading throughout their home circle, and
also among a wider circle of friends, a knowledge
and an appreciation of the importance of flight.
This education of the public, which is going on
constantly, and which brings home the lesson
to them in a personal way which cannot be
ignored, is exercising a greater influence from
day to day. More men are joining the flying
services, and the work they do is of increasing
value. In this way, like a snowball grows as it
is pushed along, a knowledge of what flying
means in war, and a growing belief and interest
in its future, are being instilled almost imper-
ceptibly into the minds of the people. The full
value of this work of education will not reveal
itself until after the war.

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 179

There was a certain amount of aerial touring
before the war; but it lacked facilities or organ-
isation. After the war the energies of clubs and
other institutions, working in co-operation with
the industry, must be directed particularly to-
wards this aspect of flight. The development of
civilian flying, leading as it will to a demand for
touring and pleasure-type aeroplanes, will have
a most beneficial influence on the progress of the
industry. It will open up a branch in design and
construction which will have an almost unlimited
scope, which will be apart altogether from the
building of war machines, and which should serve
as a convenient stepping-stone between present-
type aeroplanes and the larger machines which
will be used for carrying passengers and mails.

To accustom people to being in the air, either
as pilots of their own machines or as passengers
in machines owned by friends, will be of the
highest importance as a preliminary to the com-
mercial era of aviation. After men and women
have flown a certain number of times, and have
come to realise the possibilities of aerial travel,
they will be ready to respond when the time
comes, as it will in a few years, for the establish-
ment of the first of our passenger services by air.

II
^The Ideal Form of Travel

Aerial touring, once it is established and is
gaining headway, will be found so pleasurable

180 AIR POWER

that its subsequent progress should be rapid.
Touring by air represents indeed a form of travel
from which all such inconveniences and dis-
comforts have been eliminated as afflict the
tourist who travels by land or sea. In aerial
touring, as contrasted with motor-car touring,
there is an absence of dust or vibration; the air
breathed is pure and invigorating; while the
effortless speed of flight gives a sense of exhilara-
tion stronger than is the case with any other
form of travel : and, when the aerial tourist is
above picturesque country, a magnificent pano-
rama lies thousands of feet below him, and as
far as the eye can reach.

Aerial tourists, driving their own machines,
will not be subjected to the nerve-strain which
attends driving a motor-car along one of our
main roads, with the vigilance necessary to avoid
running over pedestrians, children, or straying
animals, or of colliding with some badly-driven
vehicle. In the air the tourist flies serenely and
with ease, chained in no way to a narrow or
crowded track. Rules in piloting will have to be
observed, of course : with these we deal later.

Doctors have noted already the beneficial re-
sults of flying. Instead of breathing into their
lungs a mixture of dust and petrol fumes, as do
travellers in a motor-car on a main road, the
aerial tourists, owing to their altitude above the
earth, breathe an air which is equivalent in its
purity to that on a mountain-top.

Business men who feel the nerve-strain and

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 181

lack of air which follow, say, a strenuous week of
work in a crowded city, will find aerial touring
a magnificent restorative. Hitherto such men
have motored at week-ends ; but flying will have
benefits which are incomparably greater.

Ill
A Day in the Air

As an instance of the possibilities of a day's
pleasure flying, one might map out a trip as
follows. The tourists, who garage their aero-
plane at the London Aerodrome, Hendon, motor
to the flying-ground in the early morning, ascend-
ing for, say, an hour's flight before breakfast,
steering for the seaside aerodrome at Shoreham,
near Brighton. Here they breakfast, and then
make a coastal flight, passing seaward of Beachy
Head, until they reach the flying ground at East-
bourne. From here, after a halt to look over
their machine, they continue along the coast to
the aerodrome at Dover, the French coast visible
away to their right, should the weather be clear.
After lunch at Dover, they make a flight to the
aerodrome at Eastchurch, on the Isle of Sheppey ;
and from here, after an interval for tea, they steer
back to Hendon — having visited four aerodromes
during their day's tour, three situated on the
sea-coast, and having flown a total distance of a
little over 200 miles. Many other such excursions
could be arranged, of course, the one mentioned
being given merely by way of illustration.

182 AIR POWER

Foreign tours by air will be possible to an
extent, and with an enjoyment and convenience,
which cannot be obtained by any present modes
of travel. Using amphibious machines, capable
of alighting on land or water, the tourist will be
able to visit coastal towns abroad as well as those
inland — going just where he pleases either by land
or sea — combining in fact the pleasures of yacht-
ing and motoring, and in a more exhilarating
form. The whole of the continent will lie open
to him; he will have a complete freedom of
choice as to his route from day to day. None
of the restrictions of railways or roads will apply
to the tourist who travels by way of the air.

IV
Touring Aeroplanes

In designing a touring aeroplane, the features
to be considered must be those of safety, re-
liability, comfort, and ease of control. The de-
signer will not aim so much for speed as for a
high all-round factor of safety. Such machines
must not be sensitive on their controls ; they
must offer as wide a latitude as possible for any
error on the part of their pilot ; and they must
also have a slow minimum speed, so that they
can be landed without risk of accident when
handled by pilots of average skill.

It should be one of the first aims of designers
and constructors, after the war, to produce two-
seated and four-seated machines of a purely

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 183

touring or pleasure type, and for all those con-
nected with the industry to promote and popularise
their use.

Designers will find that the planning of a
touring machine offers less difficulty than is
the case with craft which are required for use
in war. In a war craft it is necessary as a rule
to carry huge loads of fuel, so as to allow the
machines to remain for long periods in the air;
and this weight of fuel must be carried in ad-
dition to the load represented by bombs, guns,
and other warlike equipment. But with a touring
machine all such excessive weighting may be
eliminated. The craft will be built to carry,
say, a three hours' fuel supply. This will be
sufficient because the aerial tourist will have
landing-grounds at frequent intervals on which
he will be able to alight, and at which he will
refill his petrol tank. A three hours' journey,
non-stop, should represent the limit required for
ordinary touring, seeing that with a sixty-mile-
an-hour machine a distance of 180 miles could
be traversed during such a flight. With a moder-
ate load of fuel, and with a maximum speed of
sixty miles an hour, the designer should be able to
plan a machine fitted with, say, a 100 h.p. motor,
which will carry several people across country
with efficiency and safety. It is when, as in a
war machine, the designer is required to build
a craft which shall fly fast and carry a heavy
load, and possess at the same time a wide radius
of action, that his difficulties begin.

184 AIR POWER

The Cost of Aerial Touring

A question that arises naturally is as to the
cost of aerial touring when compared, say, with
touring by car; but it is not possible yet, nor
would it be advisable, to enter into a detailed
comparison : the data available are insufficient.
What can be said, however, with confidence is
that as soon as touring aeroplanes can be pro-
duced of approved types, and there is a demand
for them in any numbers (thus permitting a
certain standardisation), it should be possible to
produce and sell a high-class touring aeroplane at
a price no greater than would be paid for a first-
class car. And it may be stated with equal
confidence that as soon as flying is organised the
running costs of a touring aeroplane will be no
more than those of a touring car : it is likely,
indeed, that they will prove less.

The most important item of expense in motor-
ing is, of course, the wear-and-tear of tyres.
But with aeroplanes this item of expense will be
negligible. The wear on aeroplane tyres, during
the brief periods a machine is moving across
aerodromes, is so slight that a set of tyres,
when properly inflated, should last almost as long
as an aeroplane itself.

Of importance in the development of aerial
touring will be the establishment of a system of
landing-grounds such as we have described. They
will serve the aerial tourist in the same way as the

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 185

garages along our main roads serve the traveller
who journeys by motor-car.

One of the results following the introduction
of privately-owned aeroplanes, when they are
used, as they will be, in the same way as a
motor-car, is that the environs of a great city
like London will cease to be residential, and
will be given over more and more to workshops
and factories. People who travel to and fro
each day between their offices and their homes
will be able, owing to the speed and other facilities
offered them by aircraft, to live either at the
seaside or in the heart of the country, and still
reach their offices in good time each morning,
travelling quickly and comfortably by way of
the air.

The opportunity which air travel will offer a
man of living much farther from his work than
is possible to-day, will have a very important
influence, in time, on the health, habits, and
lives of the people. It will no longer be neces-
sary for great masses to congregate in one locality,
with the disadvantages which this entails, not
only in health, but also in high rentals and the
other costs of living. The coming of the air age
will enable us to distribute our population more
evenly. Districts which lie at some distance
from great towns, and which are at present
unoccupied and untilled, will be transformed
gradually into residential areas, in which the
cost of rent and living will be so much reduced,
as compared with life on the outskirts of a city,

186 AIR POWER

that the workers will be well able to afford the
cost of the aerial transport which will bear them
to and from their work. In this way the city
worker will be able to enjoy a country life, greatly
to the benefit of his health. He will be able to
have a garden — land in these country districts
being cheap — and this will not only give him
exercise, but will enable him to grow his own
vegetables and keep his own poultry, and so
reduce his living expenses.

Training Aviators

The effort to popularise aviation cannot suc-
ceed unless some general scheme is devised, and
carefully carried out, to provide well-trained and
reliable pilots for aeroplanes which pass into
private hands. Most private owners will learn
no doubt to drive their own machines, but they
will not always wish to do so; hence they will
need the services of a pilot. And there will
probably be people who will buy aeroplanes for
touring without learning to fly them, and who
will rely entirely on the pilot they engage.

On the skill and discretion of the first pilots
who fly privately-owned aeroplanes a great deal
must depend. Their training will require to be
thorough in every respect, and must be carried
out under careful supervision. Unsuitable men
must be rejected without compunction before they
have had a chance to disgust, and perhaps en-

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 187

danger, some new aeroplane owner who may have
been induced to employ them.

It is here that we can learn a lesson from the
early history of the motor-car. There were far
too many men who, after buying a motor-car in
the pioneer days, had the misfortune to be driven
so badly, by an incompetent or imperfectly-
trained chauffeur, that they abandoned motoring,
and sold their cars, just at a time when their
support of the industry was urgently required.
It was through a lack of organisation that we
failed to produce, either in sufficient numbers or
at the right time, the fully-qualified and picked
chauffeurs who should have handled the first
motor-cars which were bought by members of
the public. The right men could not be found
when they were wanted; there was no organ-
isation or recognised system of training; ex-
pensive cars had to be placed in the hands of
men who were incompetent to drive them, with
the result that accidents occurred, and motoring
acquired a bad name, just at a time when it was
most necessary to avoid accidents, and to impress
people with the safety of this new method of
travel. The use of inexperienced drivers also
meant heavy running costs.

These mistakes must be avoided with the aero-
plane. It will be fatal to progress if an attempt
to popularise aviation should coincide with a list
of accidents, caused by careless, incompetent, or
inconsiderate flying. The public is already apt
to dwell too much on the risks of aerial travel;

188 AIR POWER

and if newspapers have a number of accidents to
report, immediately private owners begin to buy
and use aeroplanes, it will have a disastrous
influence upon development.

The tests a man must undergo, before he is
given a certificate which will entitle him to pilot
an aeroplane, must be made so severe that none
but perfectly suitable men, physically and tem-
peramentally, will be able to pass them ; and the
tests imposed must be so graduated, from aero-
drome flying to flights across country, that it
may be taken for granted that the man who
passes them, and gains his certificate, will not
be found wanting in any of the emergencies
which may arise during a flight, and which can
only be dealt with successfully by a pilot of
experience. The present certificate of proficiency,
as granted by the Royal Aero Club, is a guarantee
merely that a man can handle an aeroplane in
flight, and ascend or descend safely, when flying
over an aerodrome under favourable conditions.
His cross-country experience (also his experience
in flying under bad weather conditions) has to be
gained after he has taken his certificate. Existing
tests will be quite inadequate in the future. Un-
fortunate experiences with bad pilots must not be
allowed to rob aviation of the support of those
who buy touring machines.

It is very necessary, during the early training
of an aviator, to prevent any accident which may
impair his nerve. If a man goes through his
period of tuition without a smash, and learns to

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 189

control a machine without loss of confidence, and
is willing to gain experience gradually, then he is
on the road to becoming a good pilot.

A man who decides to learn to fly does so
generally with a certain inward trepidation. But
his first experiences in a machine, and par-
ticularly his first attempts at controlling it, fill
him as a rule with astonishment that the thing
should be so easy. His trepidation leaves him,
being replaced by enthusiasm and confidence. The
problem is to carry him through his tuition,
and make him a pilot, without allowing this
feeling of confidence to lead him to a foolish
action; and also without opening his eyes too
soon — through the rude shock of an accident —
to the fact that underneath the apparent easiness
of flight there are a host of hidden dangers, and
that just when all seems plain-sailing something
may happen which will call for an instant readiness
both of judgment and nerve.

Flying is easy only so long as conditions, atmo-
spheric and otherwise, prove favourable. Where
the risk lies is that the fine-weather flier, the
novice who has not yet been faced by any serious
difficulty, may begin to feel so sure of himself
that he over-estimates his powers. While he is
in this frame of mind, should he over-step the
boundary line between safety and danger, and
involve himself and his machine in an accident,
the effect on his nerve and confidence may be
extremely bad. He may lose faith suddenly in
his own powers, and by a process of reaction

190 AIR POWER

become timorous and hesitating. And such an
attitude of mind is worse than over-confidence.
This is why it is so necessary, at a flying school,
that instructors should be chosen with special
care. They must be something more than good
pilots. They must be men of sympathy and
understanding, capable of an estimate of char-
acter; and they must have a sufficient interest
in their work to treat each pupil individually.
Flying brings out a man's temperamental
peculiarities. One may be extremely cautious ;
another foolishly daring. One may be slow and
disappointing in getting any sort of a " feel "
of his machine ; another may pick up the whole
business with facility. But the instructor need
not feel disheartened by any apparent stupidity,
nor over-elated when a pupil is unusually quick.
Often a man who is slow in the early stages will
turn out in the end a sound, reliable pilot ; while
the pupil who is very quick in learning to handle
a machine may be found to lack the judgment
and discretion which are essential.

A large proportion of the accidents which have
marred the progress of flight have been due to
the fact that men have gone ahead faster than
their experience has justified.

VII
Physical Fitness

A question which needs to be taken carefully
in hand is that of the physique of men who wish

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 191

to become pilots. No man should be in charge
of an aeroplane unless he is absolutely sound,
and in normal health in every way. To ensure
such fitness, and to prevent any man of doubtful
physique from evading medical detection, it will
be found necessary no doubt to adopt a rigid
system of examination by doctors appointed by
the Government; men who have made them-
selves familiar with aviation, and can be relied
on to pass no man unless he is unquestionably
sound. The eyesight of an aeroplane pilot needs
of course to be perfectly normal; he must have
no organic defects such as latent heart trouble,
or any weakness of the lungs; his nerves must
be sound and in a normal condition ; the muscular
action and movement of his limbs must be quick
and unhesitating. Awkwardly built, ungainly
men, with limbs of an abnormal length, are not
likely to make good pilots; nor are men who
are slow in their mental processes. Lightly-
built, intelligent men, naturally quick without
being jerky or excitable, and who are not of a
worrying or anxious temperament, represent the
type that must be sought for. Aeroplane owners,
if they are supplied with such men, well-trained
and reliable, must be prepared to pay them good
salaries.

The importance of a rigorous medical examina-
tion, for all men who wish to pilot aeroplanes, is
emphasised by the fact that there have been
cases already in which the circumstances made
it clear that a man was flying, and met with an

192 AIR POWER

accident, at a time when his physical condition
was such as would render him unfit to be in
charge of an aeroplane. But the physical strains
of flying will, in the future, be very much less
severe than has been the case in the past.

A fact that should not be forgotten, either,
is the way in which men have adapted them-
selves already to the new conditions they have
to encounter when navigating the air. It was
declared in the early days of flying that it would
be only one man in a thousand who would have
the qualities necessary to handle an aeroplane.
But this was disproved before the war, and has
been disproved even more conclusively during
the progress of the war. One can take any
young man to-day, normal in physique and
nerve, and teach him to handle an aeroplane in
a few hours; while in three months he will be
sufficiently experienced to pilot aeroplanes in
cross-country flights. If this is possible to-day,
when flying is still in its infancy, it suggests that
the people of the future will take to the air just
as naturally as to any other form of travel. Man-
kind will adapt itself to aerial locomotion in the
same way as it has adapted itself to the conditions
of modern life.

Our forefathers would have considered it im-
possible to live at the rate we live to-day — with
telephones, fast motor-cars, and all the facilities
which enable us to get so much more done, in a
given time, than was possible in the past. And
with the coming of flight there will be another

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 193

great speeding up. We shall live at an even
greater pace, doing still more in any given time
than is the case to-day. But as in the past, and
as now, there will be pessimists who will say
that mankind cannot stand the strain — that our
physique and nerves will be ruined irretrievably.
And yet, ignoring such lamentations, the world
will adapt itself almost unconsciously to the new
rate of speed. Of course there is a limit which
must be reached, so far as concerns the endurance
of the human physique and nerve. But, though
it is the habit to deplore the wear-and-tear of
modern life, that limit is not as yet in sight.
There is the elasticity of the human organisation
to be taken into account. A normal man has
to over-drive himself terribly before he breaks
down. A man who takes care of himself, who
rests when he can — who does not, in the time-
honoured phrase " burn the candle at both ends "
— will live even at the highest pressure which
attains to-day, and still feel he has 'something in
hand.

A point to be noted is that certificated aviators,
after having passed the doctor, will need to re-
port themselves periodically for re-examination,
so that there may be no chance of their having
developed any defect, since their first examination,
which might involve them, and others, in a smash.

194 AIR POWER

VIII
Flying Clubs

A feature in the popular development of avia-
tion which should be encouraged is the formation
of flying clubs. A certain number of people,
forming themselves into a club, may decide to
acquire their own flying ground, buying what
aeroplanes they require, and employing their
own engineers and mechanics. The formation
of such clubs should do much to promote the
sporting and competitive aspects of flying. They
should lead to inter-club contests ; and there is
the possibility of organising international meet-
ings, in which aviators of various countries engage
in a series of contests. Events of this kind should
prove attractive to the public; and they should
certainly have a stimulating influence on the
construction of new types of aeroplanes, seeing
that the rivalry between aviators would be shared
also by designers and constructors.

IX
Need for Organisation

Though progress in the directions we have
indicated should be rapid after the war, nothing
must be done which is haphazard or badly
organised. There is a lesson in this regard to be
learned from the first flying meetings. These,
with few exceptions, were so hastily and im-

POPULARISING TRAVEL BY AIR 195

perfectly organised, and with such a lack of
regard for the convenience of spectators, that a
bad impression was created on the public mind.
The desire to make money quickly out of flying
defeated in fact its own purpose. Great crowds
of people were brought together to see aeroplanes
fly, many of them coming from long distances, at
a time when all aeroplanes were so inefficient,
and their pilots so inexperienced, that even a
moderately high wind was sufficient to prevent
any flying from taking place. Many thousands
of people were disappointed in this way, and felt
that their ignorance had been exploited; with
the result that for years after these early failures
the aeroplane was regarded by the majority of
people as being a purely fine-weather machine,
and this even at a time when flights were possible
in high and gusty winds. The first impressions
of the public, so far as spectacular or competitive
flying was concerned, were certainly unfortunate ;
and the influence of these early disappointments
is felt to-day.

What we must strive to do, in aerial touring
and pleasure flying, and later on in commercial
flying, is to prevent the public from being disap-
pointed by unsatisfactory machines, or by a lack
of safeguards or conveniences when they fly such
machines from point to point. Machines, aero-
dromes, and all the necessary organisation, must
be thought out carefully and placed in readiness
before any general campaign is embarked on to
popularise the aeroplane. Spasmodic efforts will

196 AIR POWER

do more harm than good; while rash or ill-
considered enterprises, which individuals or con-
cerns may attempt to launch who have no proper
organisation behind them, and no knowledge, of
the special requirements of aviation, will need to
be suppressed for the common good by a firm
action on the part of the whole industry.

PART VI
LAWS OF THE AIR

NAVAL, MILITARY, INTERNATIONAL, CIVIL

The Hague Convention

IN 1899, at the Hague, the nations agreed to
prohibit the discharge from aircraft of projectiles
or explosives : but later, when this rule came up
again for consideration, several nations, including
Germany and France, declared they could no
longer agree to it ; and the reason for this change
of attitude was not hard to find. Aircraft, im-
proving rapidly, promised to be effective machines
in the making of raids across hostile frontiers;
and neither France nor Germany, with the pos-
sibility of war always in their minds, felt that
they could deprive themselves of such a weapon.

After the refusal of Germany and France to
sign this rule, matters were arranged as follows :
those countries which still consented to be bound
by it — and they included Great Britain and
America — agreed that, in any war in which they
found themselves opposing each other, they would
not use aircraft for bomb-dropping; but that if

197

198 AIR POWER

they were called on, say, to fight Germany or
France, and these countries used aircraft in
destructive raids, then they would hold them-
selves free to retaliate. This rule, as a matter
of fact, after countries like Germany and France
had withdrawn their consent to it, became prac-
tically without force. The whole question was
left in abeyance, with no fixed or definite rule to
guide the action of any combatant. The problem
was, of course, one of unusual complexity; and
this was recognised by the international aero-
nautical congress which sat at Nancy in 1909,
and which decided that " only warfare can reveal
what abuses are to be checked/'

There remained, however, as a general guide,
the article of the Hague Convention which read :
" It is forbidden to attack or to bombard, by any
means whatever, towns, villages, habitations, or
buildings, which are not defended/' This rule,
however, as it stood, did not provide adequately
for such special contingencies as might arise in
connection with raids by air — remembering that
raiding aircraft, being unchecked by land ob-
structions or defences, have the power to reach
vital points, and damage communications behind
a battle-front, in a way that would be impossible
with any other weapon. Such questions arose,
therefore, as this : Under what conditions is a
town to be considered defended, when use can
be made of aircraft for the purposes of destruc-
tion ? The presence round a city of anti-aircraft
guns, or of patrol aeroplanes, or the power an

LAWS OF THE AIR 199

attacking airman might possess of destroying
with bombs some building of military import-
ance within the confines of a city, such as an
arsenal or munition factory, raised points that
were not covered by the rule we have quoted,
and to which, prior to the war, there were no
authoritative or definite answers. No law, indeed,
existed, and therefore there was no law to be
broken.

The use of aircraft, it must be realised, brought
up problems which were entirely new. If an
army possessed a gun of such power that it would
throw a shell with accuracy for a distance, say, of
fifty miles, and it was possible to train this gun
on some railway junction used by an enemy for
the transport of troops, it would be a permissible
act of war to bombard this station, even if it was
far behind the fighting line and there was nothing
else in the vicinity of military importance. Raid-
ing aircraft, armed with bombs, may be likened
to a gun which has a range of hundreds of miles —
a gun capable of placing a shell on some railway
depot or junction which lies deep within an
enemy's territory, and which could not be attacked
by any other means. And it is only natural,
such a new and powerful weapon becoming
available, that it should be used. If the rules of
war do not, at any given time, cover the use of a
new weapon, they should be modified so as to do so.
It is certain that no weapon would be discarded,
if it was powerful and promised well, simply be-
cause provision had not been made for its use at

200 AIR POWER

some earlier Hague Conference. The science of
war is progressive ; the rules of yesterday cannot
cover to-day, nor those of to-day to-morrow.

II
Aerial and Naval Bombardment

It was considered reasonable, though there was
no formal agreement between nations to this
effect, that aerial bombardment should be governed
by the international code which concerns naval
bombardment. This lays it down that any struc-
tures or buildings may be bombarded which can
be held to be of definite use to the enemy in
providing for the needs of his fleet and army;
anything, in fact, which comes under the heading
of material of war. And under such a heading
are placed docks, harbours, railways, and all
warlike stores and military establishments. What
this means, really, is that an aircraft, when flying
over hostile territory, is entitled to aim bombs
at any railway station its occupants see below,
even if there is nothing else in a town, except
this railway station, which merits the description
of war material. The airmen, discharging their
bombs at the railway station, can argue that
this station, with its buildings and rolling stock,
is of military importance to the enemy, seeing
that it may be of use to him in the transport of
his troops or supplies. And nowadays, of course,
with munition factories everywhere, one can see

LAWS OF THE AIR 201

how universally might be extended this right to
attack war material from the air. Almost every-
where throughout this country, for instance, we
have had factories and other buildings engaged
directly on military work, which an enemy could
argue he had a right to attack.

The position amounts, in a word, to this : not
only navies and armies, but entire nations, fight
nowadays. The whole of a country has to be
organised to supply war materials, seeing that
such vast quantities are required. And if hostile
aircraft fly over such a country, and drop their
bombs, it is practically impossible to frame any
rule as to where bombs are permissible and
where they are not. The nation is in arms for
the prosecution of the war ; all the national
organisation is directed towards that end.

In the past such conditions have not existed;
wars have been more localised. Armies have
fought without there having been an upheaval
in the whole lives of the nations at war. But in
warfare on its modern scale, almost every man in a
country, and a large proportion of women, are doing
war work, and are combatants in the sense that
if it were possible for the enemy to kill them with
a bomb from the air, their death would have an
effect more or less prejudicial on the output of
some war munition, or in the product of food-
stuffs, or in the business of transport and supply.

Aerial bombardment, of course, even assuming
it is governed by the rules of naval bombard-
ment, offers possibilities of destruction which are

202 AIR POWER

far more serious. A warship, approaching a
hostile shore, can only reach with its shells some
town or position which is on the coast, or a given
number of miles inland. But an aircraft, flying
in over the shore, can reach cities which are far
inland : it can, indeed, granted it has a sufficient
radius of action, drop its bombs anywhere and
everywhere.

Natural barriers mean nothing to raiding air-
craft. They pass with equal facility above land
or sea, forest or mountain. And in this fact,
coupled with their speed, lies their immensely
destructive power.

A point that is of importance, in contrasting
bombardments from the air and from the sea, is
that it is laid down in regard to naval bombard-
ment, with a view of course to saving the lives
of non-combatants, that an attacking squadron
should give notice to the city it proposes to shell,
in order that civilians may withdraw to some
place of safety. But with this rule, as with
others in war, conditions may arise which render
its observance impossible. In aerial bombard-
ment, for example, in practically all cases, the
observance of any such rule would rob an attack
of its chief hope of success — would eliminate, that
is to say, the factor of surprise. Even an hour
or so's notice of any raid would permit guns and
defending aircraft to be brought into position.
A blow by air must be struck swiftly; it must
come, if possible, without warning : to give any
notice, therefore, before a city was attacked,

LAWS OF THE AIR 203

would be simply to play into the hands of the
enemy.

Here one comes again to the essential fact that,
owing to the power of raiding aircraft to pene-
trate within a hostile country, and to drop bombs
on military centres, railway junctions, or munition
works, there is now a risk for civilians which has
not had to be faced in any previous war. It is
a risk which must grow and which must be made
the best of. War has ceased to be an affair in
which a certain number of men fight, watched
by a host of spectators — the people who stay at
home. Onlookers as well as combatants find
themselves involved in the titanic struggle. In
future wars, as a matter of fact, there are not
likely to be any onlookers at all — either among
individuals or nations. Every man and woman
will be given some war task; while it will be
almost impossible for any nation to remain
neutral, owing to the vast and complex interests
which will be involved. The war of the future
will not be fought between individual nations :
it may be a conflict in which one half of the world
finds itself ranged against the other.

Ill
At the Outbreak of War

The position between nations as to aerial bom-
bardment, when the war came, was practically
this : any country was entitled to send its air-
craft over hostile territory, and to drop bombs on

204 AIR POWER

railways, harbours, or military stores, or any
other buildings engaged in war work. But if
any country did so — and here was the point
that was important — it might incur odium, and
the condemnation of neutrals, if the bombs from
its aircraft fell wide of their mark, as they were
quite likely to do, and killed non-combatants, or
destroyed private property, instead of reaching
the targets at which they were aimed. Would
any country use this new and dangerous weapon
indiscriminately, or would it confine its attacks
so that non-combatants ran the least risk of
injury? This, rather than the observance of any
rules, was the question that war was to solve.

Germany, as we have seen, has provided a
grim answer. Throwing aside the restraints of
humanity, and using her airships and aeroplanes
as weapons of sheer terrorism, she has flouted
the good opinion of the world, and has turned a
deaf ear to the protests of neutrals. She has
sent airships over England, by night to scatter
their bombs haphazard ; making, indeed, scarcely
a pretence of aiming at a definite target, but
merely throwing out their bombs when they
imagined, groping as they were above a darkened
countryside, that they were over some town,
railway, or human habitation.

The action of Germany need not be argued
now, or even considered, from any such aspects
of humanity, in its application to war, as were
entertained before this campaign. War has
entered upon a new phase : all previous land-

LAWS OF THE AIR 205

marks are gone. We must face the position
actually as it is ; and this means that one great
nation, directing every ounce of its energy to
the defeat of another — converting itself, in fact,
into a huge war organisation, in which civilians
as well as combatants play their appointed parts
— will strike at the enemy with every weapon
that comes to hand; and strike him not only in
the battle area, or on the seas, but at any points,
and under any conditions, where damage may be
done, or the courage of his people weakened.
And this means that it will be impossible, in the
future, to protect non-combatants from risk of
injury or death.

IV
What the War Teaches

Any nation which is chivalrous, which seeks
to fight cleanly according to the traditions of
the past, is at a disadvantage, naturally, when
opposed by an enemy who is unscrupulous. In
a fight between pugilists in a prize ring, which
is governed by certain rules, the man who breaks
a rule, who seeks to gain some unfair advantage
over his opponent, is brought to task by the
referee. The referee represents a power that the
offender cannot ignore — a power stronger than
himself. However evil may be his intentions,
therefore, he has to fight fairly, as his opponent
fights, or the contest will be declared against
him. But in the fighting between nations where
is the referee who, condemning an unfair blow,

206 AIR POWER

can enforce on the transgressor an observance of
the rules ? It was said, before this war, that
neutral opinion would take the place of a referee ;
that no country would wage a war of terrorism,
or of brutality, because it might fear what neutral
countries would say, or what action they might
take, either during the war or afterwards, to
express their disapproval. But that argument,
like a good many others, has gone completely by
the board. Germany has shocked neutral opinion,
not once but a hundred times. The protests of
neutrals have been simply disregarded. What we
have seen, indeed, in this war — and it is a lesson
that should imprint itself indelibly on our minds —
is first the striking of an unfair blow, not inad-
vertently but with premeditation, and then an
apology for it afterwards — completely insincere —
when the effect has been gained, and the damage
done. This is the policy Germany has pursued
deliberately; and she has not even taken the
trouble to apologise unless it has been for some
good reason of her own, or in order to quieten
temporarily some neutral whom she has thought
it judicious to soothe.

In this war, owing to the imperfection of
aircraft as weapons of destruction, a policy of
terrorism has failed because it could not be
pursued with sufficient rigour. Germany, by
adopting the policy she did, suffered all the repro-
bation with practically none of the results. But
the point to be remembered is that such a cam-
paign of terrorism has actually been attempted

LAWS OF THE AIR 207

and that — for any combined effort the world has
made to prevent it — it might have succeeded.

With an individual, should he break the law,
there is the power of the State to punish him ; a
power he cannot question, and before which he
is helpless. But with a great and powerful
nation, when it decides to break international law,
and cares nothing for the discredit of so doing,
where is the power, save a force greater than its
own, which can bring it to account ? A powerful
group of nations may, certainly, form themselves
into a tribunal, and enforce by their combined
strength an observance of certain laws. But the
effectiveness of any such action depends on the
strength of the combined nations being greater
than that of any country or countries which may
decide to break the law. And it is impossible to
make certain that, among the nations forming a
tribunal, there shall remain always a complete
agreement. Dissensions may arise; the balance
of power may change. It is impossible, indeed,
that it should remain stationary. Nations, as
well as individuals, rise and fall. New conditions
have constantly to be faced — conditions which
may change friends into rivals, and even enemies.

If every country in the world were to agree to
certain laws governing, say, the conduct of war,
there is the restless ambition to be reckoned with
which is a part of human nature. The control
of some great country may pass into the hands
of men whose ambition is so strong that, as soon
as they find they are not moving fast enough

208 AIR POWER

towards their goal by legitimate means, will turn
without scruple to means that are illegitimate.
Would anybody have thought, before the war,
that Germany would have done what she has
done ? No. But a nation, like an individual —
human nature being what it is — will go to any
length to gain some end, provided that its desire
is sufficiently strong. Germany wanted world
power; she had thought of little else for forty
years ; and she was ready to do anything to get
it. And as with a nation, so with an individual.
A man who wants money, whose obsession it is
to gain money, who thinks of money day and
night, and who loses his sense of proportion in
so doing, will steal if he cannot get it any
other way.

This war, from the point of view of flying, is
merely a prelude to that great air war of the
future which must come, almost inevitably, unless
the nations agree without reserve to lay aside
their arms. But will they do this ? It seems at
least improbable.

" There will be no future war/' one hears it
said. " This is the last great war/'

Well, if this war should alter, at a stroke, the
entire basis of human nature, it will have done
something so extraordinary as to be almost be-
yond belief. If the lion does lie down with the
lamb, and with nothing but peaceful intentions,
well and good. But until that phenomenon
actually does take place before our eyes, and is
seen to be a state of things likely to endure, it is

LAWS OF THE AIR 209

for us to remember that this world, like this life,
is built up of rivalry and struggle.

One sees this everywhere, of course, not only
in war but in peace. There are fights to the
death in trade, one great organisation seeking to
crush another, with the livelihood of hundreds or
perhaps thousands of people depending on the
struggle. And what takes place in civil life, and
in times of peace, takes place also on a more
terrible and lurid scale when nations go to war.
A powerful business concern, failing to make
a sufficiently rapid headway by the normal
processes of trade, may start a price-cutting
campaign against some rival, seeking to deal
this opponent a death-blow by robbing it of its
customers. And a powerful nation, feeling that
under peace conditions it cannot expand with
sufficient rapidity, may decide to take up and
use the weapons for which it has paid hundreds
of millions of pounds, and to strike suddenly at
some rival with its fleet and army. With am-
bitions high and ruthless, and with human life
so brief, it is not surprising that short cuts should
be taken to power, either by waging a trade war
or by a war of arms.

V
A Puerile Suggestion

The proposal has been made that flying should
be put a stop to after the war ; that all countries
should agree not to build any more machines or

210 AIR POWER

train any more aviators ; that this great new
science, the greatest and most important in the
world, should be deliberately suppressed. And
this merely because aircraft are powerful instru-
ments of war. The suggestion is ludicrous. Fly-
ing has a purpose far greater, in the end, than
the destruction of cities, or the killing of men in
war. It will, when machines are perfected, pro-
vide the world with its swiftest and most de-
lightful form of travel. It will open up a new
era ; it will give men, ultimately, the complete
mastery of a new element. The conquest of the
air, when it is absolute, will have a more im-
portant influence on civilisation — and a greater
influence for good — than any other conquest
man has made. To renounce this conquest, to
abandon the navigation of this new element,
which will reduce journeys of weeks to days, and
those of days to hours, would not only be illogical
in the extreme, but would be to deny the world
a means of transit by which, in the future, there
will be the greatest chance of spreading civilisa-
tion, and of strengthening the bonds of good
feeling and understanding between one nation
and another.

None but those who take a narrow view, and
who fail to realise the vast future which lies
before aviation, would suggest for a moment that
flying should cease. Such an error, if made by
the world under the influence of panic, would be
a pitiable confession of weakness and of short-
sightedness. That an aircraft is a weapon of

LAWS OF THE AIR 211

war is incidental : its great role — the role of
the future — is not as an instrument of destruc-
tion but of construction; an instrument which,
coupled with the use of a universal language,
should do more than anything else to render war
impossible.

When a man can travel into another country
just as quickly as, to-day, he travels between one
city and another in his native land; and when
he finds in that other country a people who no
longer speak a foreign language, but who can
talk with him in a universal tongue, it will need
an extraordinarily powerful influence to set these
men of different nations at each other's throats —
men who have become friends instead of strangers,
and who have talked with each other heart to
heart.

In the air there are no frontiers. Aircraft of
the future, linking not only countries but con-
tinents, will break down prejudices and false
assumptions. The nations of the world, brought
together as they will be by air travel, will get to
know each other intimately instead of super-
ficially. All earthly barriers, such as exist now,
will be removed. People will begin to under-
stand that they are the inhabitants of one great
globe, instead of being a series of separate com-
munities. The role of the aeroplane in the
future is to make men realise that they do not
belong to any one city, or country, or continent,
but are merely citizens of the world. Nothing
can do this so effectually as can aircraft, because

212 AIR POWER

nothing else can break down in the same way all
existing barriers, natural and artificial.

But will men learn this great lesson in time to
prevent another war ? That is the question, and
who can answer it ? But this at least we can say,
and remind ourselves of it constantly. Air power
alone, the power of dominating the aerial high-
ways, the power of striking and defending, will
prove our safeguard in the years to come.

Hundreds of millions of pounds might, of
course, be saved each year in the cost of armaments
if nations would agree to settle their differences
by the use of a certain number of picked men,
employing no weapon other than the sword, who
would fight hand to hand until one side or the
other was defeated. But the tendency has always
been in the past, and will be the same probably
in the future, to make use of every new weapon
which comes to hand, no matter what its cost.
When guns were invented the nations might have
agreed not to use them in war, but to content
themselves with bows and arrows. But they were
only too glad to seize this new and more power-
ful weapon — as they were when submarines and
aircraft became available.

VI
Laws after the War

A task which will face the nations after the
war will be to frame and enforce laws, inter-
national and civil, to govern the navigation of

LAWS OF THE AIR 213

the air. Before the war there were comparatively
few aviators, while machines were not passing
through the air in such numbers as rendered
necessary any immediate or detailed considera-
tion of the laws which should control their flight.
But after the war, when aircraft are built and
flown in constantly growing numbers, and flights
are being made daily not only between points
inland, but from one country to another, it will
be essential that there should be laws which are
universally recognised and obeyed.

The interests must be safeguarded of those who
use the aerial highways, and also of those on the
earth. It will be most necessary to avoid bad
feeling between those who use the air and those
who remain on the ground. We must avoid in
the development of flying any such public outcry
as occurred in the early days of motoring, when
newspapers were full of complaints against users
of motor-cars, many of whom were labelled
" road hogs " and regarded as a public menace.
Discretion will be needed in framing rules to
meet such contingencies as may arise when air-
craft are flying in large numbers. There are
international rights to be safeguarded ; traffic on
the airways must be regulated, to avoid accidents
and collisions ; and there is the question not only
of the safety of those on the earth, but also that
of preventing their property from being damaged,
or they themselves annoyed, when the air is used
as a regular highway.

These problems are not new, but they may

214 AIR POWER

become urgent after the war owing to the rapid
strides which will take place. For several years
before the war, such bodies as the International
Aeronautical Federation and the International
Law Association had been considering the problem
which would attend a general navigation of the
air, and had framed proposals which had been
submitted to various Governments. The Govern-
ments themselves had also considered these mat-
ters before the war, and certain laws had been
placed already on the statute books.

VII
The Freedom of the Air

One of the questions to arise is whether the
air should be regarded as entirely free for naviga-
tion, or whether nations should have power to
supervise and control the traffic which passes
above their territory. The argument in favour
of the complete freedom of the air, over the
whole surface of the globe, is based frequently
on the fact that the navigation of the sea is
unrestricted, except for the rights of nations over
the waters in the immediate vicinity of their
shores. But it has been pointed out that a
comparison between air and sea is not satisfac-
tory. If a ship sinks, and goes to the bottom of
the sea, there are no cities or communities on
the sea-bed which might be harmed by the
descent on them of this vessel. But if an aircraft
falls while flying above the land, its descent may

LAWS OF THE AIR 215

cause loss of life, or damage to property. There
is the law of gravity which must be considered
always. Though an aircraft is moving free of
the earth when it is in flight, it is still under the
influence of gravity. If any object is dropped
from it, inadvertently, this will fall to the earth
and may cause damage. If aircraft were com-
pletely free from earth attraction, the question
of the rights of those on the ground, when flying
becomes universal, would not need, of course, to
be studied so closely. But as it is, the com-
parison between air and sea, for the purposes of
a freedom of transit, fails to be convincing on
several points. There are, for example, no
fortifications or military works at the bottom of
the sea which those passing above in ships could
spy down on ; but with air traffic the problem of
espionage is one of the most important.

It is pointed out also, as against the conten-
tion that the navigation of the air should be
free — provided aircraft maintain a minimum
height when passing above the earth — that no
comparison in favour of such an argument can
be drawn between the navigation of air and sea.
The chief danger to a country from the attack of
a hostile fleet of warships occurs when these ships
move close to the shore and commence a bom-
bardment. But this is not the case with the air.
An attacking air fleet, even while maintaining a
high altitude, would be capable of attacking and
destroying cities by the dropping of bombs. So
it would not be a safeguard in the air, as it

216 AIR POWER

might be on the sea, to demand that craft should
keep any specified distance from the earth.

VIII
Main Problems

The chief questions which have been argued
legally, in connection with aerial navigation, are
briefly these —

1. That the air should be regarded as being
entirely free.

2. That each nation should have complete con-
trol of the air traffic passing over its possessions,
and should be able to prohibit all such traffic if
it desires to do so.

3. That each nation should have such a con-
trol of the air space above it as would enable it
to safeguard its interests internationally, and also
the lives and property of its inhabitants ; but that
apart from such a control as would be necessary
to ensure this protection, aircraft should be given
free passage.

It is held as a matter of fact to be essential
that a country should have power to regulate the
entry above its coasts of foreign aircraft ; that it
should have power to prevent spying from the
air; and that it should be able to prevent the
entry by air of undesirable aliens, or guard
against the bringing into the country by aircraft
of infectious diseases. The question of enforcing
Customs regulations we shall deal with later.

LAWS OF THE AIR 217

In order to obtain control over air traffic
entering or leaving a country it was considered
before the war that either one of two courses
might be taken : (i) That flying should be re-
stricted to certain definite routes or airways ; or
(2) that landings should be declared compulsory
at certain fixed points.

IX
British Laws

The British Government, after consulting naval
and military authorities, decided before the war
to adopt the second of the two plans just men-
tioned, and to specify certain areas in which
craft which entered from abroad must alight.
These rules, which became law in 1913, indicated
a certain number of areas on the south, east, and
north-east coasts, where it was required that
aircraft from foreign countries should be obliged
to descend.

The procedure in connection with this rule was
as follows. An aviator intending to enter Great
Britain from abroad had to give eighteen hours'
notice to the Home Office of his flight. On arrival
at one of the landing areas prescribed, he filled
up an official form and received a permit which
allowed him to continue his journey inland;
then, before leaving the country, he was required
to alight again in one of the coastal areas.

Another law governing aviation which the
British Government put in operation before the

218 AIR POWER

war was one by which no flying was permitted
over certain points of strategic importance. The
mouth of the Thames, for example, was closed
to aviation; so were fortifications like those at
Dover ; or dockyards such as those at Portsmouth.

X

International Law

The general position before the war in regard
to the establishment of aerial law may be sum-
marised as follows : the nations had not yet
agreed to any comprehensive scheme by which
the air traffic of the world might be governed,
and this mainly because aerial navigation was so
much in its infancy that many of the problems
which might arise in the future could not be
forecasted with accuracy. What had been done
was that individual nations had framed regula-
tions which gave them the right to control the
flight of aircraft reaching their shores from foreign
countries. The advocates of a complete freedom
of the air, or those who argue that a nation should
be said to own its air space only up to a certain
altitude, and that above that altitude aircraft
should navigate without restriction, found that
when it came to the framing of these first laws
the Governments were determined — with certain
exceptions — to assert their right to supervise and
regulate, but not necessarily to prohibit, the
flying which took place above their territory.

It was generally agreed that above the high

LAWS OF THE AIR 219

seas, or over unoccupied land, aviation should
be permitted without restriction; but to allow
foreign machines to fly over their territory with-
out any legal or other machinery for establishing
their identity, or for examining their papers and
discovering the purpose of their flight, was a
proposal which failed to find acceptance among
nations which had important interests to safe-
guard. It was considered that an impossible
situation would be created if an aircraft could fly
without control from its own country to that of
some neighbour, passing over strategic points and
making whatever observations its pilot might
desire, and then returning again without question
to its starting-point. Of course, if the nations
agreed to abolish war, to discard their burden of
armament, and to develop flying for nothing but
peaceful purposes, then the position would be
different, and aircraft might be given an unre-
stricted freedom. But as matters stood before
the war — and as they are likely to stand after
the war — it was held to be essential to national
security that air traffic should be supervised and
controlled.

XI
Registration

Before air traffic can be regulated, in the way
that traffic is regulated by land or sea, it will be
necessary to register all aircraft (this has not yet
been done) and to compel them to display identi-

220 AIR POWER

fying numbers showing their registration, and also
letters indicating their nationality. The Inter-
national Aeronautical Federation has drawn up
a schedule covering such points as these. It is
proposed that an international list of aircraft
should be prepared, and exchanged between
nations, and that it should be kept always up-to-
date; also that machines should be marked first
with the letters indicating their nationality (such
as G. B. for Great Britain and F. for France),
and after this the number by which they are
registered. These identifying letters and numbers
would have to be borne so prominently on an
aircraft that they were distinguishable from the
earth when the machine was at an ordinary flying
altitude.

The point has been raised that a craft coming
in over a foreign country, and flying high, might
escape recognition owing to the fact that its
number was unreadable. But here it must be
remembered that all craft will be required by law
to alight within specified areas after passing in
over the sea-coast or frontier; and if one did
not do so, and flew on, infringing the regula-
tions, it is pointed out that an intimation of the
fact would be sent at once to various centres
inland, and that patrol aircraft would endeavour
to intercept the machine and compel it to alight.
But there will be the possibility always that a
fast machine, when favoured atmospherically, will
be able to dart in over a coast-line or frontier
and get away again without being identified or

LAWS OF THE AIR 221

stopped. It is a possibility which no organisa-
tion can hope to obviate completely. But the
risks of aerial spying on an extensive scale, or of
the illegal or secret flying of machines contrary
to the regulations, can be lessened very con-
siderably by an international system of registra-
tion, and also by the establishment of air patrols,
which would seek to enforce the landing rules if
any craft attempted to evade them, or which
would report by wireless the number of any
offending craft, and so cause this machine to be
identified, and its pilot interrogated, at whatever
point he came to land.

A fact which it has been pointed out should aid
the regulation of air traffic, and render impossible
anything like a systematic avoidance of regula-
tions, is that though a machine might escape
identification by flying high, or by shielding itself
in clouds, it would be compelled eventually to
land somewhere, and submit to an examination
of its papers. Of course if a machine capable of
a long non-stop journey passes from one country
to another, in cloudy weather or under cover of
darkness, and returns again without alighting
after carrying out some secret errand, it will be
impossible in the majority of cases to prevent
any such flight. But it must be remembered
that the country which sends one of its machines
on such an errand over the territory of a neigh-
bour will place itself in an unpleasant position
should the craft happen to be identified or forced
to land. Such an offence, if it could be proved

222 AIR POWER

to be deliberate, might be considered equivalent
to an act of war.

XII
Permits to Fly

In regard to the papers which an aircraft should
carry, the International Aeronautical Federation
suggests that, after a machine has been registered,
and the aviator has obtained his certificate of
proficiency, he should be required to apply for
an official form, which would be known as a
" permit to travel." This would contain all details
necessary for the identification of the aviator and
his craft, and the possession of it would allow
him to fly anywhere within his own country.
But it would not be available for a foreign journey.
Before leaving his own country for another, it is
proposed that the aviator should obtain from the
authorities a special Customs bulletin. This would
specify the nationality of his machine, give par-
ticulars of its registration, and provide details as
to its passengers, goods, and baggage; also the
date and place of its departure from England,
with the destination to which it was bound.
When he descended on foreign soil the aviator
would hand his bulletin to the authorities, and
receive in exchange a document showing that the
Customs officers had examined his machine, and
that he had paid what duty might be claimed on
any of the goods he carried. Once he had this
Customs bulletin, the aviator would be free to
fly where he liked in the country visited.

LAWS OF THE AIR 223

It is considered that pilots of aircraft, as is
the case with captains of ships, should be required
to keep an accurate log of their various journeys,
which should be brought constantly up-to-date, and
should be shown to the proper authorities whenever
demanded.

XIII
Smuggling

The problem of smuggling by air, and how it
is to be prevented when there are large numbers
of craft in flight, and long non-stop journeys can
be made by multi-engined machines, both by
day and night, with small risk of a compulsory
descent, is one which will need careful attention.
The authorities may specify points where air-
craft are to alight, and where they are to be
examined by the Customs officials, but the ques-
tion is : What can be done if aircraft are used
with the deliberate intention of smuggling ?

Any elaborate organisation, necessitating a con-
stant use of air patrols round the whole of the
coastline, say, of Great Britain, so as to endeavour
to prevent any smuggling aircraft from creeping
through on a dark night, or when the coast was
obscured by fog, would entail an expense which
would be almost prohibitive. The Customs will
no doubt employ a certain number of patrol
machines, but it will be impracticable to have
such an organisation in constant operation as
would prevent any smuggling craft from slipping
across the coast inland, provided it flew high, and

224 AIR POWER

chose suitable conditions. What Governments
will rely on, probably, will be an organised co-
operation between the Customs authorities of each
country, working in conjunction with the police
and local organisations, so as to trace long-distance
flights; while the penalties inflicted on aerial
smugglers will no doubt be heavy.

A machine which makes a smuggling journey
say, to England, and escapes detection when
passing above our coasts, would need, of course,
to have some point of departure; also some
landing-ground to which it could return; and it
is argued that, while one or two smuggling flights
might be made perhaps without such a machine
being traced, it would be difficult to organise any
system of aerial smuggling on an extensive scale,
because the base used by the smugglers — the spot
where they housed their machines, and where
they had their mechanics and fuel supply — would
be discovered sooner or later by the authorities.

But it should be remembered that with machines
of the future any large open space for ascending
or alighting will no longer be required. Machines
with variable-surface, variable-pitch propellers,
and using high-powered engines, will be able
to leave the ground so rapidly that it will be
possible to ascend from quite a limited space.
Aerial smugglers might therefore render their base
of operations so inconspicuous that it would be
no easy matter to trace them.

They would use aircraft, naturally, in which
the machinery had been so silenced that it was

LAWS OF THE AIR 225

inaudible when the craft were at any height;
while when near their base, say before landing,
they would switch off their motors and glide in
silence to the ground; and the same plan might
be adopted when approaching the English coast —
the pilot might rise to a high altitude, that is to
say, while passing over the sea, and then switch
off his motors as he neared the coast-line, gliding
inland without a sound to reveal his passage to
those below.

It has been argued that the landing of a smug-
gling aircraft, in order to unload its cargo of
contraband, would lead to its detection; but a
plan might be adopted which made it unneces-
sary for a machine to alight. Confederates in a
motor-car could proceed at night to some lonely
point agreed upon, and, at the hour which had
been specified, shine a light skyward to act as a
guide to the pilot who was bringing over the
smuggled goods. This light would not need to
be brilliant, and it could be screened so that its
ray was invisible to any one on land.

Those in the aircraft, having located by this
light the position of their confederates, would
attach their contraband goods to parachutes,
drop them overboard without descending, and
then return through the darkness whence they
had come. The motor-car party, having retrieved
the parachutes, and taken the goods on board
their car, would then drive away, leaving no
trace when daylight came of what had occurred.
The receiving-point could be varied constantly
0

226 AIR POWER

to avoid attracting attention locally — any open or
sparsely populated stretch of land being suitable
for the purpose. Such a scheme would hardly be
profitable unless goods were smuggled on which
the duty was high — such for example as saccharin,
a large quantity of which can be stored in a
small space, and on which a high duty has to
be paid.

The scheme indicated is merely one of many.
A problem of exceptional difficulty may in fact
face the Customs authorities as the volume of
air traffic grows, and as machines become more
reliable and capable of longer non-stop flights.
It has been argued indeed that the application
of the Customs regulations to aircraft will even-
tually become so difficult that, in order to save
endless complications and the expense of an
elaborate organisation, all air-borne goods will be
allowed to go duty-free. But this is a proposal
which raises large issues, and will require detailed
consideration before (if ever) it can be adopted.

XIV
The Rights of Landowners

Apart from the international laws which will
govern flying, or the enforcement of Customs
regulations on air-borne traffic, there is the
question of civil law in its application to aerial
navigation ; the rights, for instance, of landowners
above whose property an aircraft flies. By the
old Roman law, which has come down through

LAWS OF THE AIR 227

medieval times, it is held that the owner of any
stretch of land owns also the air space above it.
This law, if rigidly applied, would give any land-
owner who had a prejudice against aviation the
right to prevent aircraft from passing above his
property.

An expert, writing in the Law Magazine, has
held that the flying of an aircraft over private
land is an act of trespass because it comes under
the heading of what is known as " constructive
entry/' which in its legal definition includes
" every interference or entry other than actual
or physical entry." But it has been argued that
if a landowner who had a prejudice against
aviation brought actions for trespass against
every aviator who passed through the air above
his property, he might be called on by the defence
to prove his occupation of the air. To his land
he can of course prove occupation, seeing that
his house is built on it, and that he moves about
on it, and employs others to work for him on it.
But it might be difficult for him to prove his
occupation of the air in a legal sense, or up to
any such altitude as that at which an aircraft
would fly : he does not go up in it, or carry on
any work in it, or employ others to make use of
it for him in any way.

In a case before the war in a local police court,
a landowner was sued for the value of certain
pigeons which he had shot as they flew above
his property. His solicitor, by way of defence,
contended that the birds were committing an act

228 AIR POWER

of trespass while passing above his client's land,
and that there was justification for shooting them ;
but the magistrates would not accept this view,
and called on the landowner to pay the value of
the birds he had shot.

XV
The Legal View

The law, being impartial, is prepared to con-
sider the rights of aviators as well as those of
landowners ; and the legal opinion at the present
time (stating the case, of course, generally) is that
while an owner of land is held to own also the
column of air above it, he has no right to prevent
an aviator from flying through this air space
unless he (the landowner) can prove to the satis-
faction of the law that the aviator has been
guilty of some damage by so doing, or has endan-
gered or annoyed those on the ground. This is
the view taken generally by legal authorities, but
cases in the nature of tests will come no doubt
before the courts as soon as there is a large
volume of civilian flying — as there will be after
the war.

An interesting case, showing as it did the
legitimate grievance of a landowner, came before
the French courts some time before the war.
Several flying schools had been established in the
neighbourhood of this landowner's property, and
the damages he claimed were in regard to the
operation of these schools. His counsel declared

LAWS OF THE AIR 229

that the hares and partridges on the estate had
been driven away by the noise of the aeroplane
engines ; that crops had been damaged by flying-
school pupils who made involuntary descents;
and that the landowner had become afraid to
walk in his own grounds for fear that some
aeroplane might fall upon him.

The court took the view that the landowner
had established a claim for damages, and awarded
him a sum of about £100. This case was of
course exceptional, inasmuch as there were several
flying schools in the neighbourhood of the land-
owner's property, and novices were passing low
over his land, and making descents at points
which a pilot of experience would have avoided.

An interesting case, brought against those who
were controlling a large permanent aerodrome,
was that of the proprietor of a nursing home,
whose establishment was near the flying ground.
The complaint was that the noise of the aeroplane
engines, as pupils made their practice flights, dis-
turbed and caused inconvenience to the patients
who were in the home, particularly in the early
hours. For certain reasons, however, this case
did not come before the courts.

XVI

A Minimum Height

The mere passage of an aircraft over private
land, provided the machine is at a reasonable
altitude, cannot be claimed to be a cause of

230 AIR POWER

annoyance, or of danger, to those on the earth.
It will be necessary, of course, in the framing of
detailed rules to govern aerial traffic, that a
minimum height should be specified below which
it is not permissible to fly across country. It
has been contended that an aircraft when flying
low may be said to interfere with the privacy
of people on the land. Legal experts argue, for
instance, that an aeroplane which passes low over
a man's garden — so low that those in the machine
may be able to look down into the garden and
see what its occupants are doing — is guilty of an
act of annoyance sufficient to give the owner of
the garden a right to take action.

XVII
Falling Objects

Among questions rather similar to this there
is that of objects which might be dropped by
accident from an aircraft, and cause damage
when they reached the ground. A problematical
case is that of a mechanic in an aircraft who,
while repairing an engine when a machine is in
flight, drops a spanner which falls with disastrous
results through the roof of a conservatory. Here
the question is one of identifying the machine
from which the spanner fell. If this could be
done, the owner or pilot would be responsible for
damages.

It will not be so difficult as might be imagined,
when air traffic is organised and under super-

LAWS OF THE AIR 231

vision, to trace a machine in any such conditions
as these. Even if, at the moment of the accident,
the registration number of the machine could not
be observed, it would be possible, of course, for
the police to make inquiries at aerodromes ; also
to question the occupants and mechanics of
machines which had been known to be flying in
the neighbourhood where the accident occurred.
People who had been in the vicinity might be
able, also, to give a general description of the
appearance of the machine. The police will be
required, no doubt, to familiarise themselves with
the appearance of the various types of aircraft
in use, and it is suggested that they should be
provided when on duty with field-glasses to
enable them to read the identifying numbers of
aircraft which pass overhead.

An actual case, rather like the supposititious
one just mentioned, occurred in connection with
one of the early meetings. A lady wearing an
expensive cloak was watching the aeroplanes in
flight when a splash of lubricating oil, which had
obviously fallen from one of the machines, de-
scended upon her cloak. She brought an action
for damages against the proprietors of the meet-
ing, but they were able to prove that the motor-
car in which she had been seated was outside and
not inside the aerodrome; therefore it was de-
cided that no claim could be established against
them. After this an attempt was made to claim
damages against the aviators taking part in the
meeting. Here, however, it was necessary to

232 AIR POWER

identify the actual machine from which the oil
had fallen ; but as there had been several aviators
in flight at the time in question, it was found
impossible to prove who had been the culprit,
and so the case had to be abandoned.

There will be cases, no doubt, in the air, as there
are with motor-cars on the land, in which an
aviator who has caused injury or damage will
make off quickly so as to avoid detection. Such
cases should, however, prove exceptional, as they
are in motoring ; and when an aviator is detected
in an attempt to escape the legitimate consequences
of an accident which he may have caused, it will
be for the authorities to make an example of him,
inflicting some heavy penalty.

XVIII
Descents on Private Land

A question which will arise, apart from the
actual navigation of craft over private property,
is that of the descent of machines, either volun-
tarily or otherwise, while they are making cross-
country flights. It is held that an aviator is a
trespasser except when he is alighting on his own
property. But it is not likely in the future that
there will be much trouble on this score, owing
to the fact that aerodromes and subsidiary
landing-grounds will become so numerous that
it will be a rare thing for machines to descend
anywhere except at these appointed places. It
must be remembered also that the use of multi-

LAWS OF THE AIR 233

engined machines will reduce very greatly the risk
of breakdown, or of an involuntary descent.

It is suggested that if an aviator should make
a voluntary descent on private land he should
pay a fixed fee for having made this use of private
property; while, if any damage should result
from his descent, the owner of the land should
make a claim which would be settled if necessary
by arbitration.

Cases which bear on this have come already
before the courts. In America a balloonist who
descended on private property was sued by the
owner of the land for damages caused by a crowd
which broke into his grounds in order to see the
balloon. The defence of the aeronaut was that
he was not in control of the balloon, which was
at the mercy of the wind, and that he was unable
to avoid landing where he did. But the court
held that the aeronaut knew at the time he
ascended that he would be obliged to drift before
the wind, and that damage might result from his
descent. The court would not, therefore, enter-
tain the plea that the aeronaut was a helpless
agent. It was decided that the case was one of
trespass, and the aeronaut was held to be respon-
sible for the damage done by the crowd, just as
though he had done this himself.

In another case an aeronaut who descended in
a parachute on private land, with the result that
damage was caused by the crowd which collected,
was sued in respect of this damage and held
responsible.

234 AIR POWER

XIX
Involuntary Landings

If an aviator who alights on private land can
prove that his descent was involuntary, and that
his machine was out of control, he may claim
that his act was what is known in law as one of
" inevitable necessity/' Here the aviator can be
regarded in much the same light as a shipwrecked
sailor, who is held by law to have a right to land
on any shore, without the possibility of an action
for trespass. The right of the sailor, on account
of his extremity, is considered greater than that
of the owner of the shore.

An aviator descending involuntarily on private
ground, and defending himself against a claim
for damages, will have to prove to the satisfac-
tion of the court that his machine was out of
control at the time of its descent, and this through
no negligence on his part, and that it was impos-
sible for him to reach a proper landing-ground,
or to avert in any way what happened. If he
can do this, it seems there will be no case in
law against him. An illustration bearing on this
occurs in the case of a man who was sued for
damages caused by the bolting of the horse he
was driving. But the court decided that, as the
animal was obviously out of control at the time,
and as its driver had done everything he could
to avoid the accident, he must be exonerated
from blame, with the result that the claim against
him failed.

LAWS OF THE AIR 235

A case more directly applicable was that in
which an action was brought against an aero-
plane pilot who had run among the spectators
during an exhibition, and caused certain injuries.
For the prosecution it was argued that the acci-
dent had been caused by the personal negligence
of the aviator; but he, in his defence, declared
that a sudden gust of wind had carried his aero-
plane over the spectators, and that he was power-
less to prevent the machine behaving in the way
it did. The court came to the conclusion that it
could not be proved that the accident was due to
the negligence of the aviator; therefore the case
failed.

XX

No Repressive Legislation

What the industry must resist is any attempt
which may be made to force the Government to
impose legislation which will hamper the progress
of flight. There have been, and will be, people
who are opposed to the development of aviation,
in the same way as there were opponents to the
train and the motor-car. The efforts of such
people must be watched and combated. Aviation
claims the right of legitimate expansion.

There existed a tendency, even before the war,
to form leagues and societies in order to impose
restrictions on aviators. In France, for example,
a league was formed to guard against " excesses
in aviation/' One of the suggestions of this
league was that the speed of aircraft should be

236 AIR POWER

limited. The proposal, however, is one which
should not be entertained. It may be argued
that a speed limit is essential for vehicles passing
along a road, in view of the fact that, apart from
any risk of colliding with each other, they may
endanger cyclists, pedestrians, school-children, or
animals. In the air, however, with its freedom
from obstruction, conditions are different : the
only restriction placed on aviators should be the
need to observe the rules as to passing or over-
taking other craft ; and there should be a heavy
penalty for pilots whom it could be proved had
flown recklessly or carelessly, thereby endangering
other craft.

XXI
Rules for Piloting

The International Aeronautical Federation has
already framed rules to govern the navigation of
aircraft, in order to avoid accidents and collisions.
Two aircraft meeting each other, end on, are
required to steer to the right, passing each other
at a distance of at least 100 metres (no yards).
An aircraft which overtakes another is held to
be responsible for keeping clear, and must not
pass directly under or over the other machine.
When aircraft approach each other in cross
directions, the pilot of the machine who sees
another on his right-hand forward quadrant must
give way, and the other aircraft must keep on
its course at the same level until both machines
are well clear. (The right-hand forward quadrant

LAWS OF THE AIR 237

is reckoned from a position straight ahead of a
machine to an angle of ninety degrees on the
right-hand side.)

For night flying the Federation suggests the
following system of lights : a white light showing
ahead, a green to starboard, and a red to port,
with another white light astern. It is suggested
that a pilot flying in the daytime, who desires
to alight, should indicate his intention to other
aircraft by displaying a red triangular flag; or,
at night-time, by waving a white light.

Other and more detailed rules will naturally be
required : these are merely by way of suggestion.
But, generally speaking, the laws governing the
navigation of the high seas will be taken — with
certain modifications — as a basis for framing the
rules of the air.

PART VII

THE COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT

Exploration

A PERFECTED aircraft, capable of flying long
distances without alighting, and with small risk
of mechanical breakdown, will be of immense
value for exploration, scientific and commercial.
Blanks still exist on the map of the world; and
it will be one of the tasks of the explorer, preparing
expeditions by air when peace has come, to fill
these in for us. As the expense attached to such
expeditions will be considerable, their organisa-
tion must not be left to private individuals, but
must be taken in hand by Governments. It
should be possible for several nations, each with
interests in common in some remote part of the
world, to organise a joint expedition by air, and
thus reduce the expense involved.

Mountains, forests, deserts — none of these im-
pede an aerial explorer : instead of having to
cut his way laboriously through dense under-
growth, he will be able to fly high above it, free
from the menace of wild animals or from the

238

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 239

possible attacks of hostile natives. For survey
work, maps being prepared from photographs
which are taken while in flight, an aircraft will
offer unique facilities. In a few hours, by air,
the explorer should do work which would occupy
him days by any other means.

II
Mail-Carrying

One of the first commercial uses for aircraft
should be as carriers of express mails and of
light, urgently-consigned goods. Aeroplanes
should be particularly useful, for example, in
carrying mails in localities, and under conditions,
which render land or sea transit difficult ; in parts
of our dominions which are sparsely populated;
or in regions where land communication is impeded
by rivers, mountains, or forests.

Aircraft must be reliable, of course, before
they can be employed regularly in any such work
as mail-carrying. The commercial value of a
machine lies in its ability to do a certain thing at
a certain time, and to keep on doing it without
breaking down or giving trouble. This was what
people thought the motor-car would never do.
When motor-vans and lorries were in their crude
stage, for example, there were sceptics who refused
to believe they could ever be employed in a
service requiring such reliability as that of mail-
carrying. But the success of the motor-vans used
for this work, and the increase in the numbers

240 AIR POWER

so employed, have proved such sceptics to be
wrong. They will prove even less accurate if
they make light of the possibilities of aircraft for
mail-carrying. The commercial use of aircraft
is no longer an idle speculation : the question
now is merely one of how long it will take, after
the war, before the industry can produce suitable
machines. That they will be produced there is
no doubt : they will be evolved just as certainly
as the first crude motor-cars have given place to
a perfected, smooth-running, six-cylinder machine.

Certain experiments had been made, before the
war, to show the value of aircraft as mail-carriers.
At the London Aerodrome, Hendon, as early as
the autumn of 1911, a test was made in which the
Post Office showed its interest. The object was
to carry special letters and postcards, packed in
ordinary mail-bags, and placed in aeroplanes
piloted by aviators of the Grahame- White Aviation
Company, between the London Aerodrome and a
landing-ground which had been chosen at Windsor.
Though there was a spell of bad weather during
the experiments, with rain and high winds, flights
were made almost daily by the aerial postmen,
who carried from Hendon to Windsor a total of
130,000 letters and postcards.

Business firms should be willing to pay special
fees for an express delivery of letters by air
between London, say, and the great cities of the
continent. A letter might, for instance, be sent
by air from London to Paris, or vice-versa, in a
little more than two hours, there being a motor or

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 241

tube delivery from the aerodrome where the
machine alighted to the point in the heart of the
city where the letter was to be delivered. What
all this would mean, in facilitating business
transactions, it is not difficult to perceive. A
London firm might dispatch in the morning to
Paris, by the express aerial mail, a letter con-
taining urgent draft contracts, specifications, or
other documents, the contents of which it would
be impossible to telegraph (apart from the ex-
pense) and might receive a reply by a return air
mail which reached London during the afternoon.
The value of such a rapid means of communica-
tion would be great, particularly in obtaining
signatures to documents in cases where these were
required urgently.

Ill
Passenger Machines

From aerial mail-carrying, with the experience
which will be gained in the operation of such
services, it will be a logical step to the carrying of
passengers by air. The first machines used for
passenger work may carry either twenty-five or
fifty people. How near the industry is to the day
when such machines will be practicable is shown
by the fact that existing-type aeroplanes, with
motors developing 500 h.p., have been able already
to raise the weight of nearly thirty passengers.
With increases in engine-power, and with improve-
ments in construction which will yield a greater
power for a given weight, the institution of the

242 AIR POWER

first passenger services should follow within a
year or so of the termination of war.

In five years' time, certainly, there should be
a service of passenger craft between the chief
cities of Britain, and also between London and
the Continent ; and in, say, ten years' time, granted
reasonable progress in construction, we should
see the establishment of a trans-Atlantic air
service. This era will come all the sooner owing
to the fact that, when the war ends, the industry
will no longer be suffering from the drawbacks
which so hampered progress in pioneer days.
Up to the time the war came — with its immense
demand for craft of all types — there had been no
money behind the flying movement. Scepticism
as to its future robbed it of the support of
financiers : the industry, such as it was, lived from
hand to mouth. Experimental work, on any
types of machines other than those which could
be sold to navies or armies, was too costly to be
attempted, except on a spasmodic and inadequate
scale. But after the war aviation should be on
a sounder footing, and the chief firms in the
industry, who are now building nothing but war
craft, should be able to turn their attention to the
design of commercial-type machines.

IV
Fares

It is inevitable that, for a time, high rates will
have to be charged for transporting passengers by

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 243

air. Organisation, however, and a growing volume
of traffic, should soon permit such rates to be
reduced. The pioneers who establish the first
services will find, no doubt, that it is difficult to
secure a sufficient number of passengers. There
will be certain enterprising people who will be
quick to make use of this new means of transport ;
but the inertia of the mass of the population will
make it a matter of time and patience before
they are convinced that they can travel safely,
as well as rapidly, by air. Nothing but facts —
the daily records of an actual service — will over-
come this natural timidity. Air services will have
to be established, and run regularly day by day
in all sorts of weather, and without accident,
before the mass of the people can be made to
realise that the era of aerial transit has actually
arrived. The organisers of these first services
will have to rely on the patronage of a certain
number of enlightened and progressive men —
men trained to profit quickly by new methods,
and to whom time is money.

It is scarcely to be hoped that the first passenger
aircraft will obtain full and regular complements of
passengers. Journeys will have to be run no doubt
at a loss, even though high fares are charged.
Educating the public to the advantages of any
new form of transport is notoriously expensive.
But somebody must, and will, come forward; a
start must be made by some one. And with air
travel there will be a considerable prejudice to
overcome.

244 AIR POWER

Apart from the question of the expense of
instituting the first passenger services, and of
educating people to make use of them, air travel
must be regarded by the public as a rapid and
luxurious means of transit, offering facilities so
much greater than those of land or sea that
passengers must be prepared as a matter of course
to pay special fares. Extra rates, for specially
fast and comfortable travel, are charged by
railways in connection, say, with Pullman cars,
and also in regard to long-distance continental
trains. If you can carry passengers by air at a
speed twice as great as that of the fastest express
train, you are entitled to demand higher fares.

A question arises whether people will be willing
to incur the extra expense of aerial transit. A
similar question was asked when motor-cabs were
first seen on the streets. It was argued that
the public would not be willing to pay this extra
money — as compared, say, with the charges of
omnibuses and tubes — in order to get quickly and
pleasantly from point to point. But the motor-
cab created its own public — a new public; and
so in time will aircraft. As soon as motor-cabs
became available, it was found that people were
willing to pay several shillings, instead of a few
pence, in order to profit by the extra speed and
comfort which the taxi offered them. And when
travel by air means a saving not of minutes or of
hours, but of days, people will be found willing
to pay for the privileges which are thus provided.
It will be possible to earn larger sums of money,

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 245

in trade and other ways, if passengers, letters,
and light merchandise can be transported more
quickly.

It will be unnecessary to attempt to carry heavy
goods by air — goods which are not urgently con-
signed, and which could be carried just as well
by the slower means of land or sea transit.

The Value of Quick Transit

Those to whom time is money will seek always,
and almost regardless of expense, the means of
travel which is the friost rapid. We have as an
instance the railway races which have taken
place between London and the great business
centres of the midlands and the north. The
saving of only a few minutes on a long journey
has been sufficient to make busy men travel by
the route which offers them this slight economy
of time ; and it should be remembered that time,
valuable enough now, will become steadily more
valuable in the future. After the war the nations
will be faced by vast tasks of reconstruction,
which will occupy them many years; and speed
in transit, as between one country and another,
will have a vital importance in furthering this
work.

Time, in the future, will have an almost priceless
value to a man who is a great organiser, and
whose energy and personality are so outstanding
that he controls enterprises in all parts of the

246 AIR POWER

world. At the present time, it is true, such a
man can flash his instructions from place to place
by cable or wireless; but when he has to travel
personally from point to point, as is often the
case, he is wearied by the slowness of travel either
on land or sea. Such men feel impatient, to-day,
even when travelling in a sixty-mile-an-hour
train, or in a liner steaming say at twenty-six knots.
They know how precious their time is to them,
and how it is wasted whenever they take a long
journey. It is to obviate this drawback, so far
as is possible, that there has been a tendency to
fit long-distance trains with telephones and wire-
less installations, so that busy men may, even
while they are en route, keep to a certain extent
in touch with their affairs. But such devices
are nothing more than makeshifts : what the
business man wants is to be able to travel more
quickly.

To the great organiser, deep in affairs of impor-
tance in all parts of the world, air travel will be an
inestimable boon. He will be able to contemplate
without apprehension, or any disorganisation of
his affairs, a journey not merely from one country
to another, but if necessary around the world.
High-speed aerial transit will represent one of the
final conquests of mind over matter, annihilating
distance, and opening up for the traveller a
completely new era.

An instance of the willingness of men of affairs
to pay high rates, in order to travel in speed and
comfort, was provided by the construction of

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 247

certain of the great modern liners. These ships,
when they were put into commission, were found
to have state-rooms for which as much as £200 was
charged for a single journey across the Atlantic.
It was declared, though, that only a very few people
would be found willing to pay such fares as these,
and that the staterooms would be often empty.
On the contrary, however, they were almost
always occupied.

A comparison is possible in this regard between
air travel and sea travel. If a man will pay
£200 to be transported in comfort across the
Atlantic, in a voyage lasting, say, five days, what
will he be willing to pay if he can make the journey,
in equal or even greater comfort, and in a voyage
lasting no more than thirty-six hours ? Would he
pay £300? There seems little doubt but that
he would; granted, of course, he could be per-
suaded, by undeniable facts, that he would be
carried with as much safety by air as by water.

VI
The Trans-Atlantic Service

To a man whose interests require personal
attention, both in America and Europe, the
trans- Atlantic air service should prove of immense
assistance. Think of the benefit it would be to
such a man to be able to travel from New York to
London, and back again, within forty-eight hours ;
a journey which should be possible with the high-
speed aircraft of the future. Sometimes a magnate

248 AIR POWER

or financier may have to cross the Atlantic merely
to append his signature to some important docu-
ment. What would not such a man pay for the
rapid transit offered him by air ?

The aircraft of the future will have an effect,
indirectly, of lengthening our lives, seeing that
long journeys will be reduced so greatly in point
of time. This will mean that people will find
time to visit places which are inaccessible by
any present mode of travel. One often hears the
man who is condemned to a city life yearn for a
glimpse of the beautiful islands of the South
Pacific. These he will be able to visit in the future,
by way of the air, even in the few weeks' annual
holiday which may be all he allows himself.

By the use of amphibious machines on the trans-
Atlantic service — machines capable of alighting
either on the sea or land — an aircraft which
leaves New York with its passengers and mails
will fly right on to within a few miles of London,
alighting at some aerodrome on the outskirts
of the city. This will obviate the delay which
takes place, to-day, when a liner puts into Liver-
pool or Southampton, and trans-ships its pas-
sengers and mails to a train, in which they are
borne to London. Travellers in the future will
enter an aircraft at New York, and not get out of
it again until they reach London, or vice-versa.

As an example one might cite the case of an
American business man who, after dining in New
York, boards a trans-Atlantic aircraft. Going
to his sleeping berth he passes a tranquil night,

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 249

disturbed neither by vibration, nor by any oscilla-
tion or swaying on the part of the machine. He
wakes next morning to find himself far out over
the Atlantic. After breakfast and lunch on board,
and an early tea, he alights during the evening
on the outskirts of London, and travels into the
city in a few minutes by means of a rapid tube.
Thanks to the conquest of the air, a man will be
able in the future to dine one evening in New
York, and the next in London.

It is difficult to estimate the influence on our
lives and habits which will result from an ability
to spend a week-end in New York just as readily
as, in the past, we have gone for a week-end to
Paris. * Such are the facilities which the aircraft
of the future will offer us.

VII
Operating Costs

In the matter of working expenses, a trans-
Atlantic aircraft should have several advantages
over the great liners on the sea such as are at
present in operation. On an aircraft, when it
makes a passage, it will not be necessary to feed
passengers for a week — as is the case with the sea
crossing — but only for a period of about twenty
or thirty hours. Nor will it be necessary for the
aircraft to lie idle in port for a week while it is
taking on board stores for a thousand or more
people. It will only need, before a trip, to take
supplies sufficient for a day and a night. It

250 AIR POWER

must be remembered also that a passenger aircraft,
owing to the speed of its flight, will be able to
make several journeys across the Atlantic while
an ocean liner is making one.

The initial cost of an aircraft for carrying
passengers across the Atlantic would be very
considerably less than that of an ocean liner.
The crew needed to man an aircraft, even one of
large size, would be far smaller also than that
required for a big passenger steamer. The engines
of the aircraft would be automatic in their action,
and no stokers would be required. The lubrica-
tion of these engines would be automatic, also,
and there would be no need to have oilers and
greasers ; while one would be able to do without
the innumerable stewards, and deck and other
hands, such as have to be carried on a large liner.
A very small, but a very highly-skilled crew,
would be all that would be necessary on an air-
craft. The possibility of such economies as these,
in working an aircraft service, would compare, of
course, most favourably with the huge expenses
which are entailed in the operation of modern
liners; and this would mean that, as soon as a
trans- Atlantic air service was in regular operation,
and was patronised adequately, there would be
no need to charge fares greatly in excess of those
which are imposed to-day by steamship lines.

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 251

VIII
European Airways

People who winter in the south of France will
find, in the future, that a continental air service
will rob their long journey of its wearisome fatigue.
By the special de luxe services which will be run
on such routes as these, an aerial traveller will be
able to leave London, say, at noon, and reach Nice
in time for tea ! What this will mean is that
during the cold and dreary winter in England
we shall be able to leave London, say, on Friday
evening, and spend a week-end in the warm sun
of the Riviera, just as readily as we travel to-day
for a week-end to our own south coast. To
hard-working city folk, who need a brief and
thorough change of air, or to those who are re-
covering from illness and are ordered to seek the
sunshine, the airways south will be the greatest
boon : they will rob our English winter of more
than half its terror.

All over Europe, in the future, will radiate a
network of airways, which will stimulate our
friendly relations with the countries which are
our Allies in this war. Russia will no longer be so
inaccessible. Instead of the tedious journey which
is necessary, to-day, in order to reach Petrograd
from London, it will be possible by means of
a service of non-stop aircraft to travel between
these two cities in a journey lasting no more than
eight or ten hours.

Of almost incalculable value, also, will be the

252 AIR POWER

shortening of the journey between Paris and
London, as effected by a service of passenger
aircraft.

On this route, by train and steamer, there is an
immense volume of traffic at normal times; and
in the future, when peace has come, the pressure
will be even greater. But business men who
make the journey by rail and sea do so rarely
without inconvenience, irritation, or delay. There
are the terrors in winter of the Channel crossing.
Passengers speculate anxiously while in the train
as to the sort of passage they are to have; and,
should it prove a bad one, as it often does, business
men may reach their journey's end in a condition
which makes it impossible for them to attend
immediately to their affairs. They may have to
go to their hotels and rest for hours before they
are ready for business appointments, and these
hours of delay have to be added to the time
occupied by the journey.

Even if weather conditions are favourable, it
is irritating, and a waste of time, to have to get
into a train and then out of it into a steamer, and
then out of the steamer again into a train. The
Channel tunnel, should it materialise after the
war, will of course obviate this; but even with
trains passing under the Channel the journey will
not be possible at anything like the speed attained
by air.

Ordinarily, by train and steamer, the journey
between the two capitals takes just about eight
hours. A fast passenger aircraft, passing as it

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 253

will in a direct line between the two cities, should
do the journey in a trifle over two hours. The
advantage of this to business people need scarcely
be emphasised. A city man in London, going to
his office as usual in the morning, will be able to
deal with his correspondence before he takes the
tube to the London Aerodrome, and catches
the ii a.m. air service to Paris. By this he would
reach Paris in time for lunch, and would then
have all the afternoon for business interviews and
calls ; returning by an afternoon air service —
tea being served en route — which would bring him
back to London again in time for dinner. Instead
of being fatiguing, irritating, and time-wasting,
this journey in the future, thanks to aircraft, will
become a pleasure.

IX

Government Encouragement

To hasten the coming of the day when all high-
speed travel is by way of the air should be one of
the chief aims of the Allied Governments after the
war. The interest they take in the development
of aircraft, and the practical support they give,
will be repaid them a hundredfold. An inter-
national alliance, when the nations concerned are
linked by airway, will be something more for the
mass of the people than a mere contract or docu-
ment : they will have every facility for seeing
each other, and for getting to know each other,

254 AIR POWER

and this will lead inevitably to a better under-
standing.

The coming of the air age should have an
immense influence on us in England — more perhaps
than will be the case with any other country.
Our insularity, the product of centuries, will go
by the board : we shall have to be prepared to
welcome the world in London, and to travel
ourselves constantly by air. And this will apply
not only to the wealthier classes, but to the whole
mass of the people. When aerial navigation is
organised, and is operating with an assured success
commercially, excursions by air should be possible
at rates which will place them within the reach
of all.

If a universal peace should become possible, in
this world of rivalry and ambition, its advent will
be due largely to the development of flying. The
opening up of travel by air is the most hopeful
augury of the future. Where darkness looms in
other directions, here there is already a light so
powerful that it is difficult for us to estimate the
full benefits it may bring. It should be some
consolation to us to think that, on the experience
gained in this dreadful war, will be based a future
progress which will render aircraft not merely
instruments of destruction, but passenger and
transport machines of such power that they will
have the greatest civilising influence the world
has known.

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 255

X

Airways in Britain

In comparatively short journeys, as well as in
long, the value of aircraft will be apparent. One
may take, as an example, the route from London
to Manchester, over which there is such a heavy
volume of traffic at ordinary times. This journey
is accomplished in about four hours by an express
train. By express aircraft it should be possible
to make the flight in, say, an hour and a half.
At normal times, by train, the first-class return
fare is £2 gs. By air, when a reasonable number
of passengers can be obtained, it should be possible,
with a service of machines each carrying, say,
fifty people, to charge a sum of £3 for the return
journey. This would mean, if all the seats were
occupied, that those who were operating the
service would receive £150 for carrying fifty people
(whose total weight may be set down at approxi-
mately 3^ tons) for an out-and-return flight
lasting a total period of three hours. And there
would be fees for the urgently-consigned mails,
and light express goods, which the aircraft might
also carry.

There should be no difficulty, after a time, in
securing a sufficient number of passengers over a
route such as this : the advantages of the service
would be so undeniable. Instead of having to
spend practically a day in travelling, as in the case
of a journey between London and Manchester by
rail, a merchant would be able to devote all the

256 AIR POWER

morning to his affairs in London, and then travel
to Manchester by air in the afternoon, allowing
himself several hours for business in that city,
and still being able to return to London by one
of the evening services, so as to be ready to go
to his office in London on the following morning.
A special fare should be paid willingly for such a
service as this ; and also for one between London
and the cities farther north.

XI
Tubes to the Aerodromes

The point has been raised that travellers might
lose time in getting from the heart of a city,
where their offices are situated, to the aerodromes
which lie on its outskirts. But in the future, as
soon as the air services are organised, there will
be tubes connecting each of the aerodromes with
the heart of the city. A business man in London
will, for example, be able to get into a fast pas-
senger tube, and reach the London Aerodrome at
Hendon, in much the same time as it takes him,
now, to travel from his office to Euston. North,
south, east, and west, there will be large aero-
dromes, each dealing with its separate stream of
traffic, and all linked with the heart of the city
by a system of high-speed tubes.

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 257

XII
Questions of Economy

An important point to be considered, when
contrasting the operation of railways and airways,
is the economy in certain directions which will be
possible with the latter. With a railway it is
necessary to construct, and to maintain at a
constant expense, some hundreds or thousands of
miles of permanent way. But with an aircraft
service no permanent way is necessary; the
machines provide their own support as they
rush through the air. All that they require is a
convenient chain of alighting-grounds. The land
occupied by these air stations will need, of course,
to be acquired from its owners ; but this expense
will be almost negligible when compared with the
costs which have to be incurred by a railway,
when it buys the right to lay its metals across
hundreds of miles of country.

It will be an advantage for the airway that it
will need to employ no huge staffs of permanent-
way men. There will be staffs, of course, at the
landing-grounds; but the operating costs of an
airway will be nowhere near so heavy as are those
of a railway. And it must be remembered that
the speed in flight of the aircraft will enable
large volumes of traffic to be handled without
congestion or delay.

When contrasting the operation of railways and
airways, one should remember always the natural

258 AIR POWER

advantage which will be possessed by the latter
through its ability to move with absolute direct-
ness from point to point. Railways are diverted,
and the length of journeys increased, owing to
the existence of natural and other obstacles. But
an aircraft, after ascending and reaching its re-
quired altitude, will be steered in an undeviating
line from point to point, going in each case
absolutely the straightest and most direct way in
order to reach its destination. Another advantage
of the airway over the railway will be that the
aircraft, once it is aloft and at a sufficient altitude,
will go full speed ahead without slackening until
it reaches its journey's end. But an express train
must lose time frequently by having to slow up as
it goes through big junctions, or when rounding
curves. It is liable also to be held up by signals
when there is a congestion on the line ; but this
would be a form of delay which would be obviated
completely on the airway.

XIII
The Air — Our Future Speedway

For this and other reasons it is clear that, even
if the speed of land travel should be increased in
the future, the air will always be the medium
for the most rapid form of travel. By the use of
mono-rail trains, driven by electricity, it may be
possible to increase to a very appreciable extent
the speeds at present attained on land. But with

COMMERCIAL ERA OF FLIGHT 259

any such services, having regard to the power
required to move heavy weights at high speed
over the land, and the wear-and-tear involved,
the question is whether they would be feasible
commercially; whether a profit could be made,
even at special fares. When very high speeds are
demanded, as they will be in the future, they
will be obtainable at less cost in the air than
will be the case on land or sea.

XIV
An Imperial Air Policy

The aircraft industry must, now and in the
future, receive not only the financial support of
the Government, but the moral support and en-
couragement of the entire nation. The Govern-
ment, quite apart from buying war machines,
must subsidise mail and passenger services, and
assist constructors to build experimental craft.
No cry for retrenchment after the war, however
desirable in other directions, must be allowed to
retard the progress of aviation. Money spent on
aircraft should be regarded as a form of national
insurance — an insurance against our peril should
some enemy, striking by air, seek to deliver a
blow so sudden and paralysing that the whole
nation, crippled and disorganised, would be
compelled to sue for an immediate peace.

Our final word is this. The same energy, de-
termination, and grit, which Britain is putting

260 AIR POWER

into this titanic struggle, and which we all trust
will ensure us victory, must be devoted after the
war to securing, and maintaining, that aerial
dominion on which the future safety of our
Empire will most assuredly depend.

INDEX

AEROPLANES, problems in their
invention, 51

, the first practicable ma-
chine, 66

, weight-lifting craft, no

, questions of strength and

efficiency, in

, multiple-plane machines,

JI3

, touring craft, 182

, passenger machines, 241

Air, its lifting power, 52

, question of the freedom

of, 214
Air fleets, their composition,

23
, their handling in

action, 46
Air travel, compared with that

of land and sea, 140
, its luxury, 163

its speed, 245
regulations, Bri

itish,

217

Bombardment by air, position
at outbreak of war, 203

Brakes, aerial and ground, 103

British aviators, their superi-
ority over the Germans, 14

temperament and tradi-
tion, 1 6

Competitions, their influence
on progress, 172

Decisive action by air, its im-
possibility at the outbreak
of this war, 3

, its possibility in the

future, 43

Engines, early types, 105

, question of breakdown,

107, 142, 150

, the turbine, 109

-, multiple power-plants,

permits to fly, 222

, question of fares,

242
Airways, British, 255

, European, 251

, their economy in work-
ing, 257
Altitude, its safety, 75

, future regulations, 229

Amphibious aircraft, 155
Armament, offensive, 30, 32
Armed machines, lack of, 9
Armour, protective, 26

Bombardment by air, its re-
lation to naval bombard-
ment, 200

261

146

Equilibrium, problem of, 59
Exploration by air, 238

Fighting in the air, 6
Flying clubs, 194

German airmen, 18
Gliding, 61
Guerilla warfare, 8

Hague Conventions, their rul-
ings in regard to flight, 197

Invisible aircraft,
possibilities, 39

Land defences, 34
Land-fire, 31

scientific

262

INDEX

Landing-chassis, questions of
weight and head resistance,
101

Landing-grounds, 152

Laws of the air, international,
218

, registration of air-
craft, 219

, rights of land-
owners, 226

, question of objects

falling from aircraft, 230

-, descents on private

land-

land, 232

, involuntary

ings, 234

-, rules for piloting,

236

Lessons from the past, 123
of the war (problem of the

" knock-out " blow), 40

Mail-carrying, 239
Meteorological investigation,
158

Night-signalling, 153

Offensive by air, its value, I
Organisation, how it tends to-
wards safety, 136
, its value in aerial tour-
ing, 194

Pioneers of aviation, British, 54
, the Wright brothers,

63

Propellers, variable pitch, 97

Raiding, long-distance, 35
, protection against, 39

Silent aircraft, future possi-
bilities, 39

Smuggling by air, 223

Specialisation (one machine, one
task), 21

Speed, its value in fighting,
10

, its combination with

striking power, 20

, its increase, 78

, its relation to alighting,

82
-, possibilities of the future,

100

Stability, inherent, 69
Steel construction, 93
Structural breakage, 165
Subsidising the industry, 121
Supremacy, the struggle for, 19

Touring by air, its pleasures,
177

, its cost, 184

Trans-Atlantic air service, 247

, its operating costs,

249

Troop transport by air, 48
Tubes to the aerodromes, 253,

256

Tuition, the need for well-
trained men, 186

, the question of physical

fitness, 190

Variable plane-surface, 91

Weight, its relation to war
efficiency, 24

Wind flying, 68, 157

Wood construction, its tem-
porary advantages, 116

PRINTED IN GREAT BKITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.B., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

CHAPMAN 6 HALL'S NEW BOOKS

JULIUS M. PRICE

Six Months on the Italian Front : From the
Selvio to the Adriatic. By JULIUS M. PRICE,
War Artist Correspondent of The Illustrated London News.
With Illustrations by the author. Demy 8vo, los. 6d. net.

VLADISLAV R. SAVlC

The Re-Construction of Southeastern

Europe. By VLADISLAV R. SAVIC". With a Preface by
Sir JAMES GEORGE FRASER, Hon. D.C.L., LL.D. With
Map. Demy 8vo, 75. 6d. net.

WINIFRED STEPHENS

The Life of Madame Adam. By WINIFRED
STEPHENS, author of "The Book of France," "French
Novelists of To-Day," etc. With Portraits and Illustrations.
Demy 8vo, 7*. 6d. net.

M. BETHAM-EDWARDS

Twentieth Century France. By M. BETHAM-
EDWARDS, author of " In the Heart of the Vosges," " Un-
frequented France," " French Vignettes," etc. With numerous
Illustrations. Demy 8vo, IQJ. 6d. net.

HARRY DE WINDT, F.R.G.S.

Russia as I Know It. By HARRY DE WINDT,
F.R.G.S., author of " Siberia as it is," etc. With Illustrations.
Demy 8vo, los. 6d.

CLAUDE GRAHAME WHITE and HARRY HARPER

Air Power : Naval, Military, and Com-
mercial. By CLAUDE GRAHAME WHITE and HARRY
HARPER. With Illustrations. Demy 8vo, 71. 6d. net.

JAMES LONG

Food and Fitness, or Diet in Relation to
Health. By JAMES LONG, author of " Making the Most
of the Land," " British Dairy Farming." Crown 8vo, 5*. net.

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED.

CHAPMAN 6 HALL'S NEW BOOKS

COLONEL A. M. MURRAY, C.B., M.V.O.

The "Fortnightly" History of the War. By

Colonel A. M. MURRAY, C.B., M.V.O. , author of "Imperial
Outposts." With Introduction by Field-Marshal Sir EVELYN
WOOD, G.C.B., K.C.B., V.C., G.C.M.G. Volume I, with
Maps and Plans. Demy 8vo, IQS. 6d. net.

DR. E. J. DILLON

Ourselves and Germany. By Dr. E. J. DILLON,
Foreign Correspondent of The Daily Telegraph. With an
Introduction by the Hon. W. M. HUGHES, M.P., Prime
Minister of Australia. Third Edition. Demy 8vo, 75. 6d. net.

THE RIGHT HON. W. F. BAILEY, C.B.

The Slavs of the War Zone. By the Right Hon.
W. F. BAILEY, C.B. With 24 Illustrations and Map. Demy
8vo, IQS. 6d. net.

THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK

A Woman and the War. By the Countess of
WARWICK. Demy 8vo, 7*. 6d. net.

GEORGE RENWICK

War Wanderings. By GEORGE RENWICK, Special Cor-
respondent to The Daily Chronicle^ author of " Luxembourg,"
etc. With Illustrations and Maps. Demy 8vo, 7*. 6d. net.

W. WALTER CROTCH

The Soul of Dickens. By W. WALTER CROTCH, author
of "The Pageant of Dickens," "Charles Dickens: Social
Reformer," etc. Demy 8vo, 6s. net.

DR. MARY SCHARLIEB

The Hope of the Future : The Management
of Children in Health and Disease. By

Dr. MARY SCHARLIEB. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED.

*

LAST

RETURN TO: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
198 Main Stacks

LOAN PERIOD 1
Home Use

2

3

4

5

6

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS.

Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date.
Books may be renewed by calling 642-3405.

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW.

JUN 0 6 2004

FORM NO. DD6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

50M 5-03 Berkeley, California 94720-6000

AW !*«»•• MAR 13 '69 -6PM )

LD 21-100m-6,'56
(B9311slO)476

.General Library

University of California

Berkeley

372881

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

*i.,...