  IWAR'S CONQUEST OF THE AIRThe World War opened to man the freedom of the skies. Amid all its anguish and suffering has come forth the conquest of the air. Scientists, manufacturers, dreamers, and the most hard-headed of men have united under the goad of its necessity to sweep away in a series of supreme efforts all the fears and doubts which had chained men to earth. True, years before, in fact, nearly a decade before, the Wright brothers had risen from the ground and flown about through the air in a machine which defied conventional rules and beliefs. The world had looked on in wonder, and then dropped back into an apathetic acceptance of the fact. Despite For years aviation dragged on. Daredevils and adventurers took it up to make money by hair-raising exploits at various meets and exhibits. Many died, and the general public, after satiating its lust for the sensational, turned its thought elsewhere. Flight was regarded as somewhat the plaything of those who cared not for life, and as a result the serious, sober thought of the community did not enter into its solution. Business men held aloof. Apart from circus performances there seemed no money to be made in aviation and consequently practically none was invested in it. What little manufacturing was done was by zealots and inventors. Workmanship was entirely by hand, slow, amateurish, and unreliable. Strangely enough, scientists were equally apathetic. It might have been expected that their imaginations would be fired by the unexplored realms of the air and by the incomparably new field of experiment opened to them; but they were not. The great question, that of flight itself, had been answered, and but few were interested in So the science limped along, unsupported by either public interest or capital. Now and again some startling feat attracted the world's attention, as when the English Channel was first crossed by air and England was made to realize that her insularity was gone. For a moment this feat held public interest, but again without a true realization of its significance. There seemed nothing which would drive man to develop the gift which had been put within his reach. Up to that fatal moment in August, 1914, when the World War broke out, aviation had made but little progress. All nations had what passed as air services, but they were very small and ill-equipped and were regarded with doubt and suspicion by the military leaders of the various countries. Compared with what has since taken place, the experiments previous to the war were only the most rudimentary beginnings. Almost immediately aviation challenged the attention of the responsible leaders. The handful of French planes which in those early fateful days of August penetrated up into Belgium brought back the information of the German mobilization there, and this led to the rearrangement of French forces in preparation for the battle of the Marne. As a result aviation at once leaped into high repute for scouting purposes and the foundations were laid for its great development. But as aviation had proved itself in the warfare of movement leading down to the Marne and sweeping back later to the Aisne, so it proved itself in the French warfare which was so unexpectedly to follow. When the two opposing lines were so close together that they locked almost in a death grip, each Thereupon began one of those silent battles of the rear, of which we see and hear so little, but which indeed decides sometimes far in advance of the actual test of battle just which side is going to win. Scientists, inventors, manufacturers, and practical fliers began coming together in increasing numbers to exact from this latest method of warfare its last degree of usefulness. In the studies and factories on both sides of the lines men dedicated themselves to the solution of the problem of flight. Stage by stage the difficulties were overcome. First it was the Germans who with their terrible Fokker planes harnessed the machine-gun to the airplane and made of it a weapon of offense. Then it was the Allies who added the radio and made of it an efficient method of observation and spotting of artillery fire. Increased engine-power began The moment an enemy plane fell on either side of the line the victors gathered about their prey with a keenness which could come only of the hope that they might find in it some suggestion that would make their own flying more efficient. Each learned from the other, so that the different schools on either side of the line had all the advantage of watching the development of their rivals. Very shortly after an improvement appeared on one side it reappeared in the planes of the other side. It is doubtful if ever a more desperate scientific battle was fought than that which featured the development of the air services of the various belligerents during the war. Control of the air was so vital that neither could afford to overlook any possibility; and, as a result, the scientific evolution was truly astounding. No man was reserved on this subject of airplane improvement. All contributed their best skill and ability to the common reservoir of knowledge. Very soon man's conquest of the air became so complete that different types of planes were developed for different kinds of work. The plane of the early days which Vital though all this work was for the war, it had an incomparably greater value for the perpetual struggle which all mankind is This, indeed, apart from the spread of democracy and internationalism, may well stand out in history as the war's richest heritage. Problems which had been considered insoluble were solved. The casting aside of all conventions, all restrictive habits of thought, all selfishnesses, and the focusing of the highest scientific ability in a struggle which might mean the life or death of the nation, had brought as a by-product a development beyond our wildest fancies. Aerial operations in any future war, however, will have at once a problem which has only recently and in very much smaller degree confronted the navy, namely, the assurance of attack not only on the front, in the rear, and on both flanks, but from above and below as well. Recently the navy has had to face that problem—submarines operating below and airplanes above; but Already, in order to meet this danger of attack from every possible direction, a most complete strategy and system of formations have been worked out. In this way the various types of planes operate in different air strata according to their missions, the upper planes echelon somewhat behind those below on the order of a flight of steps facing the enemy. This system provides a quick method of reception of an attack and the assurance of quick support, no matter where the attack may come. Obviously there would be nothing in all of warfare on either land or sea comparable to a collision between two such aerial fleets. The speed of the lighter planes, quick, life-taking duels in several different strata at once, would provide a clash of action, speed, and skill far more beautiful and yet in many ways far more terrible than anything ever recorded in the history of war. Fleets of the skies—who shall attempt at this day of the infancy of the science to limit their scope? Aerial battle-planes of colossal size and power are as certain to come in time, and in not a very long time, as the dreadnought of to-day was certain to follow The avenue of the seas has been up to now the world's greatest civilizer. Very shortly, without doubt, it will be replaced by the avenue of the skies. If we are to strive for freedom of the seas, what shall we say about freedom of this new element? The laws of aerial travel and aerial warfare open an unlimited field of speculation. IIToCTHE TRANSITION TO PEACEDevelopments during the war, despite their startling sensational character, had, however, been so overshadowed by human suffering and desperation that but few minds were awake to the changes that were to influence man's future. Amid the disasters, battles, and unprecedented movements in the politics of nations, the achievements of flight could command but a passing notice. People looked and wondered, but were distracted from following their thoughts through to the logical conclusion by the roar of a seventy-mile gun, the collapse of a nation, or the shock of battle on a one-hundred-mile front. Let us, however, weave together a few things that were done in those days of sensation, which may have a particular effect on the future of the science. Most conspicuous, perhaps, was the obliteration of distance and of all the customary limitations of travel. None of the conventional barriers stood in the way of these long trips. A new route of travel had been opened up along which men flew at will. The boundary-lines of states below, which look so formidable on the map, were passed over with the greatest ease, as well as such natural obstacles as the Alps and the English Channel. Tremendous saving in time was constantly being effected. Men were able to dart back and forth from the front to the rear and from England to France with a speed never dreamed of by other means of travel. To be sure, the front-line demands for planes were too severe to allow a very wide use in this way, but nevertheless the possibilities were there and were constantly availed of. Indeed, the British early established a With trains seldom going above 60 miles an hour, the slowest airplane went 80 and the average daylight plane on the front probably equaled 110. The fast fighters went up to 120, 130, and even 140 miles an hour, over twice as fast as any method of travel previously known. Just as the curtain closed on the war, there had been developed in the United States a plane credited with 162-2/3 miles an hour, and no one for a moment believed that the limit had been reached. Altitude likewise had been obliterated. The customary height for two-seated observation and bombing planes was between one and two miles, and of single-seated scouts between two and four miles. These altitudes were not the freakish heights occasionally obtained by adventurous fliers; on the Life at these altitudes was not possible, of course, under ordinary conditions. The temperature fell far below zero and the air became so thin that neither man nor engine could function unaided. As a result the fliers were kept from freezing by electrically heated clothing and from unconsciousness from lack of air by artificially supplied oxygen. Similarly the oil, water, and gasolene of the engine were kept working by special methods. The armistice threw the different nations into a dilemma as to their aviation plans. Obviously the huge war planes which were still in the building in all the belligerent countries were no longer necessary. Almost immediately, therefore, the placing of new contracts was halted by the various governments, enlistments stopped, and plans set in motion for the new requirements. Within a very short time the United States canceled several hundred million dollars' Nevertheless, military aviation of the future was definitely safeguarded. A bill was presented to Congress for an aerial force of 4,000 officers and 22,000 men, a fitting contrast to the force of 65 officers and 1,120 men with which the country had entered the war. Certain flying fields and schools which had shown the greatest value in the past and promised most for the future were definitely designated for permanent use, and especial effort was made to keep in the service the best of the technical experts and designers who had helped to solve America's problems of the air. Abroad demobilization was less rapid, as it was in all other lines. The British, who had given particular thought to after-war aviation, immediately turned to converting all their valuable war material and For several months, of course, there was a hiatus. Thought had been so concentrated on military aviation that the conversion to peace work proved slow. Only the most general plans had been made in any of the countries, and those by ardent supporters of aviation, who were forced to make the most earnest efforts to obtain consideration of the subject in the midst of all the vital problems of peace and reconstruction. Greatest of all the difficulties was that, as private flying had been prohibited during the war, there were, with the coming of peace, no rules and regulations ready for it. Also many great projects for international flights had to be postponed because of complete lack of international rules in this respect. Nevertheless, most spectacular and convincing flights followed one another in rapid Army fliers flew from the Atlantic to the Pacific within a few months of the signing of the armistice. It required but fifty hours of flying-time, just a fraction over two days. At that time no attempt was made to obtain speed, as the purpose of the trip had been to locate landing-fields and make aerial maps for future transcontinental flights. The four planes that made this trip might be considered as the pioneers of vast flocks of airplanes which within a short time will be winging their way from coast to coast. If, with machines built specifically for war purposes and with no special landing-fields or routes laid out, aviators could successfully travel from one coast to the other in fifty hours of flying-time, how much more rapidly will future trips be made when special touring-planes have been developed, routes and The effect that this new method of travel will have on American life and development is staggering to the imagination. San Francisco and New York will be almost neighbors, while Chicago and New Orleans will be but a pleasant day's trip apart. The business man, the statesman, and even the courier can be transported from one end of the country to the other, independent of steel rails and other devices, in record time. Such experiments have already proved successful in Europe. The British Foreign Office in London, anxious to keep in close touch with the Peace Conference at Paris, turned to the airplane to assure quick transportation of men and documents. The slow train trip with the irksome transfer to and from the Channel steamer and the more irksome voyage across the Channel itself, were avoided by a special service through the air. Thus two great capitals were brought within a few hours' time of each other, which greatly facilitated the vital negotiations under way. Civilians were finally granted the right to make the trip under military supervision. Then a French flier with six passengers made the flight from Paris to Brussels. The time consumed between the two capitals was but two hours as against over five by the ordinary train travel. As an instance of some of the problems which this particular flight brought about, it was observed that a Belgian policeman approached the plane as it was about to leave and inquired for passports and papers. Everybody made excuses for not having them. The policeman refused to allow the airplane to leave. Finally the pilot, losing his patience and temper, started the motor and flew off before the angered official knew what had happened. Two other French aviators about the same time crossed the Mediterranean from France Far more spectacular, however, was the flight made from London to Delhi. A Handley-Page machine, which had flown from London to Cairo during the war and taken part in the final military operations against the Turks, left Cairo, on November 30th, shortly after the armistice. Five and three-quarter hours later the airplane with five passengers reached Damascus, a trip practically impossible except through the air because of the ravages of the war. At 7.40 the next morning they set out again, flew northeast along the Jebel esh Shekh Range to Palmyra, then east to the Euphrates, down that river to Ramadi, and thence across to Bagdad, a flight of 510 miles made in six hours and fifty minutes without a single stop, part of it over country untrod even by the most The certainty of flight from London to India was demonstrated. A bi-weekly service for both passengers and mails was at once planned. Almost immediately preparations for the route were worked out, twenty-five airdromes and landing-fields were designated, of which the main ones would be at Cairo and Basra on the Tigris, with subsidiary fields at Marseilles, Pisa, or Rome, Taranto, Sollum, Bushire, Damascus, As with Asia Minor and Asia so with Africa, the British at once made plans for aerial routes. Only a few weeks after the armistice announcement was made of plans for an "All Red Air Route" from Cairo across the desert and the jungle to the Cape. This could all be done over British territory, with the part over Lakes Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika covered by hydroplanes. The moment men were released from the war, surveying of this route was begun and tentative plans made for landing-fields every 200 miles over the 5,700-mile trip. The air is ours to do whatever we can with it. There must be developed a large interest in this country in the business of flying. We must make the air our third, fastest, and most reliable means of communication FOOTNOTES: IIIToCTRAINING AN AIRPLANE PILOTAny ordinary, active man can fly. That is to say, any man with nerve enough to take a cold bath or drive an automobile down Fifth Avenue can maintain himself in the air with an airplane, and turn into a good pilot with practice. In other words, the regular man who rides in the Subway, who puts on a straw hat on May 15th or 20th, as the case may be, has not only the right to be in the air, but owes it to himself to learn to fly. Any one with a reasonable amount of intelligence can be made a good pilot. He need not hold a college degree, or even a high-school diploma, tucked away in some forgotten place. If he has the sense of touch of the normal man, the sense of balance of a normal man, can skate, or ride a bicycle, he should be in the air, flying. There is a difference between the war or army pilot and the peace-time flier yet to be developed. The day is coming for the man who wants to make a short pleasure flight, or go from town to town, touring by air. He need know nothing of machine-guns or warfare. He may never want to do anything more hazardous in the way of maneuver than a gentle turn. His maximum altitude would be perhaps 8,000 feet. He would in all probability be flying a machine whose "ceiling" was 10,000 feet, and he might never care to tour at a height higher than 2,000 feet. There is no reason why he should go high. One can have all the thrills in the world at 2,000 feet, follow the ground more easily, without wasting time or gasolene in attempts Let us illustrate a bit from the Royal Air Force of Canada, which is as good as any other example. The experience of the flying service of one country has been essentially that of another country, and we Americans may yet learn of the air from the English. In England the air is just another medium of travel, as much a medium as the ground and water—but that is, of course, another story. In 1917 the Royal Flying Corps, later incorporated into the Royal Air Force, came to Canada to take up the instruction of Canadian boys for flying in France. Americans enlisted with the pick of the Canadian youth, and droves were sent overseas. Very soon the cream had been skimmed off and there came a time when material was scarce. Meanwhile the war raged, and there was no option but to take drafted men from all sections, Montreal in particular. Many could not speak intelligible English, and few had enjoyed any educational advantages. The men who came as cadets to be trained as pilots in 1918 graded much lower in personal and physical qualifications than the type of the previous year. And yet these same drafted men, who had withstood for three and At the end of four, five, or six hours' solo these men could do all the high maneuvers, commonly thought dangerous, such as the barrel roll, the loop, the stall turn, the Immelmann turn. An astounding showing compared to the boys of 1917, who were forbidden to stunt and who rarely disobeyed the orders. In our American service we had specially selected men. They were college men, tested, qualified, and picked. But our men—and it's no reflection on them—seldom did their higher maneuvers with less than fifty hours of solo flying. There is just one answer—it is a matter entirely of training. It might be said that the Canadian casualties on the Texas flying-fields near Fort Worth during the winter of 1917-18, when the Royal Air Force occupied two airdromes, were the cause of comment all over the country. There were fifty fatalities in twenty weeks of flying, and machine after machine came down in a fatal spinning-nose dive, or tail spin, as the Americans speak of the spin. Briefly, the Gosport system is a graduated method of flying instruction. The cadet is led by easy steps through the earlier part of the training, and only after he has passed aerial tests in the simpler methods of control is he allowed to continue with the rest of his course and "go solo." The scheme provides that before he goes solo he must have spun, and shown that he can take his instructor out of a spin. Only then is he considered fit to go on his own. "Dangerous" and "Safe" as terms to describe flying technique gave way to wrong and right. There was built up under sound instruction one of the best schools of flying There is no reason why there should be an extended period of ground instruction for the non-military pilot of the future. He should be taught the elementary principles of the theory of flight, should know something about the engine with which he is going to fly, and understand some things about the rigging of his airplane. The details could come to him in constant association with the airplane before, during, and after each flight. No time need be spent on such subjects as artillery observation, machine-gunnery, wireless, bombing, photography, patrol work, and other subjects of a purely military nature, on which so much stress has been laid in training army pilots. "An airplane is a machine with lift-generating surfaces attached to a frame which carries an engine, fuel, aviator, and devices by which he steers, balances, and controls his craft," the mournful flight sergeant was finally able to convince them. Lift-generating surfaces—these are the bases of all flying. Every one knows, for instance, that a paper dart, instead of falling directly to the floor, sails in a gliding angle for some distance before crashing. Lift is generated under those plane surfaces moving through the air—and the lift keeps that paper dart gliding. Little eddies of air are compressed under its tiny wings. Imagine Just so with an airplane. A gliding airplane about to land with power shut off is that paper dart on a large scale. The airplane flying is the dart with power. To make the airplane safe to fly, to give control to the pilot so that he may steer it where he wants to, there is a rudder, moved by a rudder-bar under the foot of the pilot. It is impossible to turn a swiftly moving airplane in the air by the rudder alone. It must be banked to prevent skidding, even as a race-track is banked high on the turns. On its side an airplane will cushion its own bank of proper degree by the use of ailerons. These ailerons are sections of the wing-tips which may be moved either up or down. They are counterbalanced so that movement of the left down gives you the right aileron up. With left aileron down, the lift of the left wing is increased, and it tips up; at the same time the lift of the right wing is decreased, and it sags down. In that way the airplane is tipped up for a bank. These ailerons, wing sections, really, are controlled We have seen how an airplane is made to tip and turn. Before a machine is under control we must be able to climb, or come down to the ground for a landing. Vertical control of an airplane is attained by the use of elevators, flaps on the tail plane acting as horizontal rudders. A pull-back on the joy-stick lifts the flaps, raises the nose of the machine, and causes it to gain height. Push the joy-stick forward, the elevators are turned down, and the machine goes into a dive for the ground. In making many maneuvers all three controls, rudder, ailerons, and elevators, are used at once and the pilot feels his way with the machine, guiding it with the stick and the rudder-bar. After the explanation of the use of these controls, and their demonstration on the machine as it awaits its turn in the air, the pupil is taken up for his first ride—strictly a joy ride, and not always joyous for those who take every chance to be seasick. After he has a glimpse of what the ground looks like from the air, and has recovered from his first breathless sweep off the ground, the pupil is given a lesson in the demonstration of controls. The instructor explains through Then the wonderful moment when the instructor calls through the tube, "All right, now you take the stick." You clutch it as though it were the one straw in a great ocean. "Not so hard," comes the voice. "Now put your feet gently on the rudder-bar. Not so rough; easier, man, easier on that stick!" For a glorious moment she is yours, you hold her nose up, and you are flying an airplane tearing over the checkerboard country far below. Then, like the voice of doom: "Now, do a gentle turn to the left. Don't forget to give her rudder and stick at the same time. That's right. Begin the motion with your feet and hands at the same time." The world swings furiously, and down below that left wing-tip a little farm sways gently. "Now you are in a gentle turn—feel that breeze on your cheek? We are side-slipping; "Now fly straight for a few minutes. Your right wing is low—bring it up. Your nose is too high. Now it is too low. Keep it so that the radiator cap is above the horizon. That's right." So goes the business of instruction through the lessons on straight flying, gentle turns, misuse of controls, side-slipping, and approach, take-off, and landing. The trips should average thirty-five or forty minutes, long enough to teach the lesson, but not long enough to weary the pupil. Here at take-off and landing the pupil finds himself up against the most difficult part of his training. He has the problem of stopping a large machine weighing a ton or more, traveling at a landing speed of forty to fifty miles an hour, with the center of gravity just balanced over the under-carriage. An error in judgment will pile the machine up on its nose with a crashed propeller, and perhaps two broken wings and damaged under-carriage. Not a dangerous accident for the pilot, but very humiliating. As soon as the instructor shuts off the engine the machine rapidly loses flying speed. It reaches a point where there is not enough air passing over the wing surfaces to support the plane in the air. Her nose begins to drop, and he pulls the stick back. The stick is full back, she stalls, topples over on her side, and plunges nose first. The instructor kicks on full rudder, and the world whirls below like a top, and the air whistles, swish, swish, swish, in the wires at every turn. Stick forward, opposite rudder, and she comes out so fast that your head swims. That is the spin. "Now you try it," says the instructor. For there is nothing to a spin unless a After three or four hours of solo time the pupil is scheduled for another demonstration of higher maneuvers, spinning and the stall turn. For the stall turn the pilot noses the machine down to get an air speed of seventy-five miles an hour. A little bank, stick back, she rears into the air with her nose to the sky and propeller roaring. Full rudder and throttle off. In silence she drops over on her side into the empty air; blue sky and green fields flash by in a whirl. She hangs on her back while the passengers strain against the safety belts, and then her nose plunges. The air shrieks in the wires as the ground comes up at terrific speed. The natural result of training a pupil along those lines is that he graduates rapidly into a good stunting pilot. He realizes that he cannot tempt the devil at three hundred feet and hope to live, but he takes a good altitude, throws his machine upside down, and knows that, given enough air, he must come out. He does come out unless he loses complete control of his mind and body. With fifteen hours of solo flying the pupil IVToCSAFETY IN FLYINGThe fatalities on the training-fields of every country during the period of training in war, and before and after the war, testify only too surely that flying cannot be absolutely safe. It is no reflection on the future of flying to realize that it has not been safe, and that it can never, perhaps, be made fool-proof. One or two things must be remembered before we become despondent over the future safety of flying. When the United States entered the war the entire personnel of the Signal Corps numbered one hundred and sixty officers and men. At the time the armistice was signed more than thirty thousand pilots had been trained. They were trained in great numbers under high pressure. We did not have the machines to train them in or the instructors to fly with them. We had not the experience in wholesale training of flying-men, and yet we turned out vast numbers. It was a question of getting the The wonder is really that we did not have more flying accidents. There were few men in the country who really understood what conditions tended toward a flying accident. There were few who had ever gone into a spin and lived to tell about it. At that time a spinning-nose dive was a manifestation of hard luck—like a German shell. If you once got into it, it was only the matter of waiting for the crash and hoping that the hospital might be able to pull you through. Toward the end, of course, this situation had been largely overcome, the Gosport system of flying had been tried out, and there was a vast increase in the knowledge of flying among the instructors and pupils. The spin had been conquered, training was on a sound basis, and accidents were being rapidly cut down. One of the most obvious ways to cut down crashes was by making sure that the pilot was in good condition physically. Flight Flying for an early solo pupil is the greatest mental strain that a man can experience. Every moment the fact that he is up in the air, supported only by wood, wires, and fabric, may be on his mind. He is making desperate efforts to remember everything his instructor has told him since he started his dual. He tries to keep that nose on the horizon, the wings balanced, and the machine flying true. He is in fear of stalling and consequent loss of control. He goes into his turns, hardly knowing whether he is going to come out of them, and noses down for a landing, mentally giving prayer, perhaps, that he will come out all right. He can't possibly remember everything he has been told, but he tries to salvage as much knowledge as possible to make a decent landing. These experiences tend to bring about two During his first hour's solo a swift stream of hundreds of impulses is borne along the nerve centers to the brain of a pupil. It is like the pounding of heavy seas against a light sea-wall. His brain reels under the repeated shocks and the pupil falls into a detached stupor. He waits while his engine throbs ahead, and lets the machine fly itself. He seems to take no active participation in the operation, and unless he recovers control of his brain and his machine it is a crash. Physicians then have the problem of learning from a dazed and perhaps badly injured man how it happened. He can recall nothing, and seldom knows when he lost control. These are the things that happened when Now the civilian who would take up flying has just as much time as he wants to spend in learning to fly. He is paying for his instruction, and he should continue it for perhaps fifteen to twenty hours of dual instruction. He should fly the machine with an instructor in it, and really get accustomed to the feel of the air. He should become sensitive enough so that he can differentiate between the tight, firm touch to a machine flying under complete control and the slack movement of stick and rudder of a plane very nearly out of control. He should recognize these danger signs and know how to correct his flying position. Dual flying should be continued up to the point where the pupil flies without thinking, The treacherous thing about a spinning-nose dive is that, to come out of it, a pilot must put his stick forward, not hold it back, in spite of the fact that the machine is falling nose first and spinning at the same time. A spin is possible only from a stall, and only when the stick is back and rudder in either direction is given. The position is an easy one to get into from a steep turn. Air resistance against a machine turning becomes greater, it slows down the speed, decreases the lifting power of the planes. The result is that the nose falls slightly. The pilot moves the stick back to lift the nose, and in doing so pulls up his elevators, offering still more resistance to the air, and checking the speed. The effect becomes cumulative; he tries to hold up his machine, and he has stalled. In a last effort to check the spin The rudder and elevators have formed a pocket in the tail plane, which is like the spoon on a trolling-hook. The pocket is off-center and the air rushes into it as the machine topples over and plunges down. It imparts a twisting motion, which in a turn or two develops into a throbbing spin. Picture the pilot, trying to lift the nose of his machine by holding his stick well back and wondering why the nose does not come up. The pathetic thing is that so many hundred men have thought their salvation was to hold the stick back. The only possible thing to do in this case is to break the pocket. Put the stick forward to neutral, or even farther if need be, and opposite rudder. The machine will come out in three-quarters of a turn with practice, into a straight-nose dive. Then ease the stick back, and this time the nose comes up and the machine flies on its course. Instructors who have taught their pupils this before they let them go solo have saved many, many lives. It is reasonable to say that there are no fatal accidents except those from a spin, but, like all general statements, that is One hears about stunting, and the accidents which result from taking chances in the air. There may be two opinions about whether for the flying of the future it should be necessary to loop, to roll, to half roll, and stall turn, or even to spin. As to looping and rolling, the question of the type of machine to be flown will determine that largely. There are many machines which cannot be looped. The large naval flying-boats, for instance, describe a circle two thousand feet in diameter for each turnover—it is almost obvious that not much stunting is done on these boats. A small scout or sporting plane can loop and come out higher than it went in. There is certain value in practising such Army pilots who have had a good course in stunting would certainly recommend the same for civilian pilots. That does not mean that it would be necessary, or even advisable. There have been accidents due to stunting by both inexperienced and experienced pilots. Generally it is a matter of altitude, for with sufficient height the greenest pilot can come out of anything, if he does not lose his head. For the man who would be the pilot for a large commercial plane, such as the Glenn Martin bomber, the Super Handley-Page in England, or the Naval Curtiss flying-boats, no stunting is necessary. He may sit in Whatever opinions may be held regarding the advisability of teaching stunting to a civilian pilot, there can be no question that a civilian pilot must have a long and thorough course in the very gentle but essential art of making forced landings. The problem is that of controlling a machine with its engine cut off, to have complete control of it within the radius of its gliding distance. Again, the dart gliding to its uncertain landing. In the hands of an unskilled pilot, an airplane gliding without power is a very dangerous thing. He may pile up the machine against some farm-house, fence, haymow, or clump of woods, smashing it badly and injuring himself. Or he may, through inexperience, lose flying speed in the course of his descent and topple over into a spin. Even the best pilot may make a mess of his machine if his engine goes "dud" over a forest, city, swamp, or other impossible landing-place. It is his business more or The difficulty is, of course, not to undershoot, to fall short. It must be remembered that in case of actual engine failure there is no motive power, and if a man calculates his distance too short, he has nothing left but to make his landing where he may be. He has lost his height and his chance to reach other fields. He may find himself rolling into the fence of the field he was trying for. Or, equally bad, he may overshoot. The distance was shorter than it looked, he has It is possible that on a turn, a gliding turn with the engine shut off, the pilot may lose his flying speed. Unless he is experienced, he does not realize that on a turn the machine presents more surfaces to the air and greatly increases the air resistance. It is likely to stall unless a safe margin of speed is maintained. The dangerous part of this is that very often the machine will lose its speed when only a hundred feet from the ground, approaching the field. There is no chance to pull it out of a spin unless the pilot is alert and realizes that he has lost speed, and noses down before he spins. Often he spins, and a fall with an airplane from a hundred feet is just as nasty as it can be. For his own safety in the air the civilian who is about to take up instruction in flying should insist at his flying-school that he be taught thoroughly, to his own satisfaction, the control of his machine with the engine Then it may be said that a pilot is safe. When he knows in his own heart that nothing can happen to him which will throw him off his guard, or which will worry him, he can take the air without fear. What chance has a good automobile man who knows his engine thoroughly to become an airplane mechanic? There can be only one answer to this question which men ask themselves daily—there is every chance in the world. Commercial flying, in the day when the air is to become a medium of transportation, just as ground and water are at present, must draw to itself hundreds of thousands of mechanics. The only thing to which the future of flying may be compared is the automobile industry at present. And the only place from which the mechanics are to be recruited are from the men who are working in garages putting automobiles in order. An interesting comparison between the future for the automobile mechanic or airplane mechanic compared with the future for the pilot is afforded in the figures of a well-known flying-officer of great vision. He expects that the skilled mechanic, the It was estimated that it took ten mechanics of various kinds on the ground to keep one airplane pilot flying in the air, and the experience of the United States has shown that there must be a large force of trained men to keep up flying. The present leaders of the automobile world and the aeronautical world are men who got their first interest in mechanics in some little shop. Glenn H. Curtiss and Harry G. Hawker, the Australian pilot, both owned little bicycle-repair shops before they saw their opportunity in flying. Most essential of all, for the man who would become an airplane mechanic, is a thorough knowledge of gasolene-engines. This should include not only a knowledge of such fundamentals as the theory of the internal-combustion engine, carburetion, compression, ignition, and explosion, but also a keen insight into the whims of the human, and terribly inhuman, thing—the gasolene-motor. Nothing can be sweeter There are certain technical details which distinguish an airplane motor from an automobile motor, but a man who knows automobile engines can master the airplane motor in short order. Generally speaking, the airplane motor differs from the automobile motor in shape. The Liberty type of engine is V-shaped, with both sets of cylinders driving toward a common center, the crankshaft. Most airplane motors have special carbureters, and their oiling systems are extremely finely adjusted to take up any friction at their high speed. They will be found to be lighter in weight, with pistons, piston heads and other parts made of aluminium. They are, as a rule, more carefully made than most automobile motors, with especial attention to the fitting of all working parts. One advantage which an airplane mechanic has is standardization, which has reached a high point with Liberty, Hispano-Suiza, and Curtiss engines. Once a mechanic has learned his type he has learned practically every engine of that type. For a long time to come the 18,000 Liberty engines which this country had at the time the armistice An engine which was not developed to the same high point in this country as the Liberty motor is the rotary engine, of which the Gnome Monosoupape or Clerget are perhaps the best-known types. These were favorites with airmen flying fighting scout-planes. They weighed practically nothing, for an engine. A one-hundred-horse-power motor weighed only two hundred and sixty pounds, and it was a splendid type for fast work. Briefly, the power generated by the explosions in the cylinders, operating against two centers of pressure, gave a rotary motion to the cylinders and crankcase, revolving around a stationary, hollow crankshaft. Cylinders and crankcase were bolted For men who may have had some experience in the assembly of airplanes at factories, or of rigging them at flying-fields, there is great opportunity. Expert riggers who know their craft are few and hard to get. They are invaluable for maintaining a machine in flying condition. The use of airplanes in this country will require men for rigging, for truing up the wires and struts. Each airplane must be overhauled after a few hours of flight to discover hidden weaknesses and to tighten sagging wires. Rigging an airplane has some resemblance to rigging a ship for sailing. The first requisite is to see that the machine is properly balanced in flying position. There is a number of minute measurements which Radio operators will be in great demand for flying. Brig.-Gen. A.C. Critchley, the youngest general officer in the British service, who was a pilot in the Royal Air Force, said that the future development of the airplane must go hand in hand with the development of wireless communication. He added that the most difficult thing about flying, especially ocean flying, was to keep the course in heavy weather. There are no factors which will help a man on "dead" reckoning; and a shift in wind, unknown to the navigator of a plane, will carry him hundreds of miles from his objective. The Another development which is being used by the navigators flying the Atlantic is the radio compass. This instrument may be turned toward a land or sea wireless station, of which the call is known, and it will register the bearing from the flying-boat to this station. It may be turned upon another station, and this bearing also charted. The intersection of these two wireless compass bearings gives the position of the ship at sea. The radio compass is dependable day or night, and is said to be quite as reliable as a sextant or other navigating instruments. Sailmakers to repair airplane fabrics, to sew new covers for planes—these men must find an opportunity in flying. There are literally thousands of wings, as yet unmade, which will carry the air traffic of the future. It matters not whether men or women take up this branch of the work, it must be done, and done with a conscience. Like all other branches of the mechanical maintenance of an airplane, careless work on the part of a sailmaker may mean disaster for the pilot. One of the latest fatalities at a Long Island Photographers may yet take the place of surveyors, or work hand in hand with them in the making of aerial maps of the country. The map of the future must be an aerial map, a mosaic map such as was used by our army headquarters. Nothing can exceed the eye of the camera for accuracy. Cameras bolted to airplanes, such as were used by our army for reconnaissance, have already been used for mapping cities. The mapping of the entire country in such a manner is only a matter of time. One thing which an aviation mechanic of any sort must bear in mind is that he must do his work with a conscience. True, he is handling mute metal engines, or dumb wires and struts—but in his work he holds the life of the pilot in his hand. It is not too much to say that hundreds of pilots' lives have been saved by the conscientious work of skilled mechanics who realized the danger of the air. I have seen mechanics rush from a hangar First of all he must know the value of inspection. Every machine which has gone through a workshop must be inspected and checked over by a skilled mechanic before a pilot is allowed to fly it. The ideal thing would be to have legislation licensing the inspectors of aircraft and requiring that repairs on all machines be examined by a licensed inspector. The inspectors would be under civil service and would be selected by competitive examination. It may sound fantastic, but such precautions are as necessary for the preservation of life as legislation on sanitary matters. In the second place, there should be time limits placed by law covering the period of usefulness of various parts of an airplane. After fifty hours of flying there should be an inspection of certain working parts of the engine, certain wires in the body which may be strained by bad landings, and other wires For the man who would like to work into the piloting of aircraft there is a very good opportunity by starting with the mechanical side. Too many pilots know next to nothing about the construction of their machines. When an engine goes bad they know that it won't run—that is all. The pilot who is a good mechanic is a gifted man in his profession. There are endless opportunities at flying-fields for mechanics who want to learn to fly. During the war it became customary to take mechanics up for flying at least once in two weeks on some fields. It gave the mechanic an interest in his work and an interest in the life of his pilot. Perhaps nothing stimulated accurate work by a mechanic more than the knowledge that at any time he might be called upon to ride Some were taught flying by their officers, and later qualified as pilots. Others went through as cadets and became pilots after the regular course. The pilot of the future must learn the mechanical side, and the mechanic should be a good pilot. The two must go hand in hand to make flying a success. VIToCTHE FIRST CROSSING OF THE ATLANTICThe story of the American triumph in being the first to fly from the New World to the Old World is a story of careful, painstaking, organized effort on the part of the American navy. With the flight of Lieut.-Commander Albert C. Read from Rockaway Naval Air Station to Plymouth, England, nearly four thousand five hundred land miles, the navy brought to fulfilment plans which had been maturing for two years. Since 1917 there have been naval flying-officers anxious to cross the ocean by air, and their plans have been cast and recast from time to time. At first there were many reasons why it was impossible to attempt such a thing while the United States was at war. Destroyers, busily hunting German submarines, could not be spared for a feat more spectacular than useful at the time. Pilots and mechanics could not be spared from the business at hand—training hundreds of seaplane pilots for service overseas. In the latter half of 1918 the naval seaplane NC-1 was delivered to the Rockaway Naval Air Station—the largest seaplane ever built on this side of the water. She was originally planned, with three sister ships, as an aerial submarine-chaser. One hundred and twenty-six feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, she was equipped with three big Liberty motors—a monster seaplane, ideally suited to the purpose for which she was designed. The signing of the armistice interfered with her use as a submarine scout, and naval plans for crossing the ocean in the air were brought from their pigeonholes. The NC-1 and her sister ships under construction appeared to have been built for just such a Early in March of this year it became apparent that the spring or early summer would see several attempts to cross the ocean by air. On March 19th it was reported from England that the unfortunate Sopwith machine with its lucky team of Harry G. Hawker and Lieut.-Commander Mackenzie Grieve had started from England for Newfoundland. At the same time announcement was made that naval officers had been conferring over their Atlantic flight plans, and that a start would be attempted some time in May. As a matter of fact, a great deal of work had been done in secret by Commander John H. Towers, Lieut.-Commander Albert C. Read, and Lieut.-Commander Patrick N.L. Bellinger. As early as February 24th a conference was held in Washington and a date of May 15th or 16th for the flight from Newfoundland was set. This date There were really only three routes open to pilots anxious to make the first crossing of the Atlantic. There was the flight straight from Newfoundland to Ireland, a matter of about one thousand nine hundred miles of straight flying, with the possibility of favoring winds. There was the Newfoundland-Azores route which the Americans took, and the route from Dakar, French Senegal, to Pernambuco, Brazil, which French fliers attempted. In addition there was the possibility of flight from Ireland to Newfoundland, given up by Major Woods, pilot of the Short biplane, after his forced landing in the Irish Sea. The great question of a flight straight across the Atlantic was that of fuel consumption. Could a machine be devised which would carry enough fuel to fly across one thousand nine hundred miles of water? The Sopwith Aviation Company designed their machine for such a flight, but sent it out to Newfoundland to catch and take advantage of the prevailing west winds across the North Atlantic. The story of the six weeks' wait for favorable weather, and the The American planes took advantage of those winds in their flight to the Azores, that much is certain. But they were well protected with destroyers, were not pushing their planes to the limit, and did not depend upon favoring winds. That the NC-1 and the NC-3 reached the Azores, but did not make safe landings in the harbor after their long flight, is one of the fortunes of flying which must not reflect upon the American effort as a whole. The French route which Lieutenant Fontan, of the French army, tried twice, and on which he was twice forced to land because of engine trouble, was laid to take advantage of favoring winds. Across the South Atlantic the winds prevail in the spring of the year from east to west, contrary to the winds on the northern course. A twenty-mile wind at the back of a flier jumping the one thousand eight hundred miles across this bit of water would add just twenty miles an hour to the ground speed of the machine. Capt. John Alcock and Lieut. Arthur Whitten Brown startled the entire world The start of the American fliers was made after a series of tests of the seaplanes which covered a period of almost two months. At the outset it was decided to fly three out of the four NC planes, on the theory that one of the machines would probably prove to be weaker or less easy to handle than the others. The NC-2 proved to be the unfortunate sister in this case, and because of some defects in the arrangement of her With the decision to start three planes simultaneously, the navy made it clear that, although it hoped all three seaplanes might complete the trip, allowance was made for one or two machines to give up the flight if they found themselves in trouble. The NC-1, and NC-3, and the NC-4 all proved to be up to expectations, and, with increased engine power, showed that they could take-off the water with a load of twenty-eight thousand five hundred pounds. After the necessary tests had been made on Jamaica Bay, Commander Towers said on May 4th that the start would be made a little after daybreak, May 6th. There remained only the task of filling their hulls with one thousand eight hundred gallons of gasolene. Early in the morning of May 5th, while mechanics were pumping gasolene into the tanks of the NC-1, a spark from an electric pump fell into a pool of gasolene and set fire to her whole right side. In a moment the heavily "doped" linen wings, with seasoned spruce spars, were a mass of hot flame. The sailors at work on the machine, with complete disregard of their personal safety, ran for fire-extinguishers, and with the fire She was ready the next morning, with fresh wings from the discarded NC-2, but the flight was postponed on account of a heavy northeast wind, reported all the way to Halifax. The machines made their start from Rockaway on the morning of May 8th, at ten o'clock, and two of them, the NC-1, with Lieutenant-Commander Bellinger, and the NC-3, with Commander Towers, arrived at Halifax after nine hours' flying. The NC-4 proved to be the "lame duck" on the first leg of the flight, and came down at sea a hundred miles off Chatham, because of overheated bearings. Some alarm was felt during the night by the failure of destroyers to find her. She appeared the next morning off the Chatham breakwater, "taxi-ing" under her own power. While her sister ships, the NC-1 and the NC-3, were flying to Trepassey the NC-4 waited at Chatham. Even after the repairs were made, it seemed impossible for the NC-4 to catch up with the other two Four days later she left Halifax for Trepassey in a last-minute effort to catch her sister planes. It seemed certain that she could not get there in time and would be forced to follow on the course a day later. Just as she flew into Trepassey Bay, on May 14th, the NC-1 and NC-3 were preparing to take-off. They postponed their start until the next day. In the mean while repairs were rushed and adjustments made, and she was ready to start the next afternoon, when all three planes started a little after six o'clock. From the beginning of the flight from Trepassey the NC-4, thought to be the "lame duck" of the squadron, ran away from the other two machines. She lost contact with them very quickly and plowed through the night alone, laying her course by the line of destroyers lying beneath her. The half-hour lead gave the NC-4 a chance to get through a fog which was coming up over the Azores ahead of the other machines. She held a little above it until she thought she was in the right position. Then she came down through the mist. As it happened, she landed in the wrong harbor, but picked herself up and found Horta a few minutes later. She landed in Horta after fifteen hours and eighteen minutes of flying, in which she averaged 78.4 nautical miles an hour for the flight. The machine was nearly five hours ahead of the schedule laid down by the Navy Department. Both the other planes were forced to land at sea, the NC-3 after 1,250 miles of flight—the longest ever made over water up to that time—and the NC-1 after more than 1,100 miles in the air. The NC-1 with Bellinger and his crew was picked up on the morning of Saturday, May 17th, by a Greek steamer, the Ionia, and brought into Horta. Towers with the NC-3 tossed about for nearly sixty hours at sea and was not picked up until the following On Tuesday, May 20th, the NC-4 hopped off for the shortest leg of the flight, 150 miles from Horta to Ponta Delgada, where the fuel and supplies for the machines were. With favoring winds at her back, and with the lightest load she had carried, she covered the distance in one hour and forty-four minutes, an average speed of 86.7 nautical miles an hour, or more than 99 land miles. This was a new record for the seaplanes on the ocean flight. Meanwhile Harry G. Hawker and Lieut.-Commander Mackenzie Grieve, the Sopwith team waiting so long at St. John's for a chance to fly, stimulated in their daring attempt by reports of American successes at the Azores, took-off on their flight straight across on the afternoon of Sunday, May 18th. All through that night he flew, when his engine began to give signs of overheating, due to a clogged water-filter. Early the next morning, about half-way across, Hawker decided that there was no chance to make the land, and began looking through the fog for a chance for a safe landing. By zigzagging on the steamship courses for about two hours, with his engine hot but With the Sopwith team out of the race, it became evident that Commander Read and the NC-4 would actually win the honors for the first flight. On the morning of May 27th he started over his well-patrolled course of eight hundred miles, and, after a little less than ten hours of flight, brought his machine into the harbor before Lisbon, Portugal. Americans had crossed the ocean in the air, and the enthusiastic Portuguese capital turned out to do them every honor. Read, however, rather than linger, pushed on again May 30th, in the midst of the celebration for his triumph on the last leg of his course to Plymouth, seven hundred and seventy-five nautical miles. Engine trouble, the first since the machine had left Chatham, developed, and at the end of two hours he was forced to land at the mouth of the Mondego River, about a hundred miles on his way. The trouble was a water leak. It was quickly repaired, and he started again, Early in the morning of May 31st Commander Read started from Ferrol for Plymouth, and at the end of seven hours and six minutes of flight came down in the harbor, where a warm reception was waiting for him. The actual flying time since leaving the Rockaway Naval Air Station was fifty-seven hours and sixteen minutes, and the average rate of flight was at a speed of sixty-eight nautical miles an hour. VIIToCLANDING-FIELDS—THE IMMEDIATE NEEDThe immediate need, to establish aviation throughout the entire country, is a series of landing-fields from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. These landing-fields should not be designed primarily for transcontinental flying-stations, but for city-to-city flying. There is going to be a great amount of aerial traffic from New York to San Francisco, to be sure, but the future of flying is in the linking up of cities a few hundred miles apart. The War Department has already taken steps, and will establish thirty-two fields in the country to encourage flying. Many more are needed. Atlantic City is apparently the pioneer air port of the country, and for many reasons this is natural. There are political and social advantages which make Atlantic City ideal. Rules have been laid down for the coming and going of airships, and a field for land machines and water space for seaplanes have been laid out. A large Every city in the United States will have a landing-field and hangars for airplanes, as well as mechanics to care for them. Whether this is to be a private or public enterprise lies in the hands of the people handling such things. Much could be said for either type of establishment. The thing must come; it is as logical as one, two, three. There are some, perhaps, who remember the roars of derision which went up when the first automobile garage was established in their town. Such a thing was visionary-there would never be enough machines to make it pay! There are many reasons why it is impossible to consider the use of city roofs, for the present, as suitable landing-places for airplanes. In fact, the first successful landing on a roof made by Jules Vedrines last January was hailed as a feat of almost unparalleled daring. He flew and landed on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, and won a prize of $5,000 for doing it. The police of Paris refused to allow him to fly off the roof, and he was compelled to take his machine apart and lower it in an elevator. The theory of flight, the laws which make it possible apparently to defy all laws of We shall not see the business man flying to his office in the city from his country estate—unless some landing-field is built on the lower end of Manhattan Island as has been proposed. The Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York has taken up the matter of legislation to make landing-fields possible, and it must go through. The business man ought, in the near future, to be able to use the airplane for quick trips to Albany. It would save hours over rail time, and here the airplane has a wonderful field of usefulness. Airplanes have made the trip from Washington to New York in very quick time, only to have to go on to Mineola to land on the airdrome there. It takes nearly an hour to come in from Mineola, but even at that the saving of time is still considerable. The There must be a large field, broad in every dimension, to permit the landing and taking-off of airplanes. A machine must get up flying speed running across the ground before it gets into the air. The flying speed varies with the type of machine, and it may be estimated that most machines take-off and land at a speed of from forty-five to sixty miles an hour. The air must be passing through their planes at this speed before they will begin to fly, and it takes a little run to get up flying speed. Similarly, when an airplane lands, it must lose its flying speed gradually. It may glide to within a few feet of the ground, and then "flatten out" just off the ground and run along until it loses its speed, the air no longer passes over its planes fast enough to support it, and it drops to the ground. Such are the limitations which the necessity for speed in airplane flight imposes. Compare the paper dart flying through the air. As long as it moves quickly it will fly. Or a kite, that will fly when the wind is There are four forces acting on an airplane in flight, and they must be properly overcome and balanced. There is lift, the upward force exerted on the planes by the passage of air over their surfaces; and drift, the resistance to the passing of an airplane, the retarding force acting opposite to the direction of motion. Then thrust, the forward effort of a machine exerted by a propeller pushing or pulling. And finally gravity. The primary conditions of flight are that lift made by the planes shall be equal to the force of gravity, and that the forward thrust must be equal to the drift. At that point a machine will sustain flight—a fairly simple thing on paper. But the times that machines have stalled in the air, with their motors full on because their pilots have failed to sustain flight, have let the force of gravity overcome lift, are too numerous to mention. That dart, if pointed at a proper angle and let loose, will fly; its lift will overcome the force of gravity, even though it has no motive power of its own. An airplane without an engine could be pushed off the Palisades at flying speed, and a skilful pilot could bring it to a reasonably safe landing at the An airplane is in no particular danger in the air if the motor stops—provided it is in an open stretch of country with plenty of fields. Instinctively the pilot will nose down and glide, and on that glide he will find himself maintaining flying speed. He can turn and maneuver his machine, and pick out almost any field near at hand. The only limitations are that he cannot glide more than five times his height, and when he comes down to the ground he must stop gliding and land. He must land on anything that presents itself, a field if he has good judgment; if not, then a barn or swamp or woods. He must land when the end of his glide brings him to the ground. This is commonly termed a "forced landing," and in every sense of the word it is one. There is no pilot of any extensive flying experience who has not had to make a forced landing. Ninety out of a hundred are perfectly orderly safe landings; the odd ones are occasionally crashes. Incidentally it may be said that forced-landing practice A forced landing over the country is safe, but over a city it is the most deadly thing imaginable. For a machine caught with a "dud" engine over New York there is no escape but a terrific crash in the city streets, against the side of some building, with danger to the pilot and the people in the street below. There has been no motor made by the hand of man which would not let a pilot down at some unexpected time. The instance of Major Woods, starting on his flight across the Atlantic, and forced to come down to the Irish Sea is one example. The NC-4, American naval seaplane, had a forced landing at sea, a hundred miles from Chatham, Massachusetts, on the first leg of the Atlantic flight from this side. Its engines had been carefully cleaned and tested, and yet they failed. Harry G. Hawker's engine failed him half-way from Newfoundland to Ireland and let him down That is one of the most exasperating and human things about a gasolene-engine. It is efficient, but not thoroughly dependable. The best of them are liable to break down at the most needed moment, due to a hundred causes outside of the control of a mechanic or pilot. Care and rigid inspection will reduce the possibilities, but engine failure cannot yet be eliminated. That is one of the principal reasons why the roofs of buildings around big cities are so dangerous. The sides of a building drop away from the roof. An error in judgment and the machine is over the edge. It is even more dangerous to take-off. An airplane motor is ten times as likely to develop a weakness while it is cold. A motor starting a flight is never well warmed up, and fifty feet from the edge of the roof it may give out, with awful consequences. As a practicable thing, roofs are at present impossible. There is not a flying-officer in the world who will not agree. An interesting series of experiments has been carried out in England on what has been known as the helicopter machine. This machine is not dependent upon speed to fly, The effort is being made to make a machine which can hover, can hold itself in the air by brute force of its propeller blades beating the air. The thing sounds impossible to adapt, say some aeronautical engineers. Those who have seen the experiments, however, express great optimism. A machine of this sort would land and take-off in a very small space, and might be adapted to use around cities. It might even make flying over cities safe but for the human equation of the engine again. This machine is dependent on engine power. Apparently there would be two engines, or two driving mechanisms, one operating the lifting propeller and the other the pulling propeller. For the present the great need is for landing-fields as near the heart of most American cities as possible. There should be quick transportation to the business section provided, as well as hangars and mechanics. When that is done we may very well say that aerial transportation for passengers and freight is an accomplished fact. VIIIToCTHE AIRPLANE'S BROTHERAt the end of 108 hours and 12 minutes of sustained flight, more than four days, the British dirigible R-34 swung into Roosevelt Field, came to anchor, and finished the first flight of the Atlantic by a lighter-than-air airship. To the wondering throngs which went down Long Island to see her huge gray bulk swinging lazily in the wind, with men clinging in bunches, like centipedes, to her anchor ropes, and her red, white, and blue-tipped rudder turning idly, she was more than a great big balloon, but a forerunner of times to come. She had come to us, a pioneer over the sea lanes which are to be thronged with the swift dirigibles of the future plying their easy way from America to Europe. The performance of the R-34, undertaken in the line of duty, has eclipsed all the previous records made by dirigibles and is, in fact, a promise of bigger things to come. There The R-34 started from East Fortune, Scotland, on Wednesday, July 2, 1919, at 2.48 o'clock in the morning, British summer time, and arrived, after an adventurous voyage, at Mineola, Sunday, July 6, at 9.54 a.m., American summer time. She had clear sailing until she hit the lower part of Nova Scotia on Saturday. Electrical storms, which the dirigible rode out, and also heavy head winds, kept her from making any progress, and used up the gasolene. About noon of Saturday the gasolene situation became acute, and Major G.H. Scott, her commander, sent a wireless message to the United States Navy Department at Washington, asking for destroyers to stand by in the Bay of Fundy in case the gasolene should run short and the airship get out of control. Destroyers were immediately despatched, but in the next few hours the weather improved, and the ship was able to continue on her journey. It was feared, however, she might run out of fuel before reaching Long Island, and mechanics The big ship surprised everybody by appearing over Long Island about nine o'clock Sunday morning. The officer in charge of the landing party having gone to Boston, expecting her arrival there, Major John Pritchard "stepped down" in a parachute from the airship, and, landing lightly, took charge of the landing of the big machine. An approaching cyclone, which would have made it almost impossible to handle the airship at Mineola, was responsible for a rather hurried start back at midnight of Wednesday, July 9th. She visited Broadway in the midst of the midnight glare, turned over Forty-second Street a little after one o'clock in the morning, and put out to sea and her home airdrome. The voyage back was mostly with favoring winds, and she landed at Pulham, the airship station in Norfolk, after 75 hours and 3 minutes of flight. The voyage back was practically without incident except for the failure of one engine, which in no way held back the airship. She was turned off her course to East Fortune by reports that there were storms and head winds which might hold her back in case she kept on her way. The voyage was probably the most The airship has been very much neglected by popular favor. Its physical clumsiness, its lack of sporting competition in comparison with the airplane which must fight to keep itself up in the air, its lack of romance as contrasted with that of the airplane in war, have all tended to cast somewhat of a shadow over the lighter-than-air vessel and cause the public to pass it by without interest. It is a very real fact, therefore, that very few people realize either the services of the airship in the war or its possibilities for the future. During the war the airship was invaluable in the ceaseless vigil for the submarine. England early stretched a cordon of airship guards all about her coasts and crippled the U-boats' work thereby. The airship had a The German Zeppelins, on the other hand, stand out in public imagination as a failure in the war, especially because the British shortly established an airplane barrage which proved to be their masters. This view is correct only in so far as it applies to interior raiding, for which, indeed, the Zeppelin was not designed. How untrue it is of the Zeppelin as the outpost for the German fleet British officers will readily admit. Indeed, they credit them with the escape of the German fleet at Jutland, one of the deepest regrets in British naval history. As eyes for the German fleet in the North Sea, the Zeppelins, with their great cruising range and power of endurance, proved almost invaluable. Airships have, then, behind them a rich heritage and before them a bright future. The great difference, of course, between the airplane and the airship is that the former sustains itself as a heavier-than-air vessel by the lifting power of the air in relation to a body driven hard against it by its powerful engines, while the latter sustains itself as a lighter-than-air body because of the large amount of air displaced by a huge envelop loaded with gas much lighter than the air itself. The contrast is obvious; one vessel is small, agile, and very fast; the other is slow and clumsy. The airship cannot attain anything like the speed of the airplane, nor can it go so high or maneuver so quickly, but on the other hand, at least for the immediate present, it can stay afloat very much longer and carry much greater weight. Moreover, the airship has certain other easily perceptible advantages over the At present airship travel gives a greater feeling of comfort and security. Sleeping is a calm experience; moving about comparatively simple. Also there is less noise than in an airplane where the engines beat incessantly and the wind rushes through the wires and struts. An airship has no wires and can at the same time slow down and even shut off its engine, so that it need be no more noisy than a motor-car. Engine failure also is not so serious as in an airplane, for the gas-bag will always keep the ship up until there has been a chance for repairs. Up to the present, too, the airship is less of a fair-weather flier than the airplane. A surprising record has been attained in the war by British airships, as is shown by the fact that in 1918, a year of execrable weather, there where only nine days during which Of course, the great difficulty of airships has been their ungainly size and the difficulty of housing them. The sheds, particularly those for the Zeppelins, have been most costly, but the British have recently developed a system of mooring masts which make much of this expense unnecessary. If such a device can be successfully put into every-day use it will enormously increase the ease of loading and unloading passengers, which now makes for considerable discomfort and loss of time. Some of the plans for future airships are unbelievable to one who has not followed their development carefully. Already there is planned in England a monster ship known as the "ten million," for the reason that it will have a gas capacity of ten million cubic feet, over four times that of the largest Zeppelin. The length is placed at 1,100 feet, the speed at 95 miles an hour, the cruising range 20,000 miles, and the cost at about $1,000,000. As a matter of actual Airship travel would undoubtedly be expensive. The gas alone to maintain such a vessel as described is expected to cost about $30 an hour, which, added to the original investment for the ship and its house and the wages of the crew and the 200 or more skilled men at each station, would come up to a high figure. At the same time, the airship would not afford the element of very high speed which is so certain to justify any expense which may have to be put into the airplane. Nevertheless, with the improvements that are sure to come, with the ability to reach places not touched by other methods of travel, the freedom from all the delays, inconveniences, and expense of trans-shipment, this preliminary charge will be largely compensated for. Those who sponsor the airship urge that it will be used almost exclusively for long-distance flights beyond the range of the ordinary airplane and very little for short local flights. For transatlantic travel, for There are several records which would easily justify it. Besides the flight across the Atlantic by the R-34 and the four-day trip of the German airship from Bulgaria to Africa and back, a British airship during the war stayed up for 50 hours and 55 minutes, and another, just after the armistice, stayed up for 61 hours. An American naval dirigible a short time after the armistice made a flight from New York to Key West, 1,200 miles, at 40 miles an hour, for 29-1/2 hours, with one stop at Hampton Roads. As an example of some of the difficulties of airship travel, this landing was possible only after the ship had circled the town and dropped a message asking the people to go to a large field near by and catch the dirigible drag-net when it approached the ground. Even at that, however, the time of less than a day and a quarter for what is usually a very arduous train trip from New York down the coast to Florida gives some indication of the possibilities of this method of travel when properly developed. Just how the balance will be struck between airplanes and airships is a big question. It is interesting to note, however, that the supporters of the airship have worked out a general theory that the lighter-than-air vessel with its already demonstrated cruising and weight-carrying capacity will be used for all long routes, and for that almost exclusively, while the heavier-than-air vessel, with its great speed and facility for maneuvering, will be used for local flights. This, in their viewpoint, would mean that the world would be girded by great lanes of airships, fed from a few main centers by swift-scurrying airplanes radiating in from every direction. IXToCTHE CALL OF THE SKIESThe day of the air has undoubtedly come. The old order of the world has been entirely changed. A new life is breaking in over the near horizon. Almost in a moment the span of the world has shrunk to a quarter of its former size, so that where before we thought in terms of countries very soon we must think in terms of continents. The world is shortly to be linked up as it never has been before, till the great continents are brought as near as were the near-by nations of the past years. Any one who doubts the future of aviation should realize the helplessness of the science after the armistice because of the complete lack of international laws to make possible its application in Europe, where it was most highly developed. With men and machines ready, they had to hold to the ground largely because there was in force no treaties As a result a new law must be written. The law of the air will be one of the most intricate and the most fascinating in the world. It presents problems never before presented and covers a scope paralleled only by the laws of the sea. Very fortunately, however, aerial international law may be written at the very start of the science by a common international standard and practice, thus obviating the greatest part of the divergences which long years of habit have grafted into the maritime laws of the various nations. The slate is clean so that uniformity may be assured in a law which is soon to come into the most vital touch with the daily lives of the nations. Who, for instance, owns the air above the various nations? Obviously the individual landowner has rights, especially as to freedom from damage. The nation also has rights, especially for its protection and for police work. How high, however, does this jurisdiction go? Some assert that a maximum altitude should be set, say five thousand feet, Then comes the question of passports, customs, registration, safety precautions, and damages. As already shown, the man on the ground is helpless against the airplane which chooses to defy him. People and goods can cross national lines by the air without passports or customs. There will be no main ports of entry as in sea or train commerce, and it is too much to think that any nation can patrol its whole aerial frontier in all its various air strata. Undesirable immigrants or small precious freight can be smuggled in with the greatest ease through the route of the air. Obviously the most elaborate international rules are necessary. Planes must have some method of international registration and license, just as in a more limited sense ships on the seas have what amounts to an international status. Landing-fields must be established and open to foreign planes, each nation providing some kind of reciprocal landing rights to other nations. Arrangements must be made so that if a monkey-wrench drops out of a plane a mile or two up in the air proper damages can be This but sketches the problems. It shows, however, how closely this new science will bind the world together and obliterate national lines and nationalistic feelings. As the sea has been the great civilizer of the past, so the air will be the great civilizer of the future. Through it men will be brought most intimately in touch with one another and forced to learn to live together as they have not been forced to live together before. The artificial barriers that have stood so firm between nations in the past are now swept away and a great common medium of intercommunication opened. Let it not be understood that all this will take place overnight. Far from it, for the experience of the war has taught only too well that the organization of an air force takes time and patience. Up to date the essential fact is that the science, the value, and the possibilities of flight have been proved in a thousand different ways. Vistas of travel and experience have been opened up which but a few months ago would have seemed fanciful. Everywhere men are dreaming dreams of the future which challenge one's deepest imagination. Already Now comes news of an airplane with room for ninety-two passengers. Engine power and wing space have gone on increasing in a dazzling way till one is almost afraid to guess what the future may hold. But, omitting all prophecy, the actual accomplishments to date are so stupendous that there is no need to speculate as to the future. If all technical development were to stop just where it stands, the factories and workshops of the world could well be occupied for years in turning out the machines necessary for the work awaiting them. Scientific development has gone so infinitely far ahead of actual production that as yet aviation is not being put to a fraction of its use. Even more serious, however, is the general public failure to realize the gift which is within their reach. Flying was first a circus stunt and later a war wonder. The solid practical accomplishments have been lost sight of in the weird or the spectacular. People who marveled when a British plane climbed up nearly six miles into the air, or 30,000 feet, where its engine refused to run and its observer fainted, failed generally What is now needed is a big, broad imagination to seize hold of this new thing and galvanize it into actual every-day use. There are many skeptics, of course, many who point out, for instance, that the element of cost is prohibitive. This is both fallacious in reasoning and untrue in fact. A modern two-seated airplane, even to-day, costs not over $5,000, or about the price of a good automobile. Very soon, with manufacturing costs standardized and the elements of newness worn off, this price will fall as sharply as it has already fallen during the war. But what, after all, is cost in comparison with time? Modern civilization will pay dearly for any invention which will increase ever so little its hours of effectiveness. The great German liners before the war lavished money without stint to save a day or two in crossing the Atlantic. The limited express trains between New York, Boston, Washington, and Chicago have for years made money by carrying busy men a few hours more quickly to their destination. What will not be paid if these times of travel can be reduced practically to half? The element of danger has been reduced The great need of aviation to-day is faith—faith among the people, among the manufacturers, among the men who will give it its being. Its success is as inevitable as that day follows night, but the question of when that success is attained, now or generations from now, is dependent on the vision which men put into it. If they are apathetic and unreasonable, if they chafe at details or expect too much, it will be held back. If, on the other hand, they go to meet it with confidence, with coolness, and with a realization both of its difficulties and its potentialities, its success will be immediate. The task is one of the greatest, the most The development of aviation will be world-wide and will include all sorts and races of men. The nations all start pretty much abreast. Those which developed war air services have an advantage in material and experience, but this is a matter only for the moment. The main lines of progress are now pretty widely known and the field is wide open to those who have the imagination to enter it. There is practically no handicap at this early stage which cannot be overcome with ease. There is, of course, an element of As aviation runs into every phase of activity it will require every kind of man—manufacturer, scientist, mechanic, and flier. It offers problems more interesting and more complex than almost any others in the world. The field is new and virgin, the demand world-wide, and the rewards great. For the flier there is all the joy of life in the air, above the chains of the earth, reaching out to new, unvisited regions, free to come and go for almost any distance at any level desired, a freedom unparalleled. For the manufacturer there is all the lure of a new The best men of every type are needed to give aviation its full fruition. In Europe this is realized to a supreme degree. England especially, and also France and Italy, have put their best genius at work to fulfil the conquest of the air. Their progress is astonishing and should be a challenge to the New World. After the natural hiatus which followed the armistice the leading men have set to work with redoubled vigor to take first place in the air. In twenty years' time our life of to-day will seem centuries old, just as to-day it is hard to realize that the automobile and motor-truck do not date back much over a generation. No change that has ever come in man's history will be so great as the change which takes him up off the ground and into the air. This swift and dazzling era that is so close upon us is hardly suspected by the great mass of people. The world will Has there ever in all history been an appeal such as this? ADDENDUMToCA PAGE IN THE DICTIONARY FOR AVIATORSWhat is to become of all the new words, some of them with new meanings, the old words with new meanings, and the new words with old meanings, coined by the aviators of the American and British flying services in the war? Are they to die an early death from lack of nourishment and lack of use, or will they go forward, full-throated into the dictionary, where they may belong? Here are just a few of them, making a blushing dÉbut, so that it may be seen at once just how bad they are: Aerobatics—A newly coined word to describe aerial "stunting," which includes all forms of the sport of looping, spinning, and rolling. The term originated in the training schedule for pilots, and all pilots must take a course in aerobatics before being fully qualified. Aerofoil—Any plane surface of an airplane designed to obtain reaction on its surfaces from the air through which it moves. This includes Aileron—This is a movable plane, attached to the outer extremities of an airplane wing. The wing may be either raised or lowered by moving the ailerons. Raising the right wing, by depressing the right aileron, correspondingly lowers the left wing by raising the left aileron. They exercise lateral control of a machine. Blimp—A non-rigid dirigible balloon. The dirigible holds its shape due to the fact that its gas is pumped into the envelop to a pressure greater than the atmosphere. It can move through the air at forty miles an hour, but high speed will cause it to buckle in the nose. Bump—A rising or falling column of air which may be met while flying. A machine will be bumped up or bumped down on a bumpy day. A hot day over flat country, at noon, will generally be exceedingly bumpy. Crash—Any airplane accident. It may be a complete wreck or the plane may only be slightly injured by a careless landing. Crashes are often classified by the extent of damage. A class A crash, for instance, is a complete washout. A class D crash is an undercarriage and propeller broken. Dope—A varnish-like liquid applied to the linen or cotton wing fabrics. It is made chiefly of acetone, and shrinks the fabric around the wooden wing structure until it becomes as Drift—Head resistance encountered by the machine moving through the air. This must be overcome by the power of the engine. The term is also used in aerial navigation in its ordinary sense, and a machine flying a long stretch over water may drift off the course, due to winds of which the pilot has no knowledge. Dud—A condition of being without life or energy. An engine may be dud; a day may be dud for flying. A shell which will not explode is a dud. A pilot may be a dud, without skill. It is almost a synonym for washout. Flatten Out—To come out of a gliding angle into a horizontal glide a few feet from the ground before making a landing. The machine loses flying speed on a flat glide, and settles to the ground. Flying Speed—Speed of a plane fast enough to create lift with its wing surfaces. This varies with the type of plane from forty-five miles an hour as a minimum to the faster scout machines which require seventy miles an hour to carry them through the air. When a machine loses flying speed, due to stalling, it is in a dangerous situation, and flying speed must be recovered by gliding, or the machine will fall into a spin and crash out of control. Forced Landing—Any landing for reasons beyond the control of a pilot is known as a forced Fuselage—This word, meaning the body of a machine, came over from the French. The cockpits, controls, and gasolene-tanks are usually carried in the fuselage. Hop—Any flight in an airplane or seaplane is a hop. A hop may last five minutes or fifteen hours. Joy-stick—The control-stick of an airplane was invented by a man named Joyce, and for a while it was spoken of as the Joyce-stick, later being shortened to the present form. It operates the ailerons and elevators. Landfall—A sight of land by a seaplane or dirigible which has been flying over an ocean course. An aviator who has been regulating his flight by instruments will check up his navigation on the first landfall. Pancake—An extremely slow landing is known as a pancake landing. The machine almost comes to a stop about ten feet off the ground, and with the loss of her speed drops flat. There is little forward motion, and this kind of landing is used in coming down in plowed fields or standing grain. Jules Vedrines made his landing on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris by "pancaking." Stall—A machine which has lost its flying speed has stalled. This does not mean that its engine has stopped, but in the flying sense of the word means that friction of the wing surfaces has overcome the power of the engine to drive the machine through the air. The only way out of a stall is to regain speed by nosing down. A machine which has lost its engine power will not stall if put into a glide, and it may be brought to a safe landing with care. Strut—The upright braces between the upper and lower wings of a machine are called struts. They take the compression of the truss frame of the biplane or triplane. Each wing is divided into truss sections with struts. S-turn—A gliding turn, made without the use of engine power. A machine forced to seek a landing will do a number of S-turns to maneuver itself into a good field. Tail Spin—This is the most dreaded of all airplane accidents, and the most likely to be fatal. A machine out of control, due often to stalling Take-off—This is the start of the machine in its flight. After a short run over the ground the speed of the machine will create enough lift so that the plane leaves the ground. Taxi—To move an airplane or seaplane on land or water under its own power when picking out a starting-place, or coming in after a landing. This is not to be confused with the run for a start when the plane is getting up speed to fly, using all her power. The NC-4 "taxied" a hundred miles to Chatham after a forced landing, and the NC-3 came in two hundred and five miles to Ponta Delgada after she landed at sea. Vertical Bank—In this position the machine is making a turn with one wing pointing directly to the ground, and its lateral axis has become vertical. The machine turns very quickly in a short space of air, and the maneuver is sometimes spoken of as a splitting Washout—Means anything which was but is not now—anything useless, anything that has lost its usefulness, anything that never was useful. Flying may be washed out; that is, stopped; a day may be a washout, a vacation; a machine may be a washout, wrecked beyond repair; a pilot may be a washout, useless as a pilot. It has a variety of meanings, and each one is obvious in its connection. The term became familiar to American fliers with the Royal Air Force. Zoom—To gain supernormal flying speed and then pull the machine up into the air at high speed. The rush of wind will zo-o-om in the ears of the pilot. It is a sport in the country to zoom on farmers, on houses and barns, nosing directly for the object on the ground and pulling up just in time to clear it with the undercarriage.
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