Public-domain ebook
by Sweetser, Arthur; Lamont, Gordon
Language: en3,079 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: History - Modern (1750+)·Engineering & Technology·How To ...
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #23581.
The book is a practical treatise on aviation written just after World War I by two experienced pilots, an American officer of the United States Air Service and a Royal Air Force flying‑officer. It opens with a bold claim that any ordinary, active man with decent eyesight and nerve can learn to fly, arguing that training, not innate talent, produces a competent pilot. The authors dismiss elaborate physiological tests and instead emphasize common‑sense qualities such as balance, touch, and judgment, drawing on the Royal Air Force’s experience in Canada. From there they trace the rapid wartime evolution of aircraft from flimsy stunt machines to sophisticated combat tools, and they argue that the same momentum should be harnessed for peacetime commercial and civilian use.
The prose reflects the earnest, didactic tone of early‑1920s technical literature, mixing vivid wartime anecdotes with straightforward instructional advice. Its language is formal yet accessible, aimed at engineers, businessmen, and the curious layperson who wants to understand how flight moved from a daring novelty to a practical industry. Readers interested in the historical development of aeronautics, the post‑war transition to civil aviation, or the mindset of early aviation pioneers will find the book both informative and inspiring.
The opening · free to read
Any ordinary, active man, provided he has reasonably good eyesight and nerve, can fly, and fly well. If he has nerve enough to drive an automobile through the streets of a large city, and perhaps argue with a policeman on the question of speed limits, he can take himself off the ground in an airplane, and also land--a thing vastly more difficult and dangerous. We hear a great deal about special tests for the flier--vacuum-chambers, spinning-chairs, co-ordination tests--there need be none of these. The average man in the street, the clerk, the laborer, the mechanic, the salesman, with proper training and interest can be made good, if not highly proficient pilots. If there may be one deduction drawn from the experience of instructors in the Royal Air Force, it is that it is the training, not the individual, that makes the pilot.
Education is not the prime requisite. Good common sense and judgment are much more valuable. Above all, a sense of touch, such as a man can acquire playing the piano, swinging a pick, riding a bicycle, driving an automobile, or playing tennis, is important. A man should not be too sensitive to loss of balance, nor should he be lacking in a sense of balance. There are people who cannot sail a sail-boat or ride a bicycle--these people have no place in the air. But ninety-nine out of one hundred men, the ordinary normal men, can learn to fly. This has been the experience of the Royal Air Force in Canada.
There will be as much difference between the civilian pilot, the man who owns an airplane of the future and drives it himself, and the army flier, as there is now between the man who drives his car on Sunday afternoons over country roads and the racing driver who is striving for new records on specially built tracks. If aeronautics is to be made popular, every one must be able to take part in it. It must cease to be a highly specialized business. It must be put on a basis where the ordinary person can snap the flying wires of a machine, listen to their twang, and know them to be true, just as any one now thumps his rear tire to see whether it is properly inflated.
The book, in a large sense a labor of love, is the collaboration of an American officer of the United States Air Service and another American, a flying-officer in the Royal Air Force. If the Royal Air Force way of doing things seems to crowd itself to the fore in the discussion of the training of pilots, the authors crave indulgence.
In a subject which lends itself dangerously to imagination, the authors have endeavored to base what they have written, not on prophecy, but on actual accomplishments to date. The latter are indeed so solid that there is no necessity for guesswork. Aviation has proved itself beyond peradventure to those who have followed it, but up to the present the general public has not sufficiently analyzed its demonstrated possibilities.
The era of the air is undoubtedly at hand; it now remains to take the steps necessary to reap full advantages from it.
ARTHUR SWEETSER, GORDON LAMONT.
The 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 the actual demonstration and the field of imagination which was opened up, these early flights proved to be a world's wonder only for a moment.
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 working out the less spectacular applications of its principles. Aviation remained very much of a poor sister in the scientific world, held back by all the discredit attaching to the early stunt-flying and by failure to break through the ancient belief in its impracticability for any purposes other than the sensational.
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.
Then came the war. Man's imagination was aroused to a feverish desire for the development of any device for causing destruction. Conventions, usages, and prejudices were laid aside and every possibility of inflicting damage on the enemy was examined on its merits. Sentiment or any regard for personal danger involved was thrown to the winds. Science was mobilized in all lines in the struggle to keep one step ahead of the enemy.
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 side kept such strict watch that ground observation was greatly hampered. Apparently there was only one way to find out what was going on behind the enemy's lines. That was by looking from above. The first aviator, therefore, who sailed into the air and spied the enemy introduced one of the most important developments in the strategy of modern warfare.
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 to be developed, and bombs were carried in ever-increasing numbers and size.
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 wandered off by itself wherever it saw fit, gathered what information it could, and returned to drop a note to the commander below, developed into a highly efficient two-seated plane equipped with machine-guns for protection against attack, wireless for sending back messages, and cameras for photographing the enemy's positions below. The plane which had earlier dropped an occasional bomb in a hit-or-miss fashion over the side now developed either into a powerful two-seater with a great weight-carrying capacity and a continually more efficient scientific method of aiming its missiles or into a huge machine for long-distance night-bombing work capable of carrying from two to a dozen men and from two to four tons of bombs. During this time the strictly fighting plane, usually a single-seater, increased in speed, "ceiling," and agility till it could dart, twist, and dive about, three to five miles above the trenches, protecting friendly bombing and observation planes below from enemy attack or swooping down to send enemy planes in flames to the ground.
Vital though all this work was for the war, it had an incomparably greater value for the perpetual struggle which all mankind is waging against nature. While the various nations were seeking to destroy one another through the air, they were in reality destroying the chains which bound them to the ground and winning their freedom in a new element. The advance which the Allies or the Germans made over each other in scientific aerial development was a joint advance over the restrictions of gravitation.
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