CHAPTER XII
COMMERCIAL FLYING
BUSINESS POSSIBILITIES OF THE AEROPLANE—SOME CELEBRATED AIR RECORDS—GERMANY’S INITIAL ADVANTAGE—A HUGE INVESTMENT—CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS—DISCOMFORTS OVERCOME—INEXPENSIVE FLYABOUTS—THE SPORTS TYPE—ARCTIC FLIGHT—NO EAST OR WEST
Inthe face of the extraordinary development of the aeroplane and what it has accomplished in the Great War, both for the Hun and the Ally, it seems almost incredible that it was only as recent as December 17, 1903, that the Wright brothers made man’s first successful sustained and steered flight in a heavier-than-air machine driven by a gas-engine over the sand-dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina! Upon that historic occasion Wilbur Wright flew 852 feet in fifty-nine seconds, and his four-cylinder gas-engine could generate only 12 horse-power!
Since then an aeroplane has carried an aviator from Paris via Constantinople to Cairo, Egypt; a biplane driven by a 300 horse-power gas-engine has climbed to an altitude of 28,900 feet; another with a 450 horse-power engine has ascended with two men to an altitude of 30,500 feet; still another, with a wing spread of 127 feet, propelled by four twelve-cylinder motorsdeveloping 450 horse-power each, has lifted forty people to an altitude of 6,000 feet for an hour’s cruise over London. Still another machine of the same type, but with only 100 feet of wing spread, and propelled by only two 400 horse-power engines, has transported five men and a useful load of a ton all the way from London to Constantinople and back to Saloniki, a distance of more than 2,000 miles, and has carried six people from London via France, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia to Delhi, India, a distance of over 6,000 miles. A two-seater, with a pilot and mechanic, has flown from Turin to Naples and back, a distance of 920 miles, without stopping! On April 25, 1919, an F-5 U.S. Naval seaplane, carrying four aviators, flew 1,250 miles in twenty-four hours and ten minutes without stopping. A late report from Italy says that a huge triplane, measuring 150 feet, weighing many tons, and driven by three 700 horse-power engines has taken seventy-eight people up for a ride at one time. A piano has been freighted in another aeroplane from London to Paris. The Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Taurus Mountains have been aerially transnavigated by aeroplane. The Sahara Desert, the Pyramids, the English Channel, the Mediterranean and the Adriatic Seas have been flown over in heavier-than-air machines.