Courtesy of Flying Magazine.Interior view of the Graham White twenty-four-seater aeroplane in flight.The sound of the motors is shut out by padding. The room is electrically heated.
Courtesy of Flying Magazine.Interior view of the Graham White twenty-four-seater aeroplane in flight.The sound of the motors is shut out by padding. The room is electrically heated.
Courtesy of Flying Magazine.
Interior view of the Graham White twenty-four-seater aeroplane in flight.
The sound of the motors is shut out by padding. The room is electrically heated.
In the war zone the aeroplane has been put to the most astonishing uses. It has spied out the most hidden secrets of the enemy; it has dropped spies behind his lines; it has photographed thousands of square miles of European and Asiatic terrain; it has directed thefire of artillery and the march of hundreds of thousands of troops; it has scattered cigarettes over advancing soldiers; it has dropped cans of tomatoes to thirsty and hungry men in isolated stretches of the desert; it has carried food to besieged camps; it has bombed trains, concentrations of soldiers, ammunition-dumps and ammunition-factories, gas-plants, and innumerable other military and manufacturing objectives. It has performed more manœuvres in the air than the tumbler pigeon. It has fought the most extraordinary battles. It has descended so low as to rake soldiers in the trenches, transports on the highways, trains on the railroads, and even officers in their automobiles. Indeed, by bombing manufacturing cities over a belt of a hundred miles along the Rhine it has done more to break down the morale of the German people than any other factor. Truly this new engine of man has developed, under the intense necessity of war, farther in this short space of time than any other mechanical device—not excepting the automobile—which man has ever invented or fostered.
But with all the wonderful things the aeroplane has accomplished and with all the stupendous advance it has made as a carrier of man and his chattels, even though it does travel the shortest distance between any two points on this planet with the greatest speed, nevertheless, much must yet be done to make the aeroplane a safe, comfortable, popular, and inexpensive means of aerial transportation. Therefore, before we attempt to demonstrate how this fastest engine offlight can be made to do man’s will as easily and comfortably as the powerful steam-engine, the mysterious electric dynamo, and the subtle gasoline motor, let us first examine in detail what has already been accomplished in aeroplane transportation. Then, with our feet firmly planted on the ground but with our heads up in the clouds so that we may see over the highest mountains, let us look down the corridors of the ages and discern through the mists of time some of the transportation feats which this new invention of man will most certainly perform.
From the time of the first flight of the Wright brothers till the beginning of the Great War, owing to the lack of commercial incentive, the development in aviation was similar to that of any other science that involved some physical dangers. It is true that M. Bleriot had flown across the English Channel on July 25, 1909; that Jules Vedrines had been carried in an aeroplane from Paris via Vienna, Sofia, and Constantinople to Cairo, Egypt; and that Roland Garros had flown 500 miles across the Mediterranean Sea from St. Raphael, France, to Tunis, Africa; but these facts were regarded as sporting events or stunts that could not be regularly performed by aeroplanes without great loss of life. For that reason practically no commercial interest was taken in aviation, and very little military—except by Germany, which was ready to seize upon and develop anything that would help her to realizeDer Tagwhen she would be conqueror of the world.
Indeed, few people outside of those connected with aeronautics know that one of the chief reasons why the Potsdam gang made the Sarajevo murders a pretext for hurling the whole world into war was the firm belief that Germany had at that time the complete supremacy of the air. She had constructed a fleet of twoscore Zeppelins, some measuring 710 feet in length and being buoyed up by over 2,000,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas, driven by six Maybach gas-engines, each developing 250 horse-power, and carrying a crew of forty-eight men and a useful load of four tons.
What destruction those fleets of lighter-than-air machines wrought upon the open villages, towns, and cities of England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Rumania, and Russia—not to mention the part they played in the naval battle of Jutland—constitutes another chapter in the history of German aerial preparedness and sky-line transportation that is told in the chapter on the commercial Zeppelin. But just as Germany seized on the submarine and developed it for polemic purposes, so she saw the possibilities of the aeroplane as a scout, fighter, and bombing subsidiary to the Zeppelin. With the object of developing the aeronautic branch of the service beyond any other country the German Government gave every encouragement to aviation. In 1914 the Huns offered the sum of $55,000 to be awarded for the best water-cooled and air-cooled aeromotor of 80 to 200 horse-power. Among the points to be avoided in its construction was the “use of materialfrom any other country than Germany.” Under the auspices of the Aerial League of Germany the Kaiser also put up fifty thousand marks in prizes for the best altitude, cross-country, and non-stop records made by standardized aeroplanes taken from stock. Subsidized as the German aero manufacturers were by their government, it was not difficult for their flyers to carry off all the prizes at this meet, so that before the end of July, 1914, they had made the following new world’s records:
Otto Linnekogel on July 9 climbed to 21,654 feet, breaking Roland Garros’s record of 19,032; on July 14 Heinrich Oelrich reached 26,246 feet; and Reinhold Boehm flew for twenty-four hours and two minutes without stopping his engine!
Those who realize how much time, money, and energy have been expended by this country during the time we were in the war in getting quantity production of aeroplanes and aeromotors will appreciate what it meant to Germany in July, 1914, when she declared war on the world, to have all her experimentation done and her aeronautical factories tuned up and nearly a thousand standardized planes equipped with standardized Benz, Mercedes, and Maybach motors while England had barely 250 planes of almost as many different types, and France was in a similar condition with about 300 aeroplanes and engines!
With command of the land and the air Germany felt she could neutralize or overcome Britain’s command of the sea by overrunning France, seizing the Channelports, and by flying over the British fleet land an army in England and conquer the “tight little isle.” Indeed, for three years after the first battle of the Marne the fear of just such a contingency compelled England to keep a large standing army at home while Germany with her Zeppelins and aeroplanes, even from distant Belgium, terrorized Scotland and England with almost daily bombing air raids.
But as soon as the war broke out the governments of the world began to appreciate what could be accomplished by these little toys of sportsmen, and to realize that the side which built and equipped the largest and fastest fleet of scouts and fighters could put out the eyes of his opponent and win the gigantic struggle; for an army or a navy cannot feel its way forward like a worm without being destroyed! This precipitated an enormous economic and manufacturing race to make enough aircraft and to train enough skilful aviators to drive the enemy from the air and get control of the third dimension. The fighting and bombing possibilities of the aeroplane were not then fully appreciated; that came afterward. Consequently the two objectives first sought in the actual designing and building of the aeroplanes were manœuvring ability and speed, and later bombing capacity. Inherent stability and sufficient factors of safety, the two chief considerations in peace construction of aircraft, were only secondary or entirely neglected.
For nearly four years this war of tools and this war in the air went on with fluctuating vicissitudes for Hunand Ally. First came the German scouting and fighting Fokkers equipped with motors which owing to their superior horse-power made them faster and more easy to manœuvre than anything the Allies had until the famous French Baby Nieuports with 110 horse-power Le Rhone engines appeared in 1916 and began to equal the Boche in those two prime requisites. Then, owing to the number of machines shot down or forced to land through engine trouble, neither side could long keep any secret of aeromotor construction or aeroplane design from an opponent. Therefore the struggle for quantity production began. In the meantime the huge bimotored Caudrons, Voisins, Breguets, Handley Pages, and Capronis began to be built in large numbers by the French, British, and Italians, and the Gothas by the Germans. Each year saw an increase in the horse-power of the motors and in the size of the aeroplanes; and still, owing to the infinite area of the skies to manœuvre in and the lack of large aerial fleets flying as a unit, neither side could prevent the scouting-machines or the bombing raiders from spying out or bombing any objective within a flying radius of two hundred miles of their aerodromes.
With the advent of the United States into the struggle it became more and more apparent to the German military leaders that they must win the war before the tremendous manufacturing and aviator resources of this country could be felt on the West Front. That, of course, was one of the cardinal reasons for the series of great German drives beginning with March 21, 1918.
The Allies, too, now fully realized that the Great War would be won in the air, so they expended every effort and resource to build aeroplanes to clear the German machines from the skies and to bomb Germany from the air. How much these raids behind the Boche lines had to do with the breaking down of the morale of the German people and Teuton soldier cannot yet be properly estimated. However, to give an idea of the severity of this war in the air and destruction wrought by bombing-machines in Germany we know that the British Independent Air Force sent out over the enemy territory squadrons of five to one hundred aeroplanes, which dumped daily, rain or shine, sixty to one hundred tons of high explosives on military objectives and manufacturing plants scattered over a belt a hundred miles wide all along the Rhine Valley. These raids penetrated as far as Essen and Heidelberg. They destroyed ammunition-dumps, railroad-yards, chemical and gas works. By blowing up railroad communications with the rear they virtually cut the arteries of the German army. Moreover, by their repeated excursions into Holland they disrupted the sleep, the rest, and the working capacity of the people in the manufacturing towns and cities in southern Germany.
In the battles in the air, too, the Allies were rapidly becoming supreme. On October 18, 1918, the British air force alone destroyed sixty-seven Hun machines and brought down fifteen more out of control, losing only fifteen machines themselves. Thus these fliersblinded the German artillery, and in contact patrol swept the Teuton trenches, bombed their motor and rail transports, and dispersed concentrations of their troops. Indeed, the only place to escape these relentless dragons of the air was actually under ground.
Meanwhile, after much delay and many mistakes, American-built aeroplanes were beginning to appear in quantity on the West Front. Here is the record of what the Americans accomplished during the short time in which they had machines: 926 German aeroplanes and 73 balloons were destroyed. The Americans lost 265 aeroplanes and 38 balloons.
Finally, in October, 1918, 350 American-built aeroplanes in one single formation dropped thirty-two tons of high explosives on Wavrille. When the armistice was signed, there were actually engaged on the West Front 740 American aeroplanes, 744 pilots, 457 observers, and 23 aerial gunners. Of these, 329 were pursuit machines, 296 observation machines, and 115 were bombers.
How much damage the French and Italians did to German aerial supremacy and manufacturing efficiency is difficult to summarize. It was very considerable and, taken in conjunction with the others, sufficient to convince the German military leaders that the Allied production of aircraft was so rapid that within less than a year at most the Allies would sweep the Huns from the skies and not even Berlin would escape the fate the Huns had so often visited upon London, Paris, and Bucharest. Finally the plea issued by theGerman Government to the Allies, about a month before the end, to confine air raids to within a fifty-mile zone of the fighting-line was a complete confession that the Allied supremacy of the air was one of the most deciding factors in causing Germany to surrender.
But though the primary uses of the aeroplanes during the last four years were polemic, nevertheless, several of the startling new feats demonstrate clearly what may be expected when the same aircraft manufacturers design and construct machines for the avowed purpose of commercial aerial transportation. Here are only a few of the most startling world’s records that suggest these possibilities:
On August 29, 1917, Captain Marquis Giulio Laureati flew in an S. I. A. from Turin to Naples and return, a distance of 920 miles, establishing a new non-stop flight world’s record, and a month later he and his mechanic flew from Turin to London, crossing the Alps at an altitude of 12,000 feet and negotiating a distance of 656 miles at an average speed of 89 miles an hour. The speed, however, was not remarkable, for 100 miles an hour is the average speed for big machines, and 150 miles was made by scouting-machines on the West Front during the war. On April 19 Captain E. F. White, U. S. A., in a DH-4, flew from Chicago to New York, 727 miles, without stopping, in six hours and fifty minutes.
On April 25, 1919, four naval aviators, in a seaplane of the F-5 type, Serial No. 3589, made a new world’srecord for an endurance flight when they flew, officially, 1,250 miles in twenty hours and ten minutes. The record was made during a continuous flight from 11.42A. M.April 25 until 7.52A. M.April 26. Throughout the entire afternoon and night, and often bucking a strong breeze over the Chesapeake Bay and the Virginia Capes, the F-5 described a great circle, extending northward to the mouth of the Potomac River and then eastward to the Atlantic Ocean, sweeping over the Capes and then inland to the naval station.
The four men in the machine ate three meals during the flight.
The machine left the naval base with 850 gallons of gasoline. When it landed there was scarcely two gallons in its tanks.
The F-5 is an improved type of flying-boat that the Navy Department intended using in patrol duty for war purposes. It has a wing spread of 105 feet. The machine was built by Curtiss, and is known as a “kite boat,” equipped with twin Liberty motors.
At Wright Field, near Dayton, Ohio, on September 18, 1918, Major R. W. Schroeder, of the United States Air Service, in an American-built aeroplane driven by an American-made Hispano-Suiza motor, climbed to a new world’s altitude record of 28,900 feet, only 102 feet short of the highest peak of the Himalaya Mountains. In December, 1918, Captain Lang and Lieutenant Willets claimed to have ascended to 30,500 feet in a Bristol aeroplane, but the record has not been homologed. On November 19, 1918, an aeroplane flew from Combes la Villa to Paris and return, a distance ofeighty miles, carrying thirty-eight passengers. Two days before a Handley Page, with a wing spread of 127 feet and a fuselage measuring sixty-five feet, propelled by four motors and piloted by an American, carried nine women and thirty-one men to a height of 6,000 feet during an hour’s cruise over London, England. A year ago another type of this same machine, but with only a 100-foot wing spread and driven by only two 275 horse-power motors and carrying five men, flew across country from London to Constantinople, dropped bombs on the German cruiserGoebenanchored there, and then flew back to Saloniki, covering a total distance of more than 2,000 miles and remaining in the air a total of thirty-one hours. The flight was via Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles—in order to avoid the Alps—and from there to Pisa, Rome, Naples, and then across 250 miles of mountainous country, often at a height of 10,000 feet.
Near the close of the year a huge triplane Caproni, with its 150-foot wing spread, driven by three 700 horse-power Fiat motors, developing a total of 2,100 horse-power, has carried seventy-eight people in trial flights at the factory!
A Model F-5 flying-boat, with a wing spread of only 102 feet, driven by two Liberty motors, and lifting a 50-foot boat, has carried 12,900 pounds over many hundreds of miles looking for German submarines, and another flying-boat, with 123 feet of wing spread, carried fifteen officers and a pilot from Washington, District of Columbia, to Newport News, Virginia.
On November 27, 1918, a Curtiss N C 1 carried fiftypeople for a short flight at Rockaway Beach, New York. It was drawn by three Liberty motors. The flying weight of the machine was 22,000 pounds, and the machine had a wing spread of 126 feet, and the NC-3 and NC-4, which flew from Rockaway, New York, to Halifax, 520 miles for the first leg of the transatlantic, weighed 28,000 pounds, and were driven by four Liberty motors.
The War Department on December 23 also announced that a squadron of four army training-machines flew from San Diego, California, to Mineola, Long Island, a distance of 4,000 miles, in the actual flying time of fifty hours.
The infamous German bimotored pusher Gothas, measuring 78 feet, driven by six-cylinder Mercedes 260 horse-power engines, and carrying three men and five hundred pounds of explosives, flying by night from the aerodromes near Ghent, Belgium, a distance of nearly two hundred miles, have raided London more than a hundred times despite the opposition of fleets of British aeroplanes and seaplanes and thousands of antiaircraft guns.
For some time aerial mail has been carried from London to Paris in two and a half hours. Mail is also being transported by air route regularly between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, and between Rome and Turin. Mail was carried through the air from Chicago to New York in ten hours and five minutes; and Second Assistant Postmaster-General Praeger says the sky-line mail will be extended to the Pacificcoast, and in the year 1919 fully fifty aero mail routes will be in operation.
How many aeroplanes that might be used for peace purposes were completed by all the Allies and in service of some kind at the end of the war is problematic. Judging by the Allied demand that Germany surrender 1,700 aeroplanes, the Allied military authorities surely estimated that Germany must have had far more than that number in active service on the West Front. Counting the training-machines necessary to teach enough aviators to fly and the planes discarded as unsafe for battle flying, Germany must have had 8,000 or more heavier-than-air machines. The British surely had close to 5,000 of all kinds on the different fronts, with possibly 10,000 used for training and other purposes. Indeed, Britain was making over 4,000 a month, or 50,000 a year, when the war ended, according to the statement made by General Seely in Parliament in April, 1919. Perhaps the French and Italians combined did not have so many as the Germans because of the physical limitations on their manufacturing facilities. The Americans, we know, had nearly 2,000 on the front when the war ended. A thousand De Havilland 4’s had been delivered up to October 4, and more than 6,000 training-machines had also been constructed. We were just getting into a factory production of about 1,200 a month when the war ended. Indeed, to be exact, on November 11, 1918, a total of 33,384 planes had been ordered; subsequent to that date 19,628 ordered were cancelled, andup to December 27, 1918, a total of 13,241 planes had been shipped from United States factories.
With the exception of the training-machines and the two-seater fighters, like the De Havilland 4’s, most of these American machines could hardly be used for anything except aero mail service. The large Caproni and Handley Page bombers will do some passenger carrying. Indeed, the peace planes, unlike the war planes, are constructed with stability, safety, capacity carrying, and comfort as the chief factors.
At the close of the Great War, fortunately for the aeronautic industry, approximately ten billion dollars has already been invested by European, American, and Asiatic countries in aeronautics. Part of this has been expended in constructing aircraft factories, aeronautic engines, aeroplanes, dirigibles, hangars; in obtaining raw materials and landing-fields; in training aviators and mechanics, and in making aeronautic machinery, equipment, and accessories. Thousands of furniture and piano factories, boat-building shops, and similar establishments have been manufacturing propellers, struts, ribs, pontoons, flying-boats, and so on; and hundreds of automobile-makers and engine manufacturers have given over their plants, or a goodly portion of them, to making motors, spars, and tools.
Varnish, linen, cotton, castor-oil, goggles, clothes, and a hundred and one other things have also been used either in the direct manufacture of aircraft or in the equipment of the aviators or mechanics, so that there are to-day tens of thousands of skilled and unskilledartisans, aviators, mechanics, who are wondering how far the aeronautic engine, with its remarkable development from 16 horse-power, which the Wright brothers used, to the 700 horse-power of the Fiat, will be used in commercial aeronautics and how far the frail little Wright glider, which has grown into a machine weighing six tons, can be made a profitable means of aerial transportation.
Moreover, all the scientific knowledge, trained technic, all the enormous investments in fixed property, and the tens of thousands of aircraft built or building is being turned to commercial purposes. They were not, and everything is being done to make the aeroplane do man’s bidding as easily and as readily as the steamboat, electric car, steam-engine, and automobile.
Even though the aeroplane does travel the shortest route in the shortest time between any two given points, before a sufficient number of passengers can be induced to travel via the aerial line to make it financially profitable to the transportation company the public must be assured that it is reasonably safe; that they can fly in comfort; and that the price is reasonable. So let us first see what has been done and what is being done to satisfy those three requisites.
The dangers of aeroplane flight have been grossly exaggerated by newspapers, which record only the unusual. Moreover, flying in the war zone was done under the most adverse and dangerous circumstances. Also the machines were built for manœuvring abilityand speed, and not for stability and safety factors. Furthermore, all the scouts and most of the reconnaissance and battle planes were driven by only one motor, so that if engine trouble developed they had to volplane to the ground at the mercy of the antiaircraft guns and the aerial fighters. Finally, they often had to land in shell-scarred terrain. Naturally the casualties were high. Indeed, the war in the air was meant to be as perilous and dangerous as it could be.
Nevertheless, in spite of these hazards it is remarkable how many machines, even when shot down with some vital part out of commission, in many cases falling several thousand feet, have righted themselves before reaching the ground and made a safe landing, due to the precision and accuracy of construction with regard to lateral and longitudinal balance. And all in all, judging from the wonderful records already made by aeroplanes, even the single-motored machine is very reliable.
With the bimotored plane, of course, casualties were not so high, for even if one motor was put out of commission the other could bring the aviators back to the aerodrome. Major Salonone, the Italian ace, on February 20, 1916, flew a hundred miles back to his own lines with one of the motors on his Caproni shot out of commission!
On the aviation training-fields, owing to the novices who were learning to fly, the natural recklessness of youth, and sometimes the faulty construction of planes—hastily built and often superficially inspected—the casualties were higher. Stunting too near the groundand in machines constructed primarily for straight flying so that the stresses should come from only one flying angle, enemy treachery, and the absolute necessity of discovering the best manœuvres and newest types of aeroplanes also augmented the honor roll. But stunting eliminated, with machines equipped with two or more reliable aeronautic motors built according to standardized specifications as to materials, methods, stability, and the required number of safety factors, steered by tried and true pilots, flying between regular landing-fields and aerodromes and directed in the dark and in foggy weather from the ground by radiotelephones, such as flight commanders used in giving instruction to the members of the flying squadron, the dangers of flying can be reduced to proportions commensurate with the desire of the public to get from place to place in the quickest and safest vehicle.
Of course, the present high landing speed of an aeroplane is the cause of many accidents. Thirty-five miles an hour, except where the head resistance is great, is the slowest speed now made in landing a heavier-than-air machine. The invention of a device or the discovery of a means of reducing the speed to ten miles an hour when touching the ground, though still only in the realms of the probable, is by no means diametrically opposed to the inherent laws of the aeroplane. This accomplished, the danger of flying in an aeroplane will be reduced to infinitesimal proportions—at least to a degree no more precarious than riding in an automobile.
Already the War Department has ordered flyers tomap the country, and large stretches of the United States have already been mapped. The Wilson Aerial Highway, from New York to Chicago and San Francisco, has been laid out. Aerial transportation companies have been formed to provide planes. Thousands of skilled pilots have secured jobs; many chambers of commerce have built landing-places near their towns and cities. Needless to say, aerial laws will be passed to prevent stunting with passengers and requiring machines to fly at the altitude necessary to glide to the nearest aerodrome in case a motor stalls. Already a dozen different aeronautical motors have been developed which will run twenty-four to one hundred hours without stopping. Recently the Caproni biplane at Mineola, Long Island, climbed to 14,000 feet with one of the three motors completely shut off all the way.
On August 9 the Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio flew from Venice to Vienna via the Alps with his motor wide open all the way. Indeed, thousands of equally sensational flights have been made, in all kinds of weather and under the most adverse circumstances of a great war. Of the hundred-odd air raids on London by the Gothas some were conducted in broad daylight, when the Germans had to fly through squadrons of British scouts and fighters, through or over three barrages in order to get to the metropolis; and yet seldom more than one or two Hun machines out of the thirty usually constituting the squadron were forced to land or were shot down. The same thing was trueof the British Independent Air Force in the raids they made over the German cities, citadels, factories, ammunition-dumps, and other military objectives, though they often flew in fleets of fifty to a hundred.
Of the 350 machines constituting the American air raid on Wavrille in October, 1918, only one aeroplane failed to return, though twelve Hun machines were shot down. The German flying-tank which shot down Major Lufbery, the most famous American ace, was driven by five engines, which were protected, as well as the fuselage, with bullet-proof steel three-eighths of an inch thick. Major Lufbery emptied his machine-gun against this aerial monster from close range and from many angles before his gas-tank was pierced and his machine went down in flames. Therefore a bimotored machine, flying under peace conditions, should be able to make its aerodrome safely nearly every time.
There were three discomforts of air travel—the cold, the noise of the motor, and the lack of room in moving about. Electrically heated clothes eliminate the cold; ariophones, which shut out the noise of the motor but permit the passengers or aviators to converse together, are in universal use on aeroplanes. With the increase in the size of the aeroplanes and the number of motors, the nacelles and the enclosed roomy cabins can be constructed as they were on the famous Sykorsky aerobus, which was built in Russia before the war. This aeroplane carried twenty-one people to an altitude of 7,000 feet. On this trip they had ample room to move about and to observe the sky and thelandscape. On Thanksgiving Day, 1917, a half-dozen guests of an American aircraft factory had their turkey dinner served in a huge aeroplane above the clouds.
The Handley Page and Farman aerial transport busses now flying between London and Paris carry the passengers entirely housed in.
It is true that owing to the cost of the aeroplanes and the aeromotors, their upkeep and the number of skilled men required to fly and maintain them, all aerial travel is expensive. The two-seater training-machines, equipped with one motor, cost five to seven thousand dollars, and the huge bimotored bombing-machines averaged forty to sixty thousand dollars. This price was due to the necessity for hurried construction. For everything that went into the building of the aeromotor and the machine itself and also for the labor the very highest price had to be paid. Tools, machinery, factories, fields, hangars, and a thousand other things had to be purchased, and a great body of skilled workmen had to be trained before aircraft could be turned out in quantity.
Now all this skill and billions of money have been invested in the industry so that the plants in this country have the capacity to manufacture nearly two hundred a day. With this nucleus to start a peace-construction programme the price of even the biggest machines must soon shrink to that of a high-priced automobile or private yacht. Plenty of sporting machines with a small wing spread and a two-cylinder motor that will sell for five hundred dollars are now beingmade; and since these machines can average twenty-two miles on a gallon of gasoline the expense of maintaining one of these will not be out of the means of hundreds of the young flyers who have returned from flying on the West Front. Moreover, since there will be no maintenance of roads, rails, live wires, and so on, such as there is in the railroad and electric road industries, the cost of aero maintenance is infinitely smaller, so that aerial travel may become cheaper than any other known to man.
Fundamentally, the hydroaeroplane is the same as the aeroplane except that pontoons instead of wheels are used to land upon. The cost of these airships over the land machines is noticeable only where boats are used instead of pontoons. Consequently, their price above the aeroplane will depend on the size and the kind of furnishings used in the boat. Owing to the fact that no landing-field has to be bought and maintained and that the flying-boat can come down on a river or a lake with comparative ease, and also the fact that altitude does not have to be maintained in order to glide to an aerodrome or a safe landing-field, this type of aerial navigation bids fair to be fast, cheap, and absolutely safe. Moreover, the size and passenger-carrying capacity of these flying-boats will be limited only by the construction of wings strong enough to maintain them in the air, for the size of the hulls and the number of motors can be increased indefinitely.
Perhaps the best indication of what we may expect of the aeroplane as a commercial carrier is embodiedin the present plans of the manufacturers of aircraft. Using the past history of the heavier-than-air machines’ performance and their own experience and the experience of tens of thousands of flyers under all imaginable circumstances and conditions as a basis, they are building various types of aircraft. More than a score of American and British firms have already built and are putting upon the market large numbers of sports models. These machines are single and double seaters after the type of the famous Baby Nieuports, Spads, and British Sopwith Pups. They have a wing spread of anywhere from seventeen to thirty feet. The fuselage measures between ten and twenty feet. Some are equipped with one small motor generating from twenty horse-power up to ninety horse-power. Most of these motors are upright, like the ones used on motorcycles, and range from two to four cylinders. The whole machine will not weigh more than five hundred pounds and these models are able to fly at eighty to one hundred miles an hour and make an average of twenty miles or more on a gallon of gas. The price of these will depend on the demand, but most manufacturers believe they will sell for five hundred to a thousand dollars. These machines are so small that they can be landed on any road or field. Besides, the small amount of space they occupy will make it possible to house them inexpensively, and they can be used for any kind of cross-country flying or sporting purposes.
The second type of the sports model has a wing spread of twenty-six to thirty-eight feet. These wingscan be folded back so that the aeroplane can be housed in a hangar ten by thirty feet with ample room for the owner to work indoors on the machine. The fuselage is proportionately larger than that on the smaller machine. This aeroplane is equipped with a four-cylinder upright motor or an air-cooled rotary motor of the Gnome style with nine or eleven cylinders, generating up to ninety horse-power. Some also have two small twenty horse-power engines geared to the one propeller so they can be throttled down, or in case one stalls the other can take the flyers to their aerodrome without being forced to land. Some models have two motors on the smaller machines. These aircraft will sell for about the price of a medium-cost automobile.
The two-passenger models are similar in design to the army training-machines. They have more powerful upright and V-type four or eight cylinder motors and generate two to three hundred horse-power. The fuselage is built so that the pilot sits in front of or beside the passenger. The control is dual. The machines are mostly tractors, but in a few cases the nacelle is built in front of the plane like a bomber, and the propeller and engine are behind. These pusher types obviate all the blind angles and afford an excellent unobstructed range of vision. They are especially good for hunters, who desire no obstruction in gunning for birds. In case of a crash, however, there is the added danger of having the motor crush the passengers underneath. The Canadian Government has sold over ten thousand of their training-machines to an Americancompany, which is reselling them at a low price to men who wish to own an aeroplane.
The aero-mail type is about the same as the two-passenger model in wing spread and fuselage, but the motor is a twelve-cylinder V type and generates anywhere from 250 to 450 horse-power. Cost is not so much a consideration here as carrying capacity. Most of the two-seated fighting-machines built for war purposes can be adapted by the Post-Office Department for this purpose, and plans are afoot to extend the service all over the United States.
The big bombing bus type is designed for carrying great numbers of people from one aerodrome to another. These machines are biplanes and triplanes with a wing spread of anywhere from 48 to 150 feet. They are driven by V-type, twelve-cylinder engines generating 400 to 700 horse-power. They have one or two fuselages in the centre but the nacelles are usually forward of the wings, so that nothing obstructs the vision of the passengers. These machines will be sold to transportation companies, which will make a business of carrying people from aerodrome to aerodrome. They are so large and are equipped with so many motors that they are not intended to be landed anywhere except on properly prescribed flying-fields. Several transportation companies are already organized for that purpose.
All the above types of aircraft are so designed that pontoons or flying-boats can be substituted for wheels and landing-gear, and so that most aircraft manufacturerscan make both. Of course, in most cases the boats and the motors are made by different manufacturers. Several companies, however, construct aeroplanes complete with motors.
Naturally no manufacturing industry can exist without a potential market. Aircraft manufacturers are sure the majority of the twenty thousand flyers and hundred thousand aero mechanics who have learned their trade in the Great War will want to fly either machines of their own or of somebody else or of some transaerial company. The aeronautical engineers have, therefore, designed the sports type for the young fellows who wish to race in the air, travel from country town to country town, from lake to river, or to commute from country to city. Since these machines fly faster than the fastest bird or the fleetest animal, they will afford great sport for gunners. Indeed, the machines have already been used with such disastrous effects upon the bird that many hunters say it is not good sportsmanship to hunt from them. In that case, perhaps, the farmers will hire the daring young aviators to hunt down the crows and hawks with these dragons of the air.
Be that as it may, this sports type is a great convenience for a person who works in a city located on a large lake or on a river and who wishes to live far in the country. Indeed, he may live a hundred miles up or down that body of water and in less than an hour he can fly to or from his work. If it is cold he can put on his electrically heated clothing and keep as warmas in a limousine. If he has engine trouble he can land anywhere and fix his machine and then fly on. Since air resistance is much less than road resistance he can traverse the distance much cheaper than in an inexpensive automobile. If there is no body of water near his place of business he can land his cross-country flier in the park or flying-field just as easily as on the water. This same machine will lend itself to all kinds of pleasure flying, and no other sport gives so much exhilaration, scenic view, and adventuresome excitement as the aeroplane; and the price will be within the means of many young men.
The two-passenger models are being sold to persons of means who have flown or wish to fly and take up friends. After a few years the manufacturers expect there will be a considerable body of these enthusiasts. The greatest sale of these machines, however, will be to the government for the aero mail service. At first two machines will be necessary for every flier in that service, and one in every aerodrome for every one in the air, so with fifty established routes we shall require several hundred machines. Moreover, the manufacturers expect that these machines fitted with either a fuselage or a boat will be employed very extensively by mining companies for carrying precious metals in South America and Alaska. At the present time llamas are used to carry copper down from the Andes. They are so slow and have to descend to the smelters by such devious routes that valuable time is lost in the transportation. By loading the ore into thehold of a flying-boat, which can land on the lakes and ponds in case of engine trouble, the time will be so materially diminished as to reduce the cost of the metal very considerably. Besides, flying in a straight line as the bird flies, at a speed of not less than a hundred miles an hour, will expedite the work of the engineer and the surveyor over the jungles and unexplored and inaccessible portions of South America and Africa, as well as in other distant countries.
The conditions in Alaska are analogous, though the climate is different. Dogs and sleds are now used, and they, too, have to travel roundabout routes from mine to town. Of course, an aeroplane fitted with skids or runners can be landed on snow or ice as easily as on land. It now takes two days to sled gold down from one mine in the Yukon to Nome, which could be brought out in three hours by aeroplanes flying over the tops of the mountains.
At the time this goes to press Captain Robert Bartlett is so convinced of the feasibility of flying in the arctic regions that he plans to try to fly across the north pole in an aeroplane. During the summer months there are plenty of open spaces on which seaplanes can land in the arctic regions, and flying at 100 miles an hour, it would not take many hours to cross the ice-bound region of the pole itself.
Already on the plains of the West and Southwest this type of aeroplane has been found to be more serviceable than the horse in discovering the whereabouts of lost cattle or sheep, because of the range of vision itgives to the shepherd or cowboy and because of its speed and the short distance it covers in reaching its objective.
The big bombing bus type is being built primarily for companies or clubs intending to carry passengers from city to city or for cruises from the club-houses.
General Menoher, director of military aeronautics, has announced that the army will co-operate with the aero mail department in developing municipal aerodromes in thirty-two different cities in the United States, extending from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico.
Meantime the aircraft manufacturers are contemplating establishing a line of huge flying-boats between New York and Boston, carrying fifty people each way. The distance of two hundred miles could be covered in two hours, or less than half the time taken by train. Only four machines will be used at the beginning, one leaving Boston early in the morning and the other early in the afternoon. Two will leave New York at the same time. Four more will be kept in reserve, and as the traffic increases more will be added. The total investment will not require a million dollars, and the aero mail between the two cities has already set the pace for this passenger line.
The manufacturers also expect that every life-saving station along the entire coast of the United States and its possessions will be equipped with at least one seaplane with which to carry out a life-line to a ship wrecked on the beach or to rescue any one in distresswithin a hundred miles of the station, because these flying-boats can be launched in any kind of weather and can travel faster than anything that moves on the water.
The keenest aeronautic interest at the present time is centred in the aerial crossing of the Atlantic Ocean between America and Europe. Two possible routes are proposed for the flight. Both start from St. John’s, Newfoundland, but one stretches from there to Ireland and the other via the Azores to Portugal. The northern route is 1,860 miles from land to land, and the other 1,195 miles to the Flores, which is the nearest one of the Azores. From there to Ponta Delgada to Lisbon is 850 more. The southern route is preferable because the first leg is shortest from land to land. Also, less fog prevails in the south in all seasons of the year. Captain Laureati has already flown in a single-motored machine 920 miles without landing. The United States Naval F-5 flying-boat has flown 1,250 miles. Undoubtedly a flying-boat, equipped with four or more motors, could carry enough gasoline to cover the 1,200 miles on the Atlantic without stopping. Indeed, only half the number of motors need be running at one time if necessary, and since the large bimotored machines make a hundred miles an hour the flight could be negotiated within the twelve hours of day-light in the summer-time.
Just before the war broke out Mr. Glenn Curtiss, the inventor of the flying-boat, was building for Mr. Rodman Wanamaker the seaplaneAmericawith whichCaptain Porte was to try to fly across the Atlantic. The beginnings of hostilities terminated the project. TheAmerica, however, did cross the Atlantic, but in the hold of another boat, and it performed very good service in British waters chasing Hun submarines.
During the four years that have elapsed since the breaking out of the Great War the construction of aeronautic motors, aeroplanes, and the science of aviation have advanced at least a quarter of a century, so that if the proposition was feasible before the war it ought certainly to be very practicable to-day, as many authorities have testified. TheDaily Mailprize of $50,000 is still beckoning to the adventurous spirit. The Martinsyde two-seater land-machine and the two-seater Sopwith have already established themselves at St. John’s, Newfoundland, to begin the flight to Ireland. The United States Navy NC-1, NC-3, and NC-4 have flown from Rockaway by the southern route to the Azores. Once the first flight is negotiated, the aircraft manufacturers are convinced there will be a greater demand for flying seaplanes than for ocean liners, for they feel sure that most of the people going to and coming from Europe would prefer to travel in that way, and in less than half the time now taken by the fastest ocean greyhounds.