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CHArTER

i. The Dawn of Commercial Aviation .

14. Some Typical British Aeroplanes of To-day

CHAPTER I The Dawn of Commercial Aviation

THE year 1919 stands out as one of the milestones in the eternal march of progress. It recorded the definite introduction of the movement of passengers and freight under commercial conditions by way of the air. A dream, spread over centuries, was at last fulfilled. Ambitious, restless man, after grappling with stupendous problems and wrestling with tremendous issues of a severely technical character, succeeded in turning the atmosphere into a highway for travel.

Yet, if we reflect, we cannot fail to acknowledge that progress in this field, except during the closing stages of the Great Adventure, has been slow. Eliminating the wildly fantastic and the grotesque, as well as the ingenious ideas of the mediaeval experimenters, whose efforts were foredoomed to failure from the complete absence of all suitable means wherewith to propel their conceptions through the air, advance has been tedious and precarious; that is, in comparison with relative achievements in the other realms of transportation— rail, sea, and road — each of which was considered equally impracticable and wildly sensational in its day.

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In 1813 "Puffing Billy" was working, promisingly at a colliery in the north of England. Eight years later the possibilities of the steam locomotive had secured such a grip upon popular imagination as to lead to the construction of the first iron road essentially for the new means of movement — the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which was opened for traffic in 1825. Within the brief span of seventeen years the locomotive not only had established its commercial potentialities, but was being brought into increasing use far and wide upon an elaborate scale. As with the railway so with the steamship. In 1802 the possibility of driving vessels through the water by steam was conclusively demonstrated with the Charlotte Dundas ; but Bell clinched the matter beyond all refutation in 1812 with his Comet. It was not many years before steamships were plying, not only upon the coastal waters of Britain and North America, but were essaying to plough the deeper and more tempestuous open oceans. The development of motor traffic was equally rapid, if considered in the high-speed internal combustion-engine aspect. The years 1883-4 witnessed the perfection of the first vehicle. The Paris-Rouen race was run in 1894, and in 1896 antiquated legislation, which had retarded expansion and development in these islands, was repealed. From that date advance was spectacularly rapid in every field of application.

Flying has progressed at a much slower pace. It was nearly thirty years ago that the trail through the air was blazed by the French engineer Ader. His achievement, somewhat limited, it is true, imparted a new zest to experiment and endeavour, because success appeared to be within arm's length; but it was not so. Matters drifted somewhat until 1903, when quite a new outlook was presented by the Wright Brothers, in an aeroplane of their own design and construction, fitted with a motor which likewise was their own creation, flying 260 metres in 59 seconds on December 17, at Dayton, U.S.A. The American achievement, however, failed to arouse the widespread interest which it deserved and which might have been expected. It was received with incredulity mainly for the reason that the reports appeared to be ambiguous, if not utterly lacking in convincing detail ; but this was due to the reticence of the inventors, who, naturally, were not prepared to be communicative as to how dynamic flight could be accomplished, until they had secured the utmost protection which the law can extend to the fruit of brains.

Meanwhile experiment was in full swing in Europe, the manifestation of enterprise in this field having preceded the receipt of the intelligence from American sources concerning the work of the Wright Brothers. The Old World investigators frankly declined to believe all that trickled across the Atlantic, and so continued to pursue their way unconcerned, although the mystery surrounding the work in progress at Dayton unwittingly acted as a powerful stimulant to greater effort. It was Santos Dumont and his intrepidity, first with his small airships and subsequently with diminutive aeroplanes, which appealed to the human emotion and riveted the eyes of Europe upon his endeavours, which culminated in the flight of 230 yards in 21.2 seconds at Bagatelle, France, on November 12, 1906. The brothers Farman were also in the field striving for recognition, and it was they who really brought home for the first time in a vivid manner the part which the air was destined to serve as a highway for traffic with their flight of 1,093 yards, during which they notched a speed of 34 miles an hour, on January 13, 1908.

Progress now was somewhat accelerated. On July 25, 3

1909, Bleriot flew the Channel, thereby bringing home to the British public the disconcerting fact that we were not so effectively isolated from the European mainland as we had been for centuries past. We might control the seas and hold potential aggressive continental navies at bay, but the way of the air opened up quite a new situation. To maintain the splendid protection which heretofore our insular position had extended we would need to acquire the dominion of the air as well. So much was perfectly obvious ; but, as subsequent events amply proved, we failed to realise the true significance of this menace. Strenuous efforts were made to rouse us from our apathy, but in vain; we refused to be stampeded into action even though it were to make our security doubly secure.

As a matter of fact, aviation in Britain was regarded with indifference. The ventures of the air were regarded as comparable with the daring feats of the acrobat and the wirewalker in the peripatetic circus. The idea of establishing an industry comparable with that associated with the motor-car was received with an utter lack of enthusiasm, while the opportunity to dispute the domain of the air with the bird did not fire our sporting instincts. A powerful effort was made to inflame the British imagination. Lord Northcliffe, with characteristic foresight, realised the peril of our national lethargy, and set out to overcome the danger by extending practical encouragement to British effort. Through the Daily Mail tempting prizes were offered for what appeared, in those days, to be wildly impossible feats, doubtless in the feeling that when the Britisher is confronted with the ostensibly unattainable he at once sets out to secure it. At all events it proved to be so in this case because the prizes to be won made irresistible appeal to the British sporting instinct, although we had already lagged so far behind our Continental rivals as to be considered out of the running.

Appreciating the real value of keen friendly rivalry the prizes were not reserved to British airmen. Other nations were quite at liberty to compete, and they did so to very material advantage, which only served to throw our own backwardness into still more striking relief, and, at the same time, acted as a more powerful spur to the spirit of determination to excel. Of five prizes aggregating £31,100 offered by the Daily Mail, four, totalling £21,100 in value, fell to French victors. Henry Farman set the pace by carrying off the first prize of £100 for a half-mile circular flight, on January 13, 1908, at the same time securing the Deutsch-Archdeacon prize of .£2,000. Ble>iot, with his three-cylindered 22-28h.p. engined monoplane, captured the £1,000 offered for spanning the Channel by dynamic flight on July 25, 1909. Louis Paulhan secured the £10,000 London-to-Manchester prize by covering the 183 miles separating the two cities in 252 minutes with one intermediate stop, April 27-28, 1910, while it was Lieutenant " Beaumont " (Conneau) who bore off in triumph, in July, 191 1, the £10,000 extended for the aerial circuit of Great Britain. Truly the French airmen may be said to have "scooped the pool," only one insignificant prize of £100 falling to a British competitor, J. T. C. Moore- Brabazon, for his circular flight with a British machine in October, 1909, although this was a contest from which Continental rivals were virtually barred.

During the critical period of development — 1907-1912 — ■ Britain may be said to have cut a very sorry figure, not only in the creation of airmen, but in the design and fabrication of machines wherewith they might fly. If, however, the British failed lamentably to hold their own in the air during the experimental days they more than atoned for their remissness by carrying off the greatest prize of all — the ,£10,000 offered by the Daily Mail for flying the Atlantic which was triumphantly, even sensationally, won by Captain Sir John Alcock, D.S.C., and Lieutenant Sir Arthur Whitten Brown, on June 14-15, 1919, by the flight over the span of 1,880 miles of salt water separating St. John's, Newfoundland, from Clifden, Ireland, in 15 hours 57 minutes.

When one recalls the unrivalled inventive record of the nation, the British attitude of indifference towards the way of the air during the accepted experimental era may seem to be remarkable. But what may appear to be still more amazing is that that spirit of apathy still prevails, and to a startling degree. Even the transatlantic flight failed to arouse more than passing interest. It was accepted as an achievement in accordance with Brftish traditions — that the British can do anything when they feel so minded or when circumstances compel. The contemporary general interest assumed towards flying is comparable with that manifested towards other sensational performances, while even interest of an intimate character may be likened to that produced by the first actual experience of shooting the chutes, or looping the loop sideshows, at popular exhibitions.

This inability to grasp the full significance of dynamic flight, and the display of peculiarly narrow interest are readily explicable. The outbreak of war naturally relegated the commercial aspect of flying to the background. The national interests were far more vital, and so everything was subjugated to their complete satisfaction. During the five years of hostilities the nation was thrilled with the amazing feats and often incredible exploits of its fighting-men of the air. They were astonished at the growth of the Third Arm.

Also, the terrific European conflict stirred British productive effort as no other force could have done, and in 1919 Britain reached a position as far in advance of her rivals as she lagged behind them in 1914.

The subordination of all other interests to those of a military and naval character during five weary years created a totally false atmosphere. For sixty months the development of the aeroplane was pursued to one purpose— the scattering of death and the wreaking of destruction. Consequently the man-in-the-street, the woman-at-home and the boy-at-school came to regard the flying machine merely as an instrument of frightfulness. In many quarters it is held out to possess no more commercial possibilities than the submarine. The latter can be converted into a commercial craft and one whereby many of the disadvantages incidental to ordinary sea travel may be avoided in precisely the same way as aerial travel overcomes many of the defects associated with normal movement upon the railway, highway and marine lanes.

Efforts to remove this impression are being made by individual flights, but even these in certain circumstances savour too much of the sensational to he impressive, while in others they are consummated, not from the true commercial point of view, but rather as a subtle form of advertisement. So ingrained is the feeling that the flying machine is essentially a weapon of war that the mass of the peoples of the world, especially those who were compelled to live, move, and have their being in what might be called the fighting arena, resolutely declines to believe that it can ever be turned to commercial account. To the average lay mind it appears about as feasible to convert a fighting aeroplane into a vehicle of commerce as to transform an 18-inch gun into a motor-car, or a death-and-destruction-dealing mine into a talking machine. It has not yet grasped the commercial possibilities of flying ; it does not realise that in the aeroplane we have a force capable of shrinking the world, time, and distance into insignificantly brief factors. It has not yet awakened to the fact that here is a new rival, which is destined to make a bold bid for certain of the traffic at present borne by our express trains, greyhounds of the ocean, and speedy motor carriers of the road.

With the airship it is different. We were forced to realise the possibilities of the dirigible long before the clash of arms re-echoed round the world. From that momentous afternoon of August 9, 1884, when Captains Krebs and Renard, by their completion of an aerial circuit, established the fact that an airship could be manoeuvred in the air independently of the forces of Nature as easily as a vessel can be controlled upon the bosom of the ocean, the airship became accepted as an accomplished factor. Count von Zeppelin, despite the derision which His repeated disasters provoked, clinched the matter. So far as the superiority of the dirigible is concerned its success has undoubtedly been the direct result of psychological forces. We pooh-poohed the likelihood of such monstrous craft ever being able to venture very far, but when they brought the war to our doors during the early years of the war, they completely removed all lingering doubts upon this score. In war they proved far more destructive, both materially and morally, than the aeroplane. A striking revulsion of feeling set in. The airship which had been ridiculed became accepted as the future vessel of the air. Its complete safety in the modern form, its enormous raclius of action, its flexibility, its capacity to float, owing to the possession of inherent buoyancy, its superior manoeuvring powers, its comfort and its ability to move relatively bigcargoes — all these factors serve to invest the airship with superiority over the aeroplane in the minds of the average individual.

To bring home the possibilities of the aeroplane is certain to prove a tedious task. A ceaseless and aggressive campaign of enlightenment and education will be imperative, and many years must necessarily be occupied in this uphill task. The achievements of war count for little or nothing in the eyes of the people who must be won over to assure commercial success for the new force which is destined to effect such a complete transformation of our complex social and industrial life. We know that enormous strides were made during the war in the perfection of the aeroplane. We appreciate, even if only faintly, that under the stress of five years' incessant battling for superiority over a stubborn well-equipped enemy, raised and trained for war, as much progress was achieved by Britain in the domain of dynamic flight as would have been recorded during a quarter of a century's normal development. Even the most unsophisticated among us know equally well that military and naval exigencies compelled the incurrence of risks which would never have been tolerated for one moment under peace conditions. What did it matter if a machine, costing thousands of pounds, crashed upon its first flight to become resolved into a tangled heap of torn linen, broken wires, splintered wood and shattered engine? The country paid the bill. Of what significance was it that a brave man lost his life in trying out a new idea? It was dismissed as an incident inseparable from war. But consider the situation from the commercial point of view. A crashed machine represents a material loss to the owner or underwriter. Those who are exposed to the risk of being called upon to reimburse the damage wrought exercise a restraining influence, while, if insurance is ignored, then the company associated with the enterprise, if crashes are many, must be prepared to enjoy but a fleeting existence. Again, under peace conditions, a higher value is set upon human life, and recurrence of fatalities is certain to provoke as fierce and widespread an outbreak of public feeling against the aeroplane as did the death-roll incidental to motor-racing bring about the abandonment of this form of sport.

What has war contributed to the new science ? What is the position to-day ? What influence will the lessons of the battlefield and the seas exercise upon future developments ? If the answer must be unequivocal, war has not exercised any decisive influence in so far as the actual science of aeronautics is concerned. The flying machine of 1919 is what it was in 1914 — a mechanically propelled kite. No sensational revolutions in regard to design have been recorded, while in one or two directions war has really hindered progress.

The fields in which important benefits have been bestowed, however, are many and of far-reaching significance. The aeroplane was taken over to become regarded as an instrument of national importance. Individual effort for the most part became submerged. The country had first call upon the most brilliant brains and most accomplished manufacturing skill. From John o'Groats to Land's End extended one vast national aeroplane manufactory. A laboratory such as private enterprise could never have created became established, and there were unlimited funds in the bank of the National Treasury to furnish the sinews with which progress alone can be recorded. It was immaterial how much an experiment would be likely to cost. It was pursued. Ideas might crowd upon one another in an amazing manner, but that did not preclude them being submitted to the test. Anything and everything which was desired was forthcoming; expense was no object. The nation was not in the position of a private company, which is necessarily compelled to study the claims of those who finance operations — the shareholders. We were all shareholders in the National Aeronautical Laboratory and Factory, and expected no return beyond maintenance of our homes and shores.

In this manner it became possible to control inventive ability. There was no competition. The product of brains became classified and diverted into well-defined channels, to be pursued to its logical conclusion. The galaxy of talent, by skilful selection, achieved many startling wonders. It contributed to the defining of constitutional scientific laws and their due observance ; the freakish was ruled out. It led to standardisation and the evolution of the most perfect designs. We learned much concerning materials; the precise adaptability of this wood and that metal for specific purposes. The primitive was forced to one side to make way for the ultra-modern and mechanical. Every conceivable branch of the craft was covered, and the maximum amount of brains possible for each ramification was secured and turned to account. Behind it all was exercised a driving force or pressure which could not be subjugated. The policy, "We must have it; never mind the cost " alone prevailed.

What is the position of affairs to-day? The lever of national incentive has been withdrawn ; it has accomplished its work. The companies swept into the vast net have been released. They have reverted to the positions they occupied in 1914, or, if born since then, have been freed to pursue their ways untrammelled. Each now stands upon its own footing. There is no inexhaustible barrel in which to dip for the requisite finance. The shareholders once again become the dominant factor. The national laboratory has been dissolved. Each firm must now establish its own thinking department and evolve its own ideas. In these circumstances the pace has slowed down, and for the next decade progress promises to be exceedingly slow, unless something revolutionary is produced by science to change the whole aspect of things. Competition is restored not only between the various manufacturing firms, but with the other and accepted channels of movement and communication. To-day, in the conduct of any commercial transaction, the question arises, "Shall I use the aeroplane, the steamboat, the railway, the motor-car, the telephone, the telegraph, or wireless?" In other words the way of the air is relegated to a well-defined niche, and is brought into conflict with coldly-calculating, unemotional commerce.

Under the incentive offered by national necessity we have been able to attain overwhelming world-wide supremacy. The British aeroplane is conceded to be a masterpiece of design and construction. The rigid standardisation of materials has made it possible to present machines which, for strength, cannot be excelled. Then in regard to engines enormous strides have been made, and the development of the power for the mechanical unit is truly startling. Ten years ago the machine with which Bleriot flew the Channel developed only 22-28 h.p. ; now we are equipping machines with monsters as beautifully designed and built as a chronometer of 350 h.p., while contemporary airships are being fitted with giants developing 900 h.p. Speeds have risen amazingly during the decade, the two extremes being the 45 miles an hour notched by Bleriot as compared with velocities ranging up to 150 miles an hour which have recently been recorded.

With improved aeroplanes having more reliable engines the radius of action has increased rapidly. Places which six years ago appeared to be wellnigh inaccessible from London by air in a quick flight, or the realisation of which constituted a remote dream, are now regarded as common-place achievements. It is doubtful whether such big efforts to determine the endurance of the machine and of the man at the helm would have been made under peace conditions. War applied the spur. Lieutenant Marchal set the pace in this direction by establishing a record of 811 miles in June, 1916, with his flight from France to the Russian frontier, via Berlin. This was topped fourteen months later by the aerial run made by Captain Marquess Guilio Laureati from Turin to Naples without any descent, a distance of nearly 920 miles. The following month, September, 19 17, this intrepid aviator accomplished another striking performance with his crosscontinental flight of 3,656 miles from Turin to London.

Flights such as these demand the provision of supplementary fuel tanks, involving departures from standard design, or, at all events, normal commercial practice. Consequently, the next step was the achievement of comparable long journeys in easy stages, the intermediate descents beingmade to secure further supplies of petrol, and without making attempts to establish time records. In this direction must be mentioned Commander Savory's flight over the 2,000 miles separating London from Constantinople in December, 19 17, and the more leisurely run from England to India by Major Maclaren, and that of Lieutenant-Colonel W. D. Beatty from London to Madrid on May 12, 1919.

It was the subjugation of the Atlantic by air which 13 revived the public enthusiasm in the aeroplane, although, at the same time, it brought home very convincingly the fact that we have a very long row to hoe, and that considerable time must yet elapse before the aerial highway can be regarded as being able to sustain traffic with that clock-like regularity identified with our railways, streets, and ocean lanes. It effectively nonplussed those who were so strenuously advocating the immediate establishment of long-distance aerial routes, and who talked lightly of circumflying the earth in a week. Hawker's unfortunate fall into the Atlantic after covering 1,000 miles, and the failure of two out of three competitive American flying-men to make the Azores, brought home the susceptibility of the power unit to failure; that it had not yet been advanced to a sufficient degree of reliability to enable it to carry the plane anywhere, at any time, and under all and varying conditions. The feat of Commander Read, of the United States Navy, who, leaving Trepassey Bay, Newfoundland, on May 16, 1919, making the Azores 1,381 miles, Lisbon 1,094 miles and Plymouth 895 miles — a total mileage of 3,370 — but who did not reach his destination until May 31, testified very clearly that the aeroplane was not to be considered as a serious rival to the established systems of transit. The Alcock-Brown flight of 1,880 miles in 15 hours 57 minutes created the greatest measure of excitement, but not so much from the circumstance that the Atlantic was spanned in one big aerial leap, as from the high average speed attained — 117^ miles an hour — and the wonderful endurance of the men in charge of the machine.

The uncertainty revealed by the Atlantic flight has really proved a blessing in disguise. Had the aviators jumped into their machines immediately they had been assembled, and

H

The Dawn ot Commercial Aviation

made the flight without incident, a totally false atmosphere of reliability and regularity would have been associated with the aeroplane. Commerce might possibly have accepted the aerial transatlantic highway as being definitely opened. In that event, if any subsequent fiasco or hiatus had eventuated, commerce would have turned her back upon aerial transit, and superhuman effort would have been required to induce her to regard the movement ever again with favour. Bleriot flew the Channel in 1909, but the mails, freight and passengers still go by the usual routes to and from the Continent.

The development of railways and steamships, concerning the certainty of regular movement upon which there can be no dispute, has always been guided by one golden principle, "Make haste slowly." Commerce will not be stampeded into action, is difficult to woo, and when won must be held at all costs. As with the steelway and the sea so with the air. Once an aerial highway is opened it must be maintained at all hazards and irrespective of expense. Fortunately, the pioneers of contemporary aerial navigation recognise this circumstance only too well. So they too have adopted Festina lente as their motto. They frankly admit that years must necessarily pass before the way of the air becomes firmly established in popular favour, and readily concede that there is yet much to learn before any definite action can be taken in this direction. They are disposed to advance by easy stages, admit frankly that breakdowns and galling delays are likely to occur, but aver that each difficulty will extend its lesson and lead to the adoption of means whereby its repetition may be averted. Thousands of pounds will doubtless be lost in the process of evolution, many organisations established to open the way of the air will come to grief, a wave of speculation will be experienced, and serious harm

J 5 will attend precipitate action. It may even be necessary to forget a good deal of what we have learned from the war, military conditions being so completely inapplicable to commercial needs, and to resume quite methodical and well ordered development from the stage where it was summarily interrupted' in 1914. Success will only be achieved upon the ruins of the fabric raised by the pioneers.

To illustrate that the war was not omniscient in matters pertaining to aviation we need only to consider the situation as it affects the monoplane. In 1914 this type was generally accepted as being the most promising. Certainly many of the most brilliant achievements in aviation stood to its credit. But superior military knowledge overruled its claims and made many objections to its further development. Subsequent events tend to prove that this attitude was assumed from the angle of prejudice. The anti-monoplanists secured the upper hand, but we learned in good time the error of their ways. The Germans designed a fast, and, so it is conceded by those who were brought face to face with it, a first-class monoplane, that is judging from the speed and general behaviour point of view. With this unit they harried our slower-going aircraft over the North Sea. It was a bold bid to gain the upper hand in the air, and it led us to reconsider our position, the upshot of which was revived concern in the possibilities of the monoplane. The French were particularly prompt to revise their opinion of the monoplane and had completed arrangements for its development upon a wider and more intensive scale, which undoubtedly would have been carried into effect but for the intervention of the Armistice.

For certain ranges of commercial work the monoplane undoubtedly is unrivalled, especially in these islands. The probability is that commercial flying will make but little headway in Great Britain. Geographical situation and the excellence of rival means of transit and communication will react against its widespread use for at least heavy and mail traffic. In other countries, however, such as the Continent of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North and South America, there are incalculable possibilities for its expansion in every phase. At the same time the aeroplane is likely to be extensively developed in the British Isles purely for recreation or joy-riding as well as light commercial work. To the "hustler," whose daily itinerary is lunch in Manchester, an afternoon cup of tea in Edinburgh, dinner in London with a run over to Paris to the opera in the evening and the week-end in New York, everything, will have to be subservient to speed. The monoplane, by virtue of its enormous pace, will appeal to him as a commercial and sporting aerial vehicle. On the other hand, for every individual who wants to scurry round this globe as if bent upon out-distancing his shadow there are a hundred who prefer to travel leisurely, in luxury and comfort, and they will adhere to the existing means of movement. To them the air will make no appeal except as an intermittent novelty, and even then moderate pace will appeal.

Another apparent retrograde movement is to be recorded in connection with reversion to the single-engined aeroplane. The war was productive of magnificent types of twin-engined craft, but certain of our technicians have expressed dissatisfaction with the type. Now they are free to "gang their own gait " once more they have decided to rest content with the single-engine unit for the time being, and to pace slowly the path of mergence into the twin-engined aeroplane. It looks like putting the clock back with a vengeance, but they are c i 7 merely acting in accordance with the dictates of prudence, animated By the experience of a specialised nature which they have collated.