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Title: Aircraft and Submarines

Author: Willis J. Abbot

Release date: September 20, 2009 [eBook #30047]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AIRCRAFT AND
SUBMARINES ***

Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected. Hyphenation and
accentuation have been standardised, all other inconsistencies are as in the
original. The author's spelling has been maintained.

Fighting by Sea and Sky.
Painting by John E. Whiting.

Aircraft and Submarines
The Story of the Invention, Development,

and Present-Day Uses of War's
Newest Weapons

By

Willis J. Abbot
Author of "The Story of Our Army," "The Story of Our Navy,"
"The Nations at War"

With Eight Color Plates and
100 Other Illustrations

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1918

Copyright, 1918
By
WILLIS J. ABBOT

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

PREFACE

Not since gunpowder was first employed in warfare has so revolutionary a
contribution to the science of slaughtering men been made as by the
perfection of aircraft and submarines. The former have had their first
employment in this world-wide war of the nations. The latter, though in the
experimental stage as far back as the American Revolution, have in this bitter
contest been for the first time brought to so practical a stage of development
as to exert a really appreciable influence on the outcome of the struggle.

Comparatively few people appreciate how the thought of navigating the
air's dizziest heights and the sea's gloomiest depths has obsessed the minds of
inventors. From the earliest days of history men have grappled with the
problem, yet it is only within two hundred years for aircraft and one hundred
for submarines that any really intelligent start has been made upon its
solution. The men who really gave practical effect to the vague theories
which others set up—in aircraft the Wrights, Santos-Dumont, and Count
Zeppelin; in submarines Lake and Holland—are either still living, or have
died so recently that their memory is still fresh in the minds of all.

In this book the author has sketched swiftly the slow stages by which in
each of these fields of activity success has been attained. He has collated
from the immense mass of records of the activities of both submarines and
aircraft enough interesting data to show the degree of perfection and
practicability to which both have been brought. And he has outlined so far as
possible from existing conditions the possibilities of future usefulness in
fields other than those of war of these new devices.

The most serious difficulty encountered in dealing with the present state
and future development of aircraft is the rapidity with which that
development proceeds. Before a Congressional Committee last January an
official testified that grave delay in the manufacture of airplanes for the army

had been caused by the fact that types adopted a scant three months before
had become obsolete, because of experience on the European battlefields, and
later inventions before the first machines could be completed. There may be
exaggeration in the statement but it is largely true. Neither the machines nor
the tactics employed at the beginning of the war were in use in its fourth year.
The course of this evolution, with its reasons, are described in this volume.

Opportunities for the peaceful use of airplanes are beginning to suggest
themselves daily. After the main body of this book was in type the
Postmaster-General of the United States called for bids for an aërial mail
service between New York and Washington—an act urged upon the
Government in this volume. That service contemplates a swift carriage of
first-class mail at an enhanced price—the tentative schedule being three
hours, and a postage fee of twenty-five cents an ounce. There can be no doubt
of the success of the service, its value to the public, and its possibilities of
revenue to the post-office. Once its usefulness is established it will be
extended to routes of similar length, such as New York and Boston, New
York and Buffalo, or New York and Pittsburgh. The mind suggests no limit to
the extension of aërial service, both postal and passenger, in the years of
industrial activity that shall follow the war.

In the preparation of this book the author has made use of many records of
personal experiences of those who have dared the air's high altitudes and the
sea's stilly depths. For permission to use certain of these he wishes to express
his thanks to the Century Co., for extracts from My Airships by Santos-
Dumont; to Doubleday, Page & Co., for extracts from Flying for France, by
James R. McConnell; to Charles Scribner's Sons, for material drawn from
With the French Flying Corps, by Carroll Dana Winslow; to Collier's Weekly,
for certain extracts from interviews with Wilbur Wright; to McClure's
Magazine, for the account of Mr. Ray Stannard Baker's trip in a Lake
submarine; to Hearst's International Library, and to the Scientific American,
for the use of several illustrations.

W. J. A.

New York, 1918.

CONTENTS

page

Preface iii
chapter

I. —Introductory 3
II. —The Earliest Flying Men 14
III. —The Services of Santos-Dumont 39
IV. —The Count von Zeppelin 59
V. —The Development of the Airplane 82
VI. —The Training of the Aviator 103
VII. —Some Methods of the War in the Air 123
VIII. —Incidents of the War in the Air 159
IX. —The United States at War 182
X. —Some Features of Aërial Warfare 207
XI. —Beginnings of Submarine Invention 235
XII. —The Coming of Steam and Electricity 256
XIII. —John P. Holland and Simon Lake 271
XIV. —The Modern Submarine 294
XV. —Aboard a Submarine 318
XVI. —Submarine Warfare 333
XVII. —The Future of the Submarine 362

Index 383

ILLUSTRATIONS

page

Fighting by Sea and Sky Frontispiece
Painting by John E. Whiting
Dropping a Depth Bomb 4
Painting by Lieut. Farré
A Battle in Mid-air 8
Painting by Lieut. Farré
Victory in the Clouds 12
Painting by John E. Whiting
The Fall of the Boche 16
Painting by Lieut. Farré
Lana's Vacuum Balloon 18
Montgolfier's Experimental Balloon 21
A Rescue at Sea 24
Painting by Lieut. Farré
Montgolfier's Passenger Balloon 27
Charles's Balloon 31
A French Observation Balloon on Fire 32
Roberts Brothers' Dirigible 34
Giffard's Dirigible 37
A British Kite Balloon 40

British "Blimp" 40
Photographed from Above.
A Kite Balloon Rising from the Hold of a Ship 48
The Giant and the Pigmies 60
Painting by John E. Whiting
A French "Sausage" 64
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
A British "Blimp" 64
The Death of a Zeppelin 72
Photo by Paul Thompson
A German Dirigible, Hansa Type 76
A Wrecked Zeppelin at Salonika 76
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
British Aviators about to Ascend 80
Langley's Airplane 84
A French Airdrome near the Front 84
Lilienthal's Glider 86
A German War Zeppelin 88
French Observation Balloon Seeking Submarines
88
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
Chanute's Glider 90
A German Taube Pursued by British Planes 92
The First Wright Glider 93
Pilcher's Glider 94
Comparative Strength of Belligerents in Airplanes
at the Opening of the War 96

Comparative Strength of Belligerents in Dirigibles
at the Opening of the War 96

The Wright Glider 98
At a French Airplane Base 100
International Film Service
Stringfellow's Airplane 101
The "America"—Built to Cross the Atlantic 104
A Wright Airplane in Flight 104
First Americans to Fly in France 108
The Lafayette Escadrille
Distinguishing Marks of American Planes 116
What an Aviator must Watch 116
A Caproni Triplane 124
A Caproni Triplane Showing Propellers and
Fuselage 124
The Terror that Flieth by Night 128
Painting by Wm. J. Wilson
A Curtis Seaplane Leaving a Battleship 132
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
Launching a Hydroaëroplane 132
At a United States Training Camp 138
A "Blimp" with Gun Mounted on Top 138
Aviators Descending in Parachutes from a Balloon
Struck by Incendiary Shells 140
The Balloon from which the Aviators Fled 140
German Air Raiders over England 144
One Aviator's Narrow Escape 148

Downed in the Enemy's Country 156
Later Type of French Scout 160
Photo by Kadel & Herbert
Position of Gunner in Early French Machine 160
A French Scout Airplane 168
Photo by Press Illustrating Co.
"Showing Off." A Nieuport Performing Aërial
Acrobatics around a Heavier Bombing Machine 168
An Air Raid on a Troop Train 174
Painting by John E. Whiting
A Burning Balloon, Photographed from a
Parachute by the Escaping Balloonist 176
A Caproni Biplane Circling the Woolworth
Building 184
Cruising at 2000 Feet. One Biplane Photographed
from Another 184

An Air Battle in Progress 192
A Curtis Hydroaroplane 192
The U. S. Aviation School at Mineola 208
Miss Ruth Law at Close of her Chicago to New
York Flight 216
A French Aviator between Flights 216
A German "Gotha"—Their Favorite Type 224
A French Monoplane 232
A German Scout Brought to Earth in France 232
A Gas Attack Photographed from an Airplane 240
A French Nieuport Dropping a Bomb 244
A Bomb-Dropping Taube 248

A Captured German Fokker Exhibited at the
Invalides 252
A British Seaplane with Folding Wings 252
British Anti-Aircraft Guns 256
An Anti-Aircraft Outpost 264
A Coast Defense Anti-Aircraft Gun 264
The Submarine's Perfect Work 270
Painting by John E. Whiting
Types of American Aircraft 272
For Anti-Aircraft Service 288
The Latest French Aircraft Guns 288
Modern German Airplane Types 296
A German Submarine Mine-Layer Captured by the
British 304
The Exterior of First German Submarine 312
The Interior of First German Submarine, Showing
Appliances for Man-Power 312
A Torpedo Designed by Fulton 320
The Method of Attack by Nautilus 320
The Capture of a U-Boat 324
Painting by John E. Whiting
A British Submarine 336
Sectional View of the Nautilus 336
U. S. Submarine H-3 aground on California Coast
344
Salvaging H-3. Views I, II, and III 348
U. S. Submarine D-1 off Weehawken 352

A Submarine Built for Spain in the Cape Cod Canal
356
A Critical Moment 360
Painting by John E. Whiting
A Submarine Built for Chili Passing through Cape
Cod Canal 364
A Submarine Entrapped by Nets 368
Diagram of a German Submarine Mine-Layer
Captured by British 372
A Submarine Discharging a Torpedo 374
A German Submarine in Three Positions 376
Sectional View of a British Submarine 380

THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

It was at Mons in the third week of the Great War. The grey-green German
hordes had overwhelmed the greater part of Belgium and were sweeping
down into France whose people and military establishment were all
unprepared for attack from that quarter. For days the little British army of
perhaps 100,000 men, that forlorn hope which the Germans scornfully called
"contemptible," but which man for man probably numbered more veteran
fighters than any similar unit on either side, had been stoutly holding back the
enemy's right wing and fighting for the delay that alone could save Paris. At
Mons they had halted, hoping that here was the spot to administer to von
Kluck, beating upon their front, the final check. The hope was futile. Looking
back upon the day with knowledge of what General French's army faced—a
knowledge largely denied to him—it seems that the British escape from
annihilation was miraculous. And indeed it was due to a modern miracle—the
conquest of the air by man in the development of the airplane.

General French was outnumbered and in danger of being flanked on his
left flank. His right he thought safe, for it was in contact with the French line
which extended eastward along the bank of the Somme to where the dark
fortress of Namur frowned on the steeps formed by the junction of that river
with the Meuse. At that point the French line bent to the south following the
course of the latter river.

Namur was expected to hold out for weeks. Its defence lasted but three
days! As a matter of fact it did not delay the oncoming Germans a day, for
they invested it and drove past in their fierce assault upon Joffre's lines.
Enormously outnumbered, the French were broken and forced to retreat.
They left General French's right flank in the air, exposed to envelopment by
von Kluck who was already reaching around the left flank. The German

troops were ample in number to surround the British, cut them off from all
support, and crush or capture them all. This indeed they were preparing to do
while General French, owing to some mischance never yet explained, was
holding his ground utterly without knowledge that his allies had already
retired leaving his flank without protection.

Photo by Peter A. Juley.
Dropping a Depth Bomb.
From the Painting by Lieutenant Farré.

When that fatal information arrived belatedly at the British headquarters it
seemed like a death warrant. The right of the line had already been exposed
for more than half-a-day. It was inexplicable that it had not already been
attacked. It was unbelievable that the attack would not fall the next moment.
But how would it be delivered and where, and what force would the enemy
bring to it? Was von Kluck lulling the British into a false sense of security by
leaving the exposed flank unmenaced while he gained their rear and cut off
their retreat? Questions such as these demanded immediate answer. Ten years
before the most dashing scouts would have clattered off to the front and

would have required a day, perhaps more, to complete the necessary
reconnaissance. But though of all nations, except of course the utterly
negligent United States, Great Britain had least developed her aviation corps,
there were attached to General French's headquarters enough airmen to meet
this need. In a few minutes after the disquieting news arrived the beat of the
propellers rose above the din of the battlefield and the airplanes appeared
above the enemy's lines. An hour or two sufficed to gather the necessary
facts, the fliers returned to headquarters, and immediately the retreat was
begun.

It was a beaten army that plodded back to the line of the Marne. Its retreat
at times narrowly approached a rout. But the army was not crushed,
annihilated. It remained a coherent, serviceable part of the allied line in the
successful action speedily fought along the Marne. But had it not been for the
presence of the airmen the British expeditionary force would have been
wiped out then and there.

The battle of Mons gave the soldiers a legend which still persists—that of
the ghostly English bowmen of the time of Edward the Black Prince who
came back from their graves to save that field for England and for France.
Thousands of simple souls believe that legend to-day. But it is no whit more
unbelievable than the story of an army saved by a handful of men flying
thousands of feet above the field would have been had it been told of a battle
in our Civil War. The world has believed in ghosts for centuries and the
Archers of Mons are the legitimate successors of the Great Twin Brethren at
the Battle of Lake Regillus. But Cæsar, Napoleon, perhaps the elder von
Moltke himself would have scoffed at the idea that men could turn
themselves into birds to spy out the enemy's dispositions and save a sorely
menaced army.

When this war has passed into history it will be recognized that its greatest
contributions to military science have been the development and the use of
aircraft and submarines. There have, of course, been other features in the
method of waging war which have been novel either in themselves, or in the
gigantic scale upon which they have been employed. There is, for example,
nothing new about trench warfare. The American who desires to satisfy
himself about that need only to visit the Military Park at Vicksburg, or the
country about Petersburg or Richmond, to recognize that even fifty years ago

our soldiers understood the art of sheltering themselves from bullet and
shrapnel in the bosom of Mother Earth. The trench warfare in Flanders, the
Argonne, and around Verdun has been novel only in the degree to which it
has been developed and perfected. Concrete-lined trenches, with spacious and
well-furnished bomb-proofs, with phonographs, printing presses, and
occasional dramatic performances for lightening the soldiers' lot present an
impressive elaboration of the muddy ditches of Virginia and Mississippi. Yet
after all the boys of Grant and Lee had the essentials of trench warfare well in
mind half a century before Germany, France, and England came to grips on
the long line from the North Sea to the Vosges.

Asphyxiating gas, whether liberated from a shell, or released along a
trench front to roll slowly down before a wind upon its defenders, was a
novelty of this war. But in some degree it was merely a development of the
"stinkpot" which the Chinese have employed for years. So too the tear-bomb,
or lachrymatory bomb, which painfully irritated the eyes of all in its
neighbourhood when it burst, filling them with tears and making the soldiers
practically helpless in the presence of a swift attack. These two weapons of
offence, and particularly the first, because of the frightful and long-
continuing agony it inflicts upon its victims, fascinated the observer, and
awakened the bitter protests of those who held that an issue at war might be
determined by civilized nations without recourse to engines of death and
anguish more barbaric than any known to the red Indians, or the most savage
tribes of Asia. Neither of these devices, nor for that matter the cognate one of
fire spurted like a liquid from a hose upon a shrinking enemy, can be shown
to have had any appreciable effect upon the fortunes of any great battle. Each,
as soon as employed by any one belligerent, was quickly seized by the
adversary, and the respiratory mask followed fast upon the appearance of the
chlorine gas. Whatever the outcome of the gigantic conflict may be, no one
will claim that any of these devices had contributed greatly to the result.

But the airplane revolutionized warfare on land. The submarine has made
an almost equal revolution in naval warfare.

Had the airplane been known in the days of our Civil War some of its most
picturesque figures would have never risen to eminence or at least would
have had to win their places in history by efforts of an entirely different sort.
There is no place left in modern military tactics for the dashing cavalry scout

of the type of Sheridan, Custer, Fitz Lee, or Forrest. The airplane, soaring
high above the lines of the enemy, brings back to headquarters in a few hours
information that in the old times took a detachment of cavalry days to gather.
The "screen of cavalry" that in bygone campaigns commanders used to mask
their movements no longer screens nor masks. A general moves with perfect
knowledge that his enemy's aircraft will report to their headquarters his roads,
his strength, and his probable destination as soon as his vanguard is off.
During the Federal advance upon Richmond, Stonewall Jackson, most
brilliant of the generals of that war, repeatedly slipped away from the Federal
front, away from the spot where the Federal commanders confidently
supposed him to be, and was found days later in the Valley of the
Shenandoah, threatening Washington or menacing the Union rear and its
communications. The war was definitely prolonged by this Confederate dash
and elusiveness—none of which would have been possible had the Union
forces possessed an aviation corps.

Photo by Peter A. Juley.
A Battle in Mid-air.
(Note rifleman on wing of airplane.)
From the painting by Lieutenant Farré.

It is yet to be shown conclusively that as offensive engines aircraft have
any great value. The tendency of the military authorities of every side to
minimize the damage they have suffered makes any positive conclusion on
this subject difficult and dangerous at this moment. The airplane by day or the
Zeppelin by night appears swiftly and mysteriously, drops its bombs from a
height of several thousand feet, and takes its certain flight through the
boundless sky to safety. The aggressor cannot tell whether his bombs have
found a fitting target. He reports flaming buildings left behind him, but
whether they are munition factories, theatres, or primary schools filled with
little children he cannot tell. Nor does he know how quickly the flames were
extinguished, or the amount of damage done. The British boast of successful
air raids upon Cuxhaven, Zeebrugge, Essen, and Friedrichshaven. But if we
take German official reports we must be convinced that the damage done was
negligible in its relation to the progress of the war. In their turn the Germans
brag mightily of the deeds of their Zeppelins over London, and smaller
British towns. But the sum and substance of their accomplishment, according
to the British reports, has been the slaughter and mutilation of a number of
civilians—mostly women and children—and the bloody destruction of many
humble working-class homes.

At this writing, December, 1917, it is not recorded that any battleship,
munition factory, any headquarters, great government building, or fortress has
been destroyed or seriously injured by the activities of aircraft of either type.
This lack of precise information may be due to the censor rather than to any
lack of great deeds on the part of airmen. We do know of successful attacks
on submarines, though the military authorities are chary about giving out the
facts. But as scouts, messengers, and guides for hidden batteries attacking
unseen targets, aviators have compelled the rewriting of the rules of military
strategy. About this time, however, it became apparent that the belligerents
intended to develop the battleplanes. Particularly was this true of the Allies.
The great measure of success won by the German submarines and the
apparent impossibility of coping adequately with those weapons of death
once they had reached the open sea, led the British and the Americans to
consider the possibility of destroying them in their bases and destroying the
bases as well. But Kiel and Wilhelmshaven were too heavily defended to
make an attack by sea seem at all practicable. The lesser ports of Zeebrugge
and Ostend had been successfully raided from the air and made practically
useless as submarine bases. Discussion therefore was strong of making like

raids with heavier machines carrying heavier guns and dropping more
destructive bombs upon the two chief lurking places of the submarines. While
no conclusion had been reached as to this strategy at the time of the
publication of this book, both nations were busy building larger aircraft
probably for use in such an attack.

The submarine has exerted upon the progress of the war an influence even
more dominant than that of aircraft. It has been a positive force both
offensive and defensive. It has been Germany's only potent weapon for
bringing home to the British the privations and want which war entails upon a
civilian population, and at the same time guarding the German people from
the fullest result of the British blockade. It is no overstatement to declare that
but for the German submarines the war would have ended in the victory of
the Allies in 1916.

We may hark back to our own Civil War for an illustration of the crushing
power of a superior navy not qualified by any serviceable weapon in the
hands of the weaker power.

Historians have very generally failed to ascribe to the Federal blockade of
Confederate ports its proportionate influence on the outcome of that war. The
Confederates had no navy. Their few naval vessels were mere commerce
destroyers, fleeing the ships of the United States navy and preying upon
unarmed merchantmen. With what was rapidly developed into the most
powerful navy the world had ever seen, the United States Government from
the very beginning of the war locked the Confederate States in a wall of iron.
None might pass going in or out, except by stealth and at the peril of property
and life. Outside the harbour of every seaport in the control of the
Confederates the blockading men-of-war lurked awaiting the blockade
runners. Their vigilance was often eluded, of course, yet nevertheless the
number of cargoes that slipped through was painfully inadequate to meet the
needs of the fenced-in States. Clothing, medicines, articles of necessary
household use were denied to civilians. Cannon, rifles, saltpetre, and other
munitions of war were withheld from the Confederate armies. While the ports
of the North were bustling with foreign trade, grass grew on the cobble-
stoned streets along the waterfronts of Charleston and Savannah. Slow

starvation aided the constant pounding of the Northern armies in reducing the
South to subjection.

Had the Confederacy possessed but a few submarines of modern type this
situation could not have persisted. Then, as to-day, neutral nations were eager
to trade with both belligerents. There were then more neutrals whose interests
would have compelled the observance of the laws of blockade, which in the
present war are flagrantly violated by all belligerents with impunity. A
submarine raid which would have sunk or driven away the blockading fleet at
the entrance to a single harbour would have resulted in opening that harbour
to the unrestricted uses of neutral ships until the blockade could be re-
established and formal notice given to all powers—a formality which in those
days, prior to the existence of cables, would have entailed weeks, perhaps
months, of delay.

How serious such an interruption to the blockade was then considered was
shown by the trepidation of the Union naval authorities over the first victories
of the Merrimac prior to the providential arrival of the Monitor in Hampton
Roads. It was then thought that the Confederate ram would go straight to
Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, destroy or drive away the blockaders,
and open the Confederacy to the trade of the world.

Even then men dreamed of submarines, as indeed they have since the days
of the American Revolution. Of the slow development of that engine of war
to its present effectiveness we shall speak more fully in later chapters.
Enough now to say that had the Confederacy possessed boats of the U-53
type the story of our Civil War might have had a different ending. The device
which the Allies have adopted to-day of blockading a port or ports by posting
their ships several hundred miles away would have found no toleration
among neutrals none too friendly to the United States, and vastly stronger in
proportion to the power of this nation than all the neutrals to-day are to the
strength of the Allies.

Victory in the Clouds.
Painting by John E. Whiting.

From the beginning of the Great War in Europe the fleets of the Teutonic
alliance were locked up in port by the superior floating forces of the Entente.
Such sporadic dashes into the arena of conflict as the one made by the
German High Fleet, bringing on the Battle of Jutland, had but little bearing
on the progress of the war. But the steady, persistent malignant activity of the
German submarines had everything to do with it. They mitigated the rigidity
of the British blockade by keeping the blockaders far from the ports they
sought to seal. They preyed on the British fleets by sinking dreadnoughts,
battleships, and cruisers in nearly all of the belligerent seas. If the British
navy justified its costly power by keeping the German fleet practically
imprisoned in its fortified harbours, the German submarines no less won
credit and glory by keeping even that overwhelming naval force restricted in

its movements, ever on guard, ever in a certain sense on the defensive. And
meanwhile these underwater craft so preyed upon British foodships that in
the days of the greatest submarine activity England was reduced to
husbanding her stores of food with almost as great thrift and by precisely the
same methods as did Germany suffering from the British blockade.

Aircraft and submarines! Twin terrors of the world's greatest war! The
development, though by no means the final development, of dreams that men
of many nations have dreamed throughout the centuries! They are two of the
outstanding features of the war; two of its legacies to mankind. How much
the legacy may be worth in peaceful times is yet to be determined. The
airplane and the dirigible at any rate seem already to promise useful service
to peaceful man. Already the flier is almost as common a spectacle in certain
sections of our country as the automobile was fifteen years ago. The
submarine, for economic reasons, promises less for the future in the way of
peaceful service, notwithstanding the exploits of the Deutschland in the
ocean-carrying trade. But perhaps it too will find its place in industry when
awakened man shall be willing to spend as much treasure, as much genius, as
much intelligent effort, and as much heroic self-sacrifice in organizing for the
social good as in the last four years he has expended in its destruction.

CHAPTER II
THE EARLIEST FLYING MEN

The conquest of the air has been the dream of mankind for uncounted
centuries. As far back as we have historic records we find stories of the
attempts of men to fly. The earliest Greek mythology is full of aeronautical
legends, and the disaster which befell Icarus and his wings of wax when
exposed to the glare of the midsummer sun in Greece, is part of the
schoolboy's task in Ovid. We find like traditions in the legendary lore of the
Peruvians, the East Indians, the Babylonians, even the savage races of darkest
Africa. In the Hebrew scriptures the chief badge of sanctity conferred on
God's angels was wings, and the ability to fly. If we come down to the
mythology of more recent times we find our pious ancestors in New England
thoroughly convinced that the witches they flogged and hanged were
perfectly able to navigate the air on a broomstick—thus antedating the
Wrights' experiments with heavier-than-air machines by more than 250 years.

It is an interesting fact, stimulating to philosophical reflection, that in the
last decade more has been done toward the conquest of the air, than in the
twenty centuries preceding it, though during all that period men had been
dreaming, planning, and experimenting upon contrivances for flight.
Moreover when success came—or such measure of success as has been won
—it came by the application of an entirely novel principle hardly dreamed of
before the nineteenth century.

Some of the earlier efforts to master gravity and navigate the air are worthy
of brief mention if only to show how persistent were the efforts from the
earliest historic ages to accomplish this end. Passing over the legends of the
time of mythology we find that many-sided genius, Leonardo da Vinci, early
in the sixteenth century, not content with being a painter, architect, sculptor,
engineer and designer of forts, offering drawings and specifications of wings

which, fitted to men, he thought would enable them to fly. The sketches are
still preserved in a museum at Paris. He modelled his wings on those of a bat
and worked them with ropes passing over pulleys, the aviator lying prone,
face downward, and kicking with both arms and legs with the vigour of a
frog. There is, unhappily, no record that the proposition ever advanced
beyond the literary stage—certainly none that Da Vinci himself thus risked
his life. History records no one who kicked his way aloft with the Da Vinci
device. But the manuscript which the projector left shows that he recognized
the modern aviator's maxim, "There's safety in altitude." He says, in
somewhat confused diction:

The bird should with the aid of the wind raise itself to a great height,
and this will be its safety; because although the revolutions mentioned
may happen there is time for it to recover its equilibrium, provided its
various parts are capable of strong resistance so that they may safely
withstand the fury and impetus of the descent.

Photo by Peter A. Juley.
The Fall of the Boche.
From the painting by Lieutenant Farré.

The fallacy that a man could, by the rapid flapping of wings of any sort,
overcome the force of gravity persisted up to a very recent day, despite the
complete mathematical demonstration by von Helmholtz in 1878 that man
could not possibly by his own muscular exertions raise his own weight into
the air and keep it suspended. Time after time the "flapping wings" were
resorted to by ambitious aviators with results akin to those attained by Darius
Green. One of the earliest was a French locksmith named Besnier, who had
four collapsible planes on two rods balanced across his shoulders. These he
vigorously moved up and down with his hands and feet, the planes opening
like covers of a book as they came down, and closing as they came up.
Besnier made no attempt to raise himself from the ground, but believed that
once launched in the air from an elevation he could maintain himself, and
glide gradually to earth at a considerable distance. It is said that he and one or
two of his students did in a way accomplish this. Others, however,
experimenting with the same method came to sorry disaster. Among these
was an Italian friar whom King James IV. of Scotland had made Prior of
Tongland. Equipped with a pair of large feather wings operated on the
Besnier principle, he launched himself from the battlements of Stirling Castle
in the presence of King James and his court. But gravity was too much for his
apparatus, and turning over and over in mid-air he finally landed ingloriously
on a manure heap—at that period of nascent culture a very common feature
of the pleasure grounds of a palace. He had a soul above his fate however, for
he ascribed his fall not to vulgar mechanical causes, but wholly to the fact
that he had overlooked the proper dignity of flight by pluming his wings with
the feathers of common barn-yard fowl instead of with plumes plucked from
the wings of eagles!

In sharp competition with the aspiring souls who sought to fly with wings
—the forerunners of the airplane devotees of to-day—were those who tried to
find some direct lifting device for a car which should contain the aviators.
Some of their ideas were curiously logical and at the same time comic. There
was, for example, a priest, Le Père Galien of Avignon. He observed that the
rarified air at the summit of the Alps was vastly lighter than that in the valleys
below. What then was to hinder carrying up empty sacks of cotton or oiled
silk to the mountain tops, opening them to the lighter air of the upper ranges,
and sealing them hermetically when filled by it. When brought down into the
valleys they would have lifting power enough to carry tons up to the summits
again. The good Father's education in physics was not sufficiently advanced

to warn him that the effort to drag the balloons down into the valley would
exact precisely the force they would exert in lifting any load out of the valley
—if indeed they possessed any lifting power whatsoever, which is
exceedingly doubtful.

Another project, which sounded logical enough, was based on the
irrefutable truth that as air has some weight—to be exact 14.70 pounds for a
column one inch square and the height of the earth's atmosphere—a vacuum
must be lighter, as it contains nothing, not even air. Accordingly in the
seventeenth century, one Francisco Lana, another priest, proposed to build an
airship supported by four globes of copper, very thin and light, from which all
the air had been pumped. The globes were to be twenty feet in diameter, and
were estimated to have a lifting force of 2650 pounds. The weight of the
copper shells was put at 1030 pounds, leaving a margin of possible weight for
the car and its contents of 1620 pounds. It seemed at first glance a perfectly
reasonable and logical plan. Unhappily one factor in the problem had been
ignored. The atmospheric pressure on each of the globes would be about 1800
tons. Something more than a thin copper shell would be needed to resist this
crushing force and an adequate increase in the strength of the shells would so
enhance their weight as to destroy their lifting power.

To tell at length the stories of attempt and failure of the earliest dabblers in
aeronautics would be unprofitable and uninteresting. Not until the eighteenth
century did the experimenters with lighter-than-air devices show any practical
results. Not until the twentieth century did the advocates of the heavier-than-
air machines show the value of their fundamental idea. The former had to
discover a gaseous substance actually lighter, and much lighter, than the
surrounding atmosphere before they could make headway. The latter were
compelled to abandon wholly the effort to imitate the flapping of a bird's
wings, and study rather the method by which the bird adjusts the surface of
its wings to the wind and soars without apparent effort, before they could
show the world any promising results.

Nearly every step forward in applied science is accomplished because of
the observation by some thoughtful mind of some common phenomenon of
nature, and the later application of those observations to some useful purpose.

It seems a far cry from an ancient
Greek philosopher reposing
peacefully in his bath to a modern
Zeppelin, but the connection is direct.
Every schoolboy knows the story of
the sudden dash of Archimedes, stark
and dripping from his tub, with the
triumphant cry of "Eureka!"—"I have
found it!" What he had found was the
rule which governed the partial
flotation of his body in water. Most of
us observe it, but the philosophical
mind alone inquired "Why?"
Archimedes' answer was this rule
which has become a fundamental of
physics: "A body plunged into a fluid
is subjected by this fluid to a pressure
from below to above equal to the
weight of the fluid displaced by the
body." A balloon is plunged in the air
Lana's Vacuum Balloon. —a fluid. If it is filled with air there is
no upward pressure from below, but if
it is filled with a gas lighter than air
there is a pressure upward equal to the difference between the weight of that
gas and that of an equal quantity of air. Upon that fact rests the whole theory
and practice of ballooning.

The illustration of James Watt watching the steam rattle the cover of a
teapot and from it getting the rudimentary idea of the steam engine is another
case in point. Sometimes however the application of the hints of nature to the
needs of man is rather ludicrously indirect. Charles Lamb gravely averred
that because an early Chinaman discovered that the flesh of a pet pig,
accidentally roasted in the destruction by fire of his owner's house, proved
delicious to the palate, the Chinese for years made a practice of burning down
their houses to get roast pig with "crackling." Early experimenters in aviation
observed that birds flapped their wings and flew. Accordingly they believed
that man to fly must have wings and flap them likewise. Not for hundreds of
years did they observe that most birds flapped their wings only to get

headway, or altitude, thereafter soaring to great heights and distances merely
by adjusting the angle of their wings to the various currents of air they
encountered.

In a similar way the earliest experimenters with balloons observed that
smoke always ascended. "Let us fill a light envelope with smoke," said they,
"and it will rise into the air bearing a burden with it." All of which was true
enough, and some of the first balloonists cast upon their fires substances like
sulphur and pitch in order to produce a thicker smoke, which they believed
had greater lifting power than ordinary hot air.

In the race for actual accomplishment the balloonists, the advocates of
lighter-than-air machines, took the lead at first. It is customary and reasonable
to discard as fanciful the various devices and theories put forward by the
experimenters in the Middle Ages and fix the beginning of practical
aeronautical devices with the invention of hot-air balloons by the
Montgolfiers, of Paris, in 1783.

The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph and Jacques, were paper-makers of Paris.
The family had long been famous for its development of the paper trade, and
the many ingenious uses to which they put its staple. Just as the tanners of the
fabled town in the Middle Ages thought there was "nothing like leather" with
which to build its walls and gates, thereby giving a useful phrase to literature,
so the Montgolfiers thought of everything in terms of paper. Sitting by their
big open fireplace one night, so runs the story, they noticed the smoke rushing
up the chimney. "Why not fill a big paper bag with smoke and make it lift
objects into the air?" cried one. The experiment was tried next day with a
small bag and proved a complete success. A neighbouring housewife looked
in, and saw the bag bumping about the ceiling, but rapidly losing its
buoyancy as the smoke escaped.

"Why not fasten a pan below the mouth of the bag," said she, "and put your
fire in that? Its weight will keep the bag upright, and when it rises will carry
the smoke and the pan up with it."

Acting upon the hint the brothers fixed up a small bag which sailed up into
the air beyond recapture. After various experiments a bag of mixed paper and
linen thirty-five feet in diameter was inflated and released. It soared to a
height of six thousand feet, and drifted before the wind a mile or more before

descending. The ascent took place at
Avonay, the home at the time of the
Montgolfiers, and as every sort of
publicity was given in advance, a
huge assemblage including many
officials of high estate gathered to
witness it. A roaring fire was built in
a pit over the mouth of which eight
men held the great sack, which
rolled, and beat about before the
wind as it filled and took the form of
a huge ball. The crowd was
unbelieving and cynical, inclined to
scoff at the idea that mere smoke
would carry so huge a construction
up into the sky. But when the signal
was given to cast off, the balloon
rose with a swiftness and majesty
that at first struck the crowd dumb,
then moved it to cheers of
amazement and admiration. It went
up six thousand feet and the
Montgolfiers were at once elevated
to almost an equal height of fame.
The crowd which watched the Montgolfier's Experimental Balloon.
experiment was wild with
enthusiasm; the Montgolfiers elated
with the first considerable victory over the force of gravity. They had
demonstrated a principle and made their names immortal. What remained was
to develop that principle and apply it to practical ends. That development,
however, proceeded for something more than a century before anything like a
practical airship was constructed.

But for the moment the attack on the forces which had kept the air virgin
territory to man was not allowed to lag. In Paris public subscriptions were
opened to defray the cost of a new and greater balloon. By this time it was
known that hydrogen gas, or "inflammable air" as it was then called, was
lighter than air. But its manufacture was then expensive and public aid was

needed for the new experiment which would call at the outset for a thousand
pounds of iron filings and 498 pounds of sulphuric acid wherewith to
manufacture the gas.

The first experiment had been made in the provinces. This one was set for
Paris, and in an era when the French capital was intellectually more alert,
more eager for novelty, more interested in the advancement of physical
science and in new inventions than ever in its long history of hospitality to
the new idea. They began to fill the bag August 23, 1783 in the Place des
Victoires, but the populace so thronged that square that two days later it was
moved half filled to Paris's most historic point, the Champ de Mars. The
transfer was made at midnight through the narrow dark streets of mediæval
Paris. Eyewitnesses have left descriptions of the scene. Torch-bearers lighted
on its way the cortège the central feature of which was the great bag, half
filled with gas, flabby, shapeless, monstrous, mysterious, borne along by men
clutching at its formless bulk. The state had recognized the importance of the
new device and cuirassiers in glittering breastplates on horseback, and
halbardiers in buff leather on foot guarded it in its transit through the sleeping
city. But Paris was not all asleep. An escort of the sensation-loving rabble
kept pace with the guards. The cries of the quarters rose above the tramp of
the armed men. Observers have recorded that the passing cab drivers were so
affected by wonder that they clambered down from their boxes and with
doffed hats knelt in the highway while the procession passed.

The ascension, which occurred two days later, was another moving
spectacle. In the centre of the great square which has seen so many historic
pageants, rose the swaying, quivering balloon, now filled to its full capacity
of twenty-two thousand feet. Whether from the art instinct indigenous to the
French, or some superstitious idea like that which impels the Chinese to paint
eyes on their junks, the balloon was lavishly decorated in water colours, with
views of rising suns, whirling planets, and other solar bodies amongst which
it was expected to mingle.

Ranks of soldiers kept the populace at a distance, while within the sacred
precincts strolled the King and the ladies and cavaliers of his court treading
all unconsciously on the brink of that red terror soon to engulf the monarchy.
The gas in the reeling bag was no more inflammable than the air of Paris in

those days just before the Revolution. With a salvo of cannon the guy-ropes
were released and the balloon vanished in the clouds.

Benjamin Franklin, at the moment representing in France the American
colonies then struggling for liberty, witnessed this ascension! "Of what use is
a new-born child?" he remarked sententiously as the balloon vanished. 'Twas
a saying worthy of a cautious philosopher. Had Franklin been in Paris in 1914
he would have found the child, grown to lusty manhood, a strong factor in the
city's defence. It is worth noting by the way that so alert was the American
mind at that period that when the news of the Montgolfiers' achievement
reached Philadelphia it found David Rittenhouse and other members of the
Philosophical Society already experimenting with balloons.

Photo by Peter A. Juley.
A Rescue at Sea.
From the painting by Lieutenant Farré.

A curious sequel attended the descent of the Montgolfier craft which took
place in a field fifteen miles from Paris. Long before the days of newspapers,
the peasants had never heard of balloons, and this mysterious object,
dropping from high heaven into their peaceful carrot patch affrighted them.

Some fled. Others approached timidly, armed with the normal bucolic
weapons—scythes and pitchforks. Attacked with these the fainting monster,
which many took for a dragon, responded with loud hisses and emitted a gas
of unfamiliar but most pestiferous odour. It suggested brimstone, which to the
devout in turn implied the presence of Satan. With guns, flails, and all
obtainable weapons they fell upon the emissary of the Evil One, beat him to
the ground, crushed out of him the vile-smelling breath of his nostrils, and
finally hitched horses to him and dragged him about the fields until torn to
tatters and shreds.

When the public-spirited M. Charles who had contributed largely to the
cost of this experiment came in a day or two to seek his balloon he found
nothing but some shreds of cloth, and some lively legends of the prowess of
the peasants in demolishing the devil's own dragon.

The government, far-sightedly, recognizing that there would be more
balloons and useful ones, thereupon issued this proclamation for the
discouragement of such bucolic valour:

A discovery has been made which the government deems it wise to
make known so that alarm may not be occasioned to the people. On
calculating the different weights of inflammable and common air it has
been found that a balloon filled with inflammable air will rise toward
heaven until it is in equilibrium with the surrounding air; which may not
happen till it has attained to a great height. Anyone who should see such a
globe, resembling the moon in an eclipse, should be aware that far from
being an alarming phenomenon it is only a machine made of taffetas, or
light canvas covered with paper, that cannot possibly cause any harm and
which will some day prove serviceable to the wants of society.

Came now the next great step in the progress of aeronautics. It had been
demonstrated that balloons could lift themselves. They had even been made
to lift dumb animals and restore them to earth unhurt. But if the conquest of
the air was to amount to anything, men must go aloft in these new machines.
Lives must be risked to demonstrate a theory, or to justify a calculation.
Aeronautics is no science for laboratory or library prosecution. Its battles
must be fought in the sky, and its devotees must be willing to offer their lives
to the cause. In that respect the science of aviation has been different from

almost any subject of inquiry that has ever engaged the restless intellect of
man, unless perhaps submarine navigation, or the invention of explosives. It
cannot be prosecuted except with a perfect willingness to risk life. No doubt
this is one of the reasons why practical results seemed so long in the coming.
Nor have men been niggardly in this enforced sacrifice. Though no records of
assured accuracy are available, the names of forty-eight aeronauts who gave
up their lives in the century following the Montgolfiers' invention are
recorded. That record ended in 1890. How many have since perished,
particularly on the battlefields of Europe where aircraft are as commonplace
as cannon, it is too early yet to estimate.

After the success of the ascension
from the Champ de Mars, the demand
at once arose for an ascension by a
human being. It was a case of calling
for volunteers. The experiments
already made showed clearly enough
that the balloon would rise high in air.
Who would risk his life soaring one
thousand feet or more above the earth,
in a flimsy bag, filled with hot air, or
inflammable gas, without means of
directing its course or bringing it with
certainty and safety back to a landing
place? It was a hard question, and it is
interesting to note that it was
answered not by a soldier or sailor,
not by an adventurer, or devil-may-
care spirit, but by a grave and learned
professor of physical science, Pilatre
de Rozier. Presently he was joined in
his enterprise by a young man of the
fashionable world and sporting tastes,
the Marquis d'Arlandes. Aristocratic
Paris took up aviation in the last days
of the eighteenth century, precisely as Montgolfier's Passenger Balloon.
the American leisure class is taking it
up in the first days of the twentieth.

The balloon for this adventure was bigger than its predecessors and for the
first time a departure was taken from the spherical variety—the gas bag being
seventy-four feet high, and forty-eight feet in diameter. Like the first
Montgolfier balloons it was to be inflated with hot air, and the car was well
packed with bundles of fuel with which the two aeronauts were to fill the iron
brazier when its fires went down. The instinct for art and decoration, so
strong in the French mind, had been given full play by the constructors of this
balloon and it was painted with something of the gorgeousness of a circus
poster.

A tremendous crowd packed the park near Paris whence the ascent was
made. Always the spectacle of human lives in danger has a morbid attraction
for curiosity seekers, and we have seen in our own days throngs attracted to
aviation congresses quite as much in the expectation of witnessing some fatal
disaster, as to observe the progress made in man's latest conquest over nature.
But in this instance the occasion justified the widest interest. It was an
historic moment—more epoch-making than those who gathered in that field
in the environs of Paris could have possibly imagined. For in the clumsy,
gaudy bag, rolling and tossing above a smoky fire lay the fundamentals of
those great airships that, perfected by the persistence of Count Zeppelin, have
crossed angry seas, breasted fierce winds, defied alike the blackest nights and
the thickest fogs to rain their messages of death on the capital of a foe.

Contemporary accounts of this first ascension are but few, and those that
have survived have come down to us in but fragmentary form. It was thought
needful for two to make the ascent, for the car, or basket, which held the fire
hung below the open mouth of the bag, and the weight of a man on one side
would disturb the perfect equilibrium which it was believed would be
essential to a successful flight. The Marquis d'Arlandes in a published
account of the brief flight, which sounds rather as if the two explorers of an
unknown element were not free from nervousness, writes:

"Our departure was at fifty-four minutes past one, and occasioned little stir
among the spectators. Thinking they might be frightened and stand in need of
encouragement I waved my arm."

This solicitude for the fears of the spectators, standing safely on solid earth
while the first aeronauts sailed skywards, is characteristically Gallic. The

Marquis continues:

M. de Rozier cried: "You are doing nothing, and we are not rising." I
stirred the fire and then began to scan the river, but Pilatre again cried:
"See the river. We are dropping into it!" We again urged the fire, but still
clung to the river bed. Presently I heard a noise in the upper part of the
balloon, which gave a shock as though it had burst. I called to my
companion: "Are you dancing?" The balloon by this time had many holes
burnt in it and using my sponge I cried that we must descend. My
companion however explained that we were over Paris and must now
cross it; therefore raising the fire once more we turned south till we
passed the Luxembourg, when, extinguishing the flames, the balloon
came down spent and empty.

If poor Pilatre played the part of a rather nervous man in this narrative he
had the nerve still to go on with his aeronautical experiments to the point of
death. In 1785 he essayed the crossing of the English Channel in a balloon of
his own design, in which he sought to combine the principles of the gas and
hot-air balloons. It appears to have been something like an effort to combine
nitro-glycerine with an electric spark. At any rate the dense crowds that
thronged the coast near Boulogne to see the start of the "Charles—
Montgolfier"—as the balloon was named after the originators of the rival
systems—saw it, after half an hour's drift out to sea, suddenly explode in a
burst of flame. De Rozier and a friend who accompanied him were killed. A
monument still recalls their fate, which however is more picturesquely
recorded in the signs of sundry inns and cafés of the neighbourhood which
offer refreshment in the name of Les Aviateurs Perdus.

Thereafter experimenters with balloons multiplied amazingly. The world
thought the solution of the problem of flight had been found in the gas bag.
Within two months a balloon capable of lifting eighteen tons and carrying
seven passengers ascended three thousand feet at Lyons, and, though
sustaining a huge rent in the envelope, because of the expansion of the gas at
that height, returned to earth in safety. The fever ran from France to England
and in 1784, only a year after the first Montgolfier experiments, Lunardi, an
Italian aeronaut made an ascension from London which was viewed by King
George III. and his ministers, among them William Pitt. But the early
enthusiasm for ballooning quickly died down to mere curiosity. It became

apparent to all that merely to rise into the air, there to be the helpless
plaything of the wind, was but a useless and futile accomplishment. Pleasure
seekers and mountebanks used balloons for their own purposes, but serious
experimenters at once saw that if the invention of the balloon was to be of the
slightest practical value some method must be devised for controlling and
directing its flight. To this end some of the brightest intellects of the world
directed their efforts, but it is hardly overstating the case to say that more than
a century passed without any considerable progress toward the development
of a dirigible balloon.

But even at the earlier time it was
evident enough that the Quaker
philosopher, from the American
Colonies, not yet the United States,
whose shrewd and inquiring
disposition made him intellectually
one of the foremost figures of his day,
foresaw clearly the great possibilities
of this new invention. In letters to Sir
Joseph Banks, then President of the
Royal Society of London, Franklin
gave a lively account of the first three
ascensions, together with some
comments, at once suggestive and
humorous, which are worth quoting:

Some think [he wrote of the
balloon] Progressive Motion on
the Earth may be advanc'd by it,
and that a Running Footman or a
Horse slung and suspended under
such a Globe so as to have no
more of Weight pressing the Earth
with their Feet than Perhaps 8 or Charles's Balloon.
10 Pounds, might with a fair Wind
run in a straight Line across
Countries as fast as that Wind, and over Hedges, Ditches and even
Waters. It has been even fancied that in time People will keep such

Globes anchored in the Air to which by Pullies they may draw up Game
to be preserved in the Cool and Water to be frozen when Ice is wanted.
And that to get Money it will be contriv'd, by running them up in an
Elbow Chair a Mile high for a guinea, etc., etc.

With his New England lineage Franklin could hardly have failed of this
comparison: "A few Months since the Idea of Witches riding through the Air
upon a broomstick, and that of Philosophers upon a Bag of Smoke would
have appeared equally impossible and ridiculous."

To-day when aircraft are the eyes of the armies in the greatest war of
history, and when it appears that, with the return of peace, the conquest of the
air for the ordinary uses of man will be swiftly completed, Franklin's good-
humoured plea for the fullest experimentation is worth recalling. And the
touch of piety with which he concludes his argument is a delightful example
of the whimsical fashion in which he often undertook to bolster up a
mundane theory with a reference to things supernatural.

© U. & U.
A French Observation Balloon on Fire.

I am sorry this Experiment is totally neglected in England, where
mechanic Genius is so strong. I wish I could see the same Emulation
between the two Nations as I see between the two Parties here. Your
Philosophy seems to be too bashful. In this Country we are not so much
afraid of being laught at. If we do a foolish thing, we are the first to laugh
at it ourselves, and are almost as much pleased with a Bon Mot or a
Chanson, that ridicules well the Disappointment of a Project, as we might
have been with its success. It does not seem to me a good reason to
decline prosecuting a new Experiment which apparently increases the
power of Man over Matter, till we can see to what Use that Power may be
applied. When we have learnt to manage it, we may hope some time or

other to find Uses for it, as men have done for Magnetism and Electricity,
of which the first Experiments were mere Matters of Amusement.

This Experience is by no means a trifling one. It may be attended with
important Consequences that no one can foresee. We should not suffer
Pride to prevent our progress in Science.

Beings of a Rank and Nature far superior to ours have not disdained to
amuse themselves with making and launching Balloons, otherwise we
should never have enjoyed the Light of those glorious objects that rule
our Day & Night, nor have had the Pleasure of riding round the Sun
ourselves upon the Balloon we now inhabit.
B. Franklin.

The earliest experimenters thought that oars might be employed to propel
and direct a balloon. The immediate failure of all endeavours of this sort, led
them, still pursuing the analogy between a balloon and a ship at sea, to try to
navigate the air with sails. This again proved futile. It is impossible for a
balloon, or airship to "tack" or manœuvre in any way by sail power. It is in
fact a monster sail itself, needing some other power than the wind to make
headway or steerage way against the wind. The sail device was tested only to
be abandoned. Only when a trail rope dragging along the ground or sea is
employed does the sail offer sufficient resistance to the wind to sway the
balloon's course this way or that. And a trailer is impracticable when
navigating great heights.

For these reasons the development of the balloon lagged, until Count
Zeppelin and M. Santos-Dumont consecrated their fortunes, their inventive
minds, and their amazing courage to the task of perfecting a dirigible. In a
book, necessarily packed with information concerning the rapid development
of aircraft which began in the last decade of the nineteenth century and was
enormously stimulated during the war of all the world, the long series of early
experiments with balloons must be passed over hastily. Though interesting
historically these experiments were futile. Beyond having discovered what
could not be done with a balloon the practitioners of that form of aeronautics
were little further along in 1898 when Count Zeppelin came along with the
first plan for a rigid dirigible than they were when Blanchard in 1786, seizing
a favourable gale drifted across the English Channel to the French shore,

together with Dr. Jefferies, an
American. It was just 124 years later
that Bleriot, a Frenchman, made the
crossing in an airplane independently
of favouring winds. It had taken a
century and a quarter to attain this
independence.

In a vague way the earliest
balloonists recognized that power,
independent of wind, was necessary
to give balloons steerage way and
direction. Steam was in its infancy
during the early days of ballooning,
but the efforts to devise some sort of
an engine light enough to be carried
into the air were untiring. Within a
year after the experiments of the
Montgolfier brothers, the suggestion
was made that the explosion of small
quantities of gun-cotton and the
Roberts Brothers' Dirigible. expulsion of the resulting gases might
be utilized in some fashion to operate
propelling machinery. Though the
suggestion was not developed to any useful point it was of interest as
forecasting the fundamental idea of the gas engines of to-day which have
made aviation possible—that is, the creation of power by a series of
explosions within the motor.

In the effort to make balloons dirigible one of the first steps was to change
the form from the spherical or pear-shaped bag to a cylindrical, or cigar-
shape. This device was adopted by the brothers Robert in France as early as
1784. Their balloon further had a double skin or envelope, its purpose being
partly to save the gas which percolated through the inner skin, partly to
maintain the rigidity of the structure. As gas escapes from an ordinary balloon
it becomes flabby, and can be driven through the air only with extreme
difficulty. In the balloon of the Robert brothers air could from time to time be
pumped into the space between the two skins, keeping the outer envelope

always fully distended and rigid. In later years this idea has been modified by
incorporating in the envelope one large or a number of smaller balloons or
"balloonets," into which air may be pumped as needed.

The shape too has come to approximate that of a fish rather than a bird, in
the case of balloons at least. "The head of a cod and the tail of a mackerel,"
was the way Marey-Monge, the French aeronaut described it. Though most
apparent in dirigible balloons, this will be seen to be the favourite design for
airplanes if the wings be stripped off, and the body and tail alone considered.
Complete, these machines are not unlike a flying fish.

In England, Sir George Cayley, as early as 1810 studied and wrote largely
on the subject of dirigibles but, though the English call him the "father of
British aeronautics," his work seems to have been rather theoretical than
practical. He did indeed demonstrate mathematically that no lifting power
existed that would support the cumbrous steam-engine of that date, and tried
to solve this dilemma by devising a gas engine, and an explosive engine.
With one of the latter, driven by a series of explosions of gunpowder, each in
a separate cell set off by a detonator, he equipped a flying machine which
attained a sufficient height to frighten Cayley's coachman, whom he had
persuaded to act as pilot. The rather unwilling aviator, fearing a loftier flight,
jumped out and broke his leg. Though by virtue of this martyrdom his name
should surely have descended to fame with that of Cayley it has been lost,
together with all record of any later performances of the machine, which
unquestionably embodied some of the basic principles of our modern aircraft,
though it antedated the first of these by nearly a century.

Giffard's Dirigible.

We may pass over hastily some of the later experiments with dirigibles that
failed. In 1834 the Count de Lennox built an airship 130 feet long to be
driven by oars worked by man power. When the crowd that gathered to watch
the ascent found that the machine was too heavy to ascend even without the
men, they expressed their lively contempt for the inventor by tearing his
clothes to tatters and smashing his luckless airship. In 1852, another
Frenchman, Henry Giffard, built a cigar-shaped balloon 150 feet long by 40
feet in diameter, driven by steam. The engine weighed three hundred pounds
and generated about 3 H.-P.—about 1/200 as much power as a gas engine of
equal weight would produce. Even with this slender power, however, Giffard
attained a speed, independent of the wind, of from five to seven miles an hour
—enough at least for steerage way. This was really the first practical
demonstration of the possibilities of the mechanical propulsion of balloons.
Several adaptations of the Giffard idea followed, and in 1883 Renard and
Krebs, in a fusiform ship, driven by an electric motor, attained a speed of
fifteen miles an hour. By this time inventive genius in all countries—save the
United States which lagged in interest in dirigibles—was stimulated.
Germany and France became the great protagonists in the struggle for
precedence and in the struggle two figures stand out with commanding
prominence—the Count von Zeppelin and Santos-Dumont, a young Brazilian
resident in Paris who without official countenance consecrated his fortune to,
and risked his life in, the service of aviation.

CHAPTER III
THE SERVICES OF SANTOS-DUMONT

In his book My Airships the distinguished aviator A. Santos-Dumont tells
this story of the ambition of his youth and its realization in later days:

I cannot say at what age I made my first kites, but I remember how my
comrades used to tease me at our game of "pigeon flies." All the children
gather round a table and the leader calls out "Pigeon Flies! Hen flies!
Crow flies! Bee flies!" and so on; and at each call we were supposed to
raise our fingers. Sometimes, however, he would call out "Dog flies! Fox
flies!" or some other like impossibility to catch us. If any one raised a
finger then he was made to pay a forfeit. Now my playmates never failed
to wink and smile mockingly at me when one of them called "Man flies!"
for at the word I would always raise my finger very high, as a sign of
absolute conviction, and I refused with energy to pay the forfeit. The
more they laughed at me the happier I was, hoping that some day the
laugh would be on my side.

Among the thousands of letters which I received after winning the
Deutsch prize (a prize offered in 1901 for sailing around the Eiffel Tower)
there was one that gave me peculiar pleasure. I quote from it as a matter
of curiosity:

"Do you remember, my dear Alberto, when we played together 'Pigeon
Flies!'? It came back to me suddenly when the news of your success
reached Rio. 'Man flies!' old fellow! You were right to raise your finger,
and you have just proved it by flying round the Eiffel Tower.

"They play the old game now more than ever at home; but the name
has been changed, and the rules modified since October 19, 1901. They

call it now 'Man flies!' and he who does not raise his finger at the word
pays the forfeit."

The story of Santos-Dumont affords a curious instance of a boy being
obsessed by an idea which as a man he carried to its successful fruition. It
offers also evidence of the service that may accrue to society from the
devotion of a dilettante to what people may call a "fad," but what is in fact the
germ of a great idea needing only an enthusiast with enthusiasm, brains, and
money for its development. Because the efforts of Santos-Dumont always
smacked of the amateur he has been denied his real place in the history of
aeronautics, which is that of a fearless innovator, and a devoted worker in the
cause.

Born on one of those great coffee plantations of Brazil, where all is done
by machinery that possibly can be, Santos-Dumont early developed a passion
for mechanics. In childhood he made toy airplanes. He confesses that his
favourite author was Jules Verne, that literary idol of boyhood, who while
writing books as wildly imaginative as any dime tale of redskins, or nickel
novel of the doings of "Nick Carter" had none the less the spirit of prophecy
that led him to forecast the submarine, the automobile, and the navigation of
the air. At fifteen Santos-Dumont saw his first balloon and marked the day
with red.

© U. & U.
A British Kite Balloon.
(The open sack at the lower end catches the breeze and keeps the balloon steady.)

I too desired to go ballooning [he writes]. In the long sun-bathed
Brazilian afternoons, when the hum of insects, punctuated by the far-off
cry of some bird lulled me, I would lie in the shade of the veranda and
gaze into the fair sky of Brazil where the birds fly so high and soar with
such ease on their great outstretched wings; where the clouds mount so
gaily in the pure light of day, and you have only to raise your eyes to fall
in love with space and freedom. So, musing on the exploration of the
aërial ocean, I, too, devised airships and flying-machines in my
imagination.

© U. & U.
A British "Blimp" Photographed from Above.

From dreaming, the boy's ambitions rapidly developed into actions. Good
South Americans, whatever the practice of their northern neighbours, do not
wait to die before going to Paris. At the age of eighteen the youth found
himself in the capital of the world. To his amazement he found that the
science of aeronautics, such as it was, had stopped with Giffard's work in
1852. No dirigible was to be heard of in all Paris. The antiquated gas ball was
the only way to approach the upper air. When the boy tried to arrange for an
ascension the balloonist he consulted put so unconscionable a price on one
ascent that he bought an automobile instead—one of the first made, for this
was in 1891—and with it returned to Brazil. It was not until six years later
that, his ambition newly fired by reading of Andrée's plans for reaching the
Pole in a balloon, Santos-Dumont took up anew his ambition to become an
aviator. His own account of his first ascent does not bear precisely the hall-
mark of the enthusiast too rapt in ecstasy to think of common things. "I had
brought up," he notes gravely, "a substantial lunch of hard-boiled eggs, cold
roast beef and chicken, cheese, ice cream, fruits and cakes, champagne,
coffee, and chartreuse!"

The balloon with its intrepid voyagers nevertheless returned to earth in
safety.

A picturesque figure, an habitué of the clubs and an eager sportsman,
Santos-Dumont at once won the liking of the French people, and attracted
attention wherever people gave thought to aviation. Liberal in expenditure of
money, and utterly fearless in exposing his life, he pushed his experiments for
the development of a true dirigible tirelessly. Perhaps his major fault was that
he learned but slowly from the experiences of others. He clung to the
spherical balloon long after the impossibility of controlling it in the air was
accepted as unavoidable by aeronauts. But in 1898 having become infatuated
with the performances of a little sixty-six pound tricycle motor he determined
to build a cigar-shaped airship to fit it, and with that determination won
success.

Amateur he may have been, was indeed throughout the greater part of his
career as an airman. Nevertheless Santos-Dumont has to his credit two very
notable achievements.

He was the first constructor and pilot of a dirigible balloon that made a
round trip, that is to say returned to its starting place after rounding a stake at
some distance—in this instance the Eiffel Tower, 3-½ miles from St. Cloud
whence Santos-Dumont started and whither he returned within half an hour,
the time prescribed.

This was not, indeed, the first occasion on which a round trip, necessitating
operation against the wind on at least one course, had been made. In 1884
Captain Renard had accomplished this feat for the first time with the fish-
shaped balloon La France, driven by an electric motor of nine horse-power.
But though thus antedated in his exploit, Santos-Dumont did in fact
accomplish more for the advancement and development of dirigible balloons.
To begin with he was able to use a new and efficient form of motor destined
to become popular, and capable, as the automobile manufacturers later
showed, of almost illimitable development in the direction of power and
lightness. Except for the gasoline engine, developed by the makers of motor
cars, aviation to-day would be where it was a quarter of a century ago.

Moreover by his personal qualities, no less than by his successful
demonstration of the possibilities inherent in the dirigible, Santos-Dumont

persuaded the French Government to take up aeronautics again, after
abandoning the subject as the mere fad of a number of visionaries.

Turning from balloons to airplanes the Brazilian was the first aviator to
make a flight with a heavier-than-air machine before a body of judges. This
triumph was mainly technical. The Wrights had made an equally notable
flight almost a year before but not under conditions that made it a matter of
scientific record.

But setting aside for the time the work done by Santos-Dumont with
machines heavier than air, let us consider his triumphs with balloons at the
opening of his career. He had come to France about forty years after Henry
Giffard had demonstrated the practicability of navigating a balloon 144 feet
long and 34 feet in diameter with a three-horse-power steam-engine. But no
material success attended this demonstration, important as it was, and the
inventor turned his attention to captive balloons, operating one at the Paris
Exposition of 1878 that took up forty passengers at a time. There followed
Captain Renard to whose achievement we have already referred. He had laid
down as the fundamentals of a dirigible balloon these specifications:

A cigar, or fishlike shape.
An internal sack or ballonet into which air might be pumped to replace any
lost gas, and maintain the shape of the balloon.
A keel, or other longitudinal brace, to maintain the longitudinal stability of
the balloon and from which the car containing the motor might be hung.
A propeller driven by a motor, the size and power of both to be as great as
permitted by the lifting power of the balloon.
A rudder capable of controlling the course of the ship.

Santos-Dumont adopted all of these specifications, but added to them
certain improvements which gave his airships—he built five of them before
taking his first prize—notable superiority over that of Renard. To begin with
he had the inestimable advantage of having the gasoline motor. He further
lightened his craft by having the envelope made of Japanese silk, in flat
defiance of all the builders of balloons who assured him that the substance
was too light and its use would be suicidal. "All right," said the innovator to
his favourite constructor, who refused to build him a balloon of that material,
"I'll build it myself." In the face of this threat the builder capitulated. The

balloon was built, and the silk proved to be the best fabric available at that
time for the purpose. A keel made of strips of pine banded together with
aluminum wire formed the backbone of the Santos-Dumont craft, and from it
depended the car about one quarter of the length of the balloon and hung
squarely amidships. The idea of this keel occurred to the inventor while
pleasuring at Nice. Later it saved his life.

One novel and exceedingly simple device bore witness to the ingenuity of
the inventor. He had noticed in his days of free ballooning that to rise the
aeronaut had to throw out sand-ballast; to descend he had to open the valves
and let out gas. As his supply of both gas and sand was limited it was clear
that the time of his flight was necessarily curtailed every time he ascended or
descended. Santos-Dumont thought to husband his supplies of lifting force
and of ballast, and make the motor raise and lower the ship. It was obvious
that the craft would go whichever way the bow might be pointed, whether up
or down. But how to shift the bow? The solution seems so simple that one
wonders it ever perplexed aviators. From the peak of the bow and stern of his
craft Santos-Dumont hung long ropes caught in the centre by lighter ropes by
which they could be dragged into the car. In the car was carried a heavy bag
of sand, which so long as it was there held the ship in a horizontal plane. Was
it needful to depress the bow? Then the bow rope was hauled in, the bag
attached, and swung out to a position where it would pull the forward tip of
the delicately adjusted gas bag toward the earth. If only a gentle inclination
was desired the bag was not allowed to hang directly under the bow, but was
held at a point somewhere between the car and the bow so that the pull would
be diagonal and the great cylinder would be diverted but little from the
horizontal. If it were desired to ascend, a like manipulation of the ballast on
the stern rope would depress the stern and point the bow upwards. For slight
changes in direction it was not necessary even to attach the sand bag. Merely
drawing the rope into the car and thus changing the line of its "pull" was
sufficient.

The Deutsch prize which stimulated Santos-Dumont to his greatest
achievements with dirigibles was a purse of twenty thousand dollars, offered
by Mr. Henry Deutsch, a wealthy patron of the art of aviation. Not himself an
aviator, M. Deutsch greatly aided the progress of the air's conquest.
Convinced that the true solution of the problem lay in development of the
gasoline engine, he expended large sums in developing and perfecting it.

When he believed it was sufficiently developed to solve the problem of
directing the flight of balloons he offered his prize for the circuit of the Eiffel
Tower. The conditions of the contest were not easy. The competitor had to
sail from the Aero Club at St. Cloud, pass twice over the Seine which at that
point makes an abrupt bend, sail over the Bois de Boulogne, circle the Tower,
and return to the stopping place within a half an hour. The distance was about
seven miles, and it is noteworthy that in his own comment on the test Santos-
Dumont complains that that required an average speed of fifteen miles an
hour of which he could not be sure with his balloon. To-day dirigibles make
sixty miles an hour, and airplanes not infrequently reach 130 miles. Moreover
there could be no picking of a day on which atmospheric conditions were
especially good. Mr. Deutsch had stipulated that the test must be made in the
presence of a Scientific Commission whose members must be notified
twenty-four hours in advance. None could tell twenty-four hours ahead what
the air might be like, and as for utilizing the aviator's most favourable hour,
the calm of the dawn, M. Santos-Dumont remarked: "The duellist may call
out his friends at that sacred hour, but not the airship captain."

The craft with which the Brazilian first strove to win the Deutsch prize he
called Santos-Dumont No. V. It was a cylinder, sharp at both ends, 109 feet
long and driven by a 12-horse-power motor. A new feature was the use of
piano wire for the support of the car, thus greatly reducing the resistance of
the air which in the case of the old cord suspensions was almost as great as
that of the balloon itself. Another novel feature was water ballast tanks
forward and aft on the balloon itself and holding together twelve gallons. By
pulling steel wires in the car the aviator could open the stop-cocks. The
layman scarcely appreciates the very slight shift in ballast which will affect
the stability of a dirigible. The shifting of a rope a few feet from its normal
position, the dropping of two handfuls of sand, or release of a cup of water
will do it. A humorous writer describing a lunch with Santos-Dumont in the
air says: "Nothing must be thrown overboard, be it a bottle, an empty box or a
chicken bone without the pilot's permission."

After unofficial tests of his "No. 5" in one of which he circled the Tower
without difficulty, Santos-Dumont summoned the Scientific Commission for
a test. In ten minutes he had turned the Tower, and started back against a
fierce head-wind, which made him ten minutes late in reaching the time-
keepers. Just as he did so his engine failed, and after drifting for a time his

ship perched in the top of a chestnut tree on the estate of M. Edmond
Rothschild. Philosophical as ever the aeronaut clung to his craft, dispatched
an excellent lunch which the Princess Isabel, Comtesse d'Eu, daughter of
Dom Pedro, the deposed Emperor of Brazil, sent to his eyrie in the branches,
and finally extricated himself and his balloon—neither much the worse for
the accident. He had failed but his determination to win was only whetted.

The second trial for the Deutsch prize like the first ended in failure, but
that failure was so much more dramatic even than the success which attended
the third effort that it is worth telling and can best be told in M. Santos-
Dumont's own words. The quotation is from his memoir, My Airships:

And now I come to a terrible day—8th of August, 1901. At 6:30 A.M. in
presence of the Scientific Commission of the Aero Club, I started again
for the Eiffel Tower.

I turned the tower at the end of nine minutes and took my way back to
St. Cloud; but my balloon was losing hydrogen through one of its two
automatic gas valves whose spring had been accidentally weakened.

I had perceived the beginning of this loss of gas even before reaching
the Eiffel Tower, and ordinarily, in such an event, I should have come at
once to earth to examine the lesion. But here I was competing for a prize
of great honour and my speed had been good. Therefore I risked going
on.

The balloon now shrunk visibly. By the time I had got back to the
fortifications of Paris, near La Muette, it caused the suspension wires to
sag so much that those nearest to the screw-propeller caught in it as it
revolved.

I saw the propeller cutting and tearing at the wires. I stopped the motor
instantly. Then, as a consequence, the airship was at once driven back
toward the tower by the wind which was strong.

Photo by International Film Service Co.
A Kite Balloon Rising from the Hold of a Ship.

At the same time I was falling. The balloon had lost much gas. I might
have thrown out ballast and greatly diminished the fall, but then the wind
would have time to blow me back on the Eiffel Tower. I therefore
preferred to let the airship go down as it was going. It may have seemed a
terrific fall to those who watched it from the ground but to me the worst
detail was the airship's lack of equilibrium. The half-empty balloon,
fluttering its empty end as an elephant waves his trunk, caused the
airship's stern to point upward at an alarming angle. What I most feared
therefore was that the unequal strain on the suspension wires would break
them one by one and so precipitate me to the ground.

Why was the balloon fluttering an empty end causing all this extra
danger? How was it that the rotary ventilator was not fulfilling its purpose
in feeding the interior air balloon and in this manner swelling out the gas
balloon around it? The answer must be looked for in the nature of the
accident. The rotary ventilator stopped working when the motor itself
stopped, and I had been obliged to stop the motor to prevent the propeller

from tearing the suspension wires near it when the balloon first began to
sag from loss of gas. It is true that the ventilator which was working at
that moment had not proved sufficient to prevent the first sagging. It may
have been that the interior balloon refused to fill out properly. The day
after the accident when my balloon constructor's man came to me for the
plans of a "No. 6" balloon envelope I gathered from something he said
that the interior balloon of "No. 5," not having been given time for its
varnish to dry before being adjusted, might have stuck together or stuck
to the sides or bottom of the outer balloon. Such are the rewards of haste.

I was falling. At the same time the wind was carrying me toward the
Eiffel Tower. It had already carried me so far that I was expecting to land
on the Seine embankment beyond the Trocadero. My basket and the
whole of the keel had already passed the Trocadero hotels, and had my
balloon been a spherical one it would have cleared the building. But now
at the last critical moment, the end of the long balloon that was still full of
gas came slapping down on the roof just before clearing it. It exploded
with a great noise; struck after being blown up. This was the terrific
explosion described in the newspaper of the day.

I had made a mistake in my estimate of the wind's force, by a few
yards. Instead of being carried on to fall on the Seine embankment, I now
found myself hanging in my wicker basket high up in the courtyard of the
Trocadero hotels, supported by my airship's keel, that stood braced at an
angle of about forty-five degrees between the courtyard wall above and
the roof of a lower construction farther down. The keel, in spite of my
weight, that of the motor and machinery, and the shock it had received in
falling, resisted wonderfully. The thin pine scantlings and piano wires of
Nice (the town where the idea of a keel first suggested itself) had saved
my life!

After what seemed tedious waiting, I saw a rope being lowered to me
from the roof above. I held to it and was hauled up, when I perceived my
rescuers to be the brave firemen of Paris. From their station at Passy they
had been watching the flight of the airship. They had seen my fall and
immediately hastened to the spot. Then, having rescued me, they
proceeded to rescue the airship.

The operation was painful. The remains of the balloon envelope and
the suspension wires hung lamentably; and it was impossible to disengage
them except in strips and fragments!

The later balloon "No. VI." with which Santos-Dumont won the Deutsch
prize may fairly be taken as his conception of the finished type of dirigible
for one man. In fact his aspirations never soared as high as those of Count
Zeppelin, and the largest airship he ever planned—called "the Omnibus"—
carried only four men. It is probable that the diversion of his interest from
dirigibles to airplanes had most to do with his failure to carry his
development further than he did. "No. VI." was 108 feet long, and 20 feet in
diameter with an eighteen-horse-power gasoline engine which could drive it
at about nineteen miles an hour. Naturally the aeronaut's first thought in his
new construction was of the valves. The memory of the anxious minutes
spent perched on the window-sill of the Trocadero Hotel or dangling like a
spider at the end of the firemen's rope were still fresh. The ballonet which had
failed him in "No. V." was perfected in its successor. Notwithstanding the
care with which she was constructed the prize-winner turned out to be a
rather unlucky ship. On her trial voyage she ran into a tree and was damaged,
and even on the day of her greatest conquest she behaved badly. The test was
made on October 1, 1901. The aeronaut had rounded the Tower finely and
was making for home when the motor began to miss and threatened to stop
altogether. While Santos-Dumont was tinkering with the engine, leaving the
steering wheel to itself, the balloon drifted over the Bois de Boulogne. As
usual the cool air from the wood caused the hydrogen in the balloon to
contract and the craft dropped until it appeared the voyage would end in the
tree tops. Hastily shifting his weights the aeronaut forced the prow of the ship
upwards to a sharp angle with the earth. Just at this moment the reluctant
engine started up again with such vigour that for a moment the ship
threatened to assume a perpendicular position, pointing straight up in the sky.
A cry went up from the spectators below who feared a dire catastrophe was
about to end a voyage which promised success. But with incomparable sang-
froid the young Brazilian manipulated the weights, restored the ship to the
horizontal again without stopping the engines, and reached the finishing stake
in time to win the prize. Soon after it was awarded him the Brazilian
Government presented him with another substantial prize, together with a
gold medal bearing the words: Por ceos nunca d'antes navegados ("Through
heavens hitherto unsailed").

In a sense the reference to the heavens is a trifle over-rhetorical. Santos-
Dumont differed from all aviators (or pilots of airplanes) and most navigators
of dirigibles in always advocating the strategy of staying near the ground. In
his flights he barely topped the roofs of the houses, and in his writings he
repeatedly refers to the sense of safety that came to him when he knew he
was close to the tree tops of a forest. This may have been due to the fact that
in his very first flight in a dirigible he narrowly escaped a fatal accident due
to flying too high. As he descended, the gas which had expanded now
contracted. The balloon began to collapse in the middle. Cords subjected to
unusual stress began to snap. The air pump, which should have pumped the
ballonet full of air to keep the balloon rigid failed to work. Seeing that he was
about to fall into a field in which his drag rope was already trailing the
imperilled airman had a happy thought. Some boys were there flying kites.
He shouted to them to seize his rope and run against the wind. The balloon
responded to the new force like a kite. The rapidity of its fall was checked,
and its pilot landed with only a serious shaking.

But thereafter Santos-Dumont preached the maxim—rare among airmen
—"Keep near the ground. That way lies safety!" Most aviators however,
prefer the heights of the atmosphere, as the sailor prefers the wide and open
sea to a course near land.

After winning the Deutsch prize, Santos-Dumont continued for a time to
amuse himself with dirigibles. I say "amuse" purposely, for never did serious
aeronaut get so much fun out of a rather perilous pastime as he. In his "No.
IX." he built the smallest dirigible ever known. The balloon had just power
enough to raise her pilot and sixty-six pounds more beside a three-horse-
power motor. But she attained a speed of twelve miles an hour, was readily
handled, and it was her owner's dearest delight to use her for a taxicab,
calling for lunch at the cafés in the Bois, and paying visits to friends upon
whom he looked in, literally, at their second-story windows. He ran her in and
out of her hangar as one would a motor-car from its garage. One day he sailed
down the Avenue des Champs Élysées at the level of the second-and third-
story windows of the palaces that line that stately street. Coming to his own
house he descended, made fast, and went in to déjeuner, leaving his aërial cab
without. In the city streets he steered mainly by aid of a guide rope trailing
behind him. With this he turned sharp corners, went round the Arc de
Triomphe, and said: "I might have guide-roped under it had I thought myself

worthy." On occasion he picked up children in the streets and gave them a
ride.

Though before losing his interest in dirigibles Santos-Dumont carried the
number of his construction up to ten, he cannot be said to have devised any
new and useful improvements after his "No. VI." The largest of his ships was
"No. X.," which had a capacity of eighty thousand cubic feet—about ten
times the size of the little runabout with which he played pranks in Paris
streets. In this balloon he placed partitions to prevent the gas shifting to one
part of the envelope, and to guard against losing it all in the event of a tear.
The same principle was fundamental in Count Zeppelin's airships. In 1904 he
brought a dirigible to the United States expecting to compete for a prize at the
St. Louis Exposition. But while suffering exasperating delay from the red-
tape which enveloped the exposition authorities, he discovered one morning
that his craft had been mutilated almost beyond repair in its storage place. In
high dudgeon he left at once for Paris. The explanation of the malicious act
has never been made clear, though many Americans had an uneasy feeling
that the gallant and sportsman-like Brazilian had been badly treated in our
land. On his return to Paris he at once began experimenting with heavier-
than-air machines. Of his work with them we shall give some account later.

Despite his great personal popularity the airship built by Santos-Dumont
never appealed to the French military authorities. Probably this was largely
due to the fact that he never built one of a sufficient size to meet military
tests. The amateur in him was unconquerable. While von Zeppelin's first ship
was big enough to take the air in actual war the Frenchman went on building
craft for one or two men—good models for others to seize and build upon,
but nothing which a war office could actually adopt. But he served his
country well by stimulating the creation of great companies who built largely
upon the foundations he had laid.

First and greatest of these was the company formed by the Lebaudy
Brothers, wealthy sugar manufacturers. Their model was semi-rigid, that is,
provided with an inflexible keel or floor to the gas bag, which was cigar
shaped. The most successful of the earlier ships was 190 feet long, with a car
suspended by cables ten feet below the balloon and carrying the twin motors,
together with passengers and supplies. Although it made many voyages
without accident, it finally encountered what seems to be the chief peril of

dirigible balloons, being torn from its moorings at Châlons and dashed
against trees to the complete demolition of its envelope. Repaired in eleven
weeks she was taken over by the French Department of War, and was in
active service at the beginning of the war. Her two successors on the
company's building ways were less fortunate. La Patrie, after many
successful trips, and manœuvres with the troops, was insecurely moored at
Verdun, the famous fortress where she was to have been permanently
stationed. Came up a heavy gale. Her anchors began to drag. The bugles
sounded and the soldiers by hundreds rushed from the fort to aid. Hurled
along by the wind she dragged the soldiers after her. Fearing disaster to the
men the commandant reluctantly ordered them to let go. The ship leaped into
the black upper air and disappeared. All across France, across that very
country where in 1916 the trenches cut their ugly zigzags from the Channel to
the Vosges, she drifted unseen. By morning she was flying over England and
Wales. Ireland caught a glimpse of her and days thereafter sailors coming into
port told of a curious yellow mass, seemingly flabby and disintegrating like
the carcass of a whale, floating far out at sea.

Her partner ship La République had a like tragic end. She too made many
successful trips, and proved her stability and worth. But one day while
manœuvring near Paris one of her propellers broke and tore a great rent in her
envelope. As the Titanic, her hull ripped open by an iceberg, sunk with more
than a thousand of her people, so this airship, wounded in a more unstable
element, fell to the ground killing all on board.

Two airships were built in France for England in 1909. One, the Clement-
Bayard II., was of the rigid type and built for the government; the other, a
Lebaudy, was non-rigid and paid for by popular subscriptions raised in
England by the Morning Post. Both were safely delivered near London
having made their voyages of approximately 242 miles each at a speed
exceeding forty miles an hour. These were the first airships acquired for
British use.

In the United States the only serious effort to develop the dirigible prior to
the war, and to apply it to some definite purpose, was made not by the
government but by an individual. Mr. Walter Wellman, a distinguished
journalist, fired by the effort of Andrée to reach the North Pole in a drifting
balloon, undertook a similar expedition with a dirigible in 1907. A balloon

was built 184 feet in length and 52 feet in diameter, and was driven by a
seventy-to eighty-horse-power motor. A curious feature of this craft was the
guide rope or, as Wellman called it, the equilibrator, which was made of steel,
jointed and hollow. At the lower end were four steel cylinders carrying
wheels and so arranged that they would float on water or trundle along over
the roughest ice. The idea was that the equilibrator would serve like a guide
rope, trailing on the water or ice when the balloon hung low, and increasing
the power of its drag if the balloon, rising higher, lifted a greater part of its
length into the air. Wellman had every possible appliance to contribute to the
safety of the airship, and many believe that had fortune favoured him the
glory of the discovery of the Pole would have been his. Unhappily he
encountered only ill luck. One season he spent at Dane's Island, near
Spitzenberg whence Andrée had set sail, waiting vainly for favourable
weather conditions. The following summer, just as he was about to start, a
fierce storm destroyed his balloon shed and injured the balloon. Before
necessary repairs could be accomplished Admiral Peary discovered the Pole
and the purpose of the expedition was at an end. Wellman, however, had
become deeply interested in aeronautics and, balked in one ambition, set out
to accomplish another. With the same balloon somewhat remodelled he tried
to cross the Atlantic, setting sail from Atlantic City, N. J., October 16, 1911.
But the device on which the aeronaut most prided himself proved his
undoing. The equilibrator, relied upon both for storage room and as a
regulator of the altitude of the ship, proved a fatal attachment. In even
moderate weather it bumped over the waves and racked the structure of the
balloon with its savage tugging until the machinery broke down and the
adventurers were at the mercy of the elements. Luckily for them after they
had been adrift for seventy-two hours, and travelled several hundred miles
they were rescued by the British steamer Trent. Not long after Wellman's
chief engineer Vanniman sought to cross the Atlantic in a similar craft but
from some unexplained cause she blew up in mid-air and all aboard were lost.

Neither Great Britain nor the United States has reason to be proud of the
attitude of its government towards the inventors who were struggling to
subdue the air to the uses of man. Nor has either reason to boast much of its
action in utterly ignoring up to the very day war broke that aid to military
service of which Lord Kitchener said, "One aviator is worth a corps of
cavalry." It will be noted that to get its first effective dirigible Great Britain
had to rely upon popular subscriptions drummed up by a newspaper. That was

in 1909. To-day, in 1917, the United States has only one dirigible of a type to
be considered effective in the light of modern standards, though our entrance
upon the war has caused the beginning of a considerable fleet. In aviation no
less than in aerostatics the record of the United States is negligible. Our
country did indeed produce the Wright Brothers, pioneers and true
conquerors of the air with airplanes. But even they were forced to go to
France for support and indeed for respectful attention.

So far as the development of dirigible balloons is concerned there is no
more need to devote space to what was done in England and the United States
than there was for the famous chapter on Snakes in Iceland.

CHAPTER IV
THE COUNT VON ZEPPELIN

The year that witnessed the first triumphs of Santos-Dumont saw also the
beginning of the success of his great German rival, the Count von Zeppelin.
These two daring spirits, struggling to attain the same end, were alike in their
enthusiasm, their pertinacity, and their devotion to the same cause. Both were
animated by the highest patriotism. Santos-Dumont offered his fleet to France
to be used against any nation except those of the two Americas. He said: "It is
in France that I have met with all my encouragement; in France and with
French material I have made all my experiments. I excepted the two
Americas because I am an American."

Count Zeppelin for his part, when bowed down in apparent defeat and
crushed beneath the burden of virtual bankruptcy, steadily refused to deal
with agents of other nations than Germany—which at that time was turning
upon him the cold shoulder. He declared that his genius had been exerted for
his own country alone, and that his invention should be kept a secret from all
but German authorities. A secret it would be to-day, except that accident and
the fortunes of war revealed the intricacies of the Zeppelin construction to
both France and England.

Santos-Dumont had the fire, enthusiasm, and resiliency of youth; Zeppelin,
upon whom age had begun to press when first he took up aeronautics, had the
dogged pertinacity of the Teuton. Both were rich at the outset, but Zeppelin's
capital melted away under the demands of his experimental workshops, while
the ancestral coffee lands of the Brazilian never failed him.

Of the two Zeppelin had the more obstinacy, for he held to his plan of a
rigid dirigible balloon even in face of its virtual failure in the supreme test of
war. Santos-Dumont was the more alert intellectually for he was still in the

flood tide of successful demonstration with his balloons when he saw and
grasped the promise of the airplane and shifted his activities to that new field
in which he won new laurels.

Zeppelin won perhaps the wider measure of immediate fame, but whether
enduring or not is yet to be determined. His airships impressive, even
majestic as they are, have failed to prove their worth in war, and are yet to be
fully tested in peace. That they remain a unique type, one which no other
individual nor any other nation has sought to copy, cannot be attributed
wholly to the jealousy of possible rivals. If the monster ship, of rigid frame,
were indeed the ideal form of dirigible it would be imitated on every hand.
The inventions of the Wrights have been seized upon, adapted, improved
perhaps by half a hundred airplane designers of every nation. But nobody has
been imitating the Zeppelins.

The Giant and the Pigmies.
Painting by John E. Whiting.

That, however, is a mere passing reflection. If the Zeppelin has not done all
in war that the sanguine German people expected of it, nevertheless it is not
yet to be pronounced an entire failure. And even though a failure in war, the
chief service for which its stout-hearted inventor designed it, there is still
hope that it may ultimately prove better adapted to many ends of peace than
the airplanes which for the time seem to have outdone it.

Stout-hearted indeed the old Luftgraaf—"Air Scout"—as the Germans call
him, was. His was a Bismarckian nature, reminiscent of the Iron Chancellor
alike physically and mentally. In appearance he recalls irresistibly the heroic
figure of Bismarck, jack-booted and cuirassed at the Congress of Vienna,
painted by von Werner. Heir to an old land-owning family, ennobled and
entitled to bear the title Landgraf, Count von Zeppelin was a type of the
German aristocrat. But for his title and aristocratic rank he could never have
won his long fight for recognition by the bureaucrats who control the German
army. In youth he was anti-Prussian in sentiment, and indeed some of his
most interesting army experiences were in service with the army of South
Germany against Prussia and her allied states. But all that was forgotten in
the national unity that followed the defeat of France in 1872.

Before that, however, the young count—he was born in 1838—had served
with gallantry, if not distinction, in the Union Army in our Civil War, had
made a balloon ascension on the fighting line, had swum in the Niagara River
below the falls, being rescued with difficulty, and together with two Russian
officers and some Indian guides had almost starved in trying to discover the
source of the Mississippi River—a spot which can now be visited without
undergoing more serious hardships than the upper berth in a Pullman car.

It was at the siege of Paris that Zeppelin's mind first became engaged with
the problem of aërial navigation. From his post in the besieging trenches he
saw the almost daily ascent of balloons in which mail was sent out, and
persons who could pay the price sought to escape from the beleaguered city.
As a colonel of cavalry, he had been employed mainly in scouting duty
throughout the war. He was impressed now with the conviction that those
globes, rising silently into the air, above the enemy's cannon shot and drifting
away to safety would be the ideal scouts could they but return with their
intelligence. Was there no way of guiding these ships in the air, as a ship in
the ocean is guided? The young soldier was hardly home from the war when

he began to study the problem. He studied it indeed so much to the exclusion
of other military matters that in 1890 the General Staff abruptly dismissed
him from his command. They saw no reason why a major-general of cavalry
should be mooning around with balloons and kites like a schoolboy.

The dismissal hurt him, but deterred him in no way from the purpose of his
life. Indeed the fruit of his many years' study of aeronautic conditions was
ready for the gathering at this very moment. On the surface of the picturesque
Lake Constance, on the border line between Germany and Switzerland,
floated a huge shed, open to the water and more than five hundred feet long.
In it, nearing completion, floated the first Zeppelin airship.

In the long patient study which the Count had given to his problem he had
reached the fixed conclusion that the basis of a practical dirigible balloon
must be a rigid frame over which the envelope should be stretched. His
experiments were made at the same time as those of Santos-Dumont, and he
could not be ignorant of the measure of success which the younger man was
attaining with the non-rigid balloon. But it was a fact that all the serious
accidents which befell Santos-Dumont and most of the threatened accidents
which he narrowly escaped were fundamentally caused by the lack of rigidity
in his balloon. The immediate cause may have been a leaky valve permitting
the gas to escape, or a faulty air-pump which made prompt filling of the
ballonet impossible. But the effect of these flaws was to deprive the balloon
of its rigidity, cause it to buckle, throwing the cordage out of gear, shifting
stresses and strains, and resulting in ultimate breakdown.

Whether he observed the vicissitudes of his rival or not, Count Zeppelin
determined that the advantages of a rigid frame counted for more than the
disadvantage of its weight. Moreover that disadvantage could be
compensated for by increasing the size, and therefore the lifting power of the
balloon. In determining upon a rigid frame the Count was not a pioneer even
in his own country. While his experiments were still under way, a rival, David
Schwartz, who had begun, without completing, an airship in St. Petersburg,
secured in some way aid from the German Government, which was at the
moment coldly repulsing Zeppelin. He planned and built an aluminum airship
but died before its completion. His widow continued the work amidst
constant opposition from the builders. The end was one of the many tragedies
of invention. Nobody but the widow ever believed the ship would rise from

its moorings. It was in charge of a man who had never made an ascent. To his
amazement and to the amazement of the spectators the engine was hardly
started when the ship mounted and made headway against a stiff breeze. On
the ground the spectators shouted in wonder; the widow, overwhelmed by this
reward for her faith in her husband's genius, burst into tears of joy. But the
amateur pilot was no match for the situation. Affrighted to find himself in
mid-air, too dazed to know what to do, he pulled the wrong levers and the
machine crashed to earth. The pilot escaped, but the airship which had taken
four years to build was irretrievably wrecked. The widow's hopes were
blasted, and the way was left free for the Count von Zeppelin.

Freed, though unwillingly, from the routine duties of his military rank,
Zeppelin thereafter devoted himself wholly to his airships. He was fifty-three
years old, adding one more to the long list of men who found their real life's
work after middle age. With him was associated his brother Eberhard, the two
forming a partnership in aeronautical work as inseparable as that of Wilbur
and Orville Wright. Like Wilbur Wright, Eberhard von Zeppelin did not live
to witness the fullest fruition of the work, though he did see the soundness of
its principles thoroughly established and in practical application. There is a
picturesque story that when Eberhard lay on his death-bed his brother, instead
of watching by his side, took the then completed airship from its hangar, and
drove it over and around the house that the last sounds to reach the ears of his
faithful ally might be the roar of the propellers in the air—the grand pæan of
victory.

Photo by Press Illustrating Service.
A French "Sausage".

Though Count von Zeppelin had begun his experiments in 1873 it was not
until 1890 that he actually began the construction of his first airship. The
intervening years had been spent in constructing and testing models, in
abstruse calculations of the resistance of the air, the lifting power of
hydrogen, the comparative rigidity and weight of different woods and various
metals, the power and weight of the different makes of motors. In these
studies he spent both his time and his money lavishly, with the result that
when he had built a model on the lines of which he was willing to risk the
construction of an airship of operative size, his private fortune was gone. It is
the common lot of inventors. For a time the Count suffered all the
mortification and ignominy which the beggar, even in a most worthy cause,
must always experience. Hat in hand he approached every possible patron
with his story of certain success if only supplied with funds with which to
complete his ship. A stock company with a capital of $225,000 of which he
contributed one half, soon found its resources exhausted and retired from the
speculation. Appeals to the Emperor met with only cold indifference. An
American millionaire newspaper owner, resident in Europe, sent
contemptuous word by his secretary that he "had no time to bother with crazy
inventors." That was indeed the attitude of the business classes at the moment
when the inventors of dirigibles were on the very point of conquering the
obstacles in the way of making the navigation of air a practical art. A

governmental commission at Berlin rejected with contempt the plans which
Zeppelin presented in his appeal for support. Members of that commission
were forced to an about-face later and became some of the inventor's sturdiest
champions. But in his darkest hour the government failed him, and the one
friendly hand stretched out in aid was that of the German Engineers' Society
which, somewhat doubtfully, advanced some funds to keep the work in
operation.

© U. & U.
A British "Blimp".

With this the construction of the first Zeppelin craft was begun. Though
there had been built up to the opening of the war twenty-five "Zeps"—
nobody knows how many since—the fundamental type was not materially
altered in the later ones, and a description of the first will stand for all. In
connection with this description may be noted the criticisms of experts some
of which proved only too well founded.

The first Zeppelin was polygonal, 450 feet long, 78 broad, and 66 feet
high. This colossal bulk, equivalent to that of a 7500-ton ship necessary to
supply lifting power for the metallic frame, naturally made her unwieldy to
handle, unsafe to leave at rest, outside of a sheltering shed, and a particularly
attractive target for artillery in time of war. Actual action indeed proved that
to be safe from the shells of anti-aircraft guns, the Zeppelins were forced to
fly so high that their own bombs could not be dropped with any degree of
accuracy upon a desired target.

The balloon's frame is made of aluminum, the lightest of metals, but not
the least costly. A curious disadvantage of this construction was made
apparent in the accident which destroyed Zeppelin IV. That was the first of the
airships to be equipped with a full wireless outfit which was used freely on its
flight. It appeared that the aluminum frame absorbed much of the electricity
generated for the purpose of the wireless. The effect of this was two-fold. It
limited the radius of operation of the wireless to 150 miles or less, and it
made the metal frame a perilous storehouse of electricity. When Zeppelin IV.
met with a disaster by a storm which dragged it from its moorings, the stored
electricity in her frame was suddenly released by contact with the trees and
set fire to the envelope, utterly destroying the ship.

The balloon frame was divided into seventeen compartments, each of
which held a ballonet filled with hydrogen gas. The purpose of this was
similar to the practice of dividing a ship's hulls into compartments. If one or
more of the ballonets, for any reason, were injured the remainder would keep
the ship afloat. The space between the ballonets and the outer skin was
pumped full of air to keep the latter taut and rigid. Moreover it helped to
prevent the radiation of heat to the gas bags from the outer envelope whose
huge expanse, presented to the sun, absorbed an immense amount of heat
rays.

Two cars were suspended from the frame of the Zeppelin, forward and aft,
and a corridor connected them. A sliding weight was employed to raise or
depress the bow. In each car of the first Zeppelin was a sixteen-horse-power
gasoline motor, each working two screws, with four foot blades, revolving
one thousand times a minute. The engines were reversible, thus making it
possible to work the propellers against each other and aid materially in
steering the ship. Rudders at bow and stern completed the navigating
equipment.

In the first Zeppelins, the corridor connecting the two cars was wholly
outside the frame and envelope of the car. Later the perilous experiment was
tried of putting it within the envelope. This resulted in one of the most
shocking of the many Zeppelin disasters. In the case of the ship L-II., built in
1912, the corridor became filled with gas that had oozed out of the ballonets.
At one end or the other of the corridor this gas, then mixed with air, came in
contact with fire,—perhaps the exhaust of the engines,—a violent explosion

followed while the ship was some nine hundred feet aloft, and the mass of
twisted and broken metal, with the flaming envelope, fell to the ground
carrying twenty-eight men, including members of the Admiralty Board, to a
horrible death.

But to return to the first Zeppelin. Her trial was set for July 2, 1900, and
though the immediate vicinity of the floating hangar was barred to the public
by the military authorities, the shores and surface of the lake were black with
people eager to witness the test. Boats pulled out of the wide portal the huge
cigar-shaped structure, floating on small rafts, its polished surface of
pegamoid glittering in the sun. As large as a fair-sized ocean steamship, it
looked, on that little lake dotted with pleasure craft, like a leviathan. Men
were busy in the cars, fore and aft. The mooring ropes were cast off as the
vessel gained an offing, and ballast being thrown out she began to rise slowly.
The propellers began to whir, and the great craft swung around breasting the
breeze and moved slowly up the lake. The crowd cheered. Count von
Zeppelin, tense with excitement, alert for every sign of weakness watched his
monster creation with mingled pride and apprehension. Two points were set
at rest in the first two minutes—the lifting power was great enough to carry
the heaviest load ever imposed upon a balloon and the motive power was
sufficient to propel her against an ordinary breeze. But she was hardly in mid-
air when defects became apparent. The apparatus for controlling the
balancing weight got out of order. The steering lines became entangled so that
the ship was first obliged to stop, then by reversing the engines to proceed
backwards. This was, however, a favourable evidence of her handiness under
untoward circumstances. After she had been in the air nearly an hour and had
covered four or five miles, a landing was ordered and she dropped to the
surface of the lake with perfect ease. Before reaching her shed, however, she
collided with a pile—an accident in no way attributable to her design—and
seriously bent her frame.

The story told thus baldly does not sound like a record of glorious success.
Nevertheless not Count Zeppelin alone but all Germany was wild with
jubilation. Zeppelin I. had demonstrated a principle; all that remained was to
develop and apply this principle and Germany would have a fleet of aërial
dreadnoughts that would force any hostile nation to subjection. There was
little or no discussion of the application of the principle to the ends of peace.

It was as an engine of war alone that the airship appealed to the popular
fancy.

But at the time that fancy proved fickle. With a few repairs the airship was
brought out for another test. In the air it did all that was asked for it, but it
came to earth—or rather to the surface of the lake—with a shock that put it
out of commission. When Count Zeppelin's company estimated the cost of
further repairs it gave a sigh and abandoned the wreck. Thereupon the
pertinacious inventor laid aside his tools, got into his old uniform, and went
out again on the dreary task of begging for further funds.

It was two years before he could take up again the work of construction.
He lectured, wrote magazine articles, begged, cajoled, and pleaded for
money. At last he made an impression upon the Emperor who, indeed, with a
keen eye for all that makes for military advantage, should have given heed to
his efforts long before. Merely a letter of approval from the all-powerful
Kaiser was needed to turn the scale and in 1902 this was forthcoming. The
factories of the empire agreed to furnish materials at cost price, and sufficient
money was soon forthcoming to build a second ship. This ship took more
than two years to build, was tested in January, 1906, made a creditable flight,
and was dashed to pieces by a gale the same night!

The wearisome work of begging began again. But this time the Kaiser's aid
was even more effectively given and in nine months Zeppelin III. was in the
air. More powerful than its predecessors it met with a greater measure of
success. On one of its trials a propeller blade flew off and penetrated the
envelope, but the ship returned to earth in safety. In October, 1906, the
Minister of War reported that the airship was extremely stable, responded
readily to her helm, had carried eleven persons sixty-seven miles in two hours
and seventeen minutes, and had made its landing in ease and safety. Accepted
by the government "No. III." passed into military service and Zeppelin, now
the idol of the German people, began the construction of "No. IV."

That ship was larger than her predecessors and carried a third cabin for
passengers suspended amidships. Marked increase in the size of the steering
and stabling planes characterized the appearance of the ship when compared
with earlier types. She was at the outset a lucky ship. She cruised through
Alpine passes into Switzerland, and made a circular voyage carrying eleven

passengers and flying from Friedrichshaven to Mayence and back via Basle,
Strassburg, Mannheim, and Stuttgart. The voyage occupied twenty-one hours
—a world's record. The performance of the ship on both voyages was
perfection. Even in the tortuous Alpine passes which she was forced to
navigate on her trip to Lucerne she moved with the steadiness and certainty
of a great ship at sea. The rarification of the air at high altitudes, the extreme
and sudden variations in temperature, the gusts of wind that poured from the
ice-bound peaks down through the narrow canyons affected her not at all.
When to this experience was added the triumphant tour of the six German
cities, Count von Zeppelin might well have thought his triumph was
complete.

But once again the cup of victory was dashed from his lips. After his
landing a violent wind beat upon the ship. An army of men strove to hold her
fast, while an effort was made to reduce her bulk by deflation. That effort,
which would have been entirely successful in the case of a non-rigid balloon,
was obviously futile in that of a Zeppelin. Not the gas in the ballonets, but the
great rigid frame covered with water-proofed cloth constituted the huge bulk
that made her the plaything of the winds. In a trice she was snatched from the
hands of her crew and hurled against the trees in a neighbouring grove. There
was a sudden and utterly unexpected explosion and the whole fabric was in
flames. The precise cause of the explosion will always be in doubt, but, as
already pointed out, many scientists believe that the great volume of
electricity accumulated in the metallic frame was suddenly released in a
mighty spark which set fire to the stores of gasoline on board.

With this disaster the iron nerve of the inventor was for the first time
broken. It followed so fast upon what appeared to be a complete triumph that
the shock was peculiarly hard to bear. It is said that he broke down and wept,
and that but for the loving courage and earnest entreaties of his wife and
daughter he would then have abandoned the hope and ambition of his life.
But after all it was but that darkest hour which comes just before the dawn.
The demolition of "No. IV." had been no accident which reflected at all upon
the plan or construction of the craft—unless the great bulk of the ship be
considered a fundamental defect. What it did demonstrate was that the
Zeppelin, like the one-thousand-foot ocean liner, must have adequate harbour
and docking facilities wherever it is to land. The one cannot safely drop down
in any convenient meadow, any more than the other can put into any little

fishing port. Germany has learned this lesson well enough and since the
opening of the Great War her territory is plentifully provided with Zeppelin
shelters at all strategic points.

Photo by Paul Thompson.
The Death of a Zeppelin.

Fortunately for the Count the German people judged his latest reverse
more justly than he did. They saw the completeness of the triumph which had
preceded the disaster and recognized that the latter was one easily guarded
against in future. Enthusiasm ran high all over the land. Begging was no
longer necessary. The Emperor, who had heretofore expressed rather guarded
approval of the enterprise, now flung himself into it with that enthusiasm for
which he is notable. He bestowed upon the Count the Order of the Black

Eagle, embraced him in public three times, and called aloud that all might
hear, "Long life to his Excellency, Count Zeppelin, the Conqueror of the Air."
He never wearied of assuring his hearers that the Count was the "greatest
German of the century." With such august patronage the Count became the
rage. Next to the Kaiser's the face best known to the people of Germany,
through pictures and statues, was that of the inventor of the Zeppelin. The
pleasing practice of showing affection for a public man by driving nails into
his wooden effigy had not then been invented by the poetic Teutons, else von
Zeppelin would have outdone von Hindenburg in weight of metal.

The story that Zeppelin had refused repeated offers from other
governments was widely published and evoked patriotic enthusiasm. With it
went shrewd hints that in these powerful aircraft lay the way to overcome the
hated English navy, and even to carry war to the very soil of England. It was
then eight years before the greatest war of history was to break out, but even
at that date hatred of England was being sedulously cultivated among the
German people by those in authority.

As a result of this national attitude Count Zeppelin's enterprise was
speedily put on a sound financial footing. Though "No. IV." had been
destroyed by an accident it had been the purpose of the government to buy
her, and $125,000 of the purchase price was now put at the disposal of the
Count von Zeppelin. A popular Zeppelin fund of $1,500,000 was raised and
expended in building great works. Thenceforward there was no lack of
money for furthering what had truly become a great national interest.

But the progress of the construction of Zeppelins for the next few years
was curiously compounded of success and failure. Fate seemed to have
decreed to every Zeppelin triumph a disaster. Each mischance was attributed
to exceptional conditions which never could happen again, but either they did
occur, or some new but equally effective accident did. Outside of Germany,
where the public mind had become set in an almost idolatrous confidence in
Zeppelin, the great airships were becoming a jest and a byword
notwithstanding their unquestioned accomplishments. Indeed when the record
was made up just before the declaration of war in 1914 it was found that of
twenty-five Zeppelins thus far constructed only twelve were available.
Thirteen had been destroyed by accident—two of them modern naval airships
only completed in 1913. The record was not one to inspire confidence.

In 1909, during a voyage in which he made nine hundred miles in thirty-
eight hours, the rumour was spread that von Zeppelin would continue it to
Berlin. Some joker sent a forged telegram to the Kaiser to that effect signed
"Zeppelin." It was expected to be the first appearance of one of the great
ships at the capital, and the Emperor hastened to prepare a suitable welcome.
A great crowd assembled at the Templehoff Parade Ground. The Berlin
Airship Battalion was under orders to assist in the landing. The Kaiser
himself was ready to hasten to the spot should the ship be sighted. But she
never appeared. If von Zeppelin knew of the exploit which rumour had
assigned to him—which is doubtful—he could not have carried it out. His
ship collided with a tree—an accident singularly frequent in the Zeppelin
records—so disabling it that it could only limp home under half power. A
rather curt telegram from his Imperial master is said to have been Count von
Zeppelin's first intimation that he had broken an engagement.

However, he kept it two months later, flying to Berlin, a distance of 475
miles. He was greeted with mad enthusiasm and among the crowd to
welcome him was Orville Wright the American aviator. It is a curious
coincidence that on the day the writer pens these words the New York
newspapers contain accounts of Mr. Wright's proffer of his services, and
aeronautical facilities, to the President in case an existing diplomatic break
with Germany should reach the point of actual war. Mr. Wright accompanied
his proffer by an appeal for a tremendous aviation force, "but," said he, "I
strongly advise against spending any money whatsoever on dirigible balloons
of any sort."

Thereafter the progress of Count von Zeppelin was without interruption for
any lack of financial strength. His great works at Friedrichshaven expanded
until they were capable of putting out a complete ship in eight weeks. He was
building, of course, primarily for war, and never concealed the fact that the
enemy he expected to be the target of his bomb throwers was England. What
the airships accomplished in this direction, how greatly they were developed,
and the strength and weakness of the German air fleet, will be dwelt upon in
another chapter.

But, though building primarily for military purposes, Zeppelin did not
wholly neglect the possibilities of his ship for non-military service. He built
one which made more than thirty trips between Munich and Berlin, carrying

passengers who paid a heavy fee for the privilege of enjoying this novel form
of travel. The car was fitted up like our most up-to-date Pullmans, with
comfortable seats, bright lights, and a kitchen from which excellent meals
were served to the passengers. The service was not continued long enough to
determine whether it could ever be made commercially profitable, but as an
aid to firing the Teutonic heart and an assistance in selling stock it was well
worth while. The spectacle of one of these great cars, six hundred or more
feet long, floating grandly on even keel and with a steady course above one
of the compact little towns of South Germany, was one to thrill the pulses.

But the ill luck which pursued Count von Zeppelin even in what seemed to
be his moments of assured success was remorseless. In 1912 he produced the
monster L-I, 525 feet long, 50 feet in diameter, of 776,900 cubic feet capacity,
and equipped with three sets of motors, giving it a speed of fifty-two miles an
hour. This ship was designed for naval use and after several successful cross-
country voyages she was ordered to Heligoland, to participate in naval
manœuvres with the fleet there stationed. One day, caught by a sudden gust of
wind such as are common enough on the North Sea, she proved utterly
helpless. Why no man could tell, her commander being drowned, but in the
face of the gale she lost all control, was buffeted by the elements at their will,
and dropped into the sea where she was a total loss. Fifteen of her twenty-two
officers and men were drowned. The accident was the more inexplicable
because the craft had been flying steadily overland for nearly twelve months
and had covered more miles than any ship of Zeppelin construction. It was
reported that her captain had said she was overloaded and that he feared that
she would be helpless in a gale. But after the disaster his mouth was stopped
by the waters of the North Sea.

© U. & U.
A German Dirigible, Hansa Type.

This calamity was not permitted long to stand alone. Indeed one of the
most curious facts about the Zeppelin record is the regular, periodical
recurrence of fatal accidents at almost equal intervals and apparently wholly
unaffected by the growing perfection of the airships. While L-I was making
her successful cross-country flights, L-II was reaching completion at
Friedrichshaven. She was shorter but bulkier than her immediate predecessor
and carried engines giving her nine hundred horse power, or four hundred
more than L-I. On its first official trip this ship exploded a thousand feet in
air, killing twenty-eight officers and men aboard, including all the officials
who were conducting the trials. The calamity, as explained on an earlier page,
was due to the accumulation of gas in the communicating passage between
the three cars.

Photo by Press Illustrating Service.
A Wrecked Zeppelin at Salonika.

This new disaster left the faith and loyalty of the German people unshaken.
But it did decidedly estrange the scientific world from Count von Zeppelin
and all his works. It was pointed out, with truth, that the accident paralleled
precisely one which had demolished the Severo Pax airship ten years earlier,
and which had caused French inventors to establish a hard and fast rule
against incorporating in an airship's design any inclosed space in which waste
gas might gather. This rule and its reason were known to Count von Zeppelin
and by ignoring both he lent new colour to the charge, already current in
scientific circles, that he was loath to profit by the experiences of other
inventors.

Whether this feeling spread to the German Government it is impossible to
say. Nor it is easy to estimate how much official confidence was shaken by it.
The government, even before the war, was singularly reticent about the
Zeppelins, their numbers and plans. It is certain that orders were not withheld
from the Count. Great numbers of his machines were built, especially after
the war was entered upon. But he was not permitted longer to have a

monopoly of government aid for manufacturers of dirigibles. Other types
sprung up, notably the Schutte-Lanz, the Gross, and the Parseval. But being
first in the field the Zeppelin came to give its name to all the dirigibles of
German make and many of the famous—or infamous—exploits credited to it
during the war may in fact have been performed by one of its rivals.

It would be futile to attempt to enumerate all these rivals here. Among
them are the semi-rigid Parseval and Gross types which found great favour
among the military authorities during the war. The latter is merely an
adaptation of the highly successful French ship the Lebaudy, but the Parseval
is the result of a slow evolution from an ordinary balloon. It is wholly
German, in conception and development, and it is reported that the Kaiser,
secretly disgusted that the Zeppelins, to the advancement of which he had
given such powerful aid, should have recorded so many disasters, quietly
transferred his interest to the new and simpler model. Despite the hope of a
more efficient craft, however, both the Gross and the Parseval failed in their
first official trials, though later they made good.

The latter ship was absolutely without any wooden or metallic structure to
give her rigidity. Two air ballonets were contained in the envelope at bow and
stern and the ascent and descent of the ship was regulated by the quantity of
air pumped into these. A most curious device was the utilization of heavy
cloth for the propeller blades. Limp and flaccid when at rest, heavy weights
in the hem of the cloth caused these blades to stand out stiff and rigid as the
result of the centrifugal force created by their rapid revolution. One great
military advantage of the Parseval was that she could be quickly deflated in
the presence of danger at her moorings, and wholly knocked down and
packed in small compass for shipment by rail in case of need. To neither of
these models did there ever come such a succession of disasters as befell the
earlier Zeppelins. It is fair to say however that prior to the war not many of
them had been built, and that both their builders and navigators had
opportunity to learn from Count von Zeppelin's errors.

Among the chief German rivals to the Zeppelin is the Schutte-Lanz, of the
rigid type, broader but not so long as the Zeppelin, framed of wood bound
with wire and planned to carry a load of five or six tons, or as many as thirty
passengers. No. I of this type met its fate as did so many Zeppelins by
encountering a storm while improperly moored. Called to earth to replenish

its supply of gas it was moored to an anchor sunk six feet in the ground, and
as an additional precaution three hundred soldiers were called from a
neighbouring barracks to handle it. It seems to have been one of the
advantages of Germany as a place in which to manœuvre dirigibles, that,
even in time of peace, there were always several hundred soldiers available
wherever a ship might land. But this force was inadequate. A violent gust tore
the ship from their hands. One poor fellow instinctively clung to his rope
until one thousand feet in the air when he let go. The ship itself hovered over
the town for an hour or more, then descended and was dashed to pieces
against trees and stone walls.

The danger which was always attached to the landing of airships has led
some to suggest that they should never be brought to earth, but moored in
mid-air as large ships anchor in midstream. It is suggested that tall towers be
built to the top of which the ship be attached by a cable, so arranged that she
will always float to the leeward of the tower. The passengers would be landed
by gangplanks, and taken up and down the towers in elevators. Kipling
suggests this expedient in his prophetic sketch With the Night Mail. The
airship would only return to earth—as a ship goes into dry dock—when in
need of repairs.

A curious mishap that threatened for a time to wreck the peace of the
world, occurred in April, 1913, when a German Zeppelin was forced out of its
course and over French territory. The right of alien machines to pass over
their territory is jealously guarded by European nations, and during the
progress of the Great War the Dutch repeatedly protested against the violation
of their atmosphere by German aviators. At the time of this mischance,
however, France and Germany were at peace—or as nearly so as racial and
historic antipathies would permit. Accordingly when officers of a brigade of
French cavalry engaged in manœuvring near the great fortress of Luneville
saw a shadow moving across the field and looking up saw a huge Zeppelin
betwixt themselves and the sun they were astonished and alarmed. Signs and
faint shouts from the aeronauts appeared to indicate that their errand was at
least friendly, if not involuntary. The soldiers stopped their drill; the
townspeople trooped out to the Champs de Mars where the phenomenon was
exhibited and began excitedly discussing this suspicious invasion. Word was
speedily sent to military headquarters asking whether to welcome or to repel
the foe.

© U. & U.
British Aviators about to Ascend.
Note position of gunner on lower seat.

Meantime the great ship was drifting perilously near the housetops, and the
uniformed officers in the cars began making signals to the soldiers below.
Ropes were thrown out, seized by willing hands and made fast. The crew of
Germans descended to find themselves prisoners. The international law was
clear enough. The ship was a military engine of the German army. Its officers,
all in uniform, had deliberately steered her into the very heart of a French
fortress. Though the countries were at peace the act was technically one of
war—an armed invasion by the enemy. Diplomacy of course settled the issue
peacefully but not before the French had made careful drawings of all the
essential features of the Zeppelin, and taken copies of its log. As Germany
had theretofore kept a rigid secrecy about all the details of Zeppelin
construction and operation this angered the military authorities beyond

measure. The unlucky officers who had shared in the accident were savagely
told that they should have blown the ship up in mid-air and perished with it
rather than to have weakly submitted it to French inspection. They suffered
court-martial but escaped with severe reprimands.

The story of the dirigibles of France and Germany is practically the whole
story of the development to a reasonable degree of perfection of the lighter-
than-air machine. Other nations experimented somewhat, but in the main
lagged behind these pioneers. Out of Spain indeed came a most efficient craft
—the Astra-Torres, of which the British Government had the best example
prior to the war, while both France and Russia placed large orders with the
builders. How many finally went into service and what may have been their
record are facts veiled in the secrecy of wartime. Belgium and Italy both
produced dirigibles of distinctive character. The United States is alone at the
present moment in having contributed nothing to the improvement of the
dirigible balloon.

CHAPTER V
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AIRPLANE

The story of the development of the heavier-than-air machine—which were
called aëroplanes at first, but have been given the simpler name of airplanes
—is far shorter than that of the balloons. It is really a record of achievement
made since 1903 when the plane built by Professor Langley of the
Smithsonian Institution came to utter disaster on the Potomac. In 1917, at the
time of writing this book, there are probably thirty distinct types of airplanes
being manufactured for commercial and military use, and not less than fifty
thousand are being used daily over the battlefields of Europe. No invention
save possibly the telephone and the automobile ever attained so prodigious a
development in so brief a time. Wise observers hold that the demand for these
machines is yet in its infancy, and that when the end of the war shall lead
manufacturers and designers to turn their attention to the commercial value of
the airplane the flying craft will be as common in the air as the automobiles at
least on our country roads.

The idea of flying like a bird with wings, the idea basicly underlying the
airplane theory, is old enough—almost as old as the first conception of the
balloon, before hydrogen gas was discovered. In an earlier chapter some
account is given of early experiments with wings. No progress was made
along this line until the hallucination that man could make any headway
whatsoever against gravity by flapping artificial wings was definitely
abandoned. There was more promise in the experiments made by Sir George
Cayley, and he was followed in the first half of the nineteenth century by half
a dozen British experimenters who were convinced that a series of planes,
presenting a fixed angle to the breeze and driven against it by a sufficiently
powerful motor, would develop a considerable lifting power. This was
demonstrated by Henson, in 1842, Stringfellow, in 1847, Wenham, who
arranged his planes like slats in a Venetian blind and first applied the modern

term "aeroplane" to his invention, and Sir Hiram Maxim, who built in 1890
the most complicated and impressive looking 'plane the world has yet seen.
But though each of these inventors proved the theorem that a heavier-than-air
machine could be made to fly, all failed to get practical results because no
motor had then been invented which combined the necessary lightness with
the generation of the required power.

In America we like to think of the brothers Wright as being the true
inventors of the airplane. And indeed they did first bring it to the point of
usefulness, and alone among the many pioneers lived to see the adoption of
their device by many nations for serious practical use. But it would be unjust
to claim for them entire priority in the field of the glider and the heavier-than-
air machine. Professor Langley preceded them with an airplane which,
dismissed with ridicule as a failure in his day, was long after his death
equipped with a lighter motor and flown by Glenn Curtis, who declared that
the scientist had solved the problem, had only the explosive engine been
perfected in his time.

Despite, however, the early period of the successful experiments of the
Wrights and Professor Langley, it would be unjust for America to arrogate to
herself entire priority in airplane invention. Any story of that achievement
which leaves out Lilienthal, the German, and Pilcher, the Englishman, is a
record in which the truth is subordinated to national pride.

Langley's Airplane.

Otto Lilienthal and his brother Gustav—the two like the Wrights were
always associated in their aviation work—had been studying long the
problem of flight when in 1889 they jointly published their book Bird Flight
as the Basis of the Flying Art. Their investigations were wholly into the
problem of flight without a motor. At the outset they even harked back to the
long-abandoned theory that man could raise himself by mere muscular effort,
and Otto spent many hours suspended at the end of a rope flapping frantically
a pair of wings before he abandoned this effort as futile. Convinced that the
soaring or gliding of the birds was the feat to emulate, he made himself a pair
of fixed, bat-like wings formed of a light fabric stretched over a willow
frame. A tail composed of one vertical and one horizontal plane extended to
the rear, and in the middle the aviator hung by his armpits, in an erect
position. With this device he made some experimental glides, leaping from
slight eminences. With his body, which swung at will from its cushioned
supports, he could balance, and even steer the fabric which supported him,
and accomplished long glides against the wind. Not infrequently, running into
the teeth of the breeze down a gentle slope he would find himself gently
wafted into the air and would make flights of as much as three hundred yards,
steering to either side, or rising and falling at will. He was even able to make
a circuitous flight and return to his starting place—a feat that was not
accomplished with a motor-driven airplane until years later. Lilienthal
achieved it with no mechanical aid, except the wings. He became
passionately devoted to the art, made more than two thousand flights, and at
the time of his death had just completed a motor-driven airplane, which he
was never able to test. His earlier gliding wings he developed into a form of
biplane, with which he made several successful flights, but met his death in
1896 by the collapse of this machine, of the bad condition of which he had
been warned.

© Kadel & Herbert.
French Airdrome near the Front.

Lilienthal was more of a factor in the conquest of the air than his actual
accomplishments would imply. His persistent experiments, his voluminous
writings, and above all his friendly and intelligent interest in the work of
other and younger men won him a host of disciples in other lands who took
up the work that dropped from his lifeless hands.

Lilienthal's Glider.

In England Percy S. Pilcher emulated the Lilienthal glides, and was at
work on a motor-propelled machine when he was killed by the breakage of a
seemingly unimportant part of his machine. He was on the edge of the greater
success, not to that moment attained by anyone, of building a true airplane
propelled by motor. Many historians think that to Lilienthal and Pilcher is
justly due the title "the first flying men." But Le Bris, a French sailor, utterly
without scientific or technical equipment, as far back as 1854 had
accomplished a wonderful feat in that line. While on a cruise he had watched
an albatross that followed his ship day after day apparently without rest and
equally without fatigue. His imagination was fired by the spectacle and
probably having never heard of the punishment that befell the Ancient
Mariner, he shot the albatross. "I took the wing," he wrote later, "and exposed
it to the breeze, and lo, in spite of me, it drew forward into the wind;
notwithstanding my resistance it tended to rise. Thus I had discovered the
secret of the bird. I comprehend the whole mystery of flight."

A trifle too sanguine was sailor Le Bris, but he had just the qualities of
imagination and confidence essential to one who sets forth to conquer the air.
Had he possessed the accurate mind, the patience, and the pertinacity of the
Wrights he might have beaten them by half a century. As it was he
accomplished a remarkable feat, though it ended in somewhat laughable
failure. He built an artificial bird, on the general plan of his albatross. The
wings were not to flap, but their angles to the wind were controlled by a
system of levers controlled by Le Bris, who stood up in the basket in the
centre. To rise he required something like the flying start which the airplanes
of to-day get on their bicycle wheels before leaving the ground. As Le Bris
had no motor this method of propulsion was denied him, so he loaded the
apparatus in a cart, and fastened it to the rail by a rope knotted in a slip knot
which a jerk from him would release. As they started men walked beside the

cart holding the wings, which extended for twenty-five feet on either side. As
the horses speeded up these assistants released their hold. Feeling the car try
to rise under his feet Le Bris cast off the rope, tilted the front end of the
machine, and to his joy began to rise steadily into the air. The spectators
below cheered madly, but a note of alarm mingled with their cheers, and the
untried aviator noticed a strange and inexplicable jerking of his machine.
Peering down he discovered, to his amaze, a man kicking and crying aloud in
deadly fear. It was evident that the rope he had detached from the cart had
caught up the driver, who had thus become, to his intense dismay, a partner in
the inventor's triumph. Indeed it is most possible that he contributed to that
triumph for the ease and steadiness with which the machine rose to a height
estimated at three hundred feet suggests that he may have furnished needed
ballast—acted in fact as the tail to the kite. Humanity naturally impelled Le
Bris to descend at once, which he did skilfully without injuring his
involuntary passenger, and only slightly breaking one of the wings.

© U. & U.
A German War Zeppelin.

Had Le Bris won this success twenty years later his fame and fortune
would have been secure. But in 1854 the time was not ripe for aeronautics. Le
Bris was poor. The public responded but grudgingly to his appeals for aid.
His next experiment was less successful—perhaps for lack of the carter—and
he ultimately disappeared from aviation to become an excellent soldier of
France.

Photo by Press Illustrating Service.
A French Observation Balloon Seeking Submarines.

Perhaps had they not met with early and violent deaths, the Lilienthals and
Pilcher might have carried their experiments in the art of gliding into the
broader domain of power flight. This however was left to the two Americans,
Orville and Wilbur Wright, who have done more to advance the art of
navigating the air than all the other experimenters whose names we have
used. The story of the Wright brothers is one of boyhood interest gradually
developed into the passion of a lifetime. It parallels to some degree the story
of Santos-Dumont who insisting as a child that "man flies" finally made it a
fact. The interest of the Wrights was first stimulated when, in 1878, their
father brought home a small toy, called a "helicopter," which when tossed in
the air rose up instead of falling. Every child had them at that time, but
curiously this one was like the seed which fell upon fertile soil. The boys
went mad, as boys will, on the subject of flying. But unlike most boys they
nurtured and cultivated the passion and it stayed with them to manhood.
From helicopters they passed to kites, and from kites to gliders. By calling
they were makers and repairers of bicycles, but their spare time was for years
devoted to solving the problem of flight. In time it became their sole

occupation and by it they won a fortune and world-wide fame. Their story
forms a remarkable testimony to the part of imagination, pertinacity, and
courage in winning success. After years of tests with models, and with kites
controlled from the ground, the brothers had worked out a type of glider
which they believed, in a wind of from eighteen to twenty miles an hour,
would lift and carry a man. But they had to find a testing ground. The fields
near their home in Ohio were too level, and their firm unyielding surface was
not attractive as a cushion on which to light in the event of disaster. Moreover
the people round about were getting inquisitive about these grown men
"fooling around" with kites and flying toys. To the last the Wrights were
noted for their dislike of publicity, and it is entirely probable that the sneering
criticisms of their "level headed" and "practical" neighbours had a good deal
to do with rooting them in this distaste.

Low steep hills down the sides of which they could run and at the proper
moment throw themselves upon their glider; a sandy soil which would at least
lessen the shock of a tumble; and a vicinage in which winds of eighteen miles
an hour or more is the normal atmospheric state were the conditions they
sought. These they found at a little hamlet called Kitty-Hawk on the coast of
North Carolina. There for uncounted centuries the tossing Atlantic had been
throwing up its snowy sand upon the shore, and the steady wind had caught it
up, piled it in windrows, rolled it up into towering hills, or carried it over into
the dunes which extended far inland. It was a lonely spot, and there secure
from observation the Wrights pitched their camp. For them it was a
midsummer's holiday. Not at first did they decide to make aviation not a sport
but a profession. To their camp came visitors interested in the same study,
among them Chanute, a well-known experimenter, and some of his
associates. They had thought to give hours at a time to actual flight. When
they closed their first season, they found that all their time spent in actual
flight footed up less than an hour. Lilienthal, despite all he accomplished,
estimated that he, up to a short time before his death, spent only about five
hours actually in the air. In that early day of experimentation a glide covering
one hundred feet, and consuming eight or ten seconds, was counted a
triumph.

Chanute's Glider.

But the season was by no means wasted. Indeed such was the estimate that
the Wrights put upon it that they folded their tents determined that when they
returned the year following it would be as professionals, not amateurs. They
were confident of their ability to build machines that would fly, though up to
that time they had never mounted a motor on their aircraft.

In the clear hot air of a North Carolina midsummer the Wrights used to lie
on their backs studying through glasses the methods of flight of the great
buzzards—filthy scavenger birds which none the less soaring high aloft
against a blue sky are pictures of dignity and grace.

Bald eagles, ospreys, hawks, and buzzards give us daily exhibitions of
their powers [wrote Wilbur Wright]. The buzzards were the most
numerous, and were the most persistent soarers. They apparently never
flapped except when it was absolutely necessary, while the eagles and
hawks usually soared only when they were at leisure. Two methods of
soaring were employed. When the weather was cold and damp and the
wind strong the buzzards would be seen soaring back and forth along the
hills or at the edge of a clump of trees. They were evidently taking
advantage of the current of air flowing upward over these obstructions.
On such days they were often utterly unable to soar, except in these

special places. But on warm clear days when the wind was light they
would be seen high in the air soaring in great circles. Usually, however, it
seemed to be necessary to reach a height of several hundred feet by
flapping before this style of soaring became possible. Frequently a great
number of them would begin circling in one spot, rising together higher
and higher till finally they would disperse, each gliding off in whatever
direction it wished to go. At such times other buzzards only a short
distance away found it necessary to flap frequently in order to maintain
themselves. But when they reached a point beneath the circling flock they
began to rise on motionless wings. This seemed to indicate that rising
columns of air do not exist everywhere, but that the birds must find them.
They evidently watch each other and when one finds a rising current the
others quickly make their way to it. One day when scarce a breath of
wind was stirring on the ground we noticed two bald eagles sailing in
circling sweeps at a height of probably five hundred feet. After a time our
attention was attracted to the flashing of some object considerably lower
down. Examination with a field-glass proved it to be a feather which one
of the birds had evidently cast. As it seemed apparent that it would come
to earth only a short distance away, some of our party started to get it. But
in a little while it was noted that the feather was no longer falling, but on
the contrary was rising rapidly. It finally went out of sight upward. It
apparently was drawn into the same current in which the eagles were
soaring and was carried up like the birds.

It was by such painstaking methods as these, coupled with the
mathematical reduction of the fruits of such observations to terms of angles
and supporting planes, that the Wrights gradually perfected their machine.
The first airplane to which they fitted a motor and which actually flew has
been widely exhibited in the United States, and is to find final repose in some
public museum. Study it as you will you can find little resemblance in those
rectangular rigid planes to the wings of a bird. But it was built according to
deductions drawn from natural flight.

Photo by Paul Thompson.
A German Taube Pursued by British Planes.

The method of progress in these preliminary experiments was, by repeated
tests, to determine what form of airplane, and of what proportions, would best
support a man. It was evident that for free and continuous flight it must be
able to carry not only the pilot, but an engine and a store of fuel as well.
Having, as they thought, determined these conditions the Wrights essayed
their first flight at their home near Dayton, Ohio. It was a cold December day
in 1903. The first flight, with motor and all, lasted twelve seconds; the fourth
fifty-nine seconds. The handful of people who came out to witness the marvel
went home jeering. In the spring of the next year a new flight was announced
near Dayton. The newspapers had been asked to send reporters. A crowd of
perhaps fifty persons had gathered. Again fate was hostile. The engine
worked badly and the airplane refused to rise. The crowd dispersed and the
newspapermen, returning the next day, met only with another disappointment.

The First Wright Glider.

These repeated failures in public exhibitions resulted in creating general
indifference to the real progress that the Wrights were making in solving the
flight problem. While the gliding experiments at Kitty-Hawk were furnishing
the data for the plans on which the tens of thousands of airplanes used in the
European war were afterwards built, no American newspaper was sufficiently
interested to send representatives to the spot. The people of the United States
were supremely indifferent. Perhaps this was due to the fact that superficially
regarded the machine the Wrights were trying to perfect gave promise of
usefulness only in war or in sport. We are not either a warlike or a sporting
people. Ready enough to adopt a new device which seems adapted for
utilitarian purposes, as is shown by the rapid multiplication of automobiles,
we leave sport to our professional ball players, and our military equipment to
luck.

Pilcher's Glider.

So after continued experimental flights in the open fields near Dayton had
convinced them that the practical weaknesses in their machine had been
eliminated, the Wrights packed up their flyer and went to France. Before so
doing they tried to get encouragement from the United States Government,
but failed. Neither the government nor any rich American was willing to
share the cost of further experiments. All that had been done was at their own
cost, both in time and money. In France, whither they went in 1908, they had
no coldness to complain of. It was then the golden day of aviation in the land
which always afforded to the Knights of the Air their warmest welcome and
their most liberal support. Two years had elapsed since Santos-Dumont,
turning from dirigibles to 'planes, had made a flight of 238 yards. This the
Wrights had at the time excelled at home but without attracting attention.
France on the contrary went mad with enthusiasm, and claimed for the
Brazilian the honour of first demonstrating the possibility of flight in a
heavier-than-air machine. England, like the United States, was cold, clinging
to the balloon long after all other nations had abandoned it. But France
welcomed the Wrights with enthusiasm. They found rivals a-plenty in their
field of effort. Santos-Dumont, Bleriot, Farman, Latham were all flying with
airplanes, but with models radically different from that of the American
brothers. Nevertheless the latter made an instant success.

Permission of Scientific American.
The Comparative Strength of Belligerents in Airplanes at the Opening of the
War.
The French Army had at least 500 aëroplanes. England had about 250 aëroplanes of all types Russia
had 50 aëroplanes—Austria had at least 50 aëroplanes Germany is about the equal of France, having
500 flyers.

From the moment they found that they had hit upon the secret of raising,
supporting, and propelling an airplane, the Wrights made of their profession a
matter of cold business. In many ways this was the best contribution they
could possibly have made to the science of aviation, though their keen eye to
the main chance did bring down on them a certain amount of ridicule. Europe
laughed long at the sang-froid with which Wilbur Wright, having won the
Michelin prize of eight hundred pounds, gave no heed to the applause which
the assembled throng gave him as the money was transferred to him with a
neat presentation speech. Without a word he divided the notes into two
packets, handed one to his brother Orville, and thrust the other into his own
pocket. For the glory which attended his achievement he cared nothing. It
was all in the day's work. Later in the course of trials of a machine for the
United States Government at Fort Myer, just across the Potomac from

Washington, the Wrights seriously offended a certain sort of public sentiment
in a way which undoubtedly set back the encouragement of aviation by the
United States Government very seriously.

Permission of Scientific American.
The Comparative Strength of Belligerents in Dirigibles at the Opening of the
War.
France must be credited with at least eighteen airships of various types—England had only seven—
Russia had probably not more than three airships available—Belgium had one airship Austria had not
less than three, not more than five airships available—Germany had twenty three airships of the rigid,
semi-rigid, and non-rigid type.

In 1909, they had received a contract from the government for a machine
for the use of the Signal Service. The price was fixed at $25,000, but a bonus
of $2500 was to be paid for every mile above forty miles an hour made by the
machine on its trial trip. That bonus looked big to the Wrights, but it cost the
cause of aviation many times its face value in the congressional disfavour it
caused. Aviation was then in its infancy in the United States. Every man in
Congress wanted to see the flights. But Fort Myer, whose parade was to be
the testing ground, was fully fourteen miles from the Capitol, and reached

only most inconveniently from Washington by trolley, or most expensively by
carriage or automobile. Day after day members of the House and Senate
made the long journey across the Potomac. Time and again they journeyed
back without even a sight of the flyer in the hangar. One after another little
flaws discovered in the machine led the aviators to postpone their flight.
Investigating statesmen who thought that their position justified them in
seeking special privileges were brusquely turned away by the military guard.
The dusk of many a summer's night saw thousands of disappointed sightseers
tramping the long road back to Washington. The climax came when on a clear
but breezy day Wilbur Wright announced that the machine was in perfect
condition and could meet its tests readily, but that in order to win a bigger
bonus, he would postpone the flight for a day with less wind. All over
Washington the threat was heard that night that Congress would vote no more
money for aviation, and whether or not the incident was the cause, the
sequence was that the American Congress was, until the menace of war with
Germany in 1916, the most niggardly of all legislative bodies in its treatment
of the flying corps. When the Wrights did finally fly they made a triumphant
flight before twelve thousand spectators. The test involved crossing the
Potomac, going down its north side to Alexandria, and then back to Fort
Myer. Ringing cheers and the crashing strains of the military band greeted the
return of the aviator, but oblivious to the enthusiasm Wilbur Wright stood
beside his machine with pencil and pad computing his bonus. It figured up to
five thousand dollars, and the reporters chronicled that the Wrights knew well
the difference between solid coin and the bubble of reputation.

Wright Glider.

But this seemingly cold indifference to fame and single-minded
concentration on the business of flying on the part of the Wrights was in fact
of the utmost value to aviation as an art and a science. They were pioneers
and successful ones. Their example was heeded by others in the business. In
every way they sought to discourage that wild reaching after public favour
and notoriety that led aviators to attempt reckless feats, and often sacrifice
their lives in a foolish effort to astonish an audience. No one ever heard of
either of the Wright brothers "looping-the-loop," doing a "demon glide," or in
any other fashion reducing the profession of aviation to the level of a circus.
In a time when brave and skilful aviators, with a mistaken idea of the ethics
of their calling, were appealing to sensation lovers by the practice of dare-
devil feats, the Wrights with admirable common sense and dignity stood
sturdily against any such degradation of the aviator's art. In this position they
were joined by Glenn Curtis, and the influence of the three was beginning to
be shown in the reduced number of lives sacrificed in these follies when the
Great War broke upon the world and gave to aviation its greatest opportunity.
The world will hope nevertheless that after that war shall end the effort to
adapt the airplane to the ends of peace will be no less earnest and persistent
than have been the methods by which it has been made a most serviceable
auxiliary of war.

In July, 1915, Collier's Weekly published an interview with Orville Wright
in which that man, ordinarily of few words, set up some interesting theories
upon the future of airplanes.

"The greatest use of the airplane to date," said Mr. Wright, "has been as
a tremendously big factor of modern warfare. But—

"The greatest use of the airplane eventually will be to prevent war.

"Some day there will be neither war nor rumours of war, and the reason
may be flying machines.

"It sounds paradoxical. We are building airplanes to use in time of war,
and will continue to build them for war. We think of war and we think of
airplanes. Later on, perhaps, we shall think of airplanes in connection
with the wisdom of keeping out of war.

"The airplane will prevent war by making it too expensive, too slow,
too difficult, too long drawn out—in brief, by making the cost
prohibitive.

"Did you ever stop to think," inquires Wright, "that there is a very
definite reason why the present war in Europe has dragged along for a
year with neither side gaining much advantage over the other? The reason
as I figure it out is airplanes. In consequence of the scouting work done
by the flying machines each side knows exactly what the opposing forces
are doing.

"There is little chance for one army to take another by surprise.
Napoleon won his wars by massing his troops at unexpected places. The
airplane has made that impossible. It has equalized information. Each side
has such complete knowledge of the other's movements that both sides
are obliged to crawl into trenches and fight by means of slow, tedious
routine, rather than by quick, spectacular dashes.

"My impression is that before the present war started the army experts
expected it to be a matter of a few weeks, or at the most, a few months.
To-day it looks as if it might run into years before one side can dictate
terms. Now, a nation that may be willing to undertake a war lasting a few
months may well hesitate about engaging in one that will occupy years.
The daily cost of a great war is of course stupendous. When this cost runs
on for years the total is likely to be so great that the side which wins
nevertheless loses. War will become prohibitively expensive. The
scouting work in flying machines will be the predominating factor, as it
seems to me, in bringing this about. I like to think so anyhow."

"What, in your opinion, has the present war demonstrated regarding the
relative advantages of airplanes and Zeppelin airships?" the inventor was
asked.

"The airplane seems to have been of the more practical use," replied
Wright. "In the first place, dirigible airships of the Zeppelin type are so
expensive to build, costing somewhere around a half million dollars each,
that it is distinctly disadvantageous to the nation operating them to have
one destroyed. But what is more important is the fact that the Zeppelin is
so large that it furnishes an excellent target, unless it sails considerably

higher than is comparatively safe for an airplane. And when the Zeppelin
is at a safe height it is too far above the ground for your scout to make
accurate observations. Similarly, when the Zeppelin is used for dropping
bombs, it must be too high for the bomb thrower to show much
accuracy."

"You think that the use of flying machines for scouting purposes will
be of considerably more importance than their use as a means of attack?"
was another question.

"That has been decidedly true so far," replied Wright. "About all that
has been accomplished by either side from bomb dropping has been to
kill a few non-combatants and that will have no bearing on the result of
the war.

© International Pilot Service.
At a French Airplane Base.

"English newspapers have long talked of the danger of Zeppelin
attacks or airplane attacks, but it was all for a purpose, because they did

not believe the country was sufficiently prepared for war and sought to
arouse the people and the War Department to action by means of the
airship bogy. [Later history showed Mr. Wright sadly in error on this
point.]

"Aside from the use of the machines for war purposes the war will give
a great boost to aviation generally. It has led more men to learn to fly, and
with a higher degree of skill than ever before. It has awakened people to
aviation possibilities.

Stringfellow's Airplane.

"Just like the automobile, it will become more and more fool-proof,
easier to handle and safer. There is no reason why it should not take the
place of special trains where there is urgent need of great speed.

"The airplane has never really come into its own as a sporting
proposition. Of late years the tendency has been to develop a high rate of
speed rather than to build machines that may be operated safely at a
comparatively low speed. You see, a machine adapted to make from
seventy to one hundred miles an hour cannot run at all except at a pretty
rapid clip, and this means difficulty in getting down. One must have a
good, smooth piece of ground to land on and plenty of it. When we get an
airplane that will fly along at twenty miles an hour, one can land almost
any place,—on a roof, if necessary,—and then people will begin to take
an interest in owning an airplane for the enjoyment of flying."

"Is it true that you and your brother had a compact not to fly together?"

"Yes, we felt that until the records of our work could be made complete
it was a wise precaution not to take a chance on both of us getting killed
at the same time. We never flew together but once. From 1900 to 1908 the
total time in the air for both Wilbur and myself, all put together, was only
about four hours."

Mr. Wright's statement of the brevity of the time spent in actual flying in
order to learn the art will astonish many people. Few novices would be so
rash as to undertake to steer an automobile alone after only four hours'
practice, and despite the fact that the aviator always has plenty of space to
himself the airplane can hardly yet be regarded as simple a machine to handle
as the automobile. Nevertheless the ease with which the method of its actual
manipulation is acquired is surprising. More work is done in the classroom
and on the ground to make the fighting pilot than in the air. As we have traced
the development of both dirigible and airplane from the first nascent germ of
their creation to the point at which they were sufficiently developed to play a
large part in the greatest of all wars, let us now consider how hosts of young
men, boys in truth, were trained to fly like eagles and to give battle in mid-air
to foes no less well trained and desperate than they.

CHAPTER VI
THE TRAINING OF THE AVIATOR

The Great War, opening in Europe in 1914 and before its end involving
practically the whole world, including our own nation, has had more to do
with the rapid development of aircraft, both dirigible balloons and airplanes,
than any other agency up to the present time. It tested widely and discarded
all but the most efficient. It established the relative value of the dirigible and
the airplane, so relegating the former to the rear that it is said that the death of
Count Zeppelin, March 8, 1917, was in a measure due to his chagrin and
disappointment. It stimulated at once the inventiveness of the constructors
and the skill and daring of the pilots. When it opened there were a few
thousand machines and trained pilots in all the armies of Europe. Before the
war had been in progress three years there were more flying men over the
battlefields of the three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, than there were
at that time soldiers of all classes enlisted in the regular army of the United
States. Before that war the three arms of the armed service had been infantry,
artillery, and cavalry. The experience of war added a new arm—the aviation
corps—and there is to-day some doubt whether in importance it should not be
ranked above the cavalry.

© U. & U.
"America"—Built to Cross the Atlantic Ocean.

When war was declared none of the belligerent nations had its aërial fleet
properly organized, nor was the aviation department in any of them equal in
preparedness to the rest of the army. The two great antagonists did not differ
greatly in the strength of their flying forces. Germany possessed about 1000
airplanes, exclusive of about 450 in private hands, of all which it is estimated
about 700 were ready for immediate service. Fourteen Zeppelins were in
commission, and other large dirigibles of different types brought the number
of the craft of this sort available up to forty.

Wright Airplane in Flight.

France was stronger in airplanes but weaker in dirigibles. Of the former
she had about 1500; of the latter not more than twenty-five. The land was
swept for planes in the hands of private owners and, as the French people had
from the first taken a lively interest in aviation, more than 500 were thus
obtained. The French furthermore at the very outset imperilled their
immediate strength in the air for the sake of the future by adopting four or
five machines as army types and throwing out all of other makes. More than
550 machines were thus discarded, and their services lost during the first
weeks of the war. The reason for this action was the determination of the
French to equip their aviation corps with standardized machines of a few
types only. Thus interchangeable parts could always be kept in readiness in
case of an emergency, and the aviation corps was obliged to familiarize itself
with the workings of only a few machines. The objection to the system is the
fact that it practically stopped all development of any machines in France
except the favoured few. Moreover it threw out of the service at a stroke, or
remanded for further instruction, not less than four hundred pilots who had

been trained on the rejected machines. The order was received with great
public dissatisfaction, and for a time threatened serious trouble in the
Chamber of Deputies where criticisms of the direction of the flying service
even menaced the continuance of the ministry in power.

At the outset of the war Great Britain lagged far behind the other chief
belligerents in the extent of her preparations for war in the air. As has been
pointed out the people of that nation had never taken the general interest in
aviation which was manifested in France, and there was no persistent Count
von Zeppelin to stir government and citizens into action. The situation was
rather anomalous. Protected from invasion by its ring of surrounding waters,
England had long concentrated its defensive efforts upon its navy. But while
the danger of invasion by the air was second only to that by sea the British
contemplated with indifference the feverish building of Zeppelins by
Germany, and the multiplication of aircraft of every sort in all the nations of
the continent. The manufacture of aircraft was left to private builders, and not
until the war was well under way did the government undertake its systematic
supervision. The Royal Aërial Factory, then established, became the chief
manufacturer of machines for army and navy use, and acted also as the agent
for the inspection and testing of machines built by private firms. Control of
the Royal Flying Corps is vested in the Admiralty, the government holding
that the strategy of airships was distinctly naval.

In the use of seaplanes the British were early far in the lead of other
nations, as we shall see in a later chapter. And in the prompt and efficient
employment of such aircraft as she possessed at the opening of the war she
far outclassed Germany which in point of numbers was her superior. At that
moment Great Britain possessed about five hundred machines, of which two
hundred were seaplanes, and fifteen dirigibles. Despite this puny force,
however, British aviators flew across the channel in such numbers to the
headquarters in France that when the Expeditionary Army arrived on the
scene it found ready to its hand a scouting force vastly superior to anything
the Germans could put in the air. It is no exaggeration to say that the Royal
Flying Corps saved Sir John French's army in his long and gallant fight
against the overwhelming numbers of the foe.

Russia before the war had hidden her aeronautic activities behind the
dreary curtain of miles of steppe and marsh that shut her off from the

watchfulness of Western Europe. Professional aviators, indeed, had gone
thither to make exhibition flights for enormous purses and had brought back
word of huge airplanes in course of construction and an eager public interest
in the subject of flying. But the secrecy which all the governments so soon to
be plunged in war sought to throw about their production of aircraft was
especially easy for Russia in her isolation. When the storm burst her air fleet
was not less than eight hundred airplanes, and at least twenty-five dirigibles.

A competent authority estimates that at the outbreak of the war the various
Powers possessed a total of 4980 aircraft of all sorts. This sounds like a
colossal fleet, but by 1917 it was probably multiplied more than tenfold. Of
the increase of aircraft we can judge only by guesswork. The belligerents
keep their output an inviolable secret. It was known that many factories with
a capacity of from thirty to fifty 'planes a week were working in the chief
belligerent lands, that the United States was shipping aircraft in parts to avoid
violation of neutrality laws before their entrance upon the war, and that
American capital operated factories in Canada whence the completed craft
could be shipped regardless of such laws. How great was the loss to be offset
against this new construction is a subject on which no authoritative figures
are available.

It was estimated early in the war that the life of an airplane in active
service seldom exceeded three weeks. In passing it may be mentioned that by
some misapprehension on the part of the public, this estimate of the duration
of a machine was thought to cover also the average life of the aviators in
service. Happily this was far from true. The mortality among the machines
was not altogether due to wounds sustained in combat, but largely to general
wear and tear, rough usage, and constant service. The slightest sign of
weakness in a machine led to its instant condemnation and destruction, for if
it should develop in mid-air into a serious fault it might cost the life of the
aviator and even a serious disaster to the army which he was serving. As the
war went on the period of service of a machine became even briefer, for with
the growing demand for faster and more quickly controllable machines
everything was sacrificed to lightness and speed. The factor of safety which
early in the war was six to eight was reduced to three and a half, and
instances were known in all services of machines simply collapsing and
going to pieces under their own weight without wound or shock.

About the extent to which the belligerent governments developed their air
forces after the outbreak of war there was during the continuance of that
conflict great reticence maintained by all of them. At the outset there was
little employment of the flyers except on scouting reconnaissance work, or in
directing artillery fire. The raids of Zeppelins upon England, of seaplanes on
Kiel and Cuxhaven, of airplanes on Friedrichshaven, Essen, and Venice came
later. It has been noted by military authorities that, while Germany was
provided at first with the largest aviation force of all the belligerents, she
either underestimated its value at the outset, or did not know how to employ
it, for she blundered into and through Belgium using her traditional Uhlans
for scouts, to the virtual exclusion of airmen. The effectiveness of the Belgian
fight for delay is ascribed largely to the intelligent and effective use its
strategists made of the few aircraft they possessed.

Wellington was wont to say that the thing he yearned for most in battle was
to "see the other side of that hill."

Napoleon wrote:

Nothing is more contradictory, nothing more bewildering than the
multitude of reports of spies, or of officers sent out to reconnoitre. Some
locate army corps where they have seen only detachments; others see
only detachments where they ought to have seen army corps.

© U. & U.
The Lafayette Escadrille—First Americans to Fly in France.
(Lufbery on left, Thaw on right.)

So the two great protagonists of the opening years of the nineteenth
century deplored their military blindness. In the opening years of the
twentieth it was healed. All that Wellington strove to see, all that the cavalry
failed to find for Napoleon is to-day brought to headquarters by airmen,
neatly set forth in maps, supported by photographs of the enemy's positions
taken from the sky.

Before describing the exploits of the airmen in actual campaign let us
consider some account of how they were trained for their arduous and novel
duties.

To the non-professional an amazing thing about the employment of aircraft
in war has been the rapidity with which pilots are trained. The average
layman would think that to learn the art of manœuvring an airplane with such
swiftness as to evade the attacks of an enemy, and to detect precisely the
proper moment and method of attacking him in turn, would require long and

arduous practice in the air. But as we have seen in earlier chapters, inventors
like the Wrights, Bleriot, and Farman learned to fly with but a few hours
spent in the air, with flights lasting less than ten minutes each. So too the
army aviators spent but little time aloft, though their course of instruction
covered in all a period of about four months.

Some account of the method of instruction as reported by several out of the
hundred or more American boys who went to fly for France may be
interesting.

As a rule the aviators were from twenty to twenty-five years of age.
"Below twenty boys are too rash; above twenty-five they are too prudent,"
said a sententious French aviator. A slight knowledge of motors such as
would be obtained from familiarity with automobiles was a marked
advantage at the start, for the first task of the novice was to make himself
familiar with every type of airplane engine. The army pilot in all the armies
was the aristocrat of the service. Mechanics kept his motor in shape, and
helpers housed, cleaned, and brought forth his machine for action. But while
all but the actual piloting and fighting was spared him, there was always the
possibility of his making an untimely landing back of the enemy's lines with
an engine that would not work. To prepare for such an emergency he was
taught all the intricacies of motor construction, so that he might speedily
correct any minor fault.

In our army, and indeed in all others, applicants for appointment to the
aviation corps were subjected to scientific tests of their nerves, and their
mental and physical alertness. How they would react to the sudden explosion
of a shell near their ears, how long it took the candidate to respond to a
sudden call for action, how swiftly he reacted to a sensation of touch were all
tested and measured by delicate electric apparatus. A standard was fixed,
failing to attain which, the applicant was rejected. The practical effect might
be to determine how long after suddenly discovering a masked machine gun a
given candidate would take before taking the action necessary to avoid its
fire. Or how quickly would he pull the lever necessary to guard against a
sudden gust of wind. To the layman it would appear that problems of this sort
could only be solved in the presence of the actual attack, but science, which
enables artillerists to destroy a little village beyond the hills which they never

see, was able to devise instruments to answer these questions in the quiet of
the laboratory.

One of the best known flying schools of the French army was at Pau,
where on broad level plains were, in 1917, four separate camps for aviators,
each with its group of hangars for the machines, its repair shops, and with a
tall wireless tower upstanding in the midst for the daily war news from Paris.
On these plains the Wright Brothers had made some of their earliest French
flights. A little red barn which they had made their workshop was still
standing there when war suddenly turned the spot into a flying school often
with as many as five thousand pupils in attendance. "To-day that little red
barn," writes Carroll Dana Winslow, one of the Americans who went to fly
for France, "stands as a monument to American stupidity, for when we
allowed the Wrights to go abroad to perfect their ideas instead of aiding them
to carry on their work at home we lost a golden opportunity. Now the United
States which gave to the world the first practical airplane is the least
advanced in this all-important science."

Arrived at the school the tyro studies the fundamentals of flying in the
classroom and on the field for two months before he is allowed to go up—to
receive as they express it, his baptême de l'air. He picks motors to pieces, and
puts them together, he learns the principles of airplane construction, and can
discourse on such topics as the angle of attack of the cellule, the incidence of
the wings, and the carrying power of the tail-plane. More than any other
science aviation has a vocabulary of its own, and a peculiarly cosmopolitan
one drawn from all tongues, but with the French predominating. America
gave the airplane to France, but France has given the science its terminology.

The maps of the battlefields of this war are the marvels of military science.
Made from the air they show every road and watercourse, every ditch and
gully, every patch of woodland, every farmhouse, church, or stonewall. Much
of the early work of the aviator is in learning to make such maps, both by
sketches and by the employment of the camera. It is no easy task. From an
airplane one thousand feet up the earth seems to be all a dead level. Slight
hills, gentle elevations, offer no contrast to the general plain. A road is not
easy to tell from a trench. All these things the aviator must first learn to see
with accuracy, and then to depict on his map with precision. He must learn
furthermore to read the maps of his fellows—a task presupposing some

knowledge of how they had been made. He must learn to fly by a map, to
recognize objects by the technical signs upon it, to estimate his drift before
the wind because of which the machine moves sidewise en crabe—or like a
crab as the French phrase it.

His first flight the novice makes in a machine especially fitted for
instruction. The levers are fitted with double handles so that both learner and
tutor may hold them at once. If the greenhorn pushes when he should pull the
veteran's grip is hard on the handle to correct the error before it can cost two
lives—for in the air there is little time to experiment. Either set of controls
will steer the machine. The pupil grasps his levers, and puts his feet on the
pedals. At first the instructor will do the steering, the pupil following with
hands and feet as the motions made by the instructor are communicated to
him by the moving levers. For a time the two work together. Then as the
instructor senses that the student himself is doing the right thing he gradually
lessens his own activity, until after a few days' practice the student finds that
he is flying with a passenger and directing the machine himself. In France, at
any rate, they teach in brief lessons. Each flight for instruction is limited to
about five minutes. At first the student operates in a "penguin"—a machine
which will run swiftly along the ground but cannot rise. It is no easy trick at
first, to control the "penguin" and keep its course direct. Then he will try the
"jumps" in a machine that leaps into the air and descends automatically after
a twenty to forty yards' flight. As Darius Green expressed it so long ago, the
trouble about flying comes when you want to alight. That holds as true to-day
with the most perfect airplanes, as in boyhood days when one jumped from
the barn in perfect confidence that the family umbrella would serve as a
parachute. To alight with an airplane the pilot—supposing his descent to be
voluntary and not compelled by accident or otherwise—surveys the country
about him for a level field, big and clear enough for the machine to run off its
momentum in a run of perhaps two hundred yards on its wheels. Then he gets
up a good rate of speed, points the nose of the 'plane down at a sharp angle to
the ground, cuts off the engine, and glides. The angle of the fall must be great
enough for the force of gravity to keep up the speed. There is a minimum
speed at which an airplane will remain subject to control. Loss of speed
—"perte de vitesse," as the French call it—is the aviator's most common peril
in landing. If it occurs after his engine is cut off and he has not the time to
start it again, the machine tilts and slides down sideways. If it occurs higher
up a vrille is the probable result. In this the plane plunges toward the ground

spinning round and round with the corner of one wing as a pivot. In either
case a serious accident is almost inevitable.

In fact the land is almost as dangerous to the navigator of the air as it is to
him of the sea. To make good landings is an art only perfected by constant
practice. To shut off the engine at precisely the right moment, to choose an
angle of descent that will secure the greatest speed and at the same moment
bring you to your landing place, to change at the most favourable time from
this angle to one that will bring you to the ground at the most gentle of obtuse
angles, and to let your machine, weighing perhaps a ton, drop as lightly as a
bird and run along the earth for several hundred feet before coming to a full
stop, are all features of making a landing which the aviator has to master.

In full air there are but few perils to encounter. All airmen unite in
declaring that even to the novice in an airplane there is none of that sense of
dizziness or vertigo which so many people experience in looking down from
high places. The flyer has no sense of motion. A speed of forty miles an hour
and of one hundred miles are the same to him. As he looks down the earth
seems to be slipping away from him, and moving by, tailwards, like an old-
fashioned panorama being unwound.

Everything about the control of an airplane has to be learned mechanically.
Once learned the aviator applies his knowledge intuitively. He "senses" the
position and progress of the craft by the feel of the controls, as the man at the
yacht's tiller tells mysteriously how she is responding to the breeze by "the
feel." Even before the 'plane responds to some sudden gust of wind, or drops
into a hole in the air, the trained aviator will foresee precisely what is about to
happen. He reads it in some little thrill of his lever, a quiver in the frame, as
the trained boxer reads in his antagonist's eyes the sort of blow that is
coming. This instinctive control of his machine is absolutely essential for the
fighting pilot who must keep his eyes on the movements of his enemy, watch
out for possible aircraft guns below, and all the time be striving to get an
advantageous position whence he can turn his machine gun loose. A row of
gauges, dials, a compass, and a map on the frame of the car in which he sits
will engage his attention in any moments of leisure. It is needless to remark
that the successful pilot must have a quick eye and steady nerves.

Nerve and rapidity of thought save the aviator in many a ticklish position.
It is perhaps a tribute to the growing perfection of the airplanes that in certain
moments of peril the machine is best left wholly to itself. Its stability is such
that if freed from control it will often right itself and glide safely to earth.
This not infrequently occurs in the moment of the dreaded perte de vitesse, to
which reference has been made. In his book, With the French Flying Corps,
Mr. Carroll Dana Winslow, a daring American aviator, tells of two such
experiences, the one under his observation, the other happening to himself:

The modern airplane is naturally so stable [he says] that if not
interfered with it will always attempt to right itself before the dreaded
vrille occurs, and fall en feuille morte. Like a leaf dropping in an autumn
breeze is what this means, and no other words explain the meaning better.

A curious instance of this happened one day as I was watching the
flights and waiting for my turn. I was particularly interested in a machine
that had just risen from the "Grande Piste." It was acting very peculiarly.
Suddenly its motor was heard to stop. Instead of diving it commenced to
wabble, indicating a perte de vitesse. It slipped off on the wing and then
dove. I watched it intently, expecting it to turn into the dreaded spiral.
Instead it began to climb. Then it went off on the wing, righted itself,
again slipped off on the wing, volplaned, and went off once more. This
extraordinary performance was repeated several times, while each time
the machine approached nearer and nearer to the ground. I thought that
the pilot would surely be killed. Luck was with him, however, for his slip
ceased just as he made contact with the ground and he settled in a
neighbouring field. It was a very bumpy landing but the airplane was
undamaged.

The officers rushed to the spot to find out what was the matter. They
found the pilot unconscious, but otherwise unhurt. Later in the hospital he
explained that the altitude had affected his heart and that he had fainted.
As he felt himself going he remembered his instructions and relinquished
the controls, at the same time stopping his motor. His presence of mind
and his luck had saved his life—his luck I say, for had the machine not
righted itself at the moment of touching the ground it would have been
inevitably wrecked.

The spectacle, though terrifying, proved valuable as an education to young
Winslow who a few days later was ordered to a test of ascension of two
thousand feet. This is his story:

I had a narrow escape. I had received orders to make a flight during a
snow-storm. I rose to the prescribed height and then prepared to make my
descent. A whirling squall caught me in the act of making a spiral. I felt
the tail of my machine go down and the nose point up. I had a classical
perte de vitesse. I looked out and saw that I was less than eight hundred
feet above the ground and approaching it at an alarming rate of speed. I
had already shut off the motor for the spiral, and turning it on, I knew,
would not help me in the least. Suddenly I remembered the pilot who
fainted. I let go of everything, and with a sickening feeling I looked down
at the up-rushing ground. At that instant I felt the machine give a lurch
and right itself. I grabbed the controls, turned on the motor, and resumed
my line of flight only two hundred feet in the air. All this happened in a
few seconds, but my helplessness seemed to have lasted for hours. I had
had a very close call—not as close as the man who fainted, but
sufficiently so for me.

Distinguishing Marks of American Planes.

We have said that the process of training a flyer is remarkably expeditious.
So far as the fundamentals of his profession are concerned it is. But his
education in fact never ends. In the mere matter of reconnaissance, for
example, experience is everything. One might imagine that ten thousand men
marching on a road would look alike in numbers whatever the nationality.
Not so. To the untrained eye five thousand or six thousand French troops will
look as numerous as ten thousand British or Germans. Why? Because the

French march in much more extended order. Into their democratic military
methods the precision and mechanical exactitude of German drill do not
enter. With the same number of troops they will extend further along the road
by at least a third than would a detachment of either of the other armies.

1 WATCH
2 ALTIMETER-REGISTERING HEIGHT
3 COMPASS
4 PRESSURE GAUGES FOR TWO GASOLINE TANKS
5 DIAL REGISTERING ENGINE REVOLUTIONS
6 INCLINOMETER, REGISTERING LEVEL FORE AND AFT
7 OIL PULSATOR
8 CONTROL STICK, WITH THUMB SWITCH
9 SWITCHES, TWO MAGNETOS
10 AIR SPEED INDICATOR
11 GASOLENE SUPPLY PIPE

What an Aviator must Watch.

And again. Great skill has been developed in the course of the war in the
art of concealing positions and particularly in disguising cannon. The art has
given a new word to the world—camouflage. Correspondents have repeatedly

told of their amazement in suddenly coming across a battery of 75's, or a
great siege gun so cunningly hidden in the edge of a thicket they would be
almost upon it before detecting it. From an airplane 2500 feet or more in the
air it requires sharp eyes to penetrate artillery disguises. A French poilu in a
little book of reminiscences tells with glee how a German observation aviator
deceived his batteries. A considerable body of French troops being halted in
an open field, out of sight of the enemy batteries, found the glare of the sun
oppressive, and having some time to wait threw down their equipment and
betook themselves to the cool shadows of a neighbouring wood. Along came
an enemy aviator. From his lofty height the haversacks, blanket-rolls, and
other pieces of dark equipment lying upon the grass looked like a body of
troops resting. After sailing over and around the field twice as though to make
assurance doubly sure he sailed swiftly away. In a very few minutes shells
from a concealed battery began dropping into that field at the rate of several a
minute. Every foot of it was torn up, and the French soldiers from their retreat
in the woods saw their equipment being blown to pieces in every direction.
The spectacle was harrowing, but the reflection that the aviator undoubtedly
thought that he had turned his guns on a field full of men was cheering to
them in their safety.

An art which the fighting aviator must master early in his career is that of
high diving. Many of us have seen a hawk, soaring high in air, suddenly fold
his pinions and drop like a plummet full on the back of some luckless pigeon
flapping along ungainly scores of feet below, or a fishhawk drop like a
meteor from the sky with a resounding splash upon the bosom of some placid
stream and rise again carrying a flapping fish to his eyrie in the distant pines.
The hunting methods of the hawk are the fighting methods of the airman. But
his dives exceed in height and daring anything known to the feathered
warriors of the air.

Boelke, most famous of all the German airmen—or for that matter of all
aërial fighters of his day—who in 1917 held the record for the number of
enemy flyers brought down, was famed for his savage dives. He would fly at
a great height, fifteen thousand or more feet, thus assuring himself that there
was no enemy above him. When he sighted his prey he would make an
absolutely vertical nose dive, dropping at the rate of 150 miles an hour or
more and spattering shots from his machine gun as he fell. Six hundred shots
a minute and the sight of this charging demon were enough to test the nerve

of any threatened aviator. In some fashion Boelke was enabled to give a slight
spiral form to his dive so that his victim was enveloped in a ring of bullets
that blocked his retreat whichever way he might turn for safety.

Personality in fighting counted much for success. Boelke's method, its
audacity and fierceness, placed him first in the list of airmen with killing
records. Captain Immelman, also a German, who rolled up a score of thirty
enemies put out of action before he himself was slain, followed entirely
different tactics. His battle manœuvre savoured much of the circus, including
as it did complete loop-the-loop. For instead of approaching his adversary
from the side, or as would be said in the sea navy, on the beam, he followed
squarely behind him. His study was to get the nose of his machine almost on
the tail of the aircraft he was pursuing. This gave him, to begin with, what
used to be called in the navy a raking position, for his shots would rake the
whole body of the enemy airplane from tail to nose with a fair chance of
hitting either the fuel tank, the engine, or the pilot. Failing to secure the
position he most coveted, this daring German would surrender it with
apparent unconcern to the enemy who usually fell into the trap. For just as the
foeman's machine came up to the tail of Immelman's craft the latter would
suddenly turn his nose straight to earth, drop like a stone, execute a backward
loop, and come up behind his surprised adversary who thus found the tables
suddenly turned.

These two German aviators long held the record for execution done in
single combat. Boelke was killed before the air duel vanished to be replaced
by the battle of scores of planes high in air. Immelman survived longer, but
with the incoming of the pitched battle his personal prowess counted for less
and his fame waned.

In July, 1917, arrangements were complete in the United States for the
immediate training in the fundamentals of aviation of ten thousand young
Americans. The expectation was that long before the end of the year facilities
would be provided for the training of many more. Both France and Great
Britain sent over squads of their best aviators, some of them so incapacitated
from wounds as to be disqualified for further fighting, but still vigorous
enough for the work of an instructor. The aërial service took hold upon the
imagination and the patriotism of young America as did no other. The flock
of volunteers was far beyond the capacity of the government to care for, and

many drifted over into private aviation schools which were established in
great numbers. The need for the young students was admittedly great. More
and more the impression had grown in both Great Britain and France that the
airplane was to be the final arbiter in the war. It was hailed at once as the
most dangerous enemy of the submarine and the most efficient ally of troops
in the field. No number seemed too great for the needs of the entente allies,
and their eagerness to increase their flying force was strengthened by the
knowledge of the fact that Germany was building feverishly in order that its
fleet in the air might not be eclipsed.

Perhaps the best description of an idealized aviator was given by
Lieutenant Lufbery, of the Lafayette Escadrille, who came to the United
States to assist in training the new corps of American flying men. Lufbery
himself was a most successful air fighter—an "ace" several times over.
Though French by lineage, he was an American citizen and had been a soldier
in the United States Army. In October of 1917 his record was thirteen Boches
brought down within the allied lines. In the allied air service one gets no
credit for the defeated enemy plane if it falls within the enemy lines.

While young Americans were being drilled into shape for service in the
flying corps, Lufbery gave this outline of the type of men the service would
demand:

It will take the cream of the American youth between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-six to man America's thousands of airplanes, and the
double cream of youth to qualify as chasers in the Republic's new aërial
army.

Intensive and scientific training must be given this cream of youth
upon which America's welfare in the war must rest. Experience has
shown that for best results the fighting aviator should be not over twenty-
six years old or under eighteen. The youth under eighteen has shown
himself to be bold, but he lacks judgment. Men over twenty-six are too
cautious.

The best air fighters, especially a man handling a chaser, must be of
perfect physique. He must have the coolest nerve and be of a
temperament that longs for a fight. He must have a sense of absolute duty

and fearlessness, the keenest sense of action, and perfect sight to gain the
absolute "feel" of his machine.

He must be entirely familiar with aërial acrobatics. The latter
frequently means life or death.

Fighting twenty-two thousand feet in the air produces a heavy strain on
the heart. It is vital therefore that this organ show not the slightest
evidence of weakness. Such weakness would decrease the aviator's
fighting efficiency.

The American boys who come over to France for this work will be
subject to rapid and frequent variations in altitude. It is a common
occurrence to dive vertically from six thousand to ten thousand feet with
the motor pulling hard.

Sharpness of vision is imperative. Otherwise the enemy may escape or
the aviator himself will be surprised or mistake a friendly machine for a
hostile craft. The differences are often merely insignificant colours and
details.

America's aviators must be men who will be absolute masters of
themselves under fire, thinking out their attacks as their fight progresses.

Experience has shown that the chaser men should weigh under 180
pounds. Americans from the ranks of sport, youth who have played
baseball, polo, football, or have shot and participated in other sports will
make the best fighting aviators.

CHAPTER VII
SOME METHODS OF THE WAR IN THE AIR

The fighting tactics of the airmen with the various armies were developed
as the war ran its course. As happens so often in the utilization of a new
device, either of war or peace, the manner of its use was by no means what
was expected at the outset. For the first year of the war the activities of the
airmen fell far short of realizing Tennyson's conception of

The nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue.

The grappling was only incidental. The flyers seemed destined to be scouts
and rangefinders, rather than fighters. Such pitched combats as there were
took rather the form of duels, conducted with something of the formality of
the days of chivalry. The aviator intent upon a fight would take his machine
over the enemy's line and in various ways convey a challenge to a rival—
often a hostile aviator of fame for his daring and skill in combat. If the duel
was to the death it would be watched usually from the ground by the
comrades of the two duellists, and if the one who fell left his body in the
enemy's lines, the victor would gather up his identification disk and other
personal belongings and drop them the next day in the camp of the dead
man's comrades with a note of polite regret.

It was all very daring and chivalric, but it was not war according to
twentieth century standards and was not long continued.

© U. & U.
A Caproni Triplane.

When at first the aviators of one side flew over the enemy's territory
diligently mapping out his trenches, observing the movements of his troops,
or indicating, by dropping bunches of tinsel for the sun to shine upon or
breaking smoke bombs, the position of his hidden battery, the foe thus
menaced sought to drive them away with anti-aircraft guns. These proved to
be ineffective and it may be said here that throughout the war the swift
airplanes proved themselves more than a match for the best anti-aircraft
artillery that had been devised. They could complete their reconnaissances or
give their signals at a height out of range of these guns, or at least so great
that the chances of their being hit were but slight. It was amazing the manner
in which an airplane could navigate a stretch of air full of bursting shrapnel
and yet escape serious injury. The mere puncture, even the repeated puncture,
of the wings did no damage. Only lucky shots that might pierce the fuel tank,
hit the engine, touch an aileron or an important stay or strut, could affect the
machine, while in due course of time a light armour on the bottom of the
fusillage or body of the machine in which the pilot sat, protected the operator
to some degree. Other considerations, however, finally led to the rejection of
armour.

© U. & U.
A Caproni Triplane (Showing Propellers and Fuselage).

Accordingly it soon became the custom of the commanders who saw their
works being spied out by an enemy soaring above to send up one or more
aircraft to challenge the invader and drive him away. This led to the second
step in the development in aërial strategy. It was perfectly evident that a man
could not observe critically a position and draw maps of it, or seek out the
hiding place of massed batteries and indicate them to his own artillerists, and
at the same time protect himself from assaults. Accordingly the flying corps
of every army gradually became differentiated into observation machines and
fighting machines—or avions de réglage, avions de bombardement, and
avions de chasse, as the French call them. In their order these titles were
applied to heavy slow-moving machines used for taking photographs and
directing artillery fire, more heavily armed machines of greater weight used
in raids and bombing attacks, and the swift fighting machines, quick to rise
high, and swift to manœuvre which would protect the former from the enemy,
or drive away the enemy's observation machines as the case might be. In the
form which the belligerents finally adopted as most advantageous the fighting

airplanes were mainly biplanes equipped with powerful motors seldom of less
than 140 horse-power, and carrying often but one man who is not merely the
pilot, but the operator of the machine gun with which each was equipped.
Still planes carrying two men, and even three of whom one was the pilot, the
other two the operators of the machine guns were widely adopted. They had
indeed their disadvantages. They were slower to rise and clumsier in the
turns. The added weight of the two gunmen cut down the amount of fuel that
could be carried and limited the radius of action. But one curious
disadvantage which would not at first suggest itself to the lay mind was the
fact that the roar of the propeller was so great that no possible communication
could pass between the pilot and the gunner. Their co-operation must be
entirely instinctive or there could be no unity of action—and in practice it
was found that there was little indeed. The smaller machine, carrying but one
man, was quicker in the get-away and could rise higher in less time—a most
vital consideration, for in the tactics of aërial warfare it is as desirable to get
above your enemy as in the days of the old line of battleships it was
advantageous to secure a position off the stern of your enemy so that you
might rake him fore and aft.

The machines ultimately found to best meet the needs of aërial fighting
were for the Germans always the Fokker, and the Taube—so called from its
resemblance to a flying dove, though it was far from being the dove of peace.
The wings are shaped like those of a bird and the tail adds to the resemblance.
The Allies after testing the Taube design contemptuously rejected it, and
indeed the Germans themselves substituted the Fokker for it in the war's later
days.

The English used the "Vickers Scout," built of aluminum and steel and
until late in the war usually designed to carry two aviators. This machine
unlike most of the others has the propeller at the stern, called a "pusher" in
contradistinction to the "tractor," acting as the screw of a ship and avoiding
the interference with the rifle fire which the pulling, or tractor propeller
mounted before the pilot to a certain degree presents. The Vickers machine is
lightly armoured. The English also use what was known as the "D. H. 5," a
machine carrying a motor of very high horse-power, while the Sopwith and
Bristol biplane were popular as fighting craft.

The French pinned their faith mainly to the Farman, the Caudron, the
Voisin, and the Moraine-Saulnier machines. The Bleriot and the Nieuport,
which were for some reason ruled out at the beginning of the war, were
afterwards re-adopted and employed in great numbers.

It would be gratifying to an American author to be able to describe, or at
least to mention, the favourite machine of the American aviators who flocked
to France immediately upon the declaration of war, but the mortifying fact is
that having no airplanes of our own, our gallant volunteer soldiers of the air
had to be equipped throughout by the French with machines of their favourite
types. After we entered the war we adopted a 'plane of American design to
which was given the name "Liberty plane."

It may be worth while to revert for a moment to the distinction drawn in a
preceding paragraph between the pusher propeller and the tractor which
revolved in front of the aviator and of his machine gun. It would seem almost
incredible that two heavy blades of hard wood revolving at a speed not less
that twelve hundred times a minute, a speed so rapid that their passage in
front of the eyes of the aviator interfered in no way with his vision, should
not have blocked a stream of bullets falling from a gun at the rate of more
than six hundred a minute. Nevertheless it was claimed during the earlier
days of the war that these bullets were not appreciably diverted by the
whirling propellers nor were the latter apparently injured by the missiles. The
latter assertion, however, must have been to some extent disproved because it
came about that the propellers of the later machines were rimmed with a thin
coating of steel lest the blades be cut by the bullets. But the amazing ability
of modern science to cope with what seemed to be an insoluble problem was
demonstrated by the invention of a device light and compact enough to be
carried in an airplane, which applied to the machine gun and timed in
accordance with the revolutions of the propeller so synchronized the shots
with those revolutions that the stream of lead passed between the whirling
blades never once striking. The machine was entirely automatic, requiring no
attention on the part of the operator after the gun was once started on its
discharge. This device was originally used by the Germans who applied it to
their Fokker machines. It was claimed for it that by doing away with the
wastage caused by the diversion of the course of bullets, which struck the
revolving propellers, it actually saved for effective use about thirty per cent.
of the ammunition employed. As the amount of ammunition which can be

carried by an airplane is rigidly limited this gave to the appliance a positive
value.

The Terror that Flieth by Night.
Painting by William J. Wilson.

Reference has been made to the extraordinary immunity of flying airplanes
to the attacks of anti-aircraft guns. The number of wounds they could sustain
without being brought to earth was amazing. Grahame-White tells of a
comparison made in one of the airdromes of the wounds sustained by the
machines after a day's hard scouting and fighting. One was found to have
been hit no less than thirty-seven times. Curiously enough the man who
navigated it escaped unscathed. Wounds in the wings are harmless. But the
puncture of the fuel tank almost certainly means an explosion and the death

of the aviator in the flame thousands of feet in the air. During an air battle
before Arras, a British aviator encountered this fate. When his tank was
struck and the fusillage, or body, of his machine burst into flames, he knew
that he was lost. By no possibility could he reach the ground before he should
be burned to death. A neighbouring aviator flying not far from him told the
story afterwards:

Jack was not in the thick of this fight [said he]. He was rather on the
outskirts striving to get in when I suddenly saw his whole machine
enveloped in a sheet of flame. Instantly he turned towards the nearest
German and made at him with the obvious intention of running him down
and carrying him to earth in the same cloud of fire. The man thus
threatened, twisted and turned in a vain effort to escape the red terror
bearing down upon him. But suffering acutely as he must have been, Jack
followed his every move until the two machines crashed, and whirling
over and over each other like two birds in an aërial combat fell to earth
and to destruction. They landed inside the German lines so we heard no
more about them. But we could see the smoke from the burning débris for
some time.

As the range of anti-aircraft guns increased the flyers were driven higher
and higher into the air to escape their missiles. At one time 4500 feet was
looked upon as a reasonably safe height, but when the war had been under
way about two years the weapons designed to combat aircraft were so
improved that they could send their shots effectively 10,000 feet into the air.
If the aircraft had been forced to operate at that height their usefulness would
have been largely destroyed, for it is obvious that for observation purposes
the atmospheric haze at such a height would obscure the view and make
accurate mapping of the enemy's position impossible. For offensive purposes
too the airplanes at so great an elevation would be heavily handicapped, if not
indeed rendered impotent. As we shall see later, dropping a bomb from a
swiftly moving airplane upon a target is no easy task. It never falls direct but
partakes of the motion of the plane. It is estimated that for every thousand
feet of elevation a bomb will advance four hundred feet in the direction that
the aircraft is moving, provided its speed is not in excess of sixty miles an
hour. As a result marksmanship at a height of more than five thousand feet is
practically impossible.

In the main this situation is met, as all situations in war in which efficiency
can only be attained at the expense of great personal danger are met, namely,
by braving the danger. When the aviators have an attack in contemplation
they fly low and snap their fingers at the puff balls of death as the shrapnel
from their appearance when bursting may well be called. Naturally, efforts
were made early in the war to lessen the danger by armouring the body of the
machine sufficiently to protect the aviator and his engine—for if the aviator
escaped a shot which found the engine, his plight would be almost as bad as
if the missile had struck him.

The main difficulty with armouring the machines grew out of the added
weight. The more efficient the armour, the less fuel could be carried and the
less ammunition. If too heavily loaded the speed of the machine would be
reduced and its ability to climb rapidly upon which the safety of the aviator
usually depends, either in reconnaissance or fighting, would be seriously
impeded. The first essays in protective armour took the form of the
installation of a thin sheet of steel along the bottom of the body of the craft.
This turned aside missiles from below provided the plane were not so near
the ground as to receive them at the moment of their highest velocity. But it
was only an unsatisfactory makeshift. At the higher altitudes it was
unnecessary and in conflict with other airplanes it proved worthless, because
in a battle in the air the shots of the enemy are more likely to come from
above or at least from levels in the same plane. The armoured airplane was
quickly found to have less chance of mounting above its enemy, because of
the weight it carried, and before long the principle of protecting an airplane as
a battleship is protected was abandoned, except in the case of the heavier
machines intended to operate as scouts or guides to artillery, holding their
flights near the earth and protected from attack from above by their attendant
fleet of swift fighting machines. Of these the Vickers machine used mainly by
the British is a common type. It is built throughout of steel and aluminum,
and the entire fusillage is clothed with steel plating which assures protection
to the two occupants from either upward or lateral fire. The sides of the body
are carried up so that only the heads of the aviators are visible. But to
accomplish this measure of protection for the pilot and the gunner who
operates the machine gun from a seat forward of the pilot, the weight of the
craft is so greatly increased that it is but little esteemed for any save the most
sluggish manœuvre.

Indeed just as aircraft, as a factor in war, have come to be more like the
cavalry in the army, or the destroyers and scout cruisers in the navy, so the
tendency has been to discard everything in their design that might by any
possibility interfere with their speed and their ability to turn and twist, and
change direction and elevation with the utmost celerity under the most
difficult of conditions. It is possible that should this war run into the
indefinite future we may see aircraft built on ponderous lines and heavily
armoured, and performing in the air some of the functions that the British
"tanks" have discharged on the battlefields. But at the end of three years of
war, and at the moment when aërial hostilities seemed to be engaging more
fully than even before the inventive genius of the nations, and the dash and
skill of the fighting flyers, the tendency is all toward the light and swift
machine.

Photo by Press Illustrating Service.
A Curtis Seaplane Leaving a Battleship.

The attitude of the fighting airmen is somewhat reminiscent of that of
America's greatest sea-fighter, Admiral Farragut. Always opposed to
ironclads, the hero of Mobile Bay used to say that when he went to sea he did

not want to go in an iron coffin, and that when a shell had made its way
through one side of his ship he didn't want any obstacle presented to impede
its passing out of the other side.

© U. & U.
Launching a Hydroaëroplane.

The all important and even vital necessity for speed also detracted much
from the value of aircraft in offensive operations. It was found early that you
could not mount on a flying machine guns of sufficient calibre to be of
material use in attacking fortified positions. If it was necessary for the planes
to proceed any material distance before reaching their objective, the weight of
the necessary fuel would preclude the carriage of heavy artillery. In the case
of seaplanes which might be carried on the deck of a battleship to a point
reasonably contiguous to the object to be attacked, this difficulty was not so
serious. This was demonstrated to some extent by the British raids on the
German naval bases of Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven, but even in these
instances it was bombs dropped by aviators, not gunfire that injured the

enemy's works. But for the airplane proper this added weight was so positive
a handicap as to practically destroy its usefulness as an assailant of fortified
positions.

The heavier weapons of offence which could be carried by the airplane
even of the highest development were the bombs. These once landed might
cause the greatest destruction, but the difficulty of depositing them directly
upon a desired target was not to be overcome. The dirigible balloon enjoyed a
great advantage over the airplane in this respect, for it was able to hover over
the spot which it desired to hit and to discharge its bombs in a direct
perpendicular line with enough initial velocity from a spring gun to overcome
largely any tendency to deviate from the perpendicular. But an airplane
cannot stop. When it stops it must descend. If it is moving at the moderate
speed of sixty miles an hour when it drops its missile, the bomb itself will
move forward at the rate of sixty miles an hour until gravity has overcome the
initial forward force. Years before the war broke out, tests were held in
Germany and France of the ability of aviators to drop a missile upon a target
marked out upon the ground. One such test in France required the dropping of
bombs from a height of 2400 feet upon a target 170 feet long by 40 broad—or
about the dimensions of a small and rather stubby ship. The results were
uniformly disappointing. The most creditable record was made by an
American aviator, Lieutenant Scott, formerly of the United States Army. His
first three shots missed altogether, but thereafter he landed eight within the
limits. In Germany the same year the test was to drop bombs upon two
targets, one resembling a captive Zeppelin, the other a military camp 330 feet
square. The altitude limit was set at 660 feet. This, though a comparatively
easy test, was virtually a failure. Only two competitors succeeded in dropping
a bomb into the square at all, while the balloon was hit but once.

The character and size of the bombs employed by aircraft naturally differed
very widely, particularly as to size, between those carried by dirigibles and
those used by airplanes. The Zeppelin shell varied in weight between two
hundred and two hundred and fifty pounds. It was about forty-seven inches
long by eight and a half inches in diameter. Its charge varied according to the
use to which it was to be put. If it was hoped that it would drop in a crowded
spot and inflict the greatest amount of damage to human life and limb it
would carry a bursting charge, shrapnel, and bits of iron, all of which on the
impact of the missile upon the earth would be hurled in every direction to a

radius exceeding forty yards. If damage to buildings, on the other hand, was
desired, some high explosive such as picric acid would be used which would
totally wreck any moderate-sized building upon which the shell might fall. In
many instances, particularly in raids upon cities such as London, incendiary
shells were used charged with some form of liquid fire, which rapidly spread
the conflagration, and which itself was practically inextinguishable.

Shells or bombs of these varying types were dropped from airplanes as
well as from the larger and steadier Zeppelins. The difference was entirely in
the size. It was said that a Zeppelin might drop a bomb of a ton's weight. But
so far as attainable records are concerned it is impossible to cite any instance
of this being done. The effect on the great gas bag of the sudden release of a
load so great would certainly cause a sudden upward flight which might be so
quick and so powerful as to affect the very structure of the ship. So far as
known 250 pounds was the topmost limit of Zeppelin bombs, while most of
them were of much smaller dimensions. The airplane bombs were seldom
more than sixty pounds in weight, although in the larger British machines a
record of ninety-five pounds has been attained. The most common form of
bomb used in the heavier-than-air machines was pear-shaped, with a whirling
tail to keep the missile upright as it falls. Steel balls within, a little larger than
ordinary shrapnel, are held in place by a device which releases them during
the fall. On striking the ground they fall on the explosive charge within and
the shell bursts, scattering the two or three hundred steel bullets which it
carries over a wide radius. Bombs of this character weigh in the
neighbourhood of six pounds and an ordinary airplane can carry a very
considerable number. Their exploding device is very delicate so that it will
operate upon impact with water, very soft earth, or even the covering of an
airship. Other bombs commonly used in airplanes were shaped like darts,
winged like an arrow so that they would fall perpendicularly and explode by
a pusher at the point which was driven into the body of the bomb upon its
impact with any hard substance.

It seems curious to read of the devices sometimes quite complicated and at
all times the result of the greatest care and thought, used for dropping these
bombs. In the trenches men pitched explosive missiles about with little more
care than if they had been so many baseballs, but only seldom was a bomb
from aloft actually delivered by hand. In the case of the heavier bombs used
by the dirigibles this is understandable. They could not be handled by a single

man without the aid of mechanical devices. Some are dropped from a cradle
which is tilted into a vertical position after the shell has been inserted. Others
are fired from a tube not unlike the torpedo tube of a submarine, but which
imparts only slight initial velocity to the missile. Its chief force is derived
from gravity, and to be assured of its explosion the aviator must discharge it
from a height proportionate to its size.

In the airplane the aviator's methods are more simple. Sometimes the
bombs are carried in a rack beneath the body of the machine, and released by
means of a lever at the side. A more primitive method often in use is merely
to attach the bomb to a string and lower it to a point at which the aviator is
certain that in falling it will not touch any part of the craft, and then cut the
string. Half a dozen devices by which the aviator can hold the bomb at arm's
length and drop it with the certainty of a perpendicular fall are in use in the
different air navies. It will be evident to the most casual consideration that
with any one of these devices employed by an aviator in a machine going at a
speed of sixty miles an hour or more the matter of hitting the target is one in
which luck has a very great share.

There is good reason for the pains taken by the aviators to see that their
bombs fall swift and true, and clear of all the outlying parts of their machines.
The grenadier in the trenches has a clear field for his explosive missile and he
may toss it about with what appears to be desperate carelessness—though
instances have been known in which a bomb thrower, throwing back his arm
preparatory to launching his canned volcano, has struck the back of his own
trench with disastrous results. But the aviator must be even more careful. His
bombs must not hit any of the wires below his machine in falling—else there
will be a dire fall for him. And above all they must not get entangled in stays
or braces. In such case landing will bring a most unpleasant surprise.

A striking case was that of a bomber who had been out over the German
trenches. He had a two-man machine, had made a successful flight and had
dropped, effectively as he supposed, all his bombs. Returning in serene
consciousness of a day's duty well done, he was about to spiral down to the
landing place when his passenger looked over the side of the car to see if
everything was in good order. Emphatically it was not. To his horror he
discovered that two of the bombs had not fallen, but had caught in the
running gear of his machine. To attempt a landing with the bombs in this

position would have been suicidal. The bombs would have instantly
exploded, and annihilated both machine and aviators. But to get out of the
car, climb down on the wires, and try to unhook the bombs seemed more
desperate still. Stabilizers, and other devices, now in common use, had not
then been invented and to go out on the wing of a biplane, or to disturb its
delicate balance, was unheard of. Nevertheless it was a moment for desperate
remedies. The pilot clung to his controls, and sought to meet the shifting
strains, while the passenger climbed out on the wing and then upon the
running gear. To trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on
one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand
you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience
for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The
bombs fell—nobody cared where—and the two imperilled aviators came to
ground safely.

A form of offensive weapon which for some reason seems peculiarly
horrible to the human mind is the fléchette. These are steel darts a little larger
than a heavy lead pencil and with the upper two thirds of the stem deeply
grooved so that the greater weight of the lower part will cause them to fall
perpendicularly. These are used in attacks upon dense bodies of troops.
Particularly have they proved effective in assailing cavalry, for the nature of
the wounds they produce invariably maddens the horses who suffer from
them and causes confusion that will often bring grave disaster to a transport
or artillery train. Though very light, these arrows when dropped from any
considerable height inflict most extraordinary wounds. They have been
known to penetrate a soldier's steel helmet, to pass through his body and that
of the horse he bestrode, and bury themselves in the earth. In the airplane
they are carried in boxes of one hundred each, placed over an orifice in the
floor. A touch of the aviator's foot and all are discharged. The speed of the
machine causes them to fall at first in a somewhat confused fashion, with the
result that before all have finally assumed their perpendicular position they
have been scattered over a very considerable extent of air. Once fairly pointed
downward they fall with unerring directness points downward to their mark.

© U. & U.
At a United States Training Camp.

It is a curious fact that not long after these arrows first made their
appearance in the French machines, they were imitated by the Germans, but
the German darts had stamped upon them the words: "Made in Germany, but
invented by the French."

© U. & U.
A "Blimp" with Gun Mounted on Top.

One of the duties of the fighting airmen is to destroy the observation
balloons which float in great numbers over both the lines tugging lazily at the
ropes by which they are held captive while the observers perched in their
baskets communicate the results of their observations by telephone to staff
officers at a considerable distance. These balloons are usually anchored far
enough back of their own lines to be safe from the ordinary artillery fire of
their enemies. They were therefore fair game for the mosquitoes of the air.
But they were not readily destroyed by such artillery as could be mounted on
an ordinary airplane. Bullets from the machine-guns were too small to make
any rents in the envelope that would affect its stability. Even if incendiary
they could not carry a sufficiently heavy charge to affect so large a body. The
skin of the "sausages," as the balloons were commonly called from their
shape, was too soft to offer sufficient resistance to explode a shell of any size.
The war was pretty well under way before the precise weapon needed for
their destruction was discovered. This proved to be a large rocket of which
eight were carried on an airplane, four on each side. They were discharged by
powerful springs and a mechanism started which ignited them as soon as they
had left the airplane behind. The head of each rocket was of pointed steel,
very sharp and heavy enough to pierce the balloon skin. Winslow was
fortunate enough to be present when the first test of this weapon was made.
In his book, With the French Flying Corps, he thus tells the story:

Swinging lazily above the field was a captive balloon. At one end of Le
Bourget was a line of waiting airplanes. "This is the second; they have
already brought down one balloon," remarked the man at my elbow. The
hum of a motor caused me to look up. A wide-winged double motor,
Caudron, had left the ground and was mounting gracefully above us. Up
and up it went, describing a great circle, until it faced the balloon.
Everyone caught his breath. The Caudron was rushing straight at the
balloon, diving for the attack.

"Now!" cried the crowd. There was a loud crack, a flash, and eight
long rockets darted forth leaving behind a fiery trail. The aviator's aim
however was wide, and to the disappointment of everyone the darts fell
harmlessly to the ground.

Another motor roared far down the field, and a tiny appareil de chasse
shot upward like a swallow. "A Nieuport," shouted the crowd as one

voice. Eager to atone for his copain's failure, and impatient at his delay in
getting out of the way, the tiny biplane tossed and tumbled about in the
air like a clown in the circus ring.

"Look! he's looping! he falls! he slips! no, he rights again!" cried a
hundred voices as the skilful pilot kept our nerves on edge.

Suddenly he darted into position and for a second hovered uncertain.
Then with a dive like that of a dragon-fly, he rushed down to the attack.
Again a sheet of flame and a shower of sparks. This time the balloon
sagged. The flames crept slowly around its silken envelope. "Touchez!"
cried the multitude. Then the balloon burst and fell to the ground a mass
of flames. High above the little Nieuport saucily continued its pranks, as
though contemptuous of such easy prey.

It may be
properly noted at
this point that the
captive balloons
or kite balloons
have proved of
the greatest value
for observations
in this war.
Lacking of course
the mobility of
the swiftly
moving airplanes,
they have the
advantage over
the latter of being
at all times in
direct
communication
by telephone with
the ground and
being able to
carry quite heavy
scientific
instruments for
© U. & U. the more accurate © U. & U.
Aviators Descending in mapping out of The Balloon from which
Parachutes from a Balloon such territory as the Aviators Fled.
Struck by Incendiary comes within
Shells. their sphere of observation. They are not easy to
destroy by artillery fire, for the continual
swaying of the balloon before the wind perplexes gunners in their aim. At a
height of six hundred feet, a normal observation post, the horizon is nearly
thirty miles from the observer. In flat countries like Flanders, or at sea where
the balloon may be sent up from the deck of a ship, this gives an outlook of
the greatest advantage to the army or fleet relying upon the balloon for its
observations of the enemy's dispositions.

Most of the British and French observation balloons have been of the old-
fashioned spherical form which officers in those services find sufficiently
effective. The Germans, however, claimed that a balloon might be devised
which would not be so very unstable in gusty weather. Out of this belief grew
the Parseval-Siegfeld balloon which from its form took the name of the
Sausage. In fact its appearance far from being terrifying suggests not only
that particular edible, but a large dill pickle floating awkwardly in the air. In
order to keep the balloon always pointed into the teeth of the wind there is
attached to one end of it a large surrounding bag hanging from the lower half
of the main envelope. One end of this, the end facing forward, is left open
and into this the wind blows, steadying the whole structure after the fashion
of the tail of a kite. The effect is somewhat grotesque as anyone who has
studied the numerous pictures of balloons of this type employed during the
war must have observed. It looks not unlike some form of tumor growing
from a healthy structure.

Captive or kite balloons are especially effective as coast guards. Posted
fifty miles apart along a threatened coast they can keep a steady watch over
the sea for more than twenty-five miles toward the horizon. With their
telephonic connections they can notify airplanes in waiting, or for that matter
swift destroyers, of any suspicious sight in the distance, and secure an
immediate investigation which will perhaps result in the defeat of some
attempted raid. Requiring little power for raising and lowering them and few
men for their operation, they form a method of standing sentry guard at a
nation's front door which can probably be equalled by no other device. The
United States at the moment of the preparation of this book is virtually
without any balloons of this type—the first one of any pretensions having
been tested in the summer of 1917.

As late as the third year of the war it could not be said that the possibilities
of aërial offense had been thoroughly developed by any nation. The Germans
indeed had done more than any of the belligerents in this direction with their
raids on the British coast and on London. But, as already pointed out, these
raids as serious attacks on strategic positions were mere failures. Advocates
of the increased employment of aircraft in this fashion insist that the military
value to Germany of the raids lay not so much in the possibility of doing
damage of military importance but rather in the fact that the possibility of
repeated and more effective raids compelled Great Britain to keep at home a

force of thirty thousand to fifty thousand men constantly on guard, who but
for this menace would have been employed on the battlefields of France. In
this argument there is a measure of plausibility. Indeed between January,
1915, and June 13, 1917, the Germans made twenty-three disastrous raids
upon England, killing more than seven hundred persons and injuring nearly
twice as many. The amount of damage to property has never been reported
nor is it possible to estimate the extent of injury inflicted upon works of a
military character. The extreme secrecy with which Great Britain, in common
with the other belligerents, has enveloped operations of this character makes
it impossible at this early day to estimate the military value of these exploits.
Merely to inflict anguish and death upon a great number of civilians, and
those largely women and children, is obviously of no military service. But if
such suffering is inflicted in the course of an attack which promises the
destruction or even the crippling of works of military character like arsenals,
munition plants, or naval stores, it must be accepted as an incident of
legitimate warfare. The limited information obtainable in wartime seems to
indicate that the German raids had no legitimate objective in view but were
undertaken for the mere purpose of frightfulness.

The methods of defence employed in Great Britain, where all attacks must
come from the sea, were mainly naval. What might be called the outer, or
flying, defences consisted of fast armed fighting seaplanes and dirigibles.
Stationed on the coast and ready on the receipt of a wireless warning from
scouts, either aërial or naval, that an enemy air flotilla was approaching the
coast, they could at once fly forth and give it battle. A thorough defence of
the British territory demanded that the enemy should be driven back before
reaching the land. Once over British territory the projectiles discharged
whether by friend or foe did equal harm to the people on the ground below.
Accordingly every endeavour was made to meet and beat the raiders before
they had passed the barrier of sea. Beside the flying defences there were the
floating defences. Anti-aircraft guns were mounted on different types of ships
stationed far out from the shore and ever on the watch. But these latter were
of comparatively little avail, for flying over the Channel or the North Sea the
invaders naturally flew at a great height. They had no targets there to seek,
steered by their compasses, and were entirely indifferent to the prospect
beneath them. Moreover anti-aircraft guns, hard to train effectively from an
immovable mount, were particularly untrustworthy when fired from the deck
of a rolling and tossing ship in the turbulent Channel.

Third in the list of defences of the British coast, or of any other coast
which may at any time be threatened with an aërial raid, are defensive
stations equipped not only with anti-aircraft guns and searchlights but with
batteries of strange new scientific instruments like the "listening towers,"
equipped with huge microphones to magnify the sound of the motors of
approaching aircraft so that they would be heard long before they could be
seen, range finders, and other devices for the purpose of gauging the distance
and fixing the direction of an approaching enemy.

Some brief attention may here be given to the various types of anti-aircraft
guns. These differ very materially in type and weight in the different
belligerent armies and navies. They have but one quality in common, namely
that they are most disappointing in the results attained. Mr. F. W. Lancaster,
the foremost British authority on aircraft, says on this subject:

"Anti-aircraft firing is very inaccurate, hence numbers of guns are
employed to compensate."

Photo by International Film Service.
German Air Raiders over England.
In the foreground three British planes are advancing to the attack.

That is to say that one or two guns can be little relied upon to put a flyer
hors du combat. The method adopted is to have large batteries which fairly
fill that portion of the air through which the adventurous airman is making his
way with shells fired rather at the section than at the swiftly moving target.

"Archibald," the British airmen call, for some mysterious reason, the anti-
aircraft guns employed by their enemies, sometimes referring to a big
howitzer which made its appearance late in the war as "Cuthbert." The names
sound a little effeminate, redolent somehow of high teas and the dancing
floor, rather than the field of battle. Perhaps this was why the British soldiers
adopted them as an expression of contempt for the enemy's batteries. But

contempt was hardly justifiable in face of the difficulty of the problem. A gun
firing a twenty-pound shrapnel shell is not pointed on an object with the
celerity with which a practised revolver shot can throw his weapon into
position. The gunner on the ground seeing an airplane flying five thousand
feet above him—almost a mile up in the air—hurries to get his piece into
position for a shot. But while he is aiming the flyer, if a high-speed machine,
will be changing its position at a rate of perhaps 120 miles an hour. Nor does
it fly straight ahead. The gunner cannot point his weapon some distance in
advance as he would were he a sportsman intent on cutting off a flight of wild
geese. The aviator makes quick turns—zigzags—employs every artifice to
defeat the aim of his enemy below. Small wonder that in the majority of cases
they have been successful. The attitude of the airmen toward the "Archies" is
one of calm contempt.

The German mind being distinctly scientific invented early in the war a
method of fixing the range and position of an enemy airplane which would be
most effective if the target were not continually in erratic motion. The method
was to arrange anti-aircraft guns in a triangle, all in telephonic connection
with a central observer. When a flyer enters the territory which these guns are
guarding, the gunner at one of the apexes of the triangle fires a shell which
gives out a red cloud of smoke. Perhaps it falls short. The central observer
notes the result and orders a second gun to fire. Instantly a gunner at another
apex fires again, this time a shell giving forth black smoke. This shell
discharged with the warning given by the earlier one is likely to come nearer
the target, but at any rate marks another point at which it has been missed.
Between the two a third gunner instantly corrects his aim by the results of the
first two shots. His shell gives out a yellow smoke. The observer then figures
from the positions of the three guns the lines of a triangular cone at the apex
of which the target should be. Sometimes science wins, often enough for the
Germans to cling to the system. But more often the shrewd aviator defeats
science by his swift and eccentric changes of his line of flight.

At the beginning of the war Germany was very much better equipped with
anti-aircraft guns than any of her enemies. This was due to the remarkable
foresight of the great munition makers, Krupp and Ehrhardt, who began
experimenting with anti-aircraft guns before the aircraft themselves were
much more than experiments. The problem was no easy one. The gun had to
be light, mobile, and often mounted on an automobile so as to be swiftly

transferred from place to place in pursuit of raiders. It was vital that it should
be so mounted as to be speedily trained to any position vertical or horizontal.
As a result the type determined upon was mounted on a pedestal fixed to the
chassis of an automobile or to the deck of a ship in case it was to be used in
naval warfare. The heaviest gun manufactured in Germany was of 4-¼-inch
calibre, throwing a shell of forty pounds weight. This could be mounted
directly over the rear axle of a heavy motor truck. To protect the structure of
the car from the shock of the recoil these guns are of course equipped with
hydraulic or other appliances for taking it up. They are manufactured also in
the 3-inch size. Germany, France, and England vied with each other in
devising armored motor cars equipped with guns of this type—the British
using the makes of Vickers and Hotchkiss, and the French their favourite
Creusot. The trucks are always armoured, the guns mounted in turrets so that
the effect is not unlike that of a small battleship dashing madly down a
country road and firing repeatedly at some object directly overhead. But the
record has not shown that the success of these picturesque and ponderous
engines of war has been great. They cannot manœuvre with enough swiftness
to keep up with the gyrations of an airplane. They offer as good a target for a
bomb from above as the aircraft does to their shots from below. Indeed they
so thoroughly demonstrated their inefficiency that before the war had passed
its third year they were either abandoned or their guns employed only when
the car was stationary. Shots fired at full speed were seldom effective.

The real measure of the effectiveness of anti-aircraft guns may be judged
by the comparative immunity that attended the aviators engaged on the two
early British raids on Friedrichshaven, the seat of the great Zeppelin works on
Lake Constance, and on the German naval base at Cuxhaven. The first was
undertaken by three machines. From Belfort in France, the aviators turned
into Germany and flew for 120 miles across hostile territory. The flight was
made by day though indeed the adventurous aviators were favoured by a
slight mist. Small single seated "avro" machines were used, loaded heavily
with bombs as well as with the large amount of fuel necessary for a flight
which before its completion would extend over 250 miles. Not only at the
frontier, but at many fortified positions over which they passed, they must
have exposed themselves to the fire of artillery, but until they actually
reached the neighbourhood of the Zeppelin works they encountered no fire
whatsoever. There the attack on them was savage and well maintained. On
the roofs of the gigantic factory, on neighbouring hillocks and points of

vantage there were anti-aircraft guns busily discharging shrapnel at the
invaders. It is claimed by the British that fearing this attack the Germans had
called from the front in Flanders their best marksmen, for at that time the
comparative worthlessness of the Zeppelin had not been demonstrated and
the protection of the works was regarded as a prime duty of the army.

© U. & U.
One Aviator's Narrow Escape.

The invading machines flew low above the factory roofs. The adventurers
had come far on an errand which they knew would awaken the utmost
enthusiasm among their fellows at home and they were determined to so
perform their task that no charge of having left anything undone could
possibly lie. Commander Briggs, the first of the aviators to reach the scene,
flew as low as one hundred feet above the roofs, dropping his bombs with

deadly accuracy. But he paid for his temerity with the loss of his machine and
his liberty. A bullet pierced his petrol tank and there was nothing for him to
do save to glide to earth and surrender. The two aviators who accompanied
him although their machines were repeatedly hit were nevertheless able to
drop all their bombs and to fly safely back to Belfort whence they had taken
their departure some hours before. The measure of actual damage done in the
raid has never been precisely known. Germany always denied that it was
serious, while the British ascribe to it the greatest importance—a clash of
opinion common in the war and which will for some years greatly perplex the
student of its history.

The second raid, that upon Cuxhaven, was made by seaplanes so far as the
air fighting was concerned, but in it not only destroyers but submarines also
took part. It presented the unique phenomenon of a battle fought at once
above, upon, and below the surface of the sea. It is with the aërial feature of
the battle alone that we have to do.

Christmas morning, 1915, seven seaplanes were quietly lowered to the
surface of the water of the North Sea from their mother ships a little before
daybreak. The spot was within a few miles of Cuxhaven and the mouth of the
River Elbe. As the aircraft rose from the surface of the water and out of the
light mist that lay upon it, they could see in the harbour which they
threatened, a small group of German warships. Almost at the same moment
their presence was detected. The alarms of the bugles rang out from the
hitherto quiet craft and in a moment with the smoke pouring from their
funnels destroyers and torpedo boats moved out to meet the attack. Two
Zeppelins rose high in the air surrounded by a number of the smaller
airplanes, eager for the conflict. The latter proceeded at once to the attack
upon the raiding air fleet, while the destroyers, the heavier Zeppelins, and a
number of submarines sped out to sea to attack the British ships. The mist,
which grew thicker, turned the combat from a battle into a mere disorderly
raid, but out of it the seaplanes emerged unhurt. All made their way safely
back to the fleet, after having dropped their bombs with a degree of damage
never precisely known. The weakness of the seaplane is that on returning to
its parent ship it cannot usually alight upon her deck, even though a landing
platform has been provided. It must, as a rule, drop to the surface of the
ocean, and if this be at all rough the machine very speedily goes to pieces.
This was the case with four of the seven seaplanes which took part in the raid

on Cuxhaven. All however delivered their pilots safely to the awaiting fleet
and none fell a victim to the German anti-aircraft guns.

In May of 1917, the British Royal Naval Air Service undertook the
mapping of the coast of Belgium north from Nieuport, the most northerly
seaport held by the British, to the southern boundary of Holland. This section
of coast was held by the Germans and in it were included the two submarine
bases of Zeebrugge and Ostend. At the latter point the long line of German
trenches extending to the boundary of Switzerland rested its right flank on the
sea. The whole coast north of that was lined with German batteries, snugly
concealed in the rolling sand dunes and masked by the waving grasses of a
barren coast. From British ships thirty miles out at sea, for the waters there
are shallow and large vessels can only at great peril approach the shore, the
seaplanes were launched. Just south of Nieuport a land base was established
as a rendezvous for both air-and seaplanes when their day's work was done.
From fleet and station the aërial observers took their way daily to the enemy's
coast. Every mile of it was photographed. The hidden batteries were detected
and the inexorable record of their presence imprinted on the films. The work
in progress at Ostend and Zeebrugge, the active construction of basins, locks,
and quays, the progress of the great mole building at the latter port, the
activities of submarines and destroyers within the harbour, the locations of
guns and the positions of barracks were all indelibly set down. These films
developed at leisure were made into coherent wholes, placed in projecting
machines, and displayed like moving pictures in the ward rooms of the ships
hovering off shore, so that the naval forces preparing for the assault had a
very accurate idea of the nature of the defences they were about to encounter.

This was not done of course without considerable savage fighting in mid-
air. The Germans had no idea of allowing their defences and the works of
their submarine bases to be pictured for the guidance of their foes. Their anti-
aircraft guns barked from dawn to dark whenever a British plane was seen
within range. Their own aërial fighters were continually busy, and along that
desolate wave-washed coast many a lost lad in leather clothing and goggles,
crumpled up in the ruins of his machine after a fall of thousands of feet, lay
as a memorial to the prowess of the defenders of the coast and the audacity of
those who sought to invade it. But during the long weeks of this extended
reconnaissance hardly a spadeful of dirt could be moved, a square yard of
concrete placed in position, or a submarine or torpedo boat manœuvred

without its record being entered upon the detailed charts the British were so
painstakingly preparing against the day of assault. When peace shall finally
permit the publication of the records of the war, now held secret for military
reasons, such maps as those prepared by the British air service on the Belgian
coast will prove most convincing evidence of the military value of the aërial
scouts.

What the lads engaged in making these records had to brave in the way of
physical danger is strikingly shown by the description of a combat included
in one of the coldly matter-of-fact official reports. The battle was fought at
about twelve thousand feet above mother earth. We quote the official
description accompanied by some explanatory comments added by one who
was an eye-witness and who conversed with the triumphant young airman on
his return to the safety of the soil.

"While exposing six plates," says the official report of this youthful
recording angel, "I observed five H. A.'s cruising."

"H. A." stands for "hostile aeroplane."

"Not having seen the escort since returning inland, the pilot prepared to
return. The enemy separated, one taking up a position above the tail and
one ahead. The other three glided toward us on the port side, firing as
they came. The two diving machines fired over 100 rounds, hitting the
pilot in the shoulder."

As a matter of fact, the bullet entered his shoulder from above, behind,
breaking his left collarbone, and emerged just above his heart, tearing a
jagged rent down his breast. Both his feet, furthermore, were pierced by
bullets; but the observer is not concerned with petty detail.

The observer held his fire until H. A., diving on tail, was within five
yards.

Here it might be mentioned that the machines were hurtling through
space at a speed in the region of one hundred miles an hour.

The pilot of H. A., having swooped to within speaking distance, pushed
up his goggles, and laughed triumphantly as he took sight for the shot that

was to end the fight. But the observer, had his own idea how the fight
should end.

"I then shot one tray into the enemy pilot's face," he says, with curt
relish, "and watched him sideslip and go spinning earthward in a train of
smoke."

He then turned his attention to his own pilot. The British machine was
barely under control, but as the observer rose in his seat to investigate the
foremost gun was fired, and the aggressor ahead went out of control and
dived nose first in helpless spirals.

Suspecting that his mate was badly wounded in spite of this
achievement, the observer swung one leg over the side of the fusillage
and climbed on to the wing—figure for a minute the air pressure on his
body during this gymnastic feat—until he was beside the pilot, faint and
drenched with blood, who had nevertheless got his machine back into
complete control.

"Get back, you ass!" he said through white lips in response to inquiries
how he felt. So the ass got back the way he came, and looked around for
the remainder of the H. A.'s. These, however, appeared to have lost
stomach for further fighting and fled.

The riddled machine returned home at one hundred knots while the
observer, having nothing better to do, continued to take photographs.

"The pilot, though wounded, made a perfect landing"—thus the report
concludes.

When the time came for the assault upon Zeebrugge the value of these
painstaking preparations was made evident. The attack was made from sea
and air alike. Out in the North Sea the great British battleships steamed in as
near the coast as the shallowness of the water would permit. From the
forward deck of each rose grandly a seaplane until the air was darkened by
their wings, and they looked like a monstrous flock of the gulls which
passengers on ocean-going liners watch wheeling and soaring around the ship
as it ploughs its way through the ocean. These gulls though were birds of
prey. They were planes of the larger type, biplanes or triplanes carrying two

men, usually equipped with two motors and heavily laden with high
explosive bombs. As they made their way toward the land they were
accompanied by a fleet of light draft monitors especially built for this service,
each mounting two heavy guns and able to manœuvre in shallow water. With
them advanced a swarm of swift, low-lying, dark-painted destroyers ready to
watch out for enemy torpedo boats or submarines. They mounted anti-aircraft
guns too and were prepared to defend the monitors against assaults from the
heavens above as well as from the sinister attack of the underwater boats. Up
from the land base at Nieuport came a great fleet of airplanes to co-operate
with their naval brethren. Soon upon the German works, sheltering squadrons
of the sinister undersea boats, there rained a hell of exploding projectiles
from sea and sky. Every gunner had absolute knowledge of the precise
position and range of the target to which he was assigned. The great guns of
the monitors roared steadily and their twelve and fourteen-inch projectiles
rent in pieces the bomb proofs of the Germans, driving the Boches to cover
and reducing their works to mere heaps of battered concrete. Back and forth
above flew seaplanes and airplanes, giving battle to the aircraft which the
Germans sent up in the forlorn hope of heading off that attack and dropping
their bombs on points carefully mapped long in advance. It is true that the
aim of the aviators was necessarily inaccurate. That is the chief weakness of a
bombardment from the sky. But what was lacking in individual accuracy was
made up by the numbers of the bombing craft. One might miss a lock or a
shelter, but twenty concentrating their fire on the same target could not all
fail. This has become the accepted principle of aërial offensive warfare. The
inaccuracy of the individual must be corrected by the multiplication of the
number of the assailants.

The attack on Zeebrugge was wholly successful. Though the Germans
assiduously strove to conceal the damage done, the later observations of the
ruined port by British airmen left no doubt that as a submarine base it had
been put out of commission for months to come. The success of the attack led
to serious discussion, in which a determination has not yet been reached, of
the feasibility of a similar assault upon Heligoland, Kiel, or Cuxhaven, the
three great naval bases in which the German fleet has lurked in avoidance of
battle with the British fleet. Many able naval strategists declared that it was
time for the British to abandon the policy of a mere blockade and carry out
the somewhat rash promise made by Winston Churchill when First Lord of
the Admiralty, to "dig the rats out of their holes." Such an attack it was urged

should be made mainly from the air, as the land batteries and sunken mines
made the waters adjacent to these harbours almost impassable to attacking
ships. Rear-Admiral Fiske, of the United States Navy, strongly urging such an
attack, wrote in an open letter:

The German Naval General Staff realizes the value of concentration of
power and mobility in as large units as possible. The torpedo plane
embodies a greater concentration of power and mobility than does any
other mechanism. For its cost, the torpedo plane is the most powerful and
mobile weapon which exists at the present day.

An attack by allied torpedo planes, armed with guns to defend
themselves from fighting airplanes, would be a powerful menace to the
German fleet and, if made in sufficient numbers, would give the Allies
such unrestricted command of the North Sea, even of the shallow parts
near the German coast, that German submarines would be prevented from
coming from a German port, the submarine menace abolished, and all
chance of German success wiped out.

I beg also to point out that an inspection of the map of Europe shows
that in the air raids over land the strategical advantage lies with Germany,
because her most important towns, like Berlin, are farther inland than the
most important towns of the Allies, like London, so that aëroplanes of the
Allies, in order to reach Berlin, would have to fly over greater distances,
while exposed to the fire of other aëroplanes, than do aëroplanes of the
Germans in going to London for raids on naval vessels.

However, the strategical advantage over water lies with the British,
because their control of the deep parts of the North Sea enables them to
establish a temporary aeronautical base of mother ships sufficiently close
to the German fleet to enable the British to launch a torpedo-plane attack
from it on the German fleets in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, while the
Germans could not possibly establish an aeronautical base sufficiently
close to the British fleet.

© Press Illustrating Service.
Downed in the Enemy's Country.

This gives the Allies the greatest advantage of the offensive. It would
seem possible, provided a distinct effort is made, for the Allies to send a
large number of aeroplane mother ships to a point, say, fifty miles west of
Heligoland, and for a large force of fighting aëroplanes and torpedo
planes to start from this place about two hours before dawn, reach Kiel
Bay and Wilhelmshaven about dawn, attack the German fleets there and
sink the German ships.

The distance from Heligoland to Kiel is about ninety land miles, and to
Wilhelmshaven about forty-five.

The torpedo planes referred to are an invention of Admiral Fiske's which,
in accordance with what seems to be a fixed and fatal precedent in the United
States, has been ignored by our own authorities but eagerly adopted by the
naval services of practically all the belligerents. One weakness of the aërial
attack upon ships of war is that the bombs dropped from the air, even if they
strike the target, strike upon the protective deck which in most warships
above the gunboat class is strong enough to resist, or at least to minimize, the
effect of any bomb capable of being carried by an airplane. The real
vulnerable part of a ship of war is the thin skin of its hull below water and
below the armor belt. This is the point at which the torpedo strikes. Admiral
Fiske's device permits an airplane to carry two torpedoes of the regular
Whitehead class and to launch them with such an impetus and at such an
angle that they will take the water and continue their course thereunder
exactly as though launched from a naval torpedo tube. His idea was adopted
both by Great Britain and Germany. British torpedo planes thus equipped
sank four Turkish ships in the Sea of Marmora, a field of action which no
British ship could have reached after the disastrous failure to force the
Dardanelles. The Germans by employment of the same device sank at least
two Russian ships in the Baltic and one British vessel in the North Sea. The
blindness of the United States naval authorities to the merits of this invention
was a matter arousing at once curiosity and indignation among observers
during the early days of our entrance upon the war.

CHAPTER VIII
INCIDENTS OF THE WAR IN THE AIR

In time, no doubt, volumes will be written on the work of the airmen in the
Great War. Except the submarine, no such novel and effective device was
introduced into the conduct of this colossal struggle as the scouting airplane.
The development of the service was steady from the first day when the
Belgian flyers proved their worth at Liège. From mere observation trips there
sprang up the air duels, from the duels developed skirmishes, and from these
in time pitched battles in which several hundred machines would be engaged
on each side. To this extent of development aërial tactics had proceeded by
midsummer of 1917. Their further development must be left to some future
chronicler to record. It must be noted, however, that at that early day the
Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, pleading for a larger measure
of preparation for the perils of war, asserted that the time was not far distant
when this country would have to prepare to repel invading fleets of aircraft
from European shores. This may have been an exaggeration. At that moment
no aircraft had crossed the Atlantic and no effort to make the passage had
been made save those of Wellman and Vanniman. When the guns began to
roar on the Belgian frontier there was floating on Keuka Lake, New York, a
huge hydro-airplane with which it was planned to make the trans-Atlantic
voyage. The project had been financed by Mr. Rodman Wanamaker, of
Philadelphia, and the tests of the ship under the supervision of a young
British army officer who was to make the voyage were progressing most
promisingly. But the event that plunged the world into war put a sudden end
to experiments like this for the commercial development of the airplane.
There is every reason to believe, however, that such a flight is practicable and
that it will ultimately be made not long after the world shall have returned to
peace and sanity.

Photo by Kadel & Herbert.
Later Type of French Scout.
The gun mounted on the upper wing is aimed by pointing the machine and is fired by the pilot.

Airmen are not, as a rule, of a romantic or a literary temperament. Pursuing
what seems to the onlooker to be the most adventurous and exhilarating of all
forms of military service, they have been chary of telling their experiences
and singularly set upon treating them as all in the day's work and eliminating
all that is picturesque from their narratives. Sergeant James R. McConnell,
one of the Americans in the French flying corps, afterwards killed, tells of a
day's service in his most readable book, Flying for France, in a way that
gives some idea of the daily routine of an operator of an avion de chasse. He
is starting just as the sky at dawn is showing a faint pink toward the eastern
horizon, for the aviator's work is best done in early morning when, as a rule,
the sky is clear and the wind light:

© U. & U.
Position of Gunner in Early French Machines.

Drawing forward out of line, you put on full power, race across the
grass, and take the air. The ground drops as the hood slants up before you
and you seem to be going more and more slowly as you rise. At a great
height you hardly realize you are moving. You glance at the clock to note
the time of your departure, and at the oil gauge to see its throb. The
altimeter registers 650 feet. You turn and look back at the field below and
see others leaving.

In three minutes you are at about four thousand feet. You have been
making wide circles over the field and watching the other machines. At
forty-five hundred feet you throttle down and wait on that level for your
companions to catch up. Soon the escadrille is bunched and off for the
lines. You begin climbing again, gulping to clear your ears in the
changing pressure. Surveying the other machines, you recognize the pilot
of each by the marks on its side—or by the way he flies.

The country below has changed into a flat surface of varicoloured
figures. Woods are irregular blocks of dark green, like daubs of ink
spilled on a table; fields are geometrical designs of different shades of
green and brown, forming in composite an ultra-cubist painting; roads are
thin white lines, each with its distinctive windings and crossings—from
which you determine your location. The higher you are the easier it is to
read.

In about ten minutes you see the Meuse sparkling in the morning light,
and on either side the long line of sausage-shaped observation balloons
far below you. Red-roofed Verdun springs into view just beyond. There
are spots in it where no red shows and you know what has happened
there. In the green pasture land bordering the town, round flecks of brown
indicate the shell holes. You cross the Meuse.

Immediately east and north of Verdun there lies a broad, brown band.
From the Woevre plain it runs westward to the "S" bend in the Meuse,
and on the left bank of that famous stream continues on into the Argonne
Forest. Peaceful fields and farms and villages adorned that landscape a
few months ago—when there was no Battle of Verdun. Now there is only
that sinister brown belt, a strip of murdered Nature. It seems to belong to
another world. Every sign of humanity has been swept away. The woods
and roads have vanished like chalk wiped from a blackboard; of the
villages nothing remains but grey smears where stone walls have tumbled
together. The great forts of Douaumont and Vaux are outlined faintly, like
the tracings of a finger in wet sand. One cannot distinguish any one shell
crater, as one can on the pockmarked fields on either side. On the brown
band the indentations are so closely interlocked that they blend into a
confused mass of troubled earth. Of the trenches only broken, half-
obliterated links are visible.

Columns of muddy smoke spurt up continually as high explosives tear
deeper into this ulcered area. During heavy bombardment and attacks I
have seen shells falling like rain. The countless towers of smoke remind
one of Gustave Doré's picture of the fiery tombs of the arch-heretics in
Dante's "Hell." A smoky pall covers the sector under fire, rising so high
that at a height of one thousand feet one is enveloped in its mist-like
fumes. Now and then monster projectiles hurtling through the air close by

leave one's plane rocking violently in their wake. Airplanes have been cut
in two by them.

For us the battle passes in silence, the noise of one's motor deadening
all other sounds. In the green patches behind the brown belt myriads of
tiny flashes tell where the guns are hidden; and those flashes, and the
smoke of bursting shells, are all we see of the fighting. It is a weird
combination of stillness and havoc, the Verdun conflict viewed from the
sky.

Far below us, the observation and range-finding planes circle over the
trenches like gliding gulls. At a feeble altitude they follow the attacking
infantrymen and flash back wireless reports of the engagement. Only
through them can communication be maintained when, under the barrier
fire, wires from the front lines are cut. Sometimes it falls to our lot to
guard these machines from Germans eager to swoop down on their backs.
Sailing about high above a busy flock of them makes one feel like an old
mother hen protecting her chicks.

The pilot of an avion de chasse must not concern himself with the
ground, which to him is useful only for learning his whereabouts. The
earth is all-important to the men in the observation, artillery-regulating,
and bombardment machines, but the fighting aviator has an entirely
different sphere. His domain is the blue heavens, the glistening rolls of
clouds below the fleecy banks towering above the vague aërial horizon,
and he must watch it as carefully as a navigator watches the storm-tossed
sea.

On days when the clouds form almost a solid flooring, one feels very
much at sea, and wonders if one is in the navy instead of aviation. The
diminutive Nieuports skirt the white expanse like torpedo boats in an
arctic sea, and sometimes, far across the cloud-waves, one sights an
enemy escadrille, moving as a fleet.

Principally our work consists of keeping German airmen away from
our lines, and in attacking them when opportunity offers. We traverse the
brown band and enter enemy territory to the accompaniment of an anti-
aircraft cannonade. Most of the shots are wild, however, and we pay little
attention to them. When the shrapnel comes uncomfortably close, one

shifts position slightly to evade the range. One glances up to see if there
is another machine higher than one's own. Low, and far within the
German lines, are several enemy planes, a dull white in appearance,
resembling sandflies against the mottled earth. High above them one
glimpses the mosquito-like forms of two Fokkers. Away off to one side
white shrapnel puffs are vaguely visible, perhaps directed against a
German crossing the lines. We approach the enemy machines ahead, only
to find them slanting at a rapid rate into their own country. High above
them lurks a protection plane. The man doing the "ceiling work," as it is
called, will look after him for us.

Getting started is the hardest part of an attack. Once you have begun
diving you're all right. The pilot just ahead turns tail up like a trout
dropping back to water, and swoops down in irregular curves and circles.
You follow at an angle so steep your feet seem to be holding you back in
your seat. Now the black Maltese crosses on the German's wings stand
out clearly. You think of him as some sort of a big bug. Then you hear the
rapid tut-tut-tut of his machine-gun. The man that dived ahead of you
becomes mixed up with the topmost German. He is so close it looks as if
he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his
mitrailleuse and see him pass from under the German's tail.

The rattle of the gun that is aimed at you leaves you undisturbed. Only
when the bullets pierce the wings a few feet off do you become
uncomfortable. You see the gunner crouched down behind his weapon,
but you aim at where the pilot ought to be—there are two men aboard the
German craft—and press on the release hard. Your mitrailleuse hammers
out a stream of bullets as you pass over and dive, nose down, to get out of
range. Then, hopefully, you redress and look back at the foe. He ought to
be dropping earthward at several miles a minute. As a matter of fact,
however, he is sailing serenely on. They have an annoying habit of doing
that, these Boches.

Zeppelins as well as the stationary kite balloons and the swiftly flying
airplanes often tempted the fighting aviators to attack. One of the most
successful of the British champions of the air, though his own life was ended
in the second year of the war, was sub-Lieutenant R. A. J. Warneford, of the
British Flying Corps. In his brief period of service Warneford won more

laurels than any of the British aviators of the time. He was absolutely
fearless, with a marvelous control of the fast Vickers scout which he
employed, and fertile in every resource of the chase and of the flight. In an
interview widely printed at the time, Lieutenant Warneford thus told the story
of his casual meeting of a German Zeppelin high in air between Ghent and
Brussels and his prompt and systematic destruction of the great balloon. The
story as told in his own language reads like the recountal of an everyday
event. That to meet an enemy more than a mile above the earth and demolish
him was anything extraordinary does not seem to have occurred to the
aviator.

I proceeded on my journey at an increased height [he says]. It was just
three o'clock in the morning when all of a sudden I perceived on the
horizon about midway between Ghent and Brussels a Zeppelin flying fast
at an altitude of about six thousand feet. I immediately flew toward it and
when I was almost over the monster I descended about fifteen metres, and
flung six bombs at it. The sixth struck the envelope of the ship fair and
square in the middle. There was instantly a terrible explosion. The
displacement of the air round about me was so great that a tornado
seemed to have been produced. My machine tossed upward and then
flung absolutely upside down, I was forced to loop the loop in spite of
myself. I thought for a moment that the end of everything had come. In
the whirl I had the pleasure of seeing my victim falling to the earth in a
cloud of flames and smoke. Then by some miracle my machine righted
herself and I came to earth in the enemy's country. I was not long on the
ground you may be sure. I speedily put myself and my machine into
working order again; then I set my engine going.

This time the fortunate aviator returned safely to his own territory. He had
then served only four months, had attained the age of twenty-three, and even
in so brief a service had received the Cross of the Legion of Honour from
France and the Victoria Cross from the British. Only one week after this
courageous exploit he was killed while on a pleasure flight and with him a
young American journalist, Henry Beach Needham, to whom he was showing
the battlefield.

During the early years of the war all of the governments were peculiarly
secretive concerning all matters relative to their aviation services. This was

probably due to the fact that the flying corps was a brand new branch of the
service. No nation was adequately equipped with flyers. Each was afraid to
let its enemies know how insufficient were its air guards, or what measures
were being taken to bring the aërial fleet up to the necessary point of
efficiency. Investigators were frowned upon and the aviators themselves were
discouraged from much conversation about their work.

About the beginning of 1916 the British suddenly awoke to the fact that
even in war publicity has its value. It was necessary to arouse the enthusiastic
support of the people for recruiting or for the conscription which ultimately
was ordered. To do this graphic descriptions of what was doing at the front in
the various branches of the service seemed necessary. The best writers in
England were mobilized for this work. Kipling wrote of the submarines,
Conan Doyle of the fighting on the fields of France. The Royal Flying Corps
gave out a detailed story the authorship of which was not stated, but which
describes most picturesquely the day of a flying man.

In the United States it appeared in the Sun, of New York, and sections of it
are reprinted here:

"The following bombing will be carried out by No.—Squadron at night
(10 P.M., 12 midnight, and 2 A.M.). At each of these times three machines,
each carrying eight twenty-pound bombs, will bomb respectively P——,
C——, H——."

Thus the operation order read one evening in France. Just an ordinary
order too, for bombing is carried out day and night incessantly. Bombing
by night is usually carried out on towns and villages known to be resting
places of the German troops, and it is part of the work of the Royal Flying
Corps to see that the Hun never rests.

Fritz after a hard spell in the trenches is withdrawn to some shell torn
village behind his lines to rest. He enters the ruined house, that forms his
billet, and with a sigh of contentment at reaching such luxury after the
miseries of trench life prepares to sleep in peace. He dreams of home, and
then out of the night comes the terror of the air.

A bomb falls in his billet, exploding with a terrific report and doing
more damage to the already ruined walls. Possibly a few of his comrades

are wounded or killed. Other explosions take place close by and the
whole village is in turmoil.

Fritz does not sleep again. His nerves are jangled and all possibility of
sleep is gone. The next day he is in a worse condition than after a night in
the trenches. This continues night after night. The damage to German
morale is enormous.

From the aërial point of view things are different. A pilot warned for
night flying takes it as he takes everything else, with apparent unconcern.
He realizes that he will have an uninteresting ride in the dark; the danger
from "Archie" will be small, for an airplane is a difficult target to keep
under observation with a searchlight, and the danger from hostile aircraft
will be smaller still.

Over the trenches the star shells of the infantry may be seen,
occasionally the flash of a badly concealed gun glints in the darkness or
the exploding bombs of a trench raiding party cause tiny sparks to
glimmer far below. Probably the enemy, hearing the sound of engines,
will turn on his searchlights and sweep the sky with long pencils of light.
The pilot may be picked up for a second, and a trifle later the angry bang,
bang, bang of "Archie" may be heard, firing excitedly at the place where
the aeroplane ought to be but is not—the pilot has probably dipped and
changed his course since he was in the rays of the searchlight. He may be
caught again for an instant and the performance is repeated.

Before long the vicinity of the target is reached and he prepares to drop
his bombs, usually eight in number. A little before he is over the spot the
first bombs will be released, for the trajectory of the bomb follows the
course of the machine if the latter keeps on a straight course and when it
explodes the airplane is still overhead. Down far below will be seen a tiny
burst of flame; possibly a large fire blazes up and the pilot knows that his
work is good. He then turns and repeats his performance until all his
bombs are exhausted, when he turns for home.

Bombs are usually dropped from a low altitude at night in order to be
surer of getting the target. If during the performance any local
searchlights are turned on "Archie" gets busy and a merry game of hide
and seek in and out the beams takes place. If the airplane is very low, and

bombs are sometimes dropped from a height of only a few hundred feet,
it is highly probable that the bursting shells do more damage than the
airplane's bombs, and it is almost impossible to wing an airplane by night.

Photo by Press Illustrating Service.
A French Scout Airplane.

Over the lines the pilot probably meets more searchlights, dodges
them, and gradually descends. Below him he sees the aerodromes of the
surrounding squadrons lighted up for landing purposes. Should he be in
doubt as to which is his own he fires a certain combination of signal
lights and is answered from below. He then lands, hands his machine over
to the mechanics, and turns in.

Photo by International Film Service.
"Showing Off."
A Nieuport performing aërial acrobatics around a heavier bombing machine.

So much for night bombing. By day it is different. Though at night it is
the billets which usually form the target, by day bombing is carried out
for the purpose of damaging specific objects. Railroads, dumps of stores
and ammunition, and enemy aerodromes are the favourite targets.

The raiding machines fly in formation and are surrounded by other
machines used solely for protective purposes. Generally a raid is carried
out by machines from two squadrons, the bomb carriers belonging to a
corps wing and the escorting machines to an army wing.

All the machines meet at a prearranged rendezvous well on our side of
the line at a certain time and a given altitude. There they manœuvre into
their correct formation. A flight commander leads the raid and his
machine is distinguished by streamers tied to it.

Once over the target the fighters scatter and patrol the neighbourhood
while the bombers discharge their missiles on the objective. Usually,

unless anti-aircraft fire is very heavy, they descend a few thousand feet to
make surer of the target, and when their work is completed rise again to
the level of the escort.

Results can usually be fairly judged by day. An ammunition dump
quickly shows if it is hit and stores soon burst into flame. Railway
stations or junctions show clearly damage to buildings or overturned
trucks, but the damage to the track itself is hard to estimate. Aerodromes
may be bombed for the purpose of destroying enemy machines in their
hangars or merely in order to spoil the landing by blowing holes all over
the place. It is with great delight that a pilot remarks in his report that a
hostile machine, surrounded by mechanics, was about to ascend, but that
instead he had descended to within a few hundred feet and obtained a
direct hit, with the result that the enemy machine, including the
surrounding men, seemed to be severely damaged.

One officer on a bomb raid saw his chance in this way, descended to
four hundred feet under intense rifle fire, successfully bombed the enemy
machine, which was just emerging from its hangar, and then tried to make
off. Unfortunately at this moment his engine petered out, possibly on
account of the enemy's fire, and he had to descend.

By skillful planing he managed to descend about three quarters of a
mile away, in full view of the enemy. Instead of giving up the ghost and at
once firing his machine, this officer jumped out and, utterly unperturbed
by the German fire or by the Huns making across country to take him
prisoner, commenced to inspect the engine. Luckily he found the cause of
the trouble at once, put it right,—it was only a trifling mishap,—adjusted
the controls, and swung the propeller.

The engine started, he jumped in, with the nearest Hun only a hundred
yards off, and opening the throttle raced over the ground and into the air
pursued by a futile fusillade of bullets. His engine held out and he safely
regained his aerodrome, after having been reported missing by his
comrades. For this escapade he received the Military Cross—a well-
earned reward.

When all the bombs have been dropped and the formation resumed the
machines head for home. It is on the homeward journey that events may

be expected, for time enough has elapsed for the Hun to detail a squadron
to intercept our returning machines and pick off any stragglers that may
fall behind.

It is a favourite Boche manœuvre to detail some of his slow machines
to entice our fighters away from the main body, and when this has been
accomplished, to attack the remainder with Fokkers, which dive from
aloft onto the bombing machines. This trick is now well-known and the
fighters rarely leave their charges until the latter are in comparative
safety.

Sometimes a Hun of more sporting character than his brothers will wait
alone for the returning convoy, hiding himself thousands of feet up in the
clouds until he sees his moment. Then singling out a machine he will dive
at it, pouring out a stream of bullets as he falls. Sometimes he achieves
his object and a British machine falls to earth, but whatever the result, the
Hun does not alter his tactics. He dives clean through the whole block of
machines, down many thousands of feet, only flattening out when close
to the ground.

The whole affair is so swift—just one lightning dive—that long before
a fighter can reach the Hun the latter is away thousands of feet below and
heading for home and safety. Every Fokker pilot knows that once his
surprise dive is over he has no chance against another machine—the build
of the Fokker only allows this one method of attack—and he does not
stop to argue about it. His offensive dive becomes a defensive one—that
is the sole difference.

Sometimes a large squadron of German machines, composed of
various types of airplanes, intercepts a returning formation. If it attacks a
grand aërial battle ensues. The British fighting machines spread out in a
screen to allow the bombing machines a chance of escape and then attack
the Huns as they arrive. In one place one British airplane will be
defending itself from two or three German machines; close by two or
three of our busses will be occupied in sending a Hun to his death;
elsewhere more equal combats rage and the whole sky becomes an aërial
battlefield, where machines perform marvellous evolutions, putting the
best trick flying of pre-war days very much in the shade. No sooner has a

pilot accounted for his foe, by killing him, forcing him to descend, or
making him think discretion the better part of valour, than he turns to the
help of a hard-pressed brother, surprising the enemy by an attack from the
rear or otherwise creating a diversion.

A single shot in the petrol tank proves fatal; loss of pressure ensues, the
engine fails, and the pilot is forced to descend. He can usually land safely,
but should he be in enemy territory he must fire his machine and prepare
for a holiday in Germany. Should he be fortunate enough to plane over
our lines little damage is done; the tank can be repaired and the machine
made serviceable again. But for the time being he is out of the fight.
Sometimes the escaping petrol may ignite and the pilot and observer
perish in the flames—the most terrible fate of all.

The aërial battle ends in one of two ways: one side is outmanœuvred,
outnumbered, and has lost several machines and flies to safety, or, the
more usual ending, both sides exhaust their ammunition, only a limited
quantity perforce being carried, and the fight is of necessity broken off.
Meanwhile the bombing machines have probably crossed the line in
safety, and their duty is finished. Should they be attacked by a stray
machine they are armed and quite capable of guarding themselves against
any attack except one in force.

During these bomb raids photographs of the target are frequently
obtained or should the staff require any district crossed on the journey
and taken they are generally secured by bombing machines. It is
wonderful what minute details may be seen in a photograph taken at a
height of from eight to twelve thousand feet, and our prints, which are far
superior to those taken by the Hun, have revealed many useful points
which would otherwise have remained unknown.

When it is remembered that a single machine crossing the line is
heavily shelled it may be conceived what an immense concentration of
"Archies" is made on the raiders on their return. It is remarkable what
feeble results are obtained considering the intensity of the bombardment,
but rarely is a machine brought down, though casualties naturally occur
occasionally.

Lieutenant C., in company with other machines, had successfully
bombed his target and had meanwhile been heavily shelled, with the
result that his engine was not giving its full number of revolutions and he
lagged a little behind the rest of the formation. No hostile aircraft
appeared and all went well until he was about to cross the lines, when a
terrific bombardment was opened on him.

He dodged and turned to the best of his ability, but a well-aimed shell
burst just above him and a piece of the "Archie" hit him on the head, not
seriously wounding him, but knocking him unconscious. The machine,
deprived of the guiding hand, immediately got into a dive and
commenced a rapid descent from ten thousand feet, carrying the
unconscious pilot with it, to be dashed to pieces on the ground.

Whether the rush of air, the sudden increase of pressure, or the passing
off of the effect of the blow caused the disabled man to come to his
senses is not known, but when the machine was only a few hundred feet
from the ground, Lieutenant C. recovered his senses sufficiently to realize
his position and managed to pull the machine up and make a landing. He
then lapsed into unconsciousness again. Had he remained in his state of
collapse half a minute longer, he would inevitably have been killed.

Another curious case of wounding was that of Lieutenant H., who was
also returning from a bomb raid. When passing through the heavily
shelled zone his machine was hit by a shell, which passed through the
floor by the pilot's seat and out at the top without exploding. Lieutenant
H. thought it must have been very close to his leg, but he was so fully
occupied with manœuvring to dodge other shells that he had no time to
think of it.

He crossed the line and began to plane down when he was aware of a
feeling of faintness, but pulling himself together he landed his machine,
taxied up to the sheds, and attempted to get out. It was only then that he
realized that his leg was shot almost completely off above the knee; the
lower part was merely hanging by a piece of skin.

Incredible as it may seem the shell which hit his machine also tore
through the leg—luckily without exploding—unknown to Lieutenant H.
Probably the force of the blow and excitement of the moment caused it to

pass unnoticed and the torn nature of the wound helped to close the
arteries and prevent his bleeding to death. He recovered, and though no
longer flying is still engaged in doing his duty for the duration of the war.

Raid on a Troop Train
by John E. Whiting.

The courage and dash of the American aviators, serving with the French
Army, led the Allies to expect great things of our flying corps which should
be organized immediately after our declaration of war. About the time of that
declaration Major L. W. B. Rees, of the British Flying Corps, came to the
United States for the purpose of giving to our authorities the benefit of British
experience in raising and equipping aërial fleets and in the development of
the most efficient tactics. Major Rees in an official statement set forth many
facts of general interest concerning the various flying services of the
belligerent armies. The British, he said, fly on three levels with three different

kinds of machines. Nearest the ground, about six thousand feet up, are the
artillery directors who hover about cutting big figure eights above the enemy
trenches and flash back directions by wireless to the British artillerists. These
observers are, of course, exposed to attack from anti-aircraft guns, the
effective range of which had by the middle of war become as great as ten
thousand feet. Yet, as has already been noted, the amount of execution done
by these weapons was surprisingly small. The observers are protected from
attack from above, first by the heavy fighting planes, flying at ten thousand
feet, carrying two men to the plane and able to keep the air for four hours at a
time at a speed of 110 miles an hour. They are supposed to use every possible
vigilance to keep the enemy's fighters away from the slower and busy
observing machines. In this they are seconded by the lighter one-man fighting
machines which cruise about at a height of fifteen thousand feet at a speed of
130 miles an hour and able to make a straight upward dash at the rate of ten
thousand feet in ten minutes. The aviators of these latter machines came to
describe their task as "ceiling work," suggesting that they operated at the very
top of the world's great room. They are able to keep the air only about two
hours at a time.

Americans, perhaps, gave exaggerated importance to the work of the
Lafayette Escadrille which was manned wholly by American boys, and
which, while in service from the very beginning of the war, was the first
section of the French Army permitted to display the flag of the United States
in battle after our declaration of war. It was made up, in the main, of young
Americans of good family and independent means, most of them being
college students who had laid down their books for the more exciting life of
an airman. They paid heavily in the toll of death for their adventure and for
the conviction which led them to take the side of democracy and right in the
struggle against autocracy and barbarism months, even years, before their
nation finally determined to join with them. In the first two and a half years
of the war, seven of the aviators in this comparatively small body lost their
lives.

Harvard College was particularly well represented in the American Flying
Corps—although this is a proper and pertinent place to say that the sympathy
shown for the allied cause by the young collegians of the United States was a
magnificent evidence of the lofty righteousness of their convictions and the
spirit of democracy with which they looked out upon the world. When the

leash was taken off by the declaration of war by the United States the college
boys flocked to training camps and enlistment headquarters in a way that
bade fair to leave those institutions of learning without students for some
years to come.

But to hark back to Harvard, it had in the Lafayette Escadrille five men in
1916; three of these, Kiffen Rockwell, Norman Prince, and Victor Chapman,
were killed in that year. A letter published in Harvard Volunteers in Europe
tells of the way these young gladiators started the day's work:

Rockwell called me up at three: "Fine day, fine day, get up!" It was
very clear. We hung around at Billy's [Lieutenant Thaw] and took
chocolate made by his ordonnance. Hall and the Lieutenant were guards
on the field; but Thaw, Rockwell, and I thought we would take a tour
chez les Boches. Being the first time the mechanaux were not there and
the machine gun rolls not ready. However it looked misty in the Vosges,
so we were not hurried. "Rendezvous over the field at a thousand metres,"
shouted Kiffen. I nodded, for the motor was turning; and we sped over the
field and up.

In my little cockpit from which my shoulders just protrude I have
several diversions besides flying. The compass, of course, and the map I
keep tucked in a tiny closet over the reservoir before my knees, a small
clock and one altimetre. But most important is the contour, showing
revolutions of the motor which one is constantly regarding as he moves
the manettes of gasoline and gas back and forth. To husband one's fuel
and tease the motor to round eleven takes attention, for the carburetor
changes with the weather and the altitude.... The earth seemed hidden
under a fine web such as the Lady of Shalott wove. Soft purple in the
west, changing to shimmering white in the east. Under me on the left the
Vosges like rounded sand dunes cushioned up with velvety light and dark
masses (really forests), but to the south standing firmly above the purple
cloth like icebergs shone the Alps. My! they look steep and jagged. The
sharp blue shadows on their western slopes emphasized the effect. One
mighty group standing aloof to the west—Mount Blanc perhaps. Ah,
there are quantities of worm-eaten fields my friends the trenches—and
that town with the canal going through it must be M——. Right beside

the capote of my engine, showing through
the white cloth a silver snake—the Rhine!

What, not a quarter to six, and I left the
field at five! Thirty-two hundred metres.
Let's go north and have a look at the map.

While thus engaged a black puff of
smoke appeared behind my tail and I had
the impression of hearing a piece of iron
hiss by. "Must have got my range first
shot!" I surmised, and making a steep bank
piqued heavily. "There, I have lost them
now." The whole art of avoiding shells is to
pay no attention till they get your range and
then dodge away, change altitude, and
generally avoid going in a straight line. In
point of fact, I could see bunches of
exploding shells up over my right shoulder
not a kilometre off. They continued to shell
that section for some time; the little balls of
smoke thinning out and merging as they
crossed the lines.
© U. & U. In the earlier days of the war, when the
A Burning Balloon, American aviators were still few, their
Photographed from a deeds were widely recounted in their home
Parachute by the Escaping country, and their deaths were deplored as
Balloonist. though a personal loss to many of their
countrymen. Later they went faster and were lost in the daily reports. Among
those who had early fixed his personality in the minds of those who followed
the fortunes of the little band of Americans flying in France was Kiffen
Rockwell, mentioned in an earlier paragraph, and one of the first to join the
American escadrille. Rockwell was in the war from sincere conviction of the
righteousness of the Allies' cause.

"I pay my part for Lafayette, and Rochambeau," he said proudly, when
asked what he was doing in a French uniform flying for France. And pay he

did though not before making the Germans pay heavily for their part. Once,
flying alone over Thann, he came upon a German scout. Without hesitation
the battle was on. Rockwell's machine was the higher, had the better position.
As aërial tactics demanded he dived for the foe, opening fire as soon as he
came within thirty or forty yards. At his fourth shot the enemy pilot fell
forward in his seat and his machine fell heavily to earth. He lighted behind
the German lines much to the victor's disgust, for it was counted a higher
achievement to bring your foe to earth in your own territory. But Rockwell
was able to pursue his victim far enough to see the wreck burst into flames.

Though often wounded, Rockwell scorned danger. He would go into action
so bandaged that he seemed fitter to go to an hospital. He was always on the
attack—"shoved his gun into the enemy's face" as his fellows in the escadrille
expressed it. So in September, 1916, he went out after a big German machine,
he saw flying in French territory. He had but little difficulty in climbing
above it, and then dashed down in his usual impetuous manner, his machine
gun blazing as he came on. But the German was of heavier metal mounting
two machine guns. Just as to onlookers it seemed that the two machines
would crash together, the wings of one side of Rockwell's plane suddenly
collapsed and he fell like a stone between the lines. The Germans turned their
guns on the pile of wreckage where he lay, but French gunners ran out and
brought his body in. His breast was all blown to pieces with an explosive
bullet—criminal, of course, barbarous and uncivilized, but an everyday
practice of the Germans.

Rockwell was given an impressive funeral. All the British pilots, and five
hundred of their men marched, and the bier was followed by a battalion of
French troops. Over and around the little French graveyard aviators flew
dropping flowers. In later days less ceremony attended the last scene of an
American aviator's career.

Another American aviator, also a Harvard man, who met death in the air,
was Victor Chapman of New York, a youth of unusual charm, high ideals, and
indomitable courage. At the very outbreak of the war he enlisted in the
French Foreign Legion—a rough entourage for a college-bred man. Into the
Foreign Legion drifted everything that was doubtful, and many that were
criminal. No questions were asked of those who sought its hospitable ranks,
and readers of Ouida's novel Under Two Flags will recall that it enveloped in

its convenient obscurity British lordlings and the lowest of Catalonian
thieves. But in time of actual war its personnel was less mixed, and
Chapman's letters showed him serving there contentedly as pointer of a
mitrailleuse. But not for long. Most of the spirited young Americans who
entered the French Army aspired to serve in the aviation corps, and Chapman
soon was transferred to that field. There he developed into a most daring
flyer. On one occasion, with a bad scalp wound, after a brush with four
German machines, he made his landing with his machine so badly wrecked
that he had to hold together the broken ends of a severed control with one
hand, while he steered with the other. Instead of laying up for the day he had
his mechanician repair his machine while a surgeon repaired him, then,
patched up together, man and machine took the air again in search for the
Boches.

In June, 1916, though still suffering from a wound in the head, he started in
his machine to carry some oranges to a comrade lying desperately wounded
in a hospital some miles away. On the way he saw in the distance behind the
German lines two French airmen set upon by an overwhelming force of
Germans. Instantly he was off to the assistance of his friends, plunging into
so unequal a fight that even his coming left the other Americans
outnumbered. But he had scarce a chance to strike a blow. Some chance shot
from a German gun put him out of action. All that the other two Americans,
Lufbery and Prince, knew was that they saw a French machine come flying to
their aid, and suddenly tip and fall away to earth. Until nightfall came and
Chapman failed to return none was sure that he was the victim.

The part played by young Americans as volunteers for France before the
United States entered upon the war was gallant and stimulating to national
pride. It showed to the world—and to our own countrymen who needed the
lesson as much as any—that we had among our youth scores who, moved by
high ideals, stood ready to risk their lives for a sentiment—stood ready to
brave the myriad discomforts of the trenches, the bursting shrapnel, the
mutilating liquid fire, the torturing gas that German autocracy should be
balked of its purpose of dominating the world.

And the service of these boys aided far more than they knew. The fact that
our countrymen in numbers were flying for France kept ever before the
American people the vision of that war in the air of which poets and

philosophers had dreamed for ages. It brought home to our people the
importance of aviation before our statesmen could begin to see it. It set our
boys to reading of aircraft, building model planes, haunting the few aviation
fields which at the time our country possessed. And it finally so filled the
consciousness of our people with conviction of the supreme importance of
aviation as an arm of the national armed service that long before the
declaration of war the government was embarrassed by the flood of
volunteers seeking to be enrolled in the flying forces of the nation.

CHAPTER IX
THE UNITED STATES AT WAR

The entrance of the United States upon the war was the signal for a most
active agitation of the question of overwhelming the enemy with illimitable
fleets of aircraft. Though the agitation was most vociferous in this country
whence it was hoped the enormous new fleets of aircraft would come, it was
fomented and earnestly pressed by our Allies. France sent a deputation of her
leading flyers over to supervise the instruction of our new pilots. England
contributed experts to advise as to the construction of our machines. The most
comprehensive plans were urged upon Congress and the Administration for
the creation of a navy of the air. A bill for an initial appropriation of
$640,000,000, for aircraft purposes alone, was passed and one for a
Department of Aeronautics to be established, co-ordinate with those of War
and the Navy, its secretary holding a seat in the cabinet, was introduced in
Congress. Many of the most eminent retired officers of the navy joined in
their support. Retired officers only because officers in active service were
estopped from political agitation.

There was every possible reason for this great interest in the United States
in wartime aviation. The nation had long been shamefaced because the
development of the heavier-than-air machines, having their origin
undoubtedly in the inventive genius of Professor Langley and the Wrights,
had been taken away from us by the more alert governments of France and
Germany. The people were ready to buy back something of our lost prestige
by building the greatest of air fleets at the moment when it should exercise
the most determinative influence upon the war.

But more. We entered upon the war in our chronic state of unpreparedness.
We were without an army and without equipment for one. To raise, equip, and
drill an army of a million, the least number that would have any appreciable

effect upon the outcome of the war, would take months. When completed we
would have added only to the numerical superiority of the Allies on the
Western Front. The quality of a novel and decisive contribution to the war
would be lacking.

So too it was with our navy. The British Navy was amply adequate to deal
with the German fleet should the latter ever leave its prudent retreat behind
Helgoland and in the bases of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. True it was not
capable of crushing out altogether the submarine menace, but it did hold the
German underwater boats down to a fixed average of ships destroyed, which
was far less than half of what the Germans had anticipated. In this work our
ships, especially our destroyers, took a notable part.

The argument for a monster fleet of fighting aircraft, thus came to the
people of the United States in a moment of depression and perplexity. By
land the Germans had dug themselves in, holding all of Belgium and the
thousands of square miles of France they had won in their first dash to the
Marne. What they had won swiftly and cheaply could only be regained
slowly and at heavy cost. True, the Allies were, day by day, driving them
back from their position, but the cost was disheartening and the progress but
slow.

By sea the Germans refused to bring their fleet to battle with their foes. But
from every harbour of Belgium, and from Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, they sent
out their sinister submarines to prey upon the commerce of the world—
neutral as well as belligerent. Against them the navies of the world were
impotent. To the threat that by them Germany would starve England into
cowering surrender, the only answer was the despairing effort to build new
ships faster than the submarines could sink those afloat—even though half a
million tons a month were sent to the bottom in wasteful destruction.

Photo by Levick.
A Caproni Biplane Circling the Woolworth Building.

Faced by these disheartening conditions, wondering what they might do
that could be done quickly and aid materially in bringing the war to a
triumphant conclusion, the American people listened eagerly to the appeals
and arguments of the advocates of a monster aërial fleet.

© International Film Service.
Cruising at 2000 Feet.
One Biplane photographed from another.

Listen [said these advocates], we show you a way to spring full
panoplied into the war, and to make your force felt with your first stroke.
We are not preaching dreadnoughts that take four years to build. We are
not asking for a million men taking nearly a year to gather, equip, drill,
and transport to France, in imminent danger of destruction by the enemy's
submarines every mile of the way.

We ask you for a cheap, simple device of wood, wire, and cloth, with
an engine to drive it. All its parts are standardized. In a few weeks the
nation can be equipped to turn out 2000 of them weekly. We want within
the year 100,000 of them. We do not ask for a million men. We want
10,000 bright, active, hardy, plucky American boys between 20 and 25
years of age. We want to give them four months' intensive training before
sending them into the air above the enemy's lines. In time we shall want
25,000 to 35,000 but the smaller number will well do to open the
campaign.

And what will they effect?

Do you know that to-day the eyes of an army are its airplanes? Cavalry
has disappeared practically. If a general wishes to pick out a weak point
in his enemy's line to assault he sends out airmen to find it. If he is
annoyed by the fire of some distant unseen battery over the hills and far
away he sends a man in an airplane who brings back its location, its
distance, and perhaps a photograph of it in action. If he suspects that his
foe is abandoning his trenches, or getting ready for an attack, the ready
airmen bring in the facts.

And of course the enemy's airmen serve their side in the same manner.
They spy out what their foe is doing, and so far as their power permits
prevent him from seeing what they are doing.

Now suppose one side has an enormous preponderance of aircraft—six
to one, let us say. It is not believed, for example, that at this moment
Germany has more than 10,000 aircraft on the whole western front. Let us
imagine that through the enterprise of the United States our Allies were
provided with 25,000 on one sector which we intended to make the scene
of an attack on the foe. Say the neighbourhood of Arras and Lille. For
days, weeks perhaps, we would be drawing troops toward this sector from
every part of the line. Through the reports of spies the enemy's suspicions
would be aroused. It is the business of an efficient general to be
suspicious. He would send out his airplanes to report on the activities of
the other side. Few would come back. None would bring a useful report.
For every German plane that showed above the lines three Allied planes
would be ready to attack and destroy it or beat it back. The air would be
full of Allied airmen—the great bombing planes flying low and
inundating the trenches with bombs, and the troops on march with the
deadly fléchettes. Over every German battery would soar the observation
plane indicating by tinsel or smoke bombs the location of the guns, or
even telegraphing it back by wireless to the Allied batteries safe in
positions which the blinded enemy could never hope to find. Above all in
myriads would be soaring the swift fighting scouts, the Bleriots,
Nieuports, Moranes or perhaps some new American machine to-day
unknown. Let the wing of a Boche but show above the smoke and they
would be upon him in hordes, beating him to the ground, enveloping him
in flames, annihilating him before he had a chance to observe, much less
to report.

What think you would be the result on that sector of the battle line?
Why the foe would be cut to pieces, demolished, obliterated. Blinded, he
would be unrelentingly punished by an adversary all eyes. Writhing under
the concentrated fire of a thousand guns he could make no response, for
his own guns could not find the attacking batteries. Did he think to flee?
His retreating columns would be marked down by the relentless scouts in
the air, and the deadly curtain of fire from well-coached batteries miles
away would sweep every road with death. If in desperation he sought to
attack he would do so ignorant whether he were not hurling his regiments
against the strongest part of the Allied line, and with full knowledge of
the fact that though he was blinded they had complete information of his
strength and dispositions.

The argument impressed itself strongly upon the mind of the country.
There appeared indeed no public sentiment hostile to it nor any organized
opposition to the proposition for an enormous appropriation for purposes of
aviation. The customary inertia of Congress delayed the actual appropriation
for some months. But the President espoused its cause and the Secretaries
both of War and the Navy warmly recommended it, although they united in
opposing the proposition to establish a distinct department of aeronautics
with a seat in the Cabinet. Being human neither one desired to let his share of
this great new gift of power slip out of his hands. Leading in the fight for this
legislation was Rear-Admiral Robert E. Peary, U. S. N., retired, the
discoverer of the North Pole. Admiral Peary from the very outbreak of the
war consecrated his time and his abilities to pushing the development of
aeronautics in the United States. He was continually before Congressional
committees urging the fullest appropriations for this purpose. In his first
statement before the Senate Committee he declared that "in the immediate
future the air service will be more important than the army and navy
combined," and supported that statement by reference to utterances made by
such British authorities as Mr. Balfour, Lord Charles Beresford, Lord
Northcliffe, and Lord Montague. In an article published shortly after his
appearance before the Senate Committee, the Admiral summarized in a
popular way his views as to the possibility of meeting the submarine menace
with aircraft, and what the United States might do in that respect. He wrote:

We are receiving agreeable reports as to the efficiency of the American
destroyer flotilla now operating against submarines in the North Sea. An

unknown naval officer, according to the newspapers of May 30th, calls
for the immediate construction of from 100 to 200 additional American
destroyers.

By all means let us have this force—when it can be made ready—but it
would take at least two years to construct, equip, and deliver such a heavy
additional naval tonnage, while 200 fighting seaplanes, with a full
complement of machine guns, bombs, microphones, and aërial cameras,
could be put in active service in the North Sea within six months.

Seaplanes, small dirigibles on the order of the English "blimp" type,
and kite balloons have already shown themselves to be more effective in
detecting submarines than are submarine chasers or armed liners.

Not only have the British, French, German, and Turkish forces
destroyed trawlers, patrol boats, and transports by aircraft, but successful
experiments in airplane submarine hunting have also been made in this
country.

In September, 1916, our first Aërial Coast Patrol Unit, in acting as an
auxiliary to the Mosquito Squadron in the annual manœuvres of the
Atlantic fleet, detected objects smaller than the latest type of German
submarines from fifteen to twenty feet below the surface.

A more complete aërial submarine hunt took place on March 26th of
this year. This was the real thing, because the fliers were looking for
German U-boats. Inasmuch as the Navy Department is still waiting
before establishing its first and only aeronautical base on the Atlantic
seaboard, the honour of having conducted the first aërial hunt of the
enemy submarines in American history went to the civilian aviators who
are soon to be a part of the Aërial Reserve Squadron at Governor's Island
and to the civilian instructors and aërial reservists connected with the
Army Aviation School at Mineola, Long Island.

These hawks of the air darted up and down the coast in search of the
enemy, often flying as far as eleven miles out to sea. The inlets and bays
were searched, vessels plotted, compass direction and time when located
were given.

No enemy submarines were found. It developed that the supposed
submarines were two patrol motor-boats returning from a trial trip.
Nevertheless the incident is illuminating, and the official statement of the
Navy Department closed with the words: "This incident emphasizes the
need of hydroaëroplanes for naval scouting purposes."

It is also interesting to note what happened when Lawrence Sperry
went out to sea one day last summer in his hydroplane and failed to
return. Two seaplanes and three naval destroyers were sent in search of
him. In forty minutes the seaplanes returned with the news that they had
located Sperry floating safely on the water. At the end of the day, after
several hours of search, the destroyers came back without having seen
Sperry at all.

Those who may still believe that we Americans cannot build aircraft
and that all the exploits we read so much about in the newspapers taking
place on the other side are being done in foreign aircraft will be surprised
to know that a large number of the big flying boats now in use in the
English navy, harbour, and coast defence work are Curtiss machines,
designed and built in this country by Americans, with American material
and American engines.

Great Britain wants all the machines of this type that it can get, and
sees no reason why we cannot do the same thing in protecting our own
Atlantic seaboard. I quote from C. G. Grey, editor of The London
Aeroplane:

"Curiously enough, these big flying boats originated in America, and, if
America is seriously perturbed about the fate of American shipping and
American citizens travelling by sea in the vicinity of Europe, it should not
be a difficult matter for America to rig up in a very small space of time
quite a fleet of seaplane carriers suitable for the handling of these big
seaplanes. If each seaplane ship were armed with guns having a range of
five to ten miles, and if the gunners were practised in co-operating with
airplane spotters, such ships ought to be the very best possible insurance
for American lives and goods on the high seas."

I quote from The Associated Press report from Paris on May 14th to
show the relative importance of aëroplanes in submarine attacks:

"During the last three months French patrol boats have had twelve
engagements with submarines, French hydroaëroplanes have fought them
thirteen times, and there have been sixteen engagements between armed
merchantmen and submarines."

Henry Woodhouse, one of the most distinguished authorities on
aeronautics in the United States, in his standard Textbook on Naval
Aeronautics, published by the Century Company, has assembled the
following data on submarine and aeroplane combats:

"On May 4, 1915, the German Admiralty reported an engagement
between a German dirigible and several British submarines in the North
Sea. The submarines fired on the dirigible without success, whereas
bombs from the dirigible sank one submarine.

"On May 31, 1915, the German Admiralty announced the sinking of a
Russian submarine by bombs dropped by German naval aviators near
Gotland.

"On July 1, 1915, the Austrian submarine U-11 was destroyed in the
Adriatic by a French aeroplane, which swooped suddenly and dropped
three bombs directly on the deck of the submarine. The craft was
destroyed and the entire crew of twenty-five were lost.

"On July 27, 1915, a German submarine in the Dardanelles was about
to launch a torpedo at a British transport filled with troops and
ammunition, when British aviators gave the alarm to the transport, and
immediately began dropping bombs at the submarine, which had to
submerge and escape hurriedly, without launching its torpedo.

"On August 19, 1915, the Turkish War Office stated that an Allied
submarine had been sunk in the Dardanelles by a Turkish aeroplane.

"On August 26, the Secretary of the British Admiralty announced that
Squadron Commander Arthur W. Bigsworth in a single-handed attack
bombed and destroyed a German submarine off Ostend.

"Lieutenant Viney received the Victoria Cross and Lieutenant de
Sincay was recommended for the Legion of Honour for having flown

over a German submarine and destroyed it with bombs off the Belgian
coast on November 18, 1915.

"Early in 1916 an Austrian seaplane sank the French submarine
Foucault in the southern Adriatic. Lieutenant Calezeny was the pilot and
the observer was Lieutenant von Klinburg. After crippling the submarine
they then performed the remarkable feat of calling another Austrian
seaplane and rescuing the entire French crew, two officers and twenty
seven men, in spite of the fact that a high sea was running at the time."

It will be noted that Admiral Peary lays great stress on the supreme value
of aircraft as foes of the submarine. This was due to the fact that at about the
time of his appearance before the Senate Committee the world was fairly
panic-stricken by the vigour and effect of the German submarine campaign
and its possible bearing upon the outcome of the war. Of that campaign I
shall have more to say in the section of this book dealing with submarines.
But the subject of the undersea boat in war became at this time inextricably
interwoven with that of the aërial fleets, and the sudden development of the
latter, together with the marked interest taken in it by our people, cannot be
understood without some description of the way in which the two became
related.

From the very beginning of the war the Germans had prosecuted a
desultory submarine warfare on the shipping of Great Britain and had
extended it gradually until neutral shipping also was largely involved. All the
established principles of international law, or principles that had been
supposed to be established, were set at naught. In bygone days enemy
merchant ships were subject to destruction only after their crews had been
given an opportunity to take to the boats. Neutral ships bearing neutral goods,
even if bound to an enemy port, were liable to destruction only if found upon
visit to be carrying goods that were contraband of war. The list of contraband
had been from time immemorial rigidly limited, and confined almost wholly
to munitions of war, or to raw material used in their construction. But
international law went by the board early in the war. Each belligerent was
able to ascribe plausible reasons for its amendment out of recognizable form.
Great Britain established blockades two hundred miles away from the
blockaded ports because the submarines made the old practice of watching at
the entrance of the port too perilous. The list of contraband of war was

extended by both belligerents until it comprehended almost every useful
article grown, mined, or manufactured. But the amendment to international
law which acted as new fuel for the flames of war, which aroused the utmost
world-wide indignation, and which finally dragged the United States into the
conflict, was that by which Germany sought to relieve her submarine
commanders of the duty of visiting and searching a vessel, or of giving its
people time to provide for their safety, before sinking it.

© U. & U.
An Air Battle in Progress.

The German argument was that the submarine was unknown when the
code of international law then in force was formulated. It was a peculiarly
delicate naval weapon. Its strength lay in its ability to keep itself concealed
while delivering its attack. If exposed on the surface a shot from a small
calibred gun striking in a vital point would instantly send it to the bottom. If

rammed it was lost. Should a submarine rise to the surface, send an officer
aboard a ship it had halted, and await the result of his search, it would be
exposed all the time to destruction at the hands of enemy vessels coming up
to her aid. Indeed if the merchantman happened to carry one gun a single shot
might put the assailant out of business. Accordingly the practice grew up
among the Germans of launching their torpedoes without a word of warning
at their helpless victim. The wound inflicted by a torpedo is such that the ship
will go down in but a few minutes carrying with it most of the people aboard.
The most glaring, inexcusable, and criminal instance of this sort of warfare
was the sinking without warning of the great passenger liner, Lusitania, by
which more than eleven hundred people were drowned, one hundred and
fourteen of them American citizens.

© U. & U.
A Curtis Hydroaëroplane.

Against this policy—or piracy—the United States protested, and people of
this country waxed very weary as month after month through the years 1915
and 1916 Germany met the protests with polite letters of evasion and excuse
continuing the while the very practice complained of. But late in January,
1917, her government announced that there would be no longer any pretence
of complying with international law, but that with the coming month a
campaign of unlimited submarine ruthlessness would be begun and ships

sunk without warning and irrespective of their nationality if they appeared in
certain prohibited zones. Within twenty-four hours the United States sent the
German Ambassador from the country and within two months we were at
war.

At once the submarine was seen to be the great problem confronting us. Its
attack was not so much upon the United States, for we are a self-contained
nation able to raise all that we need within our own borders for our own
support. But England is a nation that has to be fed from without. Seldom are
her stores of food great enough to avert starvation for more than six weeks
should the steady flow of supply ships from America and Australia to her
ports be interrupted. This interruption the Germans proposed to effect by
means of their underwater boats. Von Tirpitz and other leaders in the German
administration promised the people that within six weeks England would be
starved and begging for peace at any price. The output of submarines from
German navy yards was greatly increased. Their activity became terrifying.
The Germans estimated that if they could sink 1,000,000 tons of shipping
monthly they would put England out of action in two or three months. For
some weeks the destruction accomplished by their boats narrowly approached
this estimate, but gradually fell off. At the same time there was no period in
1917 up to the time of Admiral Peary's statement, or indeed up to that of the
preparation of this book, when it was not felt that the cause of the Allies was
in danger because of the swarms of German submarines.

It was that feeling, coupled with the wide-spread belief that aircraft
furnished the best means of combating the submarine, that caused an
irresistible demand in the United States for the construction of colossal fleets
of these flying crafts. Congress enacted in midsummer the law appropriating
$640,000,000 for the construction of aircraft and the maintenance of the
aërial service. The Secretaries of War and the Navy each appealed for heavy
additional appropriations for aërial service. The arguments which have
already been set forth as supporting the use of aircraft in military service
were paralleled by those who urge its unlimited use in naval service.

Consider [said they] the primary need for attacking these vipers of the
sea in their nests. Once out on the broad Atlantic their chances of roaming
about undetected by destroyers or other patrol boats are almost unlimited.
But we know where they come from, from Kiel, Antwerp,

Wilhelmshaven, Ostend, and Zeebrugge. Catch them there and you will
destroy them as boys destroy hornets by smoking out their nests. But
against this the Germans have provided by blocking every avenue of
approach save one. The channels are obstructed and mined, and guarded
from the shore by heavy batteries. No hostile ships dare run that gauntlet.
Even the much-boasted British navy in the three years of the war has not
ventured to attack a single naval base. You could not even seek out the
submarines thus sheltered by other submarines because running below the
surface our boats could not detect either mines or nets and would be
doomed to destruction. The enemy boats come out on the surface
protected by the batteries and naval craft. But the air cannot be blocked
by any fixed defences. Give us more and more powerful aircraft than the
Germans possess and we will darken the sky above the German bases
with the wings of our airplanes, and rain explosive shells upon the
submarines that have taken shelter there until none survive.

The one essential is that our flyers shall be in overwhelming numbers.
We must be able not only to take care of any flying force that the
Germans may send against us, but also to have enough of our aircraft not
engaged in the aërial battle to devote their entire attention to the
destruction of the enemy forces below.

From every country allied with us came approval of this policy. At the time
the debate was pending in Congress our Allies one after another were sending
to us official commissions to consult upon the conduct of the war, to give us
the benefit of their long and bitter experience in it, and to assist in any way
our preparations for taking a decisive part in that combat. The subject of the
part to be played by aircraft was one frequently discussed with them. With the
French commission came two members of the staff of General Joffre, Major
Tulasne and Lieutenant de la Grange, experts in aviation service. A formal
interview given out by these gentlemen expressed so clearly the point of view
on aviation and its possibilities held in France where it has reached its highest
development that some extracts from it will be of interest here:

"At the beginning of the war the Germans were the only ones who had
realized the great importance of aviation from a military point of view,"
said these officers.

"France had looked upon aviation as a sport, Germany as a powerful
weapon in war. This is illustrated by the fact that even in August, 1914,
German artillery fire was directed by airplanes.

"It was only after the retreat from Belgium and the battle of the Marne
that the Allies realized the great importance of aviation. Between August
15 and 25 the French General Staff thought that the greater part of the
German army was concentrated in Alsace and that only a few army corps
were coming through Belgium. It was only through the reports of the
aviators that they realized that this was a mistake and that almost the
whole of the German army was invading Belgium.

"Immediately after the battle of the Marne the greatest efforts were
made in France to develop the aviation corps in every possible way. The
English army, then in process of formation, profited by the experience of
the French. Since that time the allied as well as the German aviation corps
has grown constantly.

"A modern army is incomplete if it has not a strong aviation corps. All
the different services are obliged to turn to the aviation corps for help in
their work. An army without airplanes is like a soldier without eyes. An
army which has the superiority in aviation over its adversary will have the
following advantages:

"It will have constantly the latest information on the movements of the
enemy. In this way, no concentration of troops will be ignored and no
surprise attack will be possible. The attack against the enemy positions
will be rendered easier because all the details of these positions will be
thoroughly known beforehand. The artillery fire will be much more
accurate. Many enemy machines will be brought down by the superior
fighting machines and the result will be to strengthen the morale both of
the aviators and of the army."

The next question put to the French experts was: "Why do we need to
make a great effort to obtain the superiority in the air?" They answered
with much interesting detail:

"Because the Germans have understood the importance of aviation
from a military point of view and have concentrated all their forces to

develop this service.

"Owing to the large number of scientists and technicians they possess
they are able constantly to perfect motors and planes. Owing to their great
industrial organization they are able to produce an enormous number of
the best machines.

"The German aviation service is now fully as strong as that of the
Allies as far as numbers are concerned. The superiority in the air can only
remain in the hands of the Allies because of the spirit of self-sacrifice of
their aviators and their greater skill.

"Germany feels that the decisive phase of the war is imminent and the
efforts she will make next year will be infinitely greater than any she has
made before. She will try in every way to regain the supremacy of the air.
Realizing what a formidable enemy America can be in the air, she will
strengthen her aviation forces in consequence.

"The aeroplane is by far the most powerful of all the modern weapons.
If the Allies have the supremacy of the air the German artillery will lose
its accuracy of aim. It is impossible, because of the long range, for
modern guns to fire without the help of airplanes. The accuracy of
artillery fire depends entirely on its being directed by an airplane.

"This was clearly illustrated during the battle of the Somme in 1916.
The French at that time had concentrated such a large number of fighting
machines that no German machine was allowed to fly over the lines. On
the other hand, the Allies' reconnaissance machines were so numerous
that each French battery could have its fire directed by an airplane.

"The destruction of the enemy positions was in consequence carried
out very effectively and very rapidly, while the Germans were obliged to
fire blindly and scatter their shells over large areas, incapable as they
were of locating our battery emplacements and the positions of our
troops. Unluckily, a few weeks later the Germans had called from the
different parts of the line a good many of their squadrons, and were able
to carry out their work under better conditions.

"We need such a superiority that it will be impossible for any German
airplane to fly anywhere near the lines.

"Every German kite balloon, every airplane would immediately be
attacked by a number of allied machines. In this way the German aviation
will not only be dominated but will be entirely crushed.

"If we can prevent the Germans from seeing, through their airplanes,
what we are preparing we will be very near the end of the war. It will
require a huge effort to carry out this plan. Neither the English nor the
French are able to do so by their own means.

"As far as France is concerned, she is able to keep on building
machines rapidly enough to increase her aviation corps at about the same
rate as Germany is increasing hers. If she wanted to double or triple her
production of machines she could do so, but she would have to call back
from the trenches a certain number of skilled workmen, and this would
weaken her fighting power. She needs in the trenches all the men who are
able to carry a rifle.

"If the Allies are to have the absolute supremacy of the air which we
have been describing it will be the privilege of America to give it to them.
We want three or four or even five allied machines for one German.
America only has the possibilities of production which would allow her
to build an enormous number of machines in a very short time.

"The airplane is a great engine of destruction. It tells the artillery where
to fire, it drops bombs, it gives the enemy all the information he needs to
plan murderous attacks. Drive the German airplanes down and you will
save the lives of thousands of men in our trenches. As Ulysses in the
cavern put out the eye of the Cyclops, so the eyes of the beast must be put
out before you can attempt to kill it."

Major Tulasne and Lieutenant de la Grange then outlined what the
aviation programme of the United States should be, saying:

"American industry must be enabled to begin building at once. No time
must be lost in experiments. America must profit by the experience of the
Allies. She must choose the best planes and build thousands of them.

"She must build reconnoissance machines which she will need for her
army; she must build a large number of fighting machines because it is
these machines that will destroy German planes; she must also build
squadrons of powerful bombing machines which will go behind the
German lines to destroy the railway junctions and bomb the enemy
cantonments, so as to give the soldiers no rest even when they have left
the trenches.

"Bombing done by a few machines gives poor results. The same cannot
be said of this operation carried out by a large number of machines which
can go to the same places and bomb continually.

"Besides the number of men that are actually killed in these raids, great
disturbance is caused in the enemy's communication lines, thereby
hindering the operations. For example, since the British Admiralty has
increased the number of its bombing squadrons in northern France and
has decided to attack constantly the two harbours of Ostend and
Zeebrugge and the locks, bridges, and canals leading to them they have
greatly interfered with the activity of these two German bases.

"It is certain that shortly, owing to this, these two ports will no more be
used by German torpedo boats and submarines. What the English Royal
Naval Air Service has been able to accomplish with 100 machines the
Flying Corps of the United States with 1000 machines must be able to
carry out on other parts of the front.

"The work of the bombing machines is rendered difficult now by the
fact that the actual lines are far from Germany. But it is hoped that soon
fighting will be carried on near the enemy frontier and then a wonderful
field will be opened to the bombing machines.

"All the big ammunition factories which are in the Rhine and Ruhr
valleys, like Krupp's, will be wonderful targets for the American bombing
machines. If these machines are of the proper type—that is to say,
sufficiently fast and well armed and able to carry a great weight of bombs
—nothing will prevent them from destroying any of these important
factories.

"As Germany at the present time is only able to continue the war
because of her great stock of war material the destruction of her sources
of production would be the end of her resistance. For this also the Allies
must turn to America. Such a large number of machines is required to
produce results that America must be relied on to manufacture them.

"Every man in this country must know that it is in the power of the
United States, no matter what can be done in other fields, to bring the war
to an end simply by concentrating all its energies on producing an
enormous amount of material for aviation, and to enlist a corresponding
number of pilots. But this will not be done without great effort. In order
to be ready for the great 1918 offensive work must be begun at once."

The extreme secrecy which in this war has characterized the operation of
the governments—our own most of all—makes it impossible to state the
amount of progress made in 1917 in the construction of our aërial fleet.
During the debate in Congress orators were very outspoken in their
prophecies that we should outnumber the Kaiser's flying fleet two or three to
one. The press of the nation was so very explicit in its descriptions of the way
in which we were to blind the Germans and drive them from the air that it is
no wonder the Kaiser's government took alarm, and set about building
additional aircraft with feverish zeal. In this it was imitated by France and
England. It seemed, all at once about the middle of 1917, that the whole
belligerent world suddenly recognized the air as the final battlefield and
began preparations for its conquest.

All statistical estimates in war time are subject to doubt as to their accuracy
—and particularly those having to do in any way with the activities of an
enemy country. But competent estimators—or at any rate shrewd guessers—
think that Germany's facilities for constructing airplanes equal those of
France and England together. If then all three nations build to the very limit
of their abilities there will be a tie, which the contribution of aircraft from the
United States will settle overwhelmingly in favour of the Allies. How great
that contribution may be cannot be foretold with certainty at this moment.
The building of aircraft was a decidedly infant industry in this country when
war began. In the eight years prior to 1916 the government had given orders
for just fifty-nine aircraft—scarcely enough to justify manufacturers in
keeping their shops open. Orders from foreign governments, however,

stimulated production after the war began so that when the United States
belatedly took her place as national honour and national safety demanded
among the Entente Allies, Mr. Howard E. Coffin, Chairman of the Aircraft
Section of the Council of National Defence was able to report eight
companies capable of turning out about 14,000 machines in six months—a
better showing than British manufacturers could have made when Great
Britain, first entered the war.

A feature in the situation which impressed both Congress and the American
people was the exposure by various military experts of the defenceless
condition of New York City against an air raid by a hostile foreign power. At
the moment, of course, there was no danger. The only hostile foreign power
with any considerable naval or aërial force was Germany and her fleet was
securely bottled up in her own harbours by the overpowering fleet of Great
Britain. Yet if one could imagine the British fleet reduced to inefficiency, let
us say by a futile, suicidal attack upon Kiel or Heligoland which would leave
it crippled, and free the Germans, or if we could conceive that the German
threat to reduce Great Britain to subjection by the submarine campaign,
proved effective, the peril of New York would then be very real and very
immediate. For, although the harbour defences are declared by military
authorities to be practically impregnable against attack by sea, they would not
be effective against an attack from the air. A hostile fleet carrying a number of
seaplanes could round-to out of range of our shore batteries and loose their
flyers who could within less than an hour be dropping bombs on the most
congested section of Manhattan Island. It is true that our own navy would
have to be evaded in such case, but the attack might be made from points
more distant from New York and at which no scouts would ever dream of
looking for an enemy.

The development in later months of the big heavily armed cruising
machines makes the menace to any seaport city like New York still greater.
The Germans have built great biplanes with two fuselages, or bodies,
armoured, carrying two machine guns and one automatic rifle to each body.
They have twin engines of three hundred and forty horse power and carry a
crew of six men. They are able in an emergency to keep the air for not less
than three days. It is obvious that a small fleet of such machines launched
from the deck of a hostile squadron, let us say in the neighbourhood of Block
Island, could menace equally Boston or New York, or by flying up the Sound

could work ruin and desolation upon all the defenceless cities bordering that
body of water.

Nor are the Germans alone in possessing machines of this type. The giant
Sikorsky machines of Russia, mentioned in an earlier chapter, have during the
war been developed into types capable of carrying crews of twenty-five men
with guns and ammunition. The French, after having brought down one of the
big German machines with the double bodies, instantly began building
aircraft of their own of an even superior type. Some of these are driven by
four motors and carry eleven persons, besides guns and ammunition. The
Caproni machines of Italy are even bigger—capable of carrying nine guns
and thirty-five men. The Congressional Committee was much impressed by
consideration of what might be done by a small fleet of aircraft of this type
launched from a hostile squadron off the Capes of Chesapeake Bay and
operating against Washington. It is not likely that any foreign foe advancing
by land could repeat the exploit of the British who burned the capitol in 1812.
But in our present defenceless state a dozen aircraft of the largest type might
reduce the national capitol to ruins.

If an enemy well provided with aërial force possesses such power of
offence an equal power of defence is given to the nation at all well provided
with flying craft. In imitation, or perhaps rather in modification, of the
English plan for guarding the coasts of Great Britain, a well matured system
of defending the American coasts has been worked out and submitted to the
national authorities. It involves the division of the coasts of the United States
into thirteen aeronautical districts, each with aeronautical stations established
at suitable points and all in communication with each other. Eight of these
districts would be laid out on the Atlantic Coast extending from the northern
boundary of Maine to the Rio Grande River.

Just what the purpose and value of these districts would be may be
explained by taking the case, not of a typical one, but of the most important
one of all, the third district including the coast line from New London, Conn.,
to Barnegat Inlet, New Jersey. This of course includes New York and adjacent
commercial centres and the entrance to Long Island Sound with its long line
of thriving cities and the ports of the places from which come our chief
supplies of munitions of war. It includes the part of the United States which
an enemy would most covet. The part which at once would furnish the richest

plunder, and possession of which by a foe would most cripple this nation. To-
day it is defended by stationary guns in land fortresses and in time of attack
would be further guarded by a fringe of cruising naval vessels. Apparently up
to the middle of 1917 the government thought no aërial watch was needed.

But if we were to follow the methods which all the belligerent nations of
Europe are employing on their sea coasts we would establish in this district
ten aeronautical stations. This would be no match for the British system
which has one such station to every twenty miles of coast. Ours would be
farther apart, but as the Sound could be guarded at its entrance the stations
need only be maintained along the south shore of Long Island and down the
Jersey coast. Each station would be provided with patrol, fighting, and
observation airplanes. It would have the mechanical equipment of
microphones, searchlights, and other devices for detecting the approach of an
enemy now employed successfully abroad. Its patrolling airplanes would
cruise constantly far out to sea, not less than eighty miles, keeping ever in
touch with their station. As the horizon visible from a soaring airplane is not
less than fifty miles distant from the observer, this would mean that no enemy
fleet could approach within 130 miles of our coast without detection and
report. The Montauk Point station would be charged with guarding the
entrance to Long Island Sound and, the waters of Nantucket shoals and Block
Island Sound where the German submarine U-53 did its deadly work in 1916.
The Sandy Hook station would of course be the most important of all,
guarding New York sea-going commerce and protecting the ship channel by a
constant patrol of aircraft over it.

The modern airplane has a speed of from eighty to one hundred and sixty
miles an hour—the latter rate being attained only by the light scouts. Thus it
is apparent that if an alarm were raised at any one of these stations between
New London and Barnegat three hours at most would suffice to bring the
fighting equipment of all the stations to the point threatened. There would be
thus concentrated a fleet of several hundred swift scouts, heavy fighting
machines, the torpedo planes of the type designed by Admiral Fiske,
hydroaëroplanes capable of carrying heavy guns and in brief every form of
aërial fighter. Moreover, by use of the wireless, every ship of the Navy within
a radius of several hundred miles would be notified of the menace. They
could not reach the scene of action so swiftly as the flying men but the former
would be able to hold the foe in action until the heavier ships should arrive.

The enormous advantage of such a system of guarding our coasts needs no
further explanation. It is not even experimental, for France on her limited
coast has 150 such stations. England, which started the war with 18, had 114
in 1917 and was still building. We at that time had none, although the extent
of our sea coast and the great multiplicity of practicable harbours make us
more vulnerable than any other nation.

CHAPTER X
SOME FEATURES OF AËRIAL WARFARE

As devices to translate German hate for England into deeds of bloody
malignancy and cowardly murder the German aircraft have ranked supreme.
The ruthless submarine war has indeed done something toward working off
this peculiar passion, but it lacked the spectacular qualities which German
wrath demanded. As the war proceeded, and it became apparent that the
participation of Great Britain—at first wholly unexpected by the Kaiser's
advisers—was certain to defeat the German aims, the authorities carefully
inculcated in the minds of the people the most malignant hatred for that
power. As Lissauer's famous hymn of hate had it—

French and Russians it matters not,
A blow for a blow, and a shot for a shot.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
We have one foe and one alone—
England!

By way of at once gratifying this hatred and still further stimulating it the
German military authorities began early in the war a series of air raids upon
English towns. They were of more than doubtful military value. They
damaged no military or naval works. They aroused the savage ire of the
British people who saw their children slain in schools and their wounded in
hospitals by bombs dropped from the sky and straightway rushed off to enlist
against so callous and barbaric a foe. But the raids served their political
purpose by making the German people believe that the British were suffering
all the horrors of war on their own soil, while the iron line of trenches drawn
across France by the German troops kept the invader and war's agonies far
from the soil of the Fatherland.

© International Film Service.
The U. S. Aviation School at Mineola.

The first German air raids were by Zeppelins on little English seaside
towns—Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Harwich. Except in so far as they
inflicted mutilation and death upon many non-combatants, mostly women
and children, and misery upon their relatives and friends they were without
effect. But early in 1915 began a systematic series of raids upon London,
which, by October of 1917, had totalled thirty-four, with a toll of 865 persons
killed, and 2500 wounded. It seems fair to say that for these raids there was
more plausible excuse than for those on the peaceful little seaside bathing
resorts and fishing villages. London is full of military and naval centres,
arsenals and navy yards, executive offices and centres of warlike activity. An
incendiary bomb dropped into the Bank of England, or the Admiralty, might
paralyze the finances of the Empire, or throw the naval organization into a
state of anarchy. But as a matter of fact the German bombs did nothing of the
sort. They fell in the congested districts of London, "the crowded warrens of
the poor." They spread wounds and death among peaceable theatre audiences.
One dropped on a 'bus loaded with passengers homeward bound, and
obliterated it and them from the face of the earth. But no building of the least
military importance sustained any injury. It is true, however, that the

persistent raiding has compelled England to withhold from the fighting lines
in France several thousand men and several hundred guns in order to be in
readiness to meet air raids in which Germany has never employed more than
fifty machines and at most two hundred men, including both aviators and
mechanics.

It is entirely probable that the failure of the Germans to strike targets of
military importance and the slaughter they wrought among peaceful civilians
were due to no intent or purpose on their part. Hitting a chosen target from
the air is no matter of certainty. The bomb intended for the railway station is
quite as likely to hit the adjacent public school or hospital. If the world ever
recurs to that moderate degree of sanity and civilization which shall permit
wars, but strive to regulate them in the interest of humanity this
untrustworthiness of the aircraft's aim will compel some form of international
regulation, just as the vulnerability of the submarine will force the
amendment of the doctrine of visitation and search. But neither problem can
be logically and reasonably solved in the middle of a war. And so, while the
German violation of existing international law had the uncomfortable result
for Germany of bringing the United States into the war, the barbarous raids
upon London caused the British at last to turn aside from their commendable
abstention from air raids on unfortified and non-military towns and prepare
for reprisals in kind.

From the beginning of the war the British had abstained from bombing
peaceful and non-military towns. They had not indeed been weak in the
employment of their air forces. General Smuts speaking in October, 1917,
said that the British had, in the month previous, dropped 207 tons of bombs
behind the lines of the enemy. But the targets were airdromes, military camps,
arsenals and munitions camps—not hospitals or kindergartens. The time had
now come when this purely military campaign no longer satisfied an enraged
British people who demanded the enforcement of the Mosaic law of an eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, against a people whom General Smuts
described as "an enemy who apparently recognizes no laws, human or divine;
who knows no pity or restraint, who sung Te Deums over the sinking of the
Lusitania, and to whom the maiming and slaughter of women and children
appear legitimate means of warfare."

And Premier Lloyd George, speaking to an audience of poor people in one
of the congested districts which had suffered sorely from the aërial activities
of the Hun, said:

"We will give it all back to them, and we will give it soon. We shall bomb
Germany with compound interest."

But whether undertaken as part of a general programme of frightfulness or
as reprisals for cruel and indefensible outrages air raids upon defenceless
towns, killing peaceable citizens in their beds, and children in their
kindergartens, are not incidents to add glory to aviation. The mind turns with
relief from such examples of the cruel misuse of aircraft to the hosts of
individual instances in which the airman and his machine remind one of the
doughty Sir Knight and his charger in the most gallant days of chivalry. There
were hosts of such incidents—men who fought gallantly and who always
fought fair, men who hung about the outskirts of an aërial battle waiting for
some individual champion of their own choosing to show himself and join in
battle to death in the high ranges of the sky. Some of these have been
mentioned in this book already. To discuss all who even as early as 1917 had
made their names memorable would require a volume in itself. A few may
well be mentioned below.

There, for example, was Captain Georges Guynemer, "King of the French
Aces." An "ace" is an aviator who has brought down five enemy aircraft.
Guynemer had fifty-three to his credit. Still a youth, only twenty-three years
of age at the time of his death, and only flying for twenty-one months, he had
lived out several life times in the mad excitement of combat in mid-air.
Within three weeks after getting his aviator's license he had become an
"Ace." Before his first year's service had expired he was decorated and
promoted for gallantry in rushing to the aid of a comrade attacked by five
enemy machines. He entered the combat at the height of ten thousand feet,
and inside of two minutes had dropped two of the enemy. The others fled. He
pursued hotly keeping up a steady fire with his machine gun. One Boche
wavered and fell, but just then an enemy shell from an "Archie" far below
exploded under Guynemer, tearing away one wing of his machine. Let him
tell the rest of that story:

I felt myself dropping [he said later]. It was ten thousand feet to the
earth, and, like a flash, I saw my funeral with my saddened comrades
marching behind the gun carriage to the cemetery. But I pulled and
pushed every lever I had, but nothing would check my terrific descent.

Five thousand feet from the earth, the wrecked machine began to turn
somersaults, but I was strapped into the seat. I do not know what it was,
but something happened and I felt the speed descent lessen. But suddenly
there was a tremendous crash and when I recovered my senses I had been
taken from the wreckage and was all right.

Two records Guynemer made which have not yet been surpassed—the
first, the one described above of dropping three Fokkers in two minutes and
thirty seconds, and rounding off the adventure by himself dropping ten
thousand feet. The second was in shooting down four enemy machines in one
day. His methods were of the simplest. He was always alone in his machine,
which was the lightest available. He would rather carry more gasoline and
ammunition than take along a gunner. The machine gun was mounted on the
plane above his head, pointing dead ahead, and aimed by aiming the whole
airplane. Once started the gun continued firing automatically and Guynemer's
task was to follow his enemy pitilessly keeping that lead-spitting muzzle
steadily bearing upon him. In September, 1917, he went up to attack five
enemy machines—no odds however appalling seemed to terrify him—but
was caught in a fleet of nearly forty Boches and fell to earth in the enemy's
country.

One of the last of the air duels to be fought under the practices which made
early air service so vividly recall the age of chivalry, was that in which
Captain Immelman, "The Falcon," of the German army, met Captain Ball of
the British Royal Flying Corps. Immelman had a record of fifty-one British
airplanes downed. Captain Ball was desirous of wiping out this record and
the audacious German at the same time, and so flying over the German lines
he dropped this letter:

Captain Immelman:

I challenge you to a man-to-man fight to take place this afternoon at
two o'clock. I will meet you over the German lines. Have your anti-air

craft guns withhold their fire, while we decide which is the better man.
The British guns will be silent.
Ball.

Presently thereafter this answer was dropped from a German airplane:

Captain Ball:

Your challenge is accepted. The guns will not interfere. I will meet you
promptly at two.
Immelman.

The word spread far and wide along the trenches on both sides. Tacitly all
firing stopped as though the bugles had sung truce. Men left cover and
clambered up on the top to watch the duel. Punctually both flyers rose from
their lines and made their way down No Man's Land. Let an eye witness tell
the story:

From our trenches there were wild cheers for Ball. The Germans yelled
just as vigorously for Immelman.

The cheers from the trenches continued; the Germans increased in
volume; ours changed into cries of alarm.

Ball, thousands of feet above us and only a speck in the sky, was doing
the craziest things imaginable. He was below Immelman and was
apparently making no effort to get above him, thus gaining the advantage
of position. Rather he was swinging around, this way and that,
attempting, it seemed, to postpone the inevitable.

We saw the German's machine dip over preparatory to starting the nose
dive.

"He's gone now," sobbed a young soldier, at my side, for he knew
Immelman's gun would start its raking fire once it was being driven
straight down.

Then in a fraction of a second the tables were turned. Before
Immelman's plane could get into firing position, Ball drove his machine
into a loop, getting above his adversary and cutting loose with his gun
and smashing Immelman by a hail of bullets as he swept by.

Immelman's airplane burst into flames and dropped. Ball, from above,
followed for a few hundred feet and then straightened out and raced for
home. He settled down, rose again, hurried back, and released a huge
wreath of flowers, almost directly over the spot where Immelman's
charred body was being lifted from a tangled mass of metal.

Four days later Ball too was killed.

But the Germans, too, had their champion airmen, mighty fliers, skillful at
control and with the machine gun, in whose triumphs they took the same
pride that our boys in France did in those of Chapman, Rockwell or Thaw, the
British in Warneford, or the French in Guynemer. Chief of these was Captain
Boelke, who came to his death in the latter part of 1917, after putting to his
credit over sixty Allied planes brought down. A German account of one of his
duels as watched from the trenches, will be of interest:

For quite a long time an Englishman had been making circles before
our eyes—calmly and deliberately.... My men on duty clenched their fists
in impotent wrath. "The dog—!" Shooting would do no good.

Then suddenly from the rear a harsh, deep singing and buzzing cuts the
air. It sounds like a German flyer. But he is not yet visible. Only the buzz
of an approaching motor is heard in the clouds in the direction of the
Englishman. More than a hundred eyes scanned the horizon. There! Far
away and high among the clouds is a small black humming bird—a
German battle aeroplane. Its course is laid directly for the hostile biplane
and it flies like an arrow shot with a clear eye and steady hand. My men
crawl out of the shelters. I adjust my field glasses. A lump rises in our
throats as if we are awaiting something new and wonderful.

So far the other does not seem to have noticed or recognized the black
flyer that already is poised as a hawk above him. All at once there is a
mighty swoop through the air like the drop of a bird of prey, and in no
time the black flyer is immediately over the Englishman and the air is
filled with the furious crackling of a machine gun, followed by the rapid
ta-ta-ta of two or three more, all operated at the highest speed just as
during a charge. The Englishman drops a little, makes a circle and tries to
escape toward the rear. The other circles and attacks him in front, and
again we hear the exciting ta-ta-ta! Now the Englishman tries to slip from
under his opponent, but the German makes a circle and the effort fails.
Then the enemy describes a great circle and attempts to rise above the
German. The latter ascends in sharp half circles and again swoops down
upon the biplane, driving it toward the German trenches.

Will the Englishman yield so soon? Scattered shouts of joy are already
heard in our ranks. Suddenly he drops a hundred yards and more through
the air and makes a skillful loop toward the rear. Our warrior of the air
swoops after him, tackles him once more and again we hear the wild
defiant rattle of the machine guns over our heads. Now they are quite
close to our trenches. The French infantry and artillery begin firing in a
last desperate hope. Neither of them is touched. Sticking close above and
behind him the German drives the Englishman along some six hundred
yards over our heads and then just above the housetops of St. A. Once

more we hear a distant ta-ta-ta a little slower and more scattered and then
as they drop both disappear from our view.

Scarcely five minutes pass before the telephone brings up this news:
Lieutenant Boelke has just brought down his seventh flyer.

Methods of air-fighting were succinctly described in a hearing before the
Senate Committee on Military Affairs, in June, 1917. The officers testifying
were young Americans of the Lafayette Escadrille of the French army. To the
civilian the testimony is interesting for the clear idea it gives of military
aviation. The extracts following are from the official record:

Adjt. Prince: Senator, there are about four kinds of machines used
abroad on the western front to-day. The machines that Adjt. Rumsey and
myself are looking after are called the battle machines. Then there are the
photography machines, machines that go up to enable the taking of
photographs of the German batteries, go back of the line and take views
of the country behind their lines and find out what their next line of attack
will be, or, if they retreat from the present line, then everything in that
way. Probably we have, where we are, in my group alone, a hundred and
fifty photographers who do nothing all day long except develop pictures,
and you can get pictures of any part of the country that you want. When
the Germans retreated from the old line where they used to be, by
Peronne and Chaulnes, we had absolute pictures of all the Hindenburg
line from where they are now right down to St. Quentin, down to the line
the French are on. We had photographs of it all.

Senator Kirby: When they started on the retreat?

© Kadel & Herbert.
Miss Ruth Law at Close of her Chicago to New York Flight.

Adjt. Prince: Yes, sir. So we knew exactly where their stand would be
made. Then, besides that, those photograph machines do a lot of scouting.
They have a pilot and a photographer aboard. He has not only a camera,
but quite often he has a Lewis gun with him in order to ward off any
hostile airmen if they should get through the battle planes that are above
him; in other words, should get through us in order to fight him. They do
a great deal of the scouting, because they fly at a lower level. The battle
planes go up to protect photography machines, or to go man-hunting, as it
is called; in other words, to fight the Germans. We fly all day, like to-day,
as high as we can go, or as high as the French go as a rule, about 5500
metres, about 17,000 to 18,000 feet.

© International Film Service.
A French Aviator between Flights.

Adjt. Rumsey: I think 5500 metres is about 19,000 feet. Some go up
6000 metres, which makes about 20,000 feet.

Adjt. Prince: We go up there, and we have a certain sector of the front
to look after. If we are only man-hunting, we go backward and forward
like a policeman to prevent the Germans from getting over our own lines.
We usually fly by fours, if we can, and the four go out together, so as not
to be alone. We are usually fighting inside of the German lines, because
the morale of the French and English is better than that of the Germans
to-day; and every fight I have had—I have never been lucky enough to
have one inside of my own lines—they have all been inside of the
German lines.

Senator Kirby: What is the equipment of a battle plane such as you
use?

Adjt. Prince: I use the 180 horse-power machine. It is called a "S. P. A.
D.," which has a Spanish motor. But a great many of the motors to-day
are being built here in America.

Senator Kirby: How many men do you carry?

Adjt. Prince: We go up alone in these machines. We did have two guns.
We had the Lewis gun on our upper wing and the Vickers down below,
that shoots through the propeller as the propeller turns around. Then we
gave up the Lewis above. It added more weight, and we did not need it so
much. The trouble with the Lewis gun is that it has only ninety-seven
cartridges, while the Vickers has five hundred, and you can do just as
much damage with the Vickers as you could with them both.

Senator Sutherland: You drive and fight at the same time?

Adjt. Prince: Yes, sir.

Adjt. Rumsey: The machine gun is fixed.

Adjt. Prince: It is absolutely fixed on the machine, and if I should want
to adjust it to shoot you, I would adjust my machine on you.

The witness then took up the nature and work of some of the heavier
machines. He testified:

Adjt. Prince: Then comes the artillery regulating machine. That
machine goes up, and it may be a Farman or a bi-motor, or some other
kind of heavier machine, a machine that goes slowly. They go over a
certain spot. They have a driver, who is a pilot, like ourselves; then they
have an artillery officer on board, whose sole duty it is to send back word,
mostly by Marconi, to his battery where the shots are landing. He will
say: "Too far," "Too short," "Right," or "Left," and he stays there over this
battery until the work done by the French guns has been absolutely
controlled, and above him he has some of these battle planes keeping him
from being attacked from above by German airmen. Of course, they may
be shot at by anti-aircraft guns, which you can not help. That is artillery
regulating.

The Chairman: Are you always attacked from above?

Adjt. Prince: By airplanes; yes, sir. It is always much safer to attack
from above.

Then you have the bomb-dropping machines, which carry a lot of
weight. They go out sometimes in the daytime, but mostly at night, and
they have these new sights by which they can stay up quite high in the air
and still know the spot they are going at. They know the wind speed, they
know their height, and they can figure out by this new arrangement they
have exactly when the time is to let go their bombs.

Senator Kirby: Something in the nature of a range-finder?

Adjt. Prince: A sort of range-finder.

Adjt. Rumsey: It is a sort of telescope that looks down between your
legs, and you have to regulate yourself, observing your speed, and when
you see the spot, you have to touch a button and off go these things.

Adjt. Rumsey: In a raid my brother went on there were sixty-eight
machines that left; the French heavy machines, the English heavy
machines, and then the English sort of half-fighting machine and half-
bombing machine. They call it a Sopwith, and it is a very good machine.
They went over there, and the first ones over were the Frenchmen, and
they dropped bombs on these Mauser works, and the only thing that the
English saw was a big cloud of smoke and dust, and they could not see
the works so they just dropped into them. Out of that raid the fighting
machines got eight Germans and dropped them, and the Germans got
eight Frenchmen. So, out of sixty-eight they lost eight, but we also got
eight Germans and dropped six tons of this stuff, which is twenty times as
strong as the melinite. We do not know what the name of the powder is.
The fighting machines on that trip only carried gasolene for two hours,
and the other ones carried it for something like six hours, so we escorted
them out for an hour, came back to our lines, filled up with gasolene,
went out and met them and brought them back over the danger zone.

Adjt. Prince: Near the trenches is where the danger zone is, because
there the German fighting machines are located.

Senator Kirby: How far was it from your battle front that you went?

Adjt. Rumsey: I think it was about 500 miles, 250 there and 250 back; it
was between 200 and 250 miles there.

Senator Kirby: Beyond the battle front?

Adjt. Rumsey: Yes; or, to be more accurate, I think it was nearer 200
than 250.

The Chairman: What do you think of the function of the airplane as a
determining factor?

Adjt. Prince: There is no doubt that if we could send over in huge
waves a great number of these bomb-dropping machines, and simply lay
the country waste—for instance, the big cities like Strassburg, Freiburg,
and others—not only would the damage done be great, but I guess the
popular opinion in Germany, everything being laid waste, would work
very strongly in the minds of the public toward having peace. I do not
think you could destroy an army, because you could not see them, but you
could go to different stations; you could go to Strassburg, to Brussels, and
places like that.

The Chairman: Then, sending them over in enormous numbers would
also put out of business their airplanes, and they would be helpless, would
they not?

Adjt. Prince: Absolutely. You not only have on the front a large number
of bomb-dropping machines, but a large number of fighting machines.
When the Somme battle was started in the morning the Germans knew,
naturally, that the French and British were going to start the Somme
drive, and they had up these Drachens, these observation balloons, and
the first eighteen minutes that the battle started the French and the
English, I think, got twenty-one "saucisse"; in other words, for the next
five days there was not a single German who came anywhere near the
lines, but the French and English could go ahead as they-felt like.

Admiral Peary: Have you any idea as to how many airplanes there are
along that western front on the German side?

Adjt. Prince: There must be about 3000 on that line in actual
commission.

Admiral Peary: That means, then, about 10,000 in all, at least?

Adjt. Prince: I should think so; I should say the French have about
2000 and the English possibly 1000, or we have about 2500.

Adjt. Rumsey: If they have 3000 we have 4000; that is, right on the
line.

Adjt. Prince: We have about 1000 more than they have, and we are up
all the time. The day before I left the front I was called to go out five
times, and I went out five times, and spent two hours every time I went
out.

It would be gratifying to author and to reader alike if it were possible to
give some account of the progress in aërial equipment made by the United
States, since its declaration of war. But at the present moment (February,
1918), the government is chary of furnishing information concerning the
advance made in the creation of an aërial fleet. Perhaps precise information,
if available, would be discouraging to the many who believe that the war will
be won in the air. For it is known in a broad general way that the activities of
the Administration have been centred upon the construction of training camps
and aviation stations. Orders for the actual construction of airplanes have
been limited, so that a chorus of criticism arose from manufacturers who
declared that they might have to close their works for lack of employment.
The apparent check was discouraging to American airmen, and to our Allies
who had expected marvellous things from the United States in the way of
swift and wholesale preparation for winning battles in the air. The response of
the government to all criticism was that it was laying broad foundations in
order that construction once begun would proceed with unabated activity, and
that when aircraft began to be turned out by the thousands a week there
would be aviators and trained mechanics a-plenty to handle them. In this
situation the advocates of a special cabinet department of aeronautics found
new reason to criticize the Administration and Congress for having ignored or
antagonized their appeals. For responsibility for the delay and indifference—
if indifference there was—rested equally upon the Secretary of the Navy and
the Secretary of War. Each had his measure of control over the enormous sum

voted in a lump for aviation, each had the further millions especially voted to
his department to account for. But no single individual could be officially
asked what had been done with the almost one billion dollars voted for
aeronautics in 1917.

But if the authorities seemed to lag, the inventors were busy. Mention has
already been made of the new "Liberty" motor, which report had it was the
fruit of the imprisonment of two mechanical experts in a hotel room with
orders that they should not be freed until they had produced a motor which
met all criticisms upon those now in use. Their product is said to have met
this test, and the happy result caused a general wish that the Secretaries of
War and of the Navy might be similarly incarcerated and only liberated upon
producing plans for the immediate creation of an aërial fleet suited to the
nation's needs. If, however, the Liberty motor shall prove the complete
success which at the moment the government believes it to be, it will be such
a spur to the development of the airplane in peace and war, as could not
otherwise be applied. For the motor is the true life of the airplane—its heart,
lungs, and nerve centre. The few people who still doubt the wide adoption of
aircraft for peaceful purposes after the war base their skepticism on the
treachery of motors still in use. They repudiate all comparisons with
automobiles. They say:

It is perfectly true that a man can run his car repeatedly from New York
to Boston without motor trouble. But the trouble is inevitable sooner or
later. When it comes to an automobile it is trifling. The driver gets out
and makes his repairs by the roadside. But if it comes to the aviator it
brings the possibility of death with it every time. If his motor stops he
must descend. But to alight he must find a long level field, with at least
two hundred yards in which to run off his momentum. If, when he
discovers the failure of his motor, he is flying at the height of a mile he
must find his landing place within a space of eight miles, for in gliding to
earth the ratio of forward movement to height is as eight to one. But how
often in rugged and densely populated New England, or Pennsylvania is
there a vacant level field half a mile in length? The aviator who made a
practice of daily flight between New York and Boston would inevitably
meet death in the end.

The criticism is a shrewd and searching one. But it is based on the airplane
and the motor of to-day without allowance for the development and
improvement which are proceeding apace. It contemplates a craft which has
but one motor, but the more modern machines have sufficient lifting power to
carry two motors, and can be navigated successfully with one of these out of
service. Experiments furthermore are being made with a device after the type
of the helicopter which with the steady lightening of the aircraft motor, may
be installed on airplanes with a special motor for its operation. This device, it
is believed, will enable the airplane so equipped to stop dead in its course
with both propellers out of action, to hover over a given spot or to rise or to
descend gently in a perpendicular line without the necessity of soaring. It is
obvious that if this device prove successful the chief force of the objections to
aërial navigation outlined above will be nullified.

The menace of infrequent landing places will quickly remedy itself on
busy lines of aërial traffic. The average railroad doing business in a densely
populated section has stations once every eight or ten miles which with their
sidings, buildings, water tanks, etc., cost far more than the field half a mile
long with a few hangars that the fliers will need as a place of refuge. Indeed,
although for its size and apparent simplicity of construction an airplane is
phenomenally costly, in the grand total of cost an aërial line would cost a tithe
of the ordinary railway. It has neither right of way, road bed, rails, nor
telegraph system to maintain, and if the average flyer seems to cost
amazingly it still foots up less than one fifth the cost of a modern locomotive
though its period of service is much shorter.

Just at the present time aircraft costs are high, based on artificial conditions
in the market. Their construction is a new industry; its processes not yet
standardized; its materials still experimental in many ways and not yet
systematically produced. A light sporting monoplane which superficially
seems to have about $250 worth of materials in it—exclusive of the engine—
will cost about $3000. A fighting biplane will touch $10,000. Yet the latter
seems to the lay observer to contain no costly materials to justify so great a
charge. The wings are a light wooden framework, usually of spruce, across
which a fine grade of linen cloth is stretched. The materials are simple
enough, but every bit of wood, every screw, every strand of wire is selected
with the utmost care, and the workmanship of their assemblage is as
painstaking as the setting of the most precious stones.

© International Film Service.
A German "Gotha"—their Favorite Type.

"REMEMBER THE LEAST NEGLIGENCE MAY COST A LIFE!" is a
sign frequently seen hanging over the work benches in an airplane factory.

When stretched over the framework, the cloth of the wings is treated to a
dressing down of a preparation of collodion, which in the jargon of the shop
is called "dope." This substance has a peculiar effect upon the cloth, causing
it to shrink, and thus making it more taut and rigid than it could be by the
most careful stretching. Though the layman would not suspect it, this wash
alone costs about $150 a machine. The seaplanes too—or hydroaëroplanes as
purists call them—present a curious illustration of unexpected and, it would
seem, unexplainable expense. Where the flyer over land has two bicycle
wheels on which to land, the flyer over the sea has two flat-bottomed boats or
pontoons. These cost from $1000 to $1200 and look as though they should
cost not over $100. But the necessity of combining maximum strength with
minimum weight sends the price soaring as the machine itself soars.
Moreover there is not yet the demand for either air-or seaplanes that would
result in the division of labour, standardization of parts, and other
manufacturing economies which reduce the cost of products.

To the high cost of aircraft their comparative fragility is added as a reason
for their unfitness for commercial uses. The engines cost from $2000 to
$5000 each, are very delicate and usually must be taken out of the plane and
overhauled after about 100 hours of active service. The strain on them is
prodigious for it is estimated that the number of revolutions of an airplane's
engine during an hour's flight is equal to the number of revolutions of an
automobile's wheels during active service of a whole month.

It is believed that the superior lightness and durability of the Liberty motor
will obviate some of these objections to the commercial availability of
aircraft in times of peace. And it is certain that with the cessation of the war,
the retirement of the governments of the world from the purchasing field and
the reduction of the demand for aircraft to such as are needed for pleasure and
industrial uses the prices which we have cited will be cut in half. In such
event what will be the future of aircraft; what their part in the social and
industrial organization of the world?

Ten or a dozen years ago Rudyard Kipling entertained the English reading
public of the world with a vivacious sketch of aërial navigation in the year
2000 A.D. He used the license of a poet in avoiding too precise descriptions
of what is to come—dealing rather with broad and picturesque
generalizations. Now the year 2000 is still far enough away for pretty much
anything to be invented, and to become commonplace before that era arrives.
Airships of the sort Mr. Kipling pictured may by that period have come and
gone—have been relegated to the museums along with the stage-coaches of
yesterday and the locomotives of to-day. For that matter before that
millennial period shall arrive men may have learned to dispense with material
transportation altogether, and be able to project their consciousness or even
their astral bodies to any desired point on psychic waves. If a poet is going to
prophecy he might as well be audacious and even revolutionary in his
predictions.

Mr. Kipling tried so hard to be reasonable that he made himself
recognizably wrong so far as the present tendency of aircraft development
would indicate. With the Night Mail, is the story of a trip by night across the
Atlantic from England to America. It is made in a monster dirigible—though
the present tendency is to reject the dirigible for the swifter, less costly, and
more airworthy (leave "seaworthy" to the plodding ships on old ocean's

breast) airplanes. If, however, we condone this glaring improbability we find
Mr. Kipling's tale full of action and imaginary incident that give it an air of
truth. His ship is not docked on the ground at the tempest's mercy, but is
moored high in air to the top of a tall tower up which passengers and freight
are conveyed in elevators. His lighthouses send their beams straight up into
the sky instead of projecting them horizontally as do those which now guard
our coasts. Just why lighthouses are needed, however, he does not explain.
There are no reefs on which a packet of the air may run, no lee shores which
they must avoid. On overland voyages guiding lights by night may be useful,
as great white direction strips laid out on the ground are even now suggested
as guides for daylight flying. But the main reliance of the airman must be his
compass. Crossing the broad oceans no lighted path is possible, and even in a
voyage from New York to Chicago, or from London to Rome good
airmanship will dictate flight at a height that will make reliance upon natural
objects as a guide perilous. The airman has the advantage over the sailor in
that he may lay his course on leaving his port, or flying field, and pursue it
straight as an arrow to his destination. No rocks or other obstacles bar his
path, no tortuous channels must be navigated. All that can divert him from his
chosen course is a steady wind on the beam, and that is instantly detected by
his instruments and allowance made for it. On the other hand the sailor has a
certain advantage over the airman in that his more leisurely progress allows
time for the rectification of errors in course arising from contrary currents or
winds. An error of a point, or even two, amounts to but little in a day's
steaming of perhaps four hundred miles. It can readily be remedied, unless
the ship is too near shore. But when the whole three thousand miles of
Atlantic are covered in twenty hours in the air, the course must be right from
the start and exactly adhered to, else the passenger for New York may be set
down in Florida.

It is not improbable that even before the war is over the crossing of the
Atlantic by plane will be accomplished. Certainly it will be one of the first
tasks undertaken by airmen on the return of peace. But it is probable that the
adaptation of aircraft to commercial uses will be begun with undertakings of
smaller proportions. Already the United States maintains an aërial mail route
in Alaska, while Italy has military mail routes served by airplanes in the Alps.
These have been undertaken because of the physical obstacles to travel on the
surface, presented in those rugged neighbourhoods. But in the more densely
populated regions of the United States considerations of financial profit will

almost certainly result in the early establishment of mail and passenger air
service. Air service will cut down the time between any two given points at
least one half, and ultimately two thirds. Letters could be sent from New York
to Boston, or even to Buffalo, and an answer received the same day. The
carrying plane could take on each trip five tons of mail. Philadelphia would
be brought within forty-five minutes of New York; Washington within two
hours instead of the present five. Is there any doubt of the creation of an
aërial passenger service under such conditions? Already a Caproni triplane
will carry thirty-five passengers beside guns—say, fifty passengers if all other
load be excluded, and has flown with a lighter load from Newport News to
New York. It is easily imaginable that by 1920 the airplane capable of
carrying eighty persons—or the normal number now accommodated on an
inter-urban trolley car—will be an accomplished fact.

The lines that will thus spring up will need no rails, no right of way, no
expensive power plant. Their physical property will be confined to the
airplanes themselves and to the fields from which the craft rise and on which
they alight, with the necessary hangars. These indeed will involve heavy
expenditure. For a busy line, with frequent sailings, of high speed machines a
field will need to be in the neighbourhood of a mile square. A plane swooping
down for its landing is not to be held up at the switch like a train while room
is made for it. It is an imperative guest, and cannot be gainsaid. Accordingly
the fields must be large enough to accommodate scores of planes at once and
give each new arrival a long straight course on which to run off its
momentum. It is obvious therefore that the union stations for aircraft routes
cannot be in the hearts of our cities as are the railroad stations of to-day, but
must be fairly well out in the suburbs.

A form of machine which the professional airmen say has yet to be
developed is the small monoplane, carrying two passengers at most, and of
low speed—not more than twenty miles an hour at most. In this age of speed
mania the idea of deliberately planning a conveyance or vehicle that shall not
exceed a low limit seems out of accord with public desire. But the low speed
airplane has the advantage of needing no extended field in which to alight. It
reaches the ground with but little momentum to be taken up and can be
brought up standing on the roof of a house or the deck of a ship. Small
machines of this sort are likely to serve as the runabouts of the air, to succeed
the trim little automobile roadsters as pleasure craft.

© International Film Service.
A French Monoplane.

The beginning of the fourth year of the war brought a notable change in
aërial tactics. For three years everything had been sacrificed to speed. Such
aërial duels as have been described were encouraged by the fact that aircraft
were reduced to the proportions needful for carrying one man and a machine
gun. The gallant flyers went up in the air and killed each other. That was
about all there was to it. While as scouts, range finders, guides for the
artillery, they exerted some influence on the course of the war, as a fighting
arm in its earlier years, they were without efficiency. The bombing forays
were harassing but little more, because the craft engaged were of too small
capacity to carry enough bombs to work really serious damage, while the
ever increasing range of the "Archies" compels the airmen to deliver their fire
from so great a height as to make accurate aim impossible.

Photo Press Illustrating Service.
A German Scout Brought to Earth in France.

But Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Zeebrugge are likely to change all this. The
constant contemplation of those nests for the sanctuary of pestiferous
submarines, effectively guarded against attack by either land or water, has
stirred up the determination of the Allies to seek their destruction from above.
Heavy bombing planes are being built in all the Allied workshops for this
purpose, and furthermore to give effect to the British determination to take
vengeance upon Germany, for her raids upon London. It is reported that the
United States, by agreement with its Allies, is to specialize in building the
light, swift scout planes, but in other shops the heavy triplane, the
dreadnought of the air is expected to be the feature of 1918. With it will come
an entirely novel strategic use of aircraft in war, and with it too, which is
perhaps the more permanently important, will come the development of
aircraft of the sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace
when the war shall end.

THE SUBMARINE BOAT

CHAPTER XI
BEGINNINGS OF SUBMARINE INVENTION

In September, 1914 the British Fleet in the North Sea had settled down to
the monotonous task of holding the coasts of Germany and the channels
leading to them in a state of blockade. The work was dismal enough. The
ships tossing from day to day on the always unquiet waters of the North Sea
were crowded with Jackies all of whom prayed each day that the German
would come from hiding and give battle. Not far from the Hook of Holland
engaged in this monotonous work were three cruisers of about 12,000 tons,
each carrying 755 men and officers. They were the Cressy, Aboukir, and
Hogue—not vessels of the first rank but still important factors in the British
blockade. They were well within the torpedo belt and it may be believed that
unceasing vigilance was observed on every ship. Nevertheless without
warning the other two suddenly saw the Aboukir overwhelmed by a flash of
fire, a pillar of smoke and a great geyser of water that rose from the sea and
fell heavily upon her deck. Instantly followed a thundering explosion as the
magazines of the doomed ship went off. Within a very few minutes, too little
time to use their guns against the enemy had they been able to see him, or to
lower their boats, the Aboukir sank leaving the crew floundering in the water.

In the distance lay the German submarine U-9—one of the earliest of her
class in service. From her conning tower Captain Weddigen had viewed the
tragedy. Now seeing the two sister ships speeding to the rescue he quickly
submerged. It may be noted that as a result of what followed, orders were
given by the British Admiralty that in the event of the destruction of a ship by
a submarine others in the same squadron should not come to the rescue of the
victim, but scatter as widely as possible to avoid a like fate. In this instance
the Hogue and the Cressy hurried to the spot whence the Aboukir had
vanished and began lowering their boats. Hardly had they begun the work of
mercy when a torpedo from the now unseen foe struck the Hogue and in

twenty minutes she too had vanished. While she was sinking the Cressy, with
all guns ready for action and her gunners scanning the sea in every direction
for this deadly enemy, suddenly felt the shock of a torpedo and, her
magazines having been set off, followed her sister ships to the ocean's bed.

In little more than half an hour thirty-six thousand tons of up-to-date
British fighting machinery, and more than 1200 gallant blue jackets had been
sent to the depths of the North Sea by a little boat of 450 tons carrying a crew
of twenty-six men.

The world stood aghast. With the feeling of horror at the swift death of so
many caused by so few, there was mingled a feeling of amazement at the
scientific perfection of the submarine, its power, and its deadly work. Men
said it was the end of dreadnoughts, battleships, and cruisers, but the history
of the war has shown singularly few of these destroyed by submarines since
the first novelty of the attack wore off. The world at the moment seemed to
think that the submarine was an entirely new idea and invention. But like
almost everything else it was merely the ultimate reduction to practical use of
an idea that had been germinating in the mind of man from the earliest days
of history.

We need not trouble ourselves with the speculations of Alexander the
Great, Aristotle, and Pliny concerning "underwater" activities. Their active
minds gave consideration to the problem, but mainly as to the employment of
divers. Not until the first part of the sixteenth century do we find any very
specific reference to actual underwater boats. That appears in a book of
travels by Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala in Sweden. Notwithstanding
the gentleman's reverend quality, one must question somewhat the veracity of
the chapter which he heads:

"Of the Leather Ships Made of Hides Used by the Pyrats of Greenland."

He professed to have seen two of these "ships," more probably boats,
hanging in a cathedral church in Greenland. With these singular vessels,
according to his veracious reports the people of that country could navigate
under water and attack stranger ships from beneath. "For the Inhabitants of
that Countrey are wont to get small profits by the spoils of others," he wrote,
"by these and the like treacherous Arts, who by their thieving wit, and by

boring a hole privately in the sides of the ships beneath (as I said) have let in
the water and presently caused them to sink."

Leaving the tale of the Archbishop where we think it must belong in the
realm of fiction, we may note that it was not until the beginning of the
seventeenth century that the first submarine boat was actually built and
navigated. A Hollander, Cornelius Drebel, or Van Drebel, born in 1572, in the
town of Alkmaar, had come to London during the reign of James I., who
became his patron and friend. Drebel seems to have been a serious student of
science and in many ways far ahead of his times. Moreover, he had the talent
of getting next to royalty. In 1620 he first conceived the idea of building a
submarine. Fairly detailed descriptions of his boats—he built three from
1620-1624—and of their actual use, have been handed down to us by men
whose accuracy and truthfulness cannot be doubted. The Honorable Robert
Boyle, a scientist of unquestioned seriousness, tells in his New Experiments,
Physico-Mechanical touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects about
Drebel's work in the quaint language of his time:

But yet on occasion of this opinion of Paracelsus, perhaps it will not be
impertinent if, before I proceed, I acquaint your Lordship with a conceit
of that deservedly famous mechanician and Chymist, Cornelius Drebel,
who, among other strange things that he perform'd, is affirm'd, by more
than a few credible persons, to have contrived for the late learned King
James, a vessel to go under water; of which, trial was made in the
Thames, with admired success, the vessel carrying twelve rowers, besides
passengers; one which is yet alive, and related it to an excellent
Mathematician that informed me of it. Now that for which I mention this
story is, that having had the curiosity and opportunity to make particular
inquiries among the relations of Drebel, and especially of an ingenious
physician that married his daughter, concerning the grounds upon which
he conceived it feasible to make men unaccustomed to continue so long
under water without suffocation, or (as the lately mentioned person that
went in the vessel affirms) without inconvenience; I was answered, that
Drebel conceived, that it is not the whole body of the air, but a certain
quintessence (as Chymists speak) or spirituous part of it, that makes it fit
for respiration; which being spent, the remaining grosser body, or carcase,
if I may so call it, of the air, is unable to cherish the vital flame residing in
the heart; so that, for aught I could gather, besides the mechanical

contrivances of his vessel, he had a chymical liquor, which he accounted
the chief secret of his submarine navigation. For when, from time to time,
he conceived that the finer and purer part of the air was consumed, or
over-clogged by the respiration and steam of those that went in his ship,
he would by unstopping a vessel full of this liquor, speedily restore to the
troubled air such a proportion of vital parts, as would make it again, for a
good while, fit for respiration whether by dissipating, or precipitating the
grosser exhalations, or by some other intelligible way, I must not now
stay to examine, contenting myself to add, that having had the
opportunity to do some service to those of his relations that were most
intimate with him, and having made it my business to learn what this
strange liquor might be, they constantly affirmed that Drebel would never
disclose the liquor unto any, nor so much as tell the nature whereof he
had made it, to above one person, who himself assured me what it was.

This most curious narrative suggests that in some way Drebel, who died in
London in 1634, had discovered the art of compressing oxygen and
conceived the idea of making it serviceable for freshening the air in a boat, or
other place, contaminated by the respiration of a number of men for a long
time. Indeed the reference made to the substance by which Drebel purified
the atmosphere in his submarine as "a liquor" suggests that he may possibly
have hit upon the secret of liquid air which late in the nineteenth century
caused such a stir in the United States. Of his possession of some such secret
there can be no doubt whatsoever, for Samuel Pepys refers in his famous
diary to a lawsuit, brought in the King's Courts by the heirs of Drebel, to
secure the secret for their own use. What was the outcome of the suit or the
subsequent history of Drebel's invention history does not record.

Throughout the next 150 years a large number of inventors and near-
inventors occupied themselves with the problem of the submarine. Some of
these men went no further than to draw plans and to write out descriptions of
what appeared to them to be feasible submarine boats. Others took one step
further, by taking out patents, but only very few of the submarine engineers
of this period had either the means or the courage to test their inventions in
the only practicable way, by building an experimental boat and using it.

In spite of this apparent lack of faith on the part of the men who worked on
the submarine problem, it would not be fair to condemn them as fakirs.

Experimental workers, in those times, had to face many difficulties which
were removed in later times. The study of science and the examination of the
forces of nature were not only not as popular as they became later, but
frequently were looked upon as blasphemous, savouring of sorcery, or as a
sign of an unbalanced mind.

© Kadel & Herbert.
A Gas Attack Photographed from an Airplane.

England and France supplied most of the men who occupied themselves
with the submarine problem between 1610 and 1760. Of the Englishmen, the
following left records of one kind or another concerning their labours in this
direction. Richard Norwood, in 1632, was granted a patent for a contrivance
which was apparently little more than a diving apparatus. In 1648, Bishop
Wilkins published a book, Mathematical Magick, which was full of rather
grotesque projects and which contained one chapter on the possibility "of
framing an ark for submarine navigation." In 1691, patents were granted on
engines connected with submarine navigation to John Holland—curious

forerunner of a name destined to be famous two hundred years later—and on
a submarine boat to Sir Stephen Evance.

In Prance, two priests, Fathers Mersenne and Fournier, published in 1634 a
small book called Questions Théologiques, Physiques, Morales et
Mathématiques, which contained a detailed description of a submarine boat.
They suggested that the hull of submarines ought to be of metal and not of
wood, and that their shape ought to be as nearly fishlike as possible. Nearly
three hundred years have hardly altered these opinions. Ancient French
records also tell us that six years later, in 1640, the King of France had
granted a patent to Jean Barrié, permitting him during the next twelve years
to fish at the bottom of the sea with his boat. Unluckily Barrié's fish stories
have expired with his permit. In 1654, a French engineer, De Son, is said to
have built at Rotterdam a submarine boat. Little is known concerning this
vessel except that it was reported to have been seventy-two feet long, twelve
feet high, and eight feet broad, and to have been propelled by a paddlewheel
instead of oars.

Borelli, about whom very little seems to be known, is credited with having
invented in 1680 a submarine boat, whose descent and ascent were regulated
by a series of leather bottles placed in the hull of the boat with their mouths
open to the surrounding water. The English magazine, Graphic, published a
picture which is considered the oldest known illustration of any submarine
boat. This picture matches in all details the description of Borelli's boat, but it
is credited to a man called Symons.

Twenty-seven years later, in 1774, another Englishman, J. Day, built a
small submarine boat, and after fairly extensive experiments, descended in
his boat in Plymouth harbour. This descent is of special interest because we
have a more detailed record of it than of any previous submarine exploit, and
because Day is the first submarine inventor who lost his life in the attempt to
prove the feasibility of his invention. The Annual Register of 1774 gives a
narration in detail of Day's experiments and death and inasmuch as this is the
first ungarbled report of a submarine descent, it may be quoted at length.

Authentic account of a late unfortunate transaction, with respect to a
diving machine at Plymouth.

Mr. Day (the sole projector of the scheme, and, as matters have turned
out, the unhappy sacrifice to his own ingenuity) employed his thoughts
for some years past in planning a method of sinking a vessel under water,
with a man in it, who should live therein for a certain time, and then by
his own means only, bring himself up to the surface. After much study he
conceived that his plan could be reduced into practice. He communicated
his idea in the part of the country where he lived, and had the most
sanguine hopes of success. He went so far as to try his project in the
Broads near Yarmouth. He fitted a Norwich market-boat for his purpose,
sunk himself thirty feet under water, where he continued during the space
of twenty-four hours, and executed his design to his own entire
satisfaction. Elated with this success, he then wanted to avail himself of
his invention. He conversed with his friends, convinced them that he had
brought his undertaking to a certainty; but how to reap the advantage of it
was the difficulty that remained. The person in whom he confided
suggested to him, that, if he acquainted the sporting Gentlemen with the
discovery, and the certainty of the performance, considerable betts would
take place, as soon as the project would be mentioned in company. The
Sporting Kalendar was immediately looked into, and the name of Blake
soon occurred; that gentleman was fixed upon as the person to whom Mr.
Day ought to address himself. Accordingly, Mr. Blake, in the month of
November last, received the following letter:

"Sir,

"I found out an affair by which many thousands may be won; it is of a
paradoxical nature, but can be performed with ease; therefore, sir, if you
chuse to be informed of it, and give me one hundred pounds of every
thousand you shall win by it, I will very readily wait upon you and inform
you of it. I am myself but a poor mechanic and not able to make anything
by it without your assistance.

"Your's, etc.

"J. DAY."

Mr. Blake had no conception of Mr. Day's design, nor was he sure that
the letter was serious. To clear the matter up, he returned for answer, that,
if Mr. Day would come to town, and explain himself, Mr. Blake would

consider of the proposal. If he approved of it, Mr. Day should have the
recompence he desired; if, on the other hand, the plan should be rejected,
Mr. Blake would make him a present to defray the expences of his
journey. In a short time after Mr. Day came to town; Mr. Blake saw him
and desired to know what secret he was possessed of. The man replied,
"that he could sink a ship 100 feet deep in the sea with himself in it, and
remain therein for the space of 24 hours, without communication with
anything above; and at the expiration of the time, rise up again in the
vessel." The proposal, in all its parts, was new to Mr. Blake. He took
down the particulars, and, after considering the matter, desired some kind
of proof of the practicability. The man added that if Mr. Blake would
furnish him with the materials necessary, he would give him an occular
demonstration. A model of the vessel, with which he was to perform the
experiment, was then required, and in three or four weeks accomplished,
so as to give a perfect idea of the principle upon which the scheme was to
be executed, and, in time, a very plausible promise of success, not to Mr.
Blake only, but many other gentlemen who were consulted upon the
occasion. The consequence was, that Mr. Blake, agreeably to the man's
desire, advanced money for the construction of a vessel fit for that
purpose. Mr. Day, thus assisted, went to Plymouth with his model, and set
a man in that place to work upon it. The pressure of the water at 100 feet
deep was a circumstance of which Mr. Blake was advised, and touching
that article he gave the strongest precautions to Mr. Day, telling him, at
any expence, to fortify the chamber in which he was to subsist, against
the weight of such a body of water. Mr. Day set off in great spirits for
Plymouth, and seemed so confident, that Mr. Blake made a bett that the
project would succeed, reducing, however, the depth of water from 100
yards to 100 feet, and the time from 24 to 12 hours. By the terms of the
wager, the experiment was to be made within three months from the date;
but so much time was necessary for due preparation, that on the
appointed day things were not in readiness and Mr. Blake lost the bett.

Photo by International Film Service.
A French Nieuport Dropping a Bomb.

In some short time afterwards the vessel was finished, and Mr. Day still
continued eager for the carrying of his plan into execution; he was uneasy
at the idea of dropping the scheme and wished for an opportunity to
convince Mr. Blake that he could perform what he had undertaken. He
wrote from Plymouth that everything was in readiness and should be
executed the moment Mr. Blake arrived. Induced by this promise, Mr.
Blake set out for Plymouth; upon his arrival a trial was made in Cat-
water, where Mr. Day lay, during the flow of tide, six hours, and six more
during the tide of ebb; confined all the time in the room appropriated for
his use. A day for the final determination was fixed; the vessel was towed
to the place agreed upon; Mr. Day provided himself with whatever he
thought necessary; he went into the vessel, let the water into her and with

great composure retired to the room constructed for him, and shut up the
valve. The ship went gradually down in 22 fathoms of water at 2 o'clock
on Tuesday, June 28, in the afternoon, being to return at 2 the next
morning. He had three buoys or messengers, which he could send to the
surface at option, to announce his situation below; but, none appearing,
Mr. Blake, who was near at hand in a barge, began to entertain some
suspicion. He kept a strict lookout, and at the time appointed, neither the
buoys nor the vessel coming up, he applied to the Orpheus frigate, which
lay just off the barge, for assistance. The captain with the most ready
benevolence supplied them with everything in his power to seek for the
ship. Mr. Blake, in this alarming situation was not content with the help
of the Orpheus only; he made immediate application to Lord Sandwich
(who happened to be at Plymouth) for further relief. His Lordship with
great humanity ordered a number of hands from the dock-yard, who went
with the utmost alacrity and tried every effort to regain the ship, but
unhappily without effect.

Thus ended this unfortunate affair. Mr. Blake had not experience
enough to judge of all possible contingencies, and he had now only to
lament the credulity with which he listened to a projector, fond of his own
scheme but certainly not possessed of skill enough to guard against the
variety of accidents to which he was liable. The poor man has
unfortunately shortened his days; he was not however tempted or
influenced by anybody; he confided in his own judgment, and put his life
to the hazard upon his own mistaken notions.

Many and various have been the opinions on this strange, useless, and
fatal experiment, though the more reasonable part of mankind seemed to
give it up as wholly impracticable. It is well-known, that pent-up air,
when overcharged with the vapours emitted out of animal bodies,
becomes unfit for respiration; for which reason, those confined in the
diving-bell, after continuing some time under water are obliged to come
up, and take in fresh air, or by some such means recruit it. That any man
should be able after having sunk a vessel to so great a depth, to make that
vessel at pressure, so much more specifically lighter than water, as
thereby to enable it to force its way to the surface, through the depressure
of so great a weight, is a matter not hastily to be credited. Even cork,

when sunk to a certain depth will, by the great weight of the fluid upon it,
be prevented from rising.

The English of the Annual Register leaves much to be desired in clarity. It
makes reasonably clear, however, that the unfortunate Mr. Day's knowledge
of submarine conditions was, by no means, equal to Mr. Blake's sporting
spirit. Even to-day one hundred feet is an unusual depth of submersion for the
largest submarines.

The credit for using a submarine boat for the first time in actual warfare
belongs to a Yankee, David Bushnell. He was born in Saybrook, Connecticut,
and graduated from Yale with the class of 1775. While still in college he was
interested in science and as far as his means and opportunities allowed, he
devoted a great deal of his time and energy to experimental work. The
problem which attracted his special attention was how to explode powder
under water, and before very long he succeeded in solving this to his own
satisfaction as well as to that of a number of prominent people amongst
whom were the Governor of Connecticut and his Council. Bushnell's
experiments, of course, fell in the period during which the Revolutionary War
was fought, and when he had completed his invention, there naturally
presented itself to him a further problem. How could his device be used for
the benefit of his country and against the British ships which were then
threatening New York City? As a means to this end, Bushnell planned and
built a submarine boat which on account of its shape is usually called the
Turtle.

General Washington thought very highly of Bushnell, whom he called in a
letter to Thomas Jefferson "a man of great mechanical powers, fertile in
inventions and master of execution." In regard to Bushnell's submarine boat
the same letter, written after its failure, says: "I thought and still think that it
was an effort of genius, but that too many things were necessary to be
combined to expect much against an enemy who are always on guard."

During the whole period of the building of the Turtle Bushnell was in ill
health. Otherwise he would have navigated it on its trial trip himself for he
was a man of undoubted courage and wrapped up alike in the merits of his
invention and in the possibility of utilizing it to free New York from the
constant ignominy of the presence of British ships in its harbour. But his

health made this out of the question. Accordingly he taught his brother the
method of navigating the craft, but at the moment for action the brother too
fell ill. It became necessary to hire an operator. This was by no means easy as
volunteers to go below the water in a submarine boat of a type hitherto
undreamed of, and to attach an explosive to the hull of a British man-of-war,
the sentries upon which were presumably especially vigilant, being in a
hostile harbour, was an adventure likely to attract only the most daring and
reckless spirits. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, other portions of which we
shall have occasion to quote later, Bushnell refers to this difficulty in finding
a suitable operator and tells briefly and with evident chagrin the story of the
failure of the attempts made to utilize successfully his submarine:

Photo by U. & U.
A Bomb-Dropping Taube.

After various attempts to find an operator to my wish, I sent one who
appeared more expert than the rest from New York to a 50-gun ship lying
not far from Governor's Island. He went under the ship and attempted to
fix the wooden screw into her bottom, but struck, as he supposes, a bar of
iron which passes from the rudder hinge, and is spiked under the ship's
quarter. Had he moved a few inches, which he might have done without
rowing, I have no doubt but he would have found wood where he might

have fixed the screw, or if the ship were sheathed with copper he might
easily have pierced it; but, not being well skilled in the management of
the vessel, in attempting to move to another place he lost the ship. After
seeking her in vain for some time, he rowed some distance and rose to the
surface of the water, but found daylight had advanced so far that he durst
not renew the attempt. He says that he could easily have fastened the
magazine under the stem of the ship above water, as he rowed up to the
stern and touched it before he descended. Had he fastened it there the
explosion of 150 lbs. of powder (the quantity contained in the magazine)
must have been fatal to the ship. In his return from the ship to New York
he passed near Governor's Island, and thought he was discovered by the
enemy on the island. Being in haste to avoid the danger he feared, he cast
off the magazine, as he imagined it retarded him in the swell, which was
very considerable. After the magazine had been cast off one hour, the
time the internal apparatus was set to run, it blew up with great violence.

Afterwards there were two attempts made in Hudson's River, above the
city, but they effected nothing. One of them was by the aforementioned
person. In going towards the ship he lost sight of her, and went a great
distance beyond her. When he at length found her the tide ran so strong
that, as he descended under water for the ship's bottom, it swept him
away. Soon after this the enemy went up the river and pursued the boat
which had the submarine vessel on board and sunk it with their shot.
Though I afterwards recovered the vessel, I found it impossible at that
time to prosecute the design any farther.

The operator to whom Bushnell had entrusted his submarine boat was a
typical Yankee, Ezra Lee of Lyme, Connecticut. His story of the adventure
differs but little from that of Bushnell, but it is told with a calm indifference
to danger and a seeming lack of any notion of the extraordinary in what he
had done that gives an idea of the man. "When I rode under the stern of the
ship [the Eagle] I could see the men on deck and hear them talk," he wrote. "I
then shut down all the doors, sunk down, and came up under the bottom of
the ship."

This means that he hermetically sealed himself inside of a craft, shaped
like two upper turtle shells joined together—hence the name of the Turtle. He
had entered through the orifice at the top, whence the head of the turtle

usually protrudes. This before sinking he had covered and made water-tight
by screwing down upon it a brass crown or top like that to a flask. Within he
had enough air to support him thirty minutes. The vessel stood upright, not
flat as a turtle carries himself. It was maintained in this position by lead
ballast. Within the operator occupied an upright position, half sitting, half
standing. To sink water was admitted, which gathered in the lower part of the
boat, while to rise again this was expelled by a force pump. There were
ventilators and portholes for the admission of light and air when operating on
the surface, but once the cap was screwed down the operator was in darkness.

In this craft, which suggests more than anything else a curiously shaped
submarine coffin, Lee drifted along by the side of the ship, navigating with
difficulty with his single oar and seeking vainly to find some spot to which he
might affix his magazine. A fact which might have disquieted a more nervous
man was that the clockwork of this machine was running and had been set to
go off in an hour from the time the voyage was undertaken. As to almost
anyone in that position minutes would seem hours, the calmness of sailor
Lee's nerves seems to be something beyond the ordinary.

When he finally abandoned the attempt on the Eagle he started up the bay.
Off Governor's Island he narrowly escaped capture.

When I was abreast of the Fort on the Island three hundred or four
hundred men got upon the parapet to observe me; at length a number
came down to the shore, shoved off a twelve oar'd barge with five or six
sitters and pulled for me. I eyed them, and when they had got within fifty
or sixty yards of me I let loose the magazine in hopes that if they should
take me they would likewise pick up the magazine and then we should all
be blown up together. But as kind providence would have it they took
fright and returned to the Island to my infinite joy.... The magazine after
getting a little past the Island went off with a tremendous explosion,
throwing up large bodies of water to an immense height.

During the last quarter of the eighteenth and during the first half of the
nineteenth century France was the chief centre for the activities of submarine
inventors. However, very few of the many plans put forward in this period
were executed. The few exceptions resulted in little else than trial boats
which usually did not live up to the expectations of their inventors or their

financial backers and were, therefore, discarded in quick order. In spite of this
lack of actual results this particular period was of considerable importance to
the later development of the submarine. Almost every one of the many boats
then projected or built contained some innovation and in this way some of the
many obstacles were gradually overcome. Strictly speaking the net result of
the experimental work done during these seventy-five years by a score or
more of men, most of whom were French, though a few were English, was
the creation of a more sane and sound basis on which, before long, other men
began to build with greater success.

The one notable accomplishment of interest, especially to Americans, was
the submarine built in 1800-01 by Robert Fulton. Fulton, of course, is far
better known by his work in connection with the discovery and development
of steam navigation. Born in Pennsylvania in 1765, he early showed marked
mechanical genius. In 1787 he went to England with the purpose of studying
art under the famous painter West, but soon began to devote most of his time
and energy to mechanical problems. Not finding in England as much
encouragement as he had hoped, he went, in 1797, to Paris and, for the next
seven years, lived there in the house of the American Minister, Joel Barlow.

As soon as he had settled down in France, he offered his plans of a
submarine boat which he called the Nautilus to the French Government.
Though a special commission reported favourably on this boat, the opposition
of the French Minister of the Marine was too strong to be overcome, even
after another commission had approved a model built by Fulton. In 1800,
however, he was successful in gaining the moral and financial support of
Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of the French Republic.

Fulton immediately proceeded to build the Nautilus and completed the boat
in May, 1801. It was cigar-shaped, about seven feet in diameter and over
twenty-one feet in length. The hull was of copper strengthened by iron ribs.
The most noticeable features were a collapsible mast and sail and a small
conning tower at the forward end. The boat was propelled by a wheel affixed
to the centre of the stern and worked by a hand-winch. A rudder was used for
steering, and increased stability was gained by a keel which ran the whole
length of the hull.

© U. & U.
A Captured German Fokker Exhibited at the Invalides.

Soon after completion the boat was taken out for a number of trial trips all
of which were carried out with signal success and finally culminated, on June
26, 1801, in the successful blowing up of an old ship furnished by the French
Government. Although the Nautilus created a great sensation, popular as well
as official interest began soon to flag. Fulton received no further
encouragement and finally gave up his submarine experiments.

© U. & U.
A British Seaplane with Folding Wings.

In 1806 he returned to America. By 1814 he had built another submarine
boat which he called the Mute. It was, comparatively speaking, of immense
size, being over eighty feet long, twenty-one feet wide, and fourteen feet deep
and accommodating a hundred men. It was iron-plated on top and derived its
peculiar name from the fact that it was propelled by a noiseless engine.
Before its trials could be completed, Fulton died on February 24, 1815, and
no one seemed to have sufficient interest or faith in his new boat to continue
his work.

In the middle of the nineteenth century for the first time a German became
seriously interested in submarines. His name was Wilhelm Bauer. He was
born in 1822 in a small town in Bavaria and, though a turner by trade, joined
the army in 1842. Bauer was even in his youth of a highly inventive turn of
mind. He possessed an indomitable will and an unlimited supply of
enthusiasm. Step by step he acquired, in what little time he could spare from
his military duties, the necessary mechanical knowledge, and finally,
supported financially by a few loyal friends and patrons, he built his first
submarine at Kiel at a cost of about $2750. It sank to the bottom on its first

trial trip, fortunately without anyone on board. Undaunted he continued his
efforts.

When he found that his support at Kiel was weakening, he promptly went
to Austria. In spite of glowing promises, opposition on the part of some
officials deprived Bauer of the promised assistance. He went then to England
and succeeded in enlisting the interest of the Prince Consort. A boat was built
according to Bauer's plans, which, however, he was forced by the interference
of politicians to change to such an extent that it sank on its first trial with
considerable loss of life.

Still full of faith in his ability to produce a successful submarine, Bauer
now went to Russia. In 1855, he built a boat at St. Petersburg and had it
accepted by the Russian Government. It was called Le Diable Marin and
looked very much like a dolphin. Its length was fifty-two feet, its beam
twelve feet five inches, and its depth eleven feet. Its hull was of iron. A
propeller, worked by four wheels, furnished motive power. Submersion and
stability were regulated by four cylinders into which water could be pumped
at will.

The first trial of the boat was made on May 26, 1856, and was entirely
successful. In later trials as many as fourteen men at a time descended in Le
Diable Marin. It is said that Bauer made a total of 134 trips on his boat. All
but two were carried out successfully. At one time, however, the propeller
was caught in some seaweed and it was only by the quickest action that all
the water was pumped out and the bow of the boat allowed to rise out of the
water, so that the occupants managed to escape by means of the hatchway.
Like Fulton in France, Bauer now experienced in Russia a sudden decrease of
official interest. When he finally lost his boat, about four weeks later, he also
lost his courage, and in 1858 he returned to Germany where he later died in
comparative poverty.

Contemporary with Bauer's submarines and immediately following them
were a large number of other boats. Some of these were little more than
freaks. Others failed in certain respects but added new features to the sum-
total of submarine inventions. As early as 1854, M. Marié-Davy, Professor of
Chemistry at Montpellier University, suggested an electro-magnetic engine as
motive power. In 1855 a well-known engineer, J. Nasmith, suggested a

submerged motor, driven by a steam engine. None of the boats of this period
proved successful enough, however, to receive more than passing notice, and
very few, indeed, ever reached the trial stage. But before long the rapid
development of internal-combustion engines and the immense progress made
in the study of electricity was to advance the development of submarines by
leaps and bounds.

CHAPTER XII
THE COMING OF STEAM AND ELECTRICITY

In the fall of 1863, the Federal fleet was blockading the harbour of
Charleston, S. C. Included among the many ships was one of the marvels of
that period, the United States battleship Ironsides. Armour-plated and
possessing what was then considered a wonderful equipment of high calibred
guns and a remarkably trained crew, she was the terror of the Confederates.
None of their ships could hope to compete with her and the land batteries of
the Southern harbour were powerless to reach her.

© U. & U.
A British Anti-Aircraft Gun.

During the night of October 5, 1863, the officer of the watch on board the
Ironsides, Ensign Howard, suddenly observed a small object looking
somewhat like a pleasure boat, floating close to his own ship. Before Ensign
Howard's order to fire at it could be executed, the Ironsides was shaken from
bow to stern, an immense column of water was thrown up and flooded her
deck and engine room, and Ensign Howard fell, mortally wounded. The little
floating object was responsible for all this. It was a Confederate submersible
boat, only fifty feet long and nine feet in diameter, carrying a fifteen-foot
spar-torpedo. She had been named David and the Confederate authorities
hoped to do away by means of her with the Goliaths of the Federal navy.
Manned only by five men, under the command of Lieutenant W. T. Glassel,
driven by a small engine and propeller, she had managed to come up
unobserved within striking distance of the big battleship.

The attack, however, was unsuccessful. The Ironsides was undamaged. On
the other hand the plucky little David had been disabled to such an extent that
her crew had to abandon her and take to the water, allowing their boat to drift
without motive power. Four of them were later picked up. According to an
account in Barnes, Torpedoes and Torpedo Warfare, the engineer, after having
been in the water for some time, found himself near her and succeeded in
getting on board. He relighted her fires and navigated his little boat safely
back to Charleston. There she remained, making occasional unsuccessful
sallies against the Federal fleet, and when Charleston was finally occupied by
the Federal forces, she was found there.

In spite of this failure the Confederates continued their attempts to break
the blockade of their most important port by submarine devices. A new and
somewhat improved David was ordered and built at another port. News of
this somehow reached the Federal Navy Department and was immediately
communicated to Vice-Admiral Dahlgren, in command of the blockading
fleet. Despite this warning and instructions to all the officers of the fleet, the
second David succeeded in crossing Charleston bar.

This new boat was a real diving submarine boat and though frequently
called David had been christened the Hundley. It had been built in the
shipyards of McClintock & Hundley at Mobile, Alabama, and had been
brought to Charleston by rail. On her trial she proved very clumsy and
difficult to manage. For her first trip a crew of nine men volunteered. Not

having any conning tower it was necessary that one of the hatchways should
be left open while the boat travelled on the surface so that the steersman
could find his bearings. While she was on her first trip, the swell from a
passing boat engulfed her. Before the hatchway could be closed, she filled
with water. Of course, she sank like a piece of lead and her entire crew, with
the exception of the steersman, was drowned.

In spite of this mishap the Hundley was raised and again put in
commission. Lieutenant Payne who had steered her on her first fatal trip had
lost neither his courage nor faith and again assumed command of her. Soon
after she started on her second trip a sudden squall arose. Before the
hatchways could be closed, she again filled with water and sank, drowning all
of her crew with the exception of Lieutenant Payne and two of his men.

Undaunted he took her out on a third trip after she had again been raised.
Ill luck still pursued her. Off Fort Sumter she was capsized and this time four
of her crew were drowned.

The difficulties encountered in sailing the Hundley on the surface of the
water apparently made no difference when it came to finding new crews for
her. By this time, however, the powers that be had become anxious that their
submarine boat should accomplish something against an enemy, instead of
drowning only her own men and it was decided to use her on the next trip in a
submerged state. Again Lieutenant Payne was entrusted with her guidance.
Her hatches were closed, her water tanks filled, and she was off for her first
dive. Something went wrong however; either too much water had been put in
her tanks or else the steering gear refused to work. At any rate she hit the
muddy bottom with such force that her nose became deeply imbedded and
before she could work herself free her entire crew of eight was suffocated.
Lieutenant Payne himself lost his life which he had risked so valiantly and
frequently before.

Once more she was raised and once more volunteers rushed to man her. On
the fifth trip, however, the Hundley, while travelling underwater, became
entangled in the anchor chains of a boat she passed and was held fast so long
that her crew of nine were dead when she was finally disentangled and raised.

Thirty-five lives had so far been lost without any actual results having been
accomplished. In spite of this a new crew was found. Her commander,

Lieutenant Dixon, was ordered to make an attack against the Federal fleet
immediately, using, however, the boat as a submersible instead of a
submarine.

Admiral David Porter in his Naval History of the Civil War described the
attack, which was directed against the U. S. S. Housatonic, one of the newest
Federal battleships, as follows:

At about 8.45 P. M., the officer of the deck on board the unfortunate
vessel discovered something about one hundred yards away, moving
along the water. It came directly towards the ship, and within two minutes
of the time it was first sighted was alongside. The cable was slipped, the
engines backed, and all hands called to quarters. But it was too late—the
torpedo struck the Housatonic just forward of the mainmast, on the
starboard side, on a line with the magazine. The man who steered her (the
Hundley) knew where the vital spots of the steamer were and he did his
work well. When the explosion took place the ship trembled all over as if
by the shock of an earthquake, and seemed to be lifted out of the water,
and then sank stern foremost, heeling to port as she went down.

Only a part of the Housatonic's complement was saved. Of the Hundley no
trace was discovered and she was believed to have escaped. Three years later,
however, divers who had been sent down to examine the hull of the
Housatonic found the little submarine stuck in the hole made by her attack on
the larger ship and inside of her the bodies of her entire crew.

The submarines and near-submarines built in the United States during the
Civil War were remarkable rather for what they actually accomplished than
for what they contributed towards the development of submarine boats.
Perhaps the greatest service which they rendered in the latter direction was
that they proved to the satisfaction of many scientific men that submarine
boats really held vast possibilities as instruments of naval warfare.

France still retained its lead in furnishing new submarine projects. One of
these put forward in 1861 by Olivier Riou deserves mention because it
provided for two boats, one driven by steam and one by electricity. Both of
these submarines were built, but inasmuch as nothing is known of the result
of their trials, it is safe to conclude that neither of them proved of any
practical value.

Two years later, in 1863, two other Frenchmen, Captain Bourgeois and M.
Brun, built at Rochefort a submarine 146 feet long and 12 feet in diameter
which they called the Plongeur. They fitted it with a compressed-air engine
of eighty horse-power. Extensive trials were made with this boat but resulted
only in the discovery that, though it was possible to sink or rise with a boat of
this type without great difficulty, it was impossible to keep her at an even keel
for any length of time.

During the next few years, undoubtedly as a result of the submarine
activities during the Civil War, a number of projects were put forward in the
United States, none of which, however, turned out successfully. One of them,
for which a man by the name of Halstead was responsible, was a submarine
built for the United States Navy in 1865. It was not tried out until 1872 and it
was not even successful in living up to its wonderful name, The Intelligent
Whale. Its first trial almost resulted in loss of life and was never repeated. In
spite of this, however, the boat was preserved and may still be seen at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard.

In the meantime, an invention had been made by an Austrian artillery
officer which before long was to exert a powerful influence on submarine
development, though it was in no sense a submarine boat. The manner in
which the submarines had attacked their opponents during the Civil War
suggested to him the need of improvements in this direction. As a result he
conceived a small launch which was to carry the explosive without any
navigators. Before he could carry his plans very far he died. A brother officer
in the navy continued his work and finally interested the manager of an
English engineering firm located at Fiume, Mr. Whitehead. The result of the
collaboration of these two men was the Whitehead torpedo. A series of
experiments led to the construction of what was first called a "Submarine
Locomotive" torpedo, which not only contained a sufficient quantity of
explosives to destroy large boats, but was also enabled by mechanical means
to propel itself and keep on its course after having been fired. The Austrian
Government was the first one to adopt this new weapon. Whitehead,
however, refused to grant a monopoly to the Austrians and in 1870 he sold his
manufacturing rights and secret processes to the British Government for a
consideration of $45,000.

Before very long, special boats were built for the purpose of carrying and
firing these torpedoes and gradually every great power developed a separate
torpedo flotilla. Hand in hand with this development a large number of
improvements were made on the original torpedo and some of these devices
proved of great usefulness in the development of submarine boats.

The public interest in submarines grew rapidly at this time. Every man who
was a boy in 1873, or who had the spirit of boyhood in him then,—or perhaps
now,—will remember the extraordinary piece of literary and imaginative
prophecy achieved by Jules Verne in his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under the Sea. Little about the Nautilus that held all readers entranced
throughout his story is lacking in the submarines of to-day except indeed its
extreme comfort, even luxury. With those qualities our submarine navigators
have to dispense. But the electric light, as we know it, was unknown in
Verne's time yet he installed it in the boat of his fancy. Our modern internal-
combustion engines were barely dreamed of, yet they drove his boat. His
fancy even enabled him to foresee one of the most amazing features of the
Lake boat of to-day, namely the compressed air chamber which opened to the
sea still holds the water back, and enables the submarine navigator clad in a
diver's suit to step into the wall of water and prosecute his labors on the bed
of the ocean. Jules Verne even foresaw the callous and inhuman character of
the men who command the German submarines to-day. His Captain Nemo
had taken a vow of hate against the world and relentlessly drove the prow of
his steel boat into the hulls of crowded passenger ships, finding his greatest
joy in sinking slowly beside them with the bright glare of his submarine
electric lights turned full upon the hapless women and children over whose
sufferings he gloated as they sank. The man who sank the Lusitania could do
no more.

More and more determined became the attempts to build submarine boats
that could sink and rise easily, navigate safely and quickly, and sustain human
beings under the surface of the water for a considerable length of time.
Steam, compressed air, and electricity were called upon to do their share in
accomplishing this desired result. Engineers in every part of the world began
to interest themselves in the submarine problem and as a result submarine
boats in numbers were either projected or built between 1875 and 1900.

One of the most persistent workers in this period was a well-known
Swedish inventor, Nordenfeldt, who had established for himself a reputation
by inventing a gun which even to-day has lost nothing of its fame. In 1881 he
became interested in the work which had been done by an English clergyman
named Garret. The latter had built a submarine boat which he called the
Resurgam (I shall rise)—thus neatly combining a sacred promise with a
profane purpose. In 1879 another boat was built by him driven by a steam
engine. Nordenfeldt used the fundamental ideas upon which these two boats
were based, added to them some improvements of his own as well as some
devices which had been used by Bushnell, and finally launched in 1886 his
first submarine boat. The government of Greece bought it after some
successful trials. Not to be outdone, Greece's old rival, Turkey, immediately
ordered two boats for her own navy. Both of these were much larger than the
Greek boat and by 1887 they had reached Constantinople in sections where
they were to be put together. Only one of them, however, was ever
completed. Characteristic Turkish delay intervened. The most typical feature
of this boat was the fact that it carried a torpedo tube for Whitehead
torpedoes. On the surface of the water this boat proved very efficient, but as
an underwater boat it was a dismal failure. More than in any other craft that
had ever been built and accepted, the lack of stability was a cause of trouble
in the Nordenfeldt II. As soon as any member of the crew moved from one
part of the boat to another, she would dip in the direction in which he was
moving, and everybody, who could not in time take hold of some part of the
boat, came sliding and rolling in the same direction. When finally such a
tangle was straightened out, only a few minutes elapsed before somebody
else, moving a few steps, would bring about the same deplorable state of
affairs. The Nordenfeldt II. acted more like a bucking bronco than a self-
respecting submarine boat and as a result it became impossible to find a crew
willing to risk their lives in manning her. Before very long she had rusted and
rotted to pieces. In spite of this lack of success, Nordenfeldt built a fourth
boat which displayed almost as many unfortunate features as her predecessors
and soon was discarded and forgotten.

Photo by Bain News Service.
An Anti-Aircraft Outpost.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century the French Government, which
for so many years had shown a strong and continuous interest in the
submarine problem, was particularly active. Three different types of boats
built in this period under the auspices and with the assistance of the French
Government deserve particular attention. The first of these was the Gymnote,
planned originally by a well-known French engineer, Dupuy de Lome, whose
alert mind also planned an airship and made him a figure in the history of our
Panama Canal. He died, however, before his project could be executed. M.
Gustave Zédé, a marine engineer and his friend, continued his work after
modifying some of his plans. The French Minister of Marine of this period,
Admiral Aube who had long been strongly interested in submarines,
immediately accepted M. Zédé's design and ordered the boat to be built. As
the earliest of successful submarines she merits description:

© U. & U.
A Coast Defense Anti-Aircraft Gun.

The Gymnote was built of steel in the shape of a cigar. She was 59 feet
long, 5 feet 9 inches beam, and 6 feet in diameter, just deep enough to allow a
man to stand upright in the interior. The motive power was originally an
electro-motor of 55 horse-power, driven from 564 accumulators. It was of
extraordinary lightness, weighing only 4410 pounds, and drove the screw at
the rate of two thousand revolutions a minute, giving a speed of six knots an
hour, its radius of action at this speed being thirty-five miles.

Immersion was accomplished by the introduction of water into three
reservoirs, placed one forward, one aft, and one centre. The water was
expelled either by means of compressed air or by a rotary pump worked by an
electro-motor. Two horizontal rudders steered the boat in the vertical plane
and an ordinary rudder steered in the horizontal.

The Gymnote had her first trial on September 4, 1888, and the Paris Temps
described the result in the following enthusiastic language:

She steered like a fish both as regards direction and depth; she
mastered the desired depth with ease and exactness; at full power she
attained the anticipated speed of from nine to ten knots; the lighting was
excellent, there was no difficulty about heating. It was a strange sight to
see the vessel skimming along the top of the water, suddenly give a
downward plunge with its snout, and disappear with a shark-like wriggle
of its stern, only to come up again at a distance out and in an unlooked-
for direction. A few small matters connected with the accumulators had to
be seen to, but they did not take a month.

Following along the same lines as this boat another boat, considerably
larger, was built. Before it was completed, M. Zédé died and it was decided to
name the new boat in his honour. The Gustave Zédé was launched at Toulon
on June 1, 1893; she was 159 feet in length, beam 12 feet 4 inches, and had a
total displacement of 266 tons. Her shell was of "Roma" bronze, a non-
magnetic metal, and one that could not be attacked by sea water.

The motive power was furnished by two independent electro-motors of 360
horse-power each and fed by accumulators. In order to endow the boat with a
wide radius of action a storage battery was provided.

The successive crews of the Gustave Zédé suffered much from the
poisonous fumes of the accumulators, and during the earlier trials all the men
on board were ill.

In the bows was a torpedo tube, and an arrangement was used whereby the
water that entered the tube after the discharge of the torpedo was forced out
by compressed air. Three Whitehead torpedoes were carried. In spite of the
fact that a horizontal rudder placed at the stern had not proved serviceable on
the Gymnote, such a rudder was fitted in the Gustave Zédé. With this rudder
she usually plunged at an angle of about 5°, but on several occasions she
behaved in a very erratic fashion, seesawing up and down, and once when the
Committee of Experts were on board, she proved so capricious, going down
at an angle of 30°-35°, often throwing the poor gentlemen on to the floor, that
it was decided to fix a system of six rudders, three on each side.

Four water tanks were carried, one at each end and two in the middle, and
the water was expelled by four pumps worked by a little electro-motor; these
pumps also furnished the air necessary for the crew and for the discharge of

the torpedoes. For underwater vision, an optical tube and a periscope had
been provided.

On July 5, 1899, still another submarine boat was launched for the French
Navy. She was called the Morse. She was 118 feet long, 9 feet beam,
displaced 146 tons, and was likewise made of "Roma" bronze. The motive
power was electricity and in many other respects she was very similar to the
Gustave Zédé, embodying, however, a number of improvements. M.
Calmette, who accompanied the French Minister of War on the trial trip of the
Morse, described his experience in the Paris Figaro as follows:

General André, Dr. Vincent, a naval doctor, and I entered the
submarine boat Morse through the narrow opening in the upper surface of
the boat. Our excursion was to begin immediately; in two hours we came
to the surface of the water again three miles to the north to rejoin the
Narval. Turning to the crew, every man of which was at his post, the
commandant gave his orders, dwelling with emphasis on each word. A
sailor repeated his orders one by one, and all was silent. The Morse had
already started on its mysterious voyage, but was skimming along the
surface until outside the port in order to avoid the numerous craft in the
Arsenal. To say that at this moment, which I had so keenly anticipated, I
did not have the tremor which comes from contact with the unknown
would be beside the truth. On the other hand, calm and imperturbable, but
keenly curious as to this novel form of navigation, General André had
already taken his place near the commandant on a folding seat. There
were no chairs in this long tube in which we were imprisoned. Everything
was arranged for the crew alone, with an eye to serious action. Moreover,
the Minister of War was too tall to stand upright beneath the iron ceiling,
and in any case it would be impossible to walk about.

The only free space was a narrow passage, sixty centimetres broad, less
than two metres high, and thirty metres long, divided into three equal
sections. In the first, in the forefront of the tube, reposed the torpedoes,
with the machine for launching them, which at a distance of from 500 to
600 metres were bound to sink, with the present secret processes, the
largest of ironclads. In the second section were the electric accumulators
which gave the light and power. In the third, near the screw, was the
electric motor which transformed into movement the current of the

accumulators. Under all this, beneath the floor, from end to end, were
immense water ballasts, which were capable of being emptied or filled in
a few seconds by electric machines, in order to carry the vessel up or
down. Finally, in the centre of the tube, dominating these three sections,
which the electric light inundated, and which no partition divided, the
navigating lieutenant stood on the lookout giving his orders.

There was but one thing which could destroy in a second all the
sources of authority, initiative, and responsibility in this officer. That was
the failure of the accumulators. Were the electricity to fail everything
would come to a stop. Darkness would overtake the boat and imprison it
for ever in the water. To avoid any such disaster there have been arranged,
it is true, outside the tube and low down, a series of lead blades which
were capable of being removed from within to lighten the vessel. But
admitting that the plunger would return to the surface, the boat would
float hither and thither, and at all events lose all its properties as a
submarine vessel. To avoid any such disaster a combination of motors
have been in course of construction for some months, so that the
accumulators might be loaded afresh on the spot, in case of their being
used up.

The Morse, after skimming along the surface of the water until outside
the port, was now about to sink. The commandant's place was no longer
in the helmet or kiosque whence he could direct the route along the
surface of the sea. His place was henceforth in the very centre of the tube,
in the midst of all sort of electric manipulators, his eyes continually fixed
on a mysterious optical apparatus, the periscope. The other extremity of
this instrument floated on the surface of the water, and whatever the depth
of the plunge it gave him a perfectly faithful and clear representation, as
in a camera, of everything occurring on the water.

The most interesting moment of all now came. I hastened to the little
opening to get the impression of total immersion. The lieutenant by the
marine chart verified the depths. The casks of water were filled and our
supply of air was thereby renewed from their stores of surplus air. In our
tiny observatory, where General André stationed himself above me, a
most unexpected spectacle presented itself as the boat was immersed.