Opportunities in Aviation Part 5

An approaching cyclone, which would have made it almost impossible to handle the airship at Mineola, was responsible for a rather hurried start back at midnight of Wednesday, July 9th. She visited Broadway in the midst of the midnight glare, turned over Forty-second Street a little after one o'clock in the morning, and put out to sea and her home airdrome. The voyage back was mostly with favoring winds, and she landed at Pulham, the airship station in Norfolk, after 75 hours and 3 minutes of flight. The voyage back was practically without incident except for the failure of one engine, which in no way held back the airship. She was turned off her course to East Fortune by reports that there were storms and head winds which might hold her back in case she kept on her way.

The voyage was probably the most significant in the history of flying. It brought home to the public the possibilities of the airship for ocean commerce as nothing else could have done. The ship remained in the air longer than any previous airship, and pointed the way clear to commercial flying. It is, in fact, only considered a matter of time before companies are started to carry pa.s.sengers and mails across the Atlantic at a price that would offer serious compet.i.tion to the fastest steamships.

The airship has been very much neglected by popular favor. Its physical clumsiness, its lack of sporting compet.i.tion in comparison with the airplane which must fight to keep itself up in the air, its lack of romance as contrasted with that of the airplane in war, have all tended to cast somewhat of a shadow over the lighter-than-air vessel and cause the public to pa.s.s it by without interest. It is a very real fact, therefore, that very few people realize either the services of the airship in the war or its possibilities for the future.

During the war the airship was invaluable in the ceaseless vigil for the submarine. England early stretched a cordon of airship guards all about her coasts and crippled the U-boats' work thereby. The airship had a greater range of vision and a better downward view than any sea-vessel; it could travel more slowly, watch more closely, stay out much longer, than any other vessel of the air. The British credit their airships with several successful attacks on submarines, but they give them a far greater place in causing a fear among the under-sea boats which drove them beneath the surface and greatly limited their efficiency.

The German Zeppelins, on the other hand, stand out in public imagination as a failure in the war, especially because the British shortly established an airplane barrage which proved to be their masters. This view is correct only in so far as it applies to interior raiding, for which, indeed, the Zeppelin was not designed. How untrue it is of the Zeppelin as the outpost for the German fleet British officers will readily admit. Indeed, they credit them with the escape of the German fleet at Jutland, one of the deepest regrets in British naval history. As eyes for the German fleet in the North Sea, the Zeppelins, with their great cruising range and power of endurance, proved almost invaluable.

Airships have, then, behind them a rich heritage and before them a bright future. Much work that the airplane can do they cannot do; while, on the other hand, much work that they can do the airplane cannot. The two services are essentially different and yet essentially complementary. Between them they offer nearly every facility and method of travel in the air which could be desired. Each must be equally developed in order to increase the efficiency and the value of the other.

The great difference, of course, between the airplane and the airship is that the former sustains itself as a heavier-than-air vessel by the lifting power of the air in relation to a body driven hard against it by its powerful engines, while the latter sustains itself as a lighter-than-air body because of the large amount of air displaced by a huge envelop loaded with gas much lighter than the air itself. The contrast is obvious; one vessel is small, agile, and very fast; the other is slow and clumsy. The airship cannot attain anything like the speed of the airplane, nor can it go so high or maneuver so quickly, but on the other hand, at least for the immediate present, it can stay afloat very much longer and carry much greater weight.

Moreover, the airship has certain other easily perceptible advantages over the airplane. Ordinarily an airship need not fly at much more than a thousand feet, which not only makes far less cold traveling than at higher alt.i.tudes, but also allows the pa.s.sengers to enjoy the view far better than from an airplane, whence the world below looks like a dull contour map. An airship also flies on an even keel; it does not bank as an airplane does nor does it climb or descend so quickly.

At present airship travel gives a greater feeling of comfort and security. Sleeping is a calm experience; moving about comparatively simple. Also there is less noise than in an airplane where the engines beat incessantly and the wind rushes through the wires and struts. An airship has no wires and can at the same time slow down and even shut off its engine, so that it need be no more noisy than a motor-car.

Engine failure also is not so serious as in an airplane, for the gas-bag will always keep the ship up until there has been a chance for repairs.

Up to the present, too, the airship is less of a fair-weather flier than the airplane. A surprising record has been attained in the war by British airships, as is shown by the fact that in 1918, a year of execrable weather, there where only nine days during which their vessels were not up. This is, of course, in considerable contrast to airplanes as at present developed, but it may reasonably be expected that the latter will very soon develop to the same point of independence of the weather.

Of course, the great difficulty of airships has been their ungainly size and the difficulty of housing them. The sheds, particularly those for the Zeppelins, have been most costly, but the British have recently developed a system of mooring masts which make much of this expense unnecessary. If such a device can be successfully put into every-day use it will enormously increase the ease of loading and unloading pa.s.sengers, which now makes for considerable discomfort and loss of time.

Some of the plans for future airships are unbelievable to one who has not followed their development carefully. Already there is planned in England a monster ship known as the "ten million," for the reason that it will have a gas capacity of ten million cubic feet, over four times that of the largest Zeppelin. The length is placed at 1,100 feet, the speed at 95 miles an hour, the cruising range 20,000 miles, and the cost at about $1,000,000. As a matter of actual practice, however, the best division of the s.p.a.ce and lifting power of this airship would be for it to carry a crew of about 20, a useful load of 200 pa.s.sengers or 150 tons of merchandise, and 50 tons of petrol, which would give it a non-stop run of about 5,000 miles.

Airship travel would undoubtedly be expensive. The gas alone to maintain such a vessel as described is expected to cost about $30 an hour, which, added to the original investment for the ship and its house and the wages of the crew and the 200 or more skilled men at each station, would come up to a high figure. At the same time, the airship would not afford the element of very high speed which is so certain to justify any expense which may have to be put into the airplane. Nevertheless, with the improvements that are sure to come, with the ability to reach places not touched by other methods of travel, the freedom from all the delays, inconveniences, and expense of trans-shipment, this preliminary charge will be largely compensated for.

Those who sponsor the airship urge that it will be used almost exclusively for long-distance flights beyond the range of the ordinary airplane and very little for short local flights. For transatlantic travel, for instance, it is being particularly pressed, as ships even of to-day have all the capacity for such a voyage, without the dangers which might surround an airplane if its sustaining engine power were to give out.

There are several records which would easily justify it. Besides the flight across the Atlantic by the R-34 and the four-day trip of the German airship from Bulgaria to Africa and back, a British airship during the war stayed up for 50 hours and 55 minutes, and another, just after the armistice, stayed up for 61 hours. An American naval dirigible a short time after the armistice made a flight from New York to Key West, 1,200 miles, at 40 miles an hour, for 29-1/2 hours, with one stop at Hampton Roads. As an example of some of the difficulties of airship travel, this landing was possible only after the ship had circled the town and dropped a message asking the people to go to a large field near by and catch the dirigible drag-net when it approached the ground. Even at that, however, the time of less than a day and a quarter for what is usually a very arduous train trip from New York down the coast to Florida gives some indication of the possibilities of this method of travel when properly developed.

Practically all the new airships contemplated look to a much greater speed than the pre-war speed of about 40 miles an hour. It is not at all uncertain that they will not run up as high as 100 miles, though at the present time that figure is extreme. But granted that they no more than double the pre-war speed and reach the actual figure contemplated of about 75 miles an hour, they still would triple the best pa.s.senger-steamer speed, which would make them a matter of the utmost importance in all long ocean voyages.

Just how the balance will be struck between airplanes and airships is a big question. It is interesting to note, however, that the supporters of the airship have worked out a general theory that the lighter-than-air vessel with its already demonstrated cruising and weight-carrying capacity will be used for all long routes, and for that almost exclusively, while the heavier-than-air vessel, with its great speed and facility for maneuvering, will be used for local flights. This, in their viewpoint, would mean that the world would be girded by great lanes of airships, fed from a few main centers by swift-scurrying airplanes radiating in from every direction.

IX

THE CALL OF THE SKIES

The day of the air has undoubtedly come. The old order of the world has been entirely changed. A new life is breaking in over the near horizon. Almost in a moment the span of the world has shrunk to a quarter of its former size, so that where before we thought in terms of countries very soon we must think in terms of continents. The world is shortly to be linked up as it never has been before, till the great continents are brought as near as were the near-by nations of the past years.

Any one who doubts the future of aviation should realize the helplessness of the science after the armistice because of the complete lack of international laws to make possible its application in Europe, where it was most highly developed. With men and machines ready, they had to hold to the ground largely because there was in force no treaties a.s.suring them the right to cross frontiers. The broad plans for international routes were held up because aviation itself was so big in its expanse that it could not meet its just fulfilment within national lines.

As a result a new law must be written. The law of the air will be one of the most intricate and the most fascinating in the world. It presents problems never before presented and covers a scope paralleled only by the laws of the sea. Very fortunately, however, aerial international law may be written at the very start of the science by a common international standard and practice, thus obviating the greatest part of the divergences which long years of habit have grafted into the maritime laws of the various nations. The slate is clean so that uniformity may be a.s.sured in a law which is soon to come into the most vital touch with the daily lives of the nations.

Who, for instance, owns the air above the various nations? Obviously the individual landowner has rights, especially as to freedom from damage. The nation also has rights, especially for its protection and for police work. How high, however, does this jurisdiction go? Some a.s.sert that a maximum alt.i.tude should be set, say five thousand feet, above which the air would be as free as the seas; others that each nation must have unqualified control to the limit of the ether.

Then comes the question of pa.s.sports, customs, registration, safety precautions, and damages. As already shown, the man on the ground is helpless against the airplane which chooses to defy him. People and goods can cross national lines by the air without pa.s.sports or customs. There will be no main ports of entry as in sea or train commerce, and it is too much to think that any nation can patrol its whole aerial frontier in all its various air strata. Undesirable immigrants or small precious freight can be smuggled in with the greatest ease through the route of the air.

Obviously the most elaborate international rules are necessary. Planes must have some method of international registration and license, just as in a more limited sense ships on the seas have what amounts to an international status. Landing-fields must be established and open to foreign planes, each nation providing some kind of reciprocal landing rights to other nations. Arrangements must be made so that if a monkey-wrench drops out of a plane a mile or two up in the air proper damages can be collected. For such things there is to-day but little precedent in law.

This but sketches the problems. It shows, however, how closely this new science will bind the world together and obliterate national lines and nationalistic feelings. As the sea has been the great civilizer of the past, so the air will be the great civilizer of the future.

Through it men will be brought most intimately in touch with one another and forced to learn to live together as they have not been forced to live together before. The artificial barriers that have stood so firm between nations in the past are now swept away and a great common medium of intercommunication opened.

Let it not be understood that all this will take place overnight. Far from it, for the experience of the war has taught only too well that the organization of an air force takes time and patience. Up to date the essential fact is that the science, the value, and the possibilities of flight have been proved in a thousand different ways.

Vistas of travel and experience have been opened up which but a few months ago would have seemed fanciful. Everywhere men are dreaming dreams of the future which challenge one's deepest imagination.

Already Cap.r.o.ni, the great Italian inventor, has signed a contract to carry mails from Genoa to Rio Janeiro.

Now comes news of an airplane with room for ninety-two pa.s.sengers.

Engine power and wing s.p.a.ce have gone on increasing in a dazzling way till one is almost afraid to guess what the future may hold. But, omitting all prophecy, the actual accomplishments to date are so stupendous that there is no need to speculate as to the future. If all technical development were to stop just where it stands, the factories and workshops of the world could well be occupied for years in turning out the machines necessary for the work awaiting them. Scientific development has gone so infinitely far ahead of actual production that as yet aviation is not being put to a fraction of its use.

Even more serious, however, is the general public failure to realize the gift which is within their reach. Flying was first a circus stunt and later a war wonder. The solid practical accomplishments have been lost sight of in the weird or the spectacular. People who marveled when a British plane climbed up nearly six miles into the air, or 30,000 feet, where its engine refused to run and its observer fainted, failed generally to a.n.a.lyze what the invasion of this new element would mean in the future of mankind.

What is now needed is a big, broad imagination to seize hold of this new thing and galvanize it into actual every-day use. There are many skeptics, of course, many who point out, for instance, that the element of cost is prohibitive. This is both fallacious in reasoning and untrue in fact. A modern two-seated airplane, even to-day, costs not over $5,000, or about the price of a good automobile. Very soon, with manufacturing costs standardized and the elements of newness worn off, this price will fall as sharply as it has already fallen during the war.

But what, after all, is cost in comparison with time? Modern civilization will pay dearly for any invention which will increase ever so little its hours of effectiveness. The great German liners before the war lavished money without stint to save a day or two in crossing the Atlantic. The limited express trains between New York, Boston, Washington, and Chicago have for years made money by carrying busy men a few hours more quickly to their destination. What will not be paid if these times of travel can be reduced practically to half?

The element of danger has been reduced to a minimum and will be still more reduced as emphasis is laid on safety rather than wartime agility. Many men, of course, will meet their death in the air, just as in the early days many men met their death in ships and in railroad trains, but this will not be a deterrent if the goal is worth attaining. There will be accidents in learning to fly, there will be accidents of foolhardiness and of collision or in landing, but they will decrease to the vanishing-point as experience grows. Already the air routes which have been established have a high record of success and freedom from fatalities.

The great need of aviation to-day is faith--faith among the people, among the manufacturers, among the men who will give it its being. Its success is as inevitable as that day follows night, but the question of when that success is attained, now or generations from now, is dependent on the vision which men put into it. If they are apathetic and unreasonable, if they chafe at details or expect too much, it will be held back. If, on the other hand, they go to meet it with confidence, with coolness, and with a realization both of its difficulties and its potentialities, its success will be immediate.

The task is one of the greatest, the most vital, and the most promising which mankind has ever faced. With the general theories proved and demonstrated, the great crisis of invention has pa.s.sed, and the slow, unspectacular process of development and application has set in. Now has come the time for serious, sober thought, for careful, a.n.a.lytical planning, for vision combined with hopefulness. It is well in these early days, when flight is with the general public a very special and occasional event, to remember what has happened since Watt developed the steam-engine only a few generations ago, when Columbus set the first ship westward, or when America's first train ran over its rough tracks near the Quincy quarries.

The development of aviation will be world-wide and will include all sorts and races of men. The nations all start pretty much abreast.

Those which developed war air services have an advantage in material and experience, but this is a matter only for the moment. The main lines of progress are now pretty widely known and the field is wide open to those who have the imagination to enter it. There is practically no handicap at this early stage which cannot be overcome with ease.

There is, of course, an element of individual gamble to those who enter this compet.i.tion. Undoubtedly there will be many failures, as in all new fields; failures come to those who put in capital as well as those who contribute their scientific knowledge. But by the same token there will be great successes both financially and scientifically. The prize that is being striven for is one of the richest that have ever been offered and the rewards will be in accordance. This has been the case at the birth of every great development in human progress and will undoubtedly be the case with the science of flight. Until a field becomes standardized it offers extremes on both sides rather than a dull, dreary, but safe average.

As aviation runs into every phase of activity it will require every kind of man--manufacturer, scientist, mechanic, and flier. It offers problems more interesting and more complex than almost any others in the world. The field is new and virgin, the demand world-wide, and the rewards great. For the flier there is all the joy of life in the air, above the chains of the earth, reaching out to new, unvisited regions, free to come and go for almost any distance at any level desired, a freedom unparalleled. For the manufacturer there is all the lure of a new product destined in a short time to be used as freely as the automobile of to-day; for the scientist there are problems of balance, meteorology, air pressure, engine power, wing spread, alt.i.tude effects, and the like in a bewildering variety; for the explorer, the geographer, the map-maker a wholly new field is laid open.

The best men of every type are needed to give aviation its full fruition. In Europe this is realized to a supreme degree. England especially, and also France and Italy, have put their best genius at work to fulfil the conquest of the air. Their progress is astonishing and should be a challenge to the New World. After the natural hiatus which followed the armistice the leading men have set to work with redoubled vigor to take first place in the air.

In twenty years' time our life of to-day will seem centuries old, just as to-day it is hard to realize that the automobile and motor-truck do not date back much over a generation. No change that has ever come in man's history will be so great as the change which takes him up off the ground and into the air. This swift and dazzling era that is so close upon us is hardly suspected by the great ma.s.s of people. The world will be both new and better for it. Less than the train or the motor-car will the airplane disturb its features. On the blue above white wings will glitter for a moment, a murmuring as of bees will be heard, and the traveler will be gone, the world unstained and pure.

Meanwhile high in the clouds, perhaps lost to view of the earth, men will be speeding on at an unparalleled rate, guiding their course by the wireless which alone gives them connection with the world below.

Has there ever in all history been an appeal such as this?

ADDENDUM

A PAGE IN THE DICTIONARY FOR AVIATORS