Читать книгу The Way of the Air: A Description of Modern Aviation - Edgar Charles Middleton - Страница 4

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The Air Service is young, very young; it is like an overgrown schoolboy, strong, healthy and full of life, but lacking just that sense of proportion that distinguishes the schoolboy from the man. It is wise, for it is endowed with the wisdom of initiative, courage and resource. Turned loose into an entirely novel and little understood element, it has had to create its own methods of procedure, its own ideals, its own traditions. Reference to the policies and the formulas of past generations are impossible, for there are none!

The main principles of aerial warfare are entirely new; in every combat, and in every raid, some precedent is established, some new form or theory of attack is set up. To the airman every day is alike. In times of peace he risks his neck as much as he does in time of war, save that engaged in the latter he has the additional unpleasantness of shell fire. He willingly gives all, but asks for nothing. He is the knight-errant of the twentieth century.

In days of the past, it was the cavalryman, wounded and galloping across country, with a hundred foemen hard at his heels, who first brought news of the enemy to the general in command. His was a pleasant occupation, that smacked largely of daring and romance. He stood an excellent chance of getting a bullet through his lungs, or of being clapped into an enemy prison. To-day there comes flying across the heavens a resolute young hero, in a few feet of wood and fabric, throwing defiance to shot and shell alike, suspended thousands of feet up between heaven and earth, peering from that swaying aeroplane at the panorama of the earth beneath.

This is the age of science and invention. War on and over the earth, on and under the sea. For many years we have steadily been putting behind us the barbarities of our forbears, we have become more civilized, and, though more civilized, more barbarous. This is no paradox; science has made great and wonderful strides, but science has been more devilishly ingenious than any torture of Spanish Inquisition days.

The airmen who pilot their frail craft over hill and valley, sea and land, across cloud and through fog and mist, are the privateers of modern times; but for them there can be no capture, no quarter: only victory or a thousand feet drop to the cruel earth below. Through their young veins must flow the blood of a Drake, of a Philip Sidney, of a Nelson. Theirs must be the courage of a conqueror, the heart of a lion, the nerve of a colossus.

No bounded ocean is their sea, but the infinity of space. The ship’s compass is their best friend; for they maneuver their craft like a ship at sea. Wind and weather affect them as they would a mariner. For rock, shoal, sandbank and channel there are the high hills, the tall factory stack, the church steeple, and the deep valley. Landmarks there are, but always below, not on either side. Railways, roads, rivers, fields, woods and hills form the color scheme of the surface of the earth, by which the air pilot steers a course.

This, the youngest and most important Service, is essentially one for the young man and of the young man: a Service the future of which is being steadily built up by the “muddied oafs and flanneled fools” of the playing-fields of the public schools of Great Britain.

Immediately after leaving school is the most perplexing period in a boy’s life. Not only for the boy himself, but for his parents, for then has to be considered his future career. What is the boy capable of? What are his own personal wishes? What profession is he best adapted for physically? It is indeed a momentous question.

It is worse than useless for the boy fond of good, wholesome, out-of-door exercises and games to be put into an office or to study for the Bar, or to mope his young life away pen-driving. And, on the other hand, it is a positive torture for the youth with distinct literary taste, or love of things scholastic, to take up a Commission in one of the Services, or to go in for farming or a similar profession.

Taking everything into consideration, at least eighty per cent. of boys may be grouped into the former class—that is to say, they wish to adopt a healthy, open-air profession; and for this type of youth nothing can be better, and nothing can offer greater inducements, than the profession of the airman. It is a calling that appeals irresistibly to a boy’s heart.

The best possible training for the pilot of the air are outdoor sports and games. Football, which teaches the boy to keep his head in all emergencies, to keep his feelings always well under control, and to learn to obey implicitly the discipline of the referee’s whistle will prove invaluable to him when learning to fly, when he will be subject to every kind and manner of unexpected and sudden mishap and accident.

Cricket will teach him patience, judgment—so invaluable when landing an aeroplane (which, incidentally, is by far the most difficult feat to accomplish in flying)—and a steady eye.

Swimming and running will develop those muscles of the back and thigh which are used extensively in the pilotage of the aeroplanes.

Again, the sensation of a horse jumping a hedge is exactly similar to that of an aeroplane just getting off from the ground. With ski-ing, on the other hand, there is the feeling—and, in fact, the action—of plunging desperately into what, at the first attempt, appears to be an interminable and awful space. This is exactly the feeling experienced by the novice in his first trip up aloft. There is a strong similarity to ski-ing at the moment that the nose of the machine is suddenly put down, and she commences to sink rapidly towards the earth.

The next matter to be taken into consideration is that of physical peculiarities. The would-be pilot must be neither too tall nor too short. This is essentially a matter to do with the steering of the aeroplane. If he is too tall, he will find himself very cramped in the confined space between the pilot-seat and the rudder-bar. If he is too short he will discover that his legs will not be long enough to reach that all-important adjunct.

Again with regard to weight, for preference he should be on the light side. There is not very much room in an aeroplane, and, for reasons with which we will deal, the machine is only capable of lifting up to a certain weight.

Take into consideration that an aeroplane is often required to take up two passengers, not to mention bombs, grenades, spare petrol and a machine-gun; every extra pound of weight is of the utmost importance.

His stomach must be strong, for with a weak stomach he will be liable to air-sickness.

Further, he must be possessed of good health. He must not suffer from heart trouble. It has been proved by several very eminent doctors that the rise and the descent through the various altitudes of the atmosphere effect the heart greatly.

Again, he must have good eyesight. This is imperative, for the best part of his work will take place at an altitude of ten thousand feet above the earth. The best age for an air pilot is between nineteen and twenty-four.

The life of a pilot—that is to say, his flying life—varies from three to five years; I may say eighteen months under war conditions. Never more. The great strain on the nerves, although not felt at the time, begins to make itself apparent after two years of flying; then the pilot discovers that he is no longer so keen on going up as he was, that he gets “cold feet” more frequently than he was wont to do in the early days, that he has no longer the nerve to do the little tricks, upon the performance of which he formerly prided himself.

A good air-pilot must be born so, he cannot be made. After years of experience a man may become expert in trick flying, landing, getting off, etc.; but, however long and however diligently he may strive, he can never become the equal of the natural pilot.

Before applying for a Commission in either Service the aspirant to flying honors must first decide which of the two branches he wishes to take up. The two branches, by the way, are pilotage and observation. The difference between the two I will here briefly endeavor to explain.

The pilot is concerned with the flying of the machine, the care of the engine, spare parts, etc., and is responsible for the general condition of the craft; also to see that it is properly tested before each flight.

On the other hand, the observer has a great many subjects to learn. He must be at one and the same time wireless expert, gunner, rifle-shot, artist, photographer and map-maker. He must know something about heavy artillery.

The observer in the Royal Flying Corps is given equal rank to the pilot, but can only wear a half-wing on his tunic where the pilot has full wings.

In the Royal Naval Air Service observers are permitted to wear the bird on their sleeve immediately on joining. However, they are of different rank from the pilot, being either lieutenants or sub-lieutenants, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.