Читать книгу The Way of the Air: A Description of Modern Aviation - Edgar Charles Middleton - Страница 5

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The appointment to a commission in one of the flying services can be either temporary or permanent. The former holds good until the end of the war, the latter for as long as the would-be airman wishes to retain it. For a period of from four to six months he must undergo a probationary course; if after that time he has served satisfactorily he will be confirmed in his rank.

Upon first joining up he will receive a uniform allowance of £20, and at the confirmation a further £20. These amounts should easily cover his requirements and enable him to buy a complete flying outfit. During the probationary period he will receive 14s. a day in pay; when he is confirmed in rank, 18s. a day in the Royal Naval Air Service, and 20s. per day in the Royal Flying Corps.

Service etiquette plays a prominent part in the matter of uniform. In the military wing he will be expected to wear the button-over tunic and forage cap of the Flying Corps, with breeches and long brown field-boots.

In the R.N.A.S. the matter of dress is a more difficult and more delicate one. In the first place, with regard to the cap, there are four entirely separate badges in the Naval Service: they are (1) the big silver anchor and the gold crown of the regular Navy; (2) the smaller replica of the Royal Naval Reserve; and of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, to which latter branch the aeroplane observer always belongs; and lastly the silver bird of the R.N.A.S., worn only by pilots.

In hosiery the naval flying man must confine his taste to plain white shirts with collars to match; black ties, and socks of the plain black variety. His shoes must be unadorned of toecap, and it is a cardinal sin to leave the buttons of his jacket undone, if he reveal as much as a button of the waistcoat beneath.

There is an amusing story told concerning a famous English airman who has since resigned from the R.N.A.S. On the occasion of his appointment to the Service he had to visit a certain big man at the Admiralty, and arrived there in the brass hat of a full-blown naval commander, with a black-and-white striped tie, in which there coyly reposed a large diamond pin.

When the interview was over the big man called him back.

“You’ve forgotten something.”

“What is it, sir?” the airman inquired.

“Your pink shirt and your purple socks,” was the reply.

Another new hand—an Australian—presented himself to the astonished and apoplectic commanding officer of his first station wearing a blue monkey-jacket, white flannel trousers, green socks, and brown shoes.

Luckily he was a good-tempered youth, or he would never have been able to live down the subsequent ragging he got from all the other members of his mess.

Flying-clothes must be the warmest procurable: a black or brown leather coat lined with lamb’s wool, with trousers to match. Good flying-coats cost from three to five guineas, and the trousers range from a guinea to thirty shillings in price.

A khaki balaclava helmet, a wool-lined aviation cap fitting closely round the skull, and costing approximately half-a-guinea. A pair of triplex glass goggles, price 12s. 6d.—cheaper ones of ordinary glass can be obtained as cheap as 3s. 6d.—but it is always advisable to get triplex, as in the event of a smash-up ordinary glass would splinter, fly into the eyes and possibly blind one for life.

A good pair of leather gauntlets, large enough in size to permit the wearing of a warmer pair of woolen gloves beneath, and a gray sweater to wear underneath the leather coat are all that are required, bringing the total cost to about £6.

As in other professions and walks in life, a certain slang has sprung into being in flying circles, and this the new hand will discover will take him a considerable time to pick up—at least, with any degree of satisfaction or success.

First he will discover that a “quirk” or a “hun” is no less a person than a youngster who aspires to flying honors, and who has not yet taken his ticket. Even the aeroplanes themselves have nicknames, as the “Bristol Bullet,” so called because of its peculiar shape.

Airships and balloons are always referred to—and somewhat contemptuously, it must be admitted—by aeroplane pilots as “gasbags.” The small, silver-colored airships that are to be seen occasionally floating over a certain western suburb of London are known in the Service as “Babies,” on account of their diminutive size; on the other hand as “Blimps,” and again as “S.S.’s”—submarine seekers—that being their principal duty when on active service.

Various parts of the machine have their own particular nickname, as the “fuselage,” or body which contains the engine, pilot and observer’s seats, and the petrol tanks. That wonderful control lever which is placed immediately before the pilot’s seat in the fuselage, and which maneuvers the machine both upwards and downwards, and to the left and to the right, or, in the terms used by R.N.A.S., to port and to starboard, is known as the “joy-stick.” No self-respecting pilot will ever refer to a trip in the air as such, but rather as a “joy-ride.” A bomb-dropping expedition or a raid he speaks of as a “stunt.”

To “nose-dive” is for the front portion of the machine to plunge suddenly downwards at an angle of approximately ninety degrees with the earth. To “pancake,” the aeroplane must fall flat to the earth. It is possible sometimes to recover from a “nose-dive,” but never from a “pancake.” Sometimes in banking—turning in mid-air—a pilot will overdo the angle at which he turns; the result is that the machine commences to rotate, and whirls round like a humming-top; this, again, invariably develops into a “nose-dive,” and is known as a “spin.”

The majority of pilots, when first starting off, run their machines some distance across the aerodrome, then rise gradually at an angle of about fifteen degrees with the earth; others, on the other hand, prefer to run their machine a considerably greater distance across the ground, and, thus attaining a much greater speed, to rise almost vertically for about two hundred feet, then to flatten out and bring the machine level: this trick is known as “zumming.”

To “switchback” is to fly up and down, up and down, as the name implies.

Immediately after leaving the ground the aeroplane invariably commences to plunge and to dive like a ship in a stormy sea—this is when it enters a patch of rarefied air known as a “bump”; this latter often causes the machine to drop suddenly, and drops of as much as two hundred feet at a time have been recorded.

No airman is capable of talking through his hat—at least, not literally, for he does not possess such a thing, that article of his attire always being referred to as a “gadget.”

To have “cold feet” in the air is to have a bad attack of nerves or funk. One day at Hendon, before the war, a well-meaning but somewhat dense journalist attached to a big London daily was told Hamel was suffering from “cold feet.”

Imagining that “cold feet” meant some ailment of the feet, like chilblains, and solicitous for his welfare, this enterprising individual approached the famous airman immediately after his descent from a trip up above.

“Excuse me asking, but is it true that you suffer from cold feet, Mr. Hamel?” he asked.

Hamel’s reply is not recorded.