FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0535.PDF
SEPTEMBER 4, 1909. THE FLYING RACES AT RHEIMS. BEING A GOSSIP ABOUT AN HISTORICAL MEETING THAT MARKS AN EPOCH IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AERIAL LOCOMOTION. By H. Massac Buist. PROBABLY not more than two thousand Britishers, at an outside estimate, witnessed the extraordinary flying machine race meeting that lasted eight days at Rheims. I was there only part of the time, and would not have missed that spectacle if it had cost ten times as much trouble and money. There have been all sorts of estimates as to the crowd. The lowest figure is half a million. But the fact is.it is impossible to determine, for the throng stretched for miles and miles round the course. Whether the masses were ten, or twenty, or forty deep you could not tell. No military review has ever drawn such throngs in France. Considering the utterly unprecedented nature of the whole thing, the favourable conditions possible were experienced by the competitors. In a word, it must not be assumed that at present anybody who buys an aeroplane can put up quite as good performances with it anywhere about Europe as were witnessed at Betheny a few days ago. Altogether, apart from physically favourable conditions too, it was very obvious what a deal depends on the pilot, for some who undoubtedly had good machines performed little or not at all with them, while others who had natural aptitude and machines that many deemed to be fairly indifferent, contrived to make them behave as though new life had been infused into them. The more one studied the meeting and the preparations in connection with it, the Last week M. Lefebvre's (in his Wright flyer) sudden swoop down in passing under M. Paulhan's machine wasrecorded and the effect upon an enterprising Press photographer mentioned. In the above photograph the moment of this incident is depicted, as secured by the brother " photO'fiend." organisation from every point of view was something to marvel at. It was a fortunate thing, too, that the weather improved daily, so that towards the end of the meeting the conditions were absolutely ideal. This point is worth bringing out, because, when so much of a really striking nature has been achieved, there is a risk, as the accounts published in the Press have witnessed, of running to the extreme and exaggerating. Let us not cozen ourselves that more has been done than has actually been accomplished. Of thirty-eight machines entered, scarcely more than a third that number ever rose off the vast plain of Betheny. Furthermore, for the bulk of the time there was practically no wind, while the absence of hollows and hills, of woods and villages, also furnished the competitors with ideal condi- tions for handling their machines. Again, from ten o'clock till about noonday there was flying, and as a rule it did not commence again till about four o'clock in the afternoon, so that it will be observed that the most more one realised that the possession of an aeroplane is only part of the equipment at present necessary to flying. On the ground at Betheny each firm had a factory in little and a company of mechanics. Their work was no sinecure. In conversation on returning. here one finds that scarcely the least realisation of what the meeting proved obtains in Britain. Here it is thought that we who went over theTe as enthusiasts before we arrived on the ground were so delighted at what we saw that our imaginations enabled us to regard everything as though it were viewed through powerful field-glasses. It may be that the fault of this lies in the news of the meeting Having been con- veyed for the most part in one or other of two manners. Many of the accounts that have appeared in the Press have been jerky, uninspiring, none too accurate, con- siderably monotonous, and void of what one may call constructional narrative. At the other extreme there have been the gorgeous impressionist versions in con- 537
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
