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Aviation History
1911
1911 - 0836.PDF
EDITORIAL An adverse fate seems to dog the big ThofIthilUre dirigible with a pertinacity that will not be Big Dirigible, denied. Disaster after disaster to these huge gas-bags comes to point the moral that the future of aircraft does not lie in their direction. While the aeroplane constantly gains in efficiency and in safety, until even now it is almost correct to say that flying is as safe as motoring given that proper care is taken by the aviator, we do not seem to have made a single step in advance so far as the airship proper is concerned. It scarcely needed the lesson of the collapse of " Naval Dirigible No. i " to demonstrate the elementary fact that the big dirigible is a failure. We had learnt that from the experience gained with the Morning Post Lebaudy and the almost equally unfortunate Clement-Bayard, so that we can scarcely feel surprised at this latest catastrophe. On this side of the Channel the dirigible has been, not to put too fine a point upon it, an utter failure, and on the Continent it has been very little better in spite of the masfly long voyages under favourable conditions which have been accomplished. Before the aeroplane became the highly efficient organism it is to-day it was natural that the lighter-than-air type of flying machine should have attracted a great deal of attention from those who were seeking dominion over the air. The type of craft evolved was admittedly crude and cumbrous, but it was the best we could do, and at any rate it was capable of making ascents, and in good weather of being navigated to a set course instead of being at the absolute mercy of the lightest air that blew. The school which believed in the gas-nag as the airship of the future held, and rightly, that experiment and research might quite possibly lead to the evolution of a type which should be capable ot safe navigation in all but the worst of weather conditions. But they had not reckoned with the rapid rise of the heavier-than-air type—a rise which has resulted in the complete overshadowing of the " aeronef" by the aero plane. So comp'etely has the one outbid the other for supremacy that we might almost say that the dirigible of anything like the dimensions of the unfortunate naval craft which was wrecked on Sunday is discredited and obsolete. We do not blame the naval authorities for building this vessel. Jt must be remembered that she was laid down two years ago, when it was impossible to say wherein lay the future of flying. Continental powers were experimenting with airships of similar type, and to have held our hjwids while possible rivals were attempting to build up aerial navies would have been folly of the worst description. But things have progressed apace in the period that has elapsed since the navy embarked upon airship construction, and no amount of prescience could have foretold that aerial science would stand where it is to-day. Now that the lesson has been so drastically driven home, it may be hoped that our authorities will keep in mind the excellent maxim of the card-player relative to the cutting of losses. They have been generous in their allocation of money for the building of this experimental craft. It has proved a failure and the ® ® Aerial Legislation in India. BASED on the same lines as the Indian Arms Act, and containing similar clauses to the Aerial Navigation Act passed in the British Parliament just before the Coronation, a Bill has been introduced SEPTEMBER 30, 1911. COMMENT. money has been wasted, albeit through no fault of anyone. It is just as necessary to-day as it was when it was decided to build the Vickers craft that we should keep up with the rest of the nations. They have practically abandoned the gas-bag, and are concentrating all their energies upon the development of the military aeroplane. Therefore we trust that our own authorities will rise to the needs of the situation, and alter the direction of their experimental work. We have been careful to confine our condemnatory remarks to large craft, because we are not convinced that the lighter-than-air type is altogether without possibilities, but if it has any future at all we believe that it lies in" craft of less ambitious dimensions than those of the unwieldy Zeppelins and Lebaudys. Certainly, while the latter have been leaving their bones dotted over the face of Germany and France, the smaller vessels of the Beta and Delta type have achieved some small measure of success. It may, therefore, be advisable to go on experimenting with them for a time, though we confess to being more than a little sceptical even with regard to that. „ p. If anything more were needed to drive Flying." tne nnal na'l mt0 tne coffin of the " Flying Meet," surely the shocking occurrences reported from America recently should serve to point the needed moral. In one case, the scene of which Norton, Kansas, Mr. J. B. Frisbie had made a flight on the day previous in which he sustained a fall which damaged his aeroplane, and on the day on which he met his death it was not working well and he decided against an ascent. But the crowd had paid to see flying, and against their getting their money's worth the life of an aviator more or less weighed as nothing. Mr. Frisbie was literally hounded into the air, with the result that his aeroplane came down from an altitude of about a hundred feet and he was killed before the eyes of his wife and children. It is difficult to write calmly of an occurrence like this. Crowds are inevitably brutal, even though in the aggregate they are composed of quite ordinary persons, but this one seems to have been even more brutal than the generality of such gatherings, and it is no wonder, as reported, that the poor wife, as she supported her dying husband's head, called on them as cowardly murderers to look upon their handiwork. In another case* this time at Dayton, Ohio,- an aviator who had made several flights at a function described as a " county fair " declined to go up again because his motor was giving trouble. As in the previous case, the crowd wanted its money's worth and "barracked" the unfortu nate airman until he was stung into attempting another ascent. The result was an explosion which brought man and machine to earth in a mass of flame, the victim of the crowd's callousness being dragged from the wreckage dead. It is such occurrences as these which make us feel ttankful that the type of exhibition which has claimed all too many victims is entirely discredited in our own country. ® ® into the Indian Viceroy's Council, by Mr. J. L. Jenkins, controlling the manufacture, sale, importation and possession of airships by a system of licences. He maintains that these precautions have become necessary for military purposes. The Bill was passed on. September 22nd.
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