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Aviation History
1913
1913 - 0002.PDF
I/O CHT something about the subject under review. Of the latter variety is the rider added to the verdict of the jury which assisted in the enquiry into the fatal accident in which Lieut. Parke and Mr. Hard wick lost their lives at Wembley. After finding that the two aviators met their deaths accidentally, the jury went on to express the opinion that officers of the Royal Flying Corps ought not to be allowed to make experimental flights without the express permission of the authorities. No one can deplore these too frequent accidents, which lose us our best flying men, more than ourselves, but we cannot help regarding such expressions of opinion as that we are discussing as being sheer futility and an attempt to defeat the real ends for which the Royal Flying Corps exists. It would be unwise in the highest degree to place any obstacles in the way of officers flying when and where they please, within the limits imposed by the exigencies of the Service, and we are perfectly confident that every officer of the Corps will be at one with us in the expres sion of this opinion. It is even more essential that the military aviator should have a free hand as to his discretion to take advantage of opportunities that may occur for making these so-called experimental flights than that the civilian flying man should have no bar erected before his enthusiasm for the science. The one flies because it pleases him, the other because JANUARY 4, 1913. he has devoted his life to a particular branch of the country's service which involves extraordinary risks at all times. In the day when we find ourselves at war with a first class military power we shall want our men to be better than the best on the other side, and they will not reach that stage in peace if they are to be hampered by all kinds of red-tape restrictions imposed at the behest of soft-hearted jurymen. In questions of this sort it will not' do to allow senti ment to blind us to the facts. The salient point is that the officers and men of the Royal Flying Corps can only learn to fly in one way—by flying, and that under every condition of wind and weather in which the individual officer considers it safe and advisable to venture into the air. We are speaking now of these flights which the jury called "experimental," and not of flights undertaken in obedience to the direct orders of superior officers. With the latter we have no concern, and must not be taken as discussing them at all, because they come within an entirely different category as a part of the routine work of the Corps which it is outside the province of the civilian layman to advise upon. The single point upon which we desire to insist most strongly is, that the very fullest freedom of action should be accorded to the individual who is striving to make himself a thoroughly efficient unit of the country's system of defence. THE BRISTOL MONOPLANE IN ITALY.—A remarkable photograph of Mr. C. H. Pixton, piloting one of these well'known monoplanes, gliding down to earth at sunset at Mirafiori, near Turin. On the left of the picture can be remarked the rising full moon. 2
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