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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0054.PDF
l/JIGHTj pigs. What, they demand to know, do their own people mean by allowing the ever-to-be-strafed enemy to invent and actually to use such devilish devices for -the destruction of those beautiful Zeppelins that have destroyed London so often ? And, they also demand to know, are their military experts going to " wait until the enemy has devised some equally effective answer to the submarine " ? Really, the more we learn of the Hun the stronger becomes the conviction that he is utterly without the sense of humour. Not that there is much of the humorous in Zeppelin raids, or even in the destruc- _ tion of enemy airships. There is too much of the tragic in both for there to be humour. But there is a good deal of humour in the spectacle of ponderous German newspapers girding at their own officials because the other side has found an answer to some- thing they have invented or initiated. It is not even as though they looked the thing squarely in the face and said : " The other side has found the answer to this particular method of making war. Now let us sit down and find the answer to the answer." That does not seem to be the attitude at all. Rather they appear to administer castigation because the enemy was allowed to discover something that all the prescience in the world on the part of the Hun could not have prevented being discovered. They are as querulous as ill-tempered puppies about it, and do not seem to realise for a moment that they are making themselves supremely ridiculous. There is this about it, however, that we know from experience that the German censorship allows nothing to be printed of which it does not approve. Neither does it permit much to see the light of day unless there is some object underlying its publication. Bearing this in mind, we may ask ourselves whether the criticisms of the Zeppelin policy are merely a device to throw dust in the eyes of the Allies. Is it part of a plan to lead us to believe that the Hun has definitely made up his mind that the Zeppelin game is not worth the candle and to cause us to become careless in our preparations for meeting the menace ? It is certainly a possibility, and one which we doubt not those in charge of those preparations have already appreciated. We believe that unless our efforts are slackened off the Zeppelin danger is well in hand, though it would be foolish to asservate that no further attempts will be made to raid these shores by means of airships. There is the danger, which is a real one at that, but it is one to which our authorities are fully alive, and, we believe, are now fully prepared to meet. - We are extremely pleased to see that the Institution of Automobile Engineers continues to interest itself in the scientific TheI.A.E. Aviation side of aerial development. It announces Research, that during its present session a paper is to be read on " Aeroplane Propellers," and this, we trust, will be followed by others of similar interest, if not during the current session, at some future period. We| are only on the threshold of development, and the more widespread the interest and the deeper the research, the. more rapidly will events move in the future. There need be no question as to whether this or that scientific body is the right one to carry out the work of investigation, provided always that the subject is approached from the point JANUARY 18, 1917. of view of real scientific inquiry. The greater the number of serious inquirers the more rapidly will the sum total of knowledge be increased. We therefore welcome the entry into the arena of aerial research of such a body as the Institution of Automobile En- gineers. The experience of its members gained in the development of the internal combustion engine and in many other directions cannot fail to produce a most valuable reflex action upon all matters of research in which the Institution may in the future concern itself. . • • • There is no doubt that an impression •• Five exists among the mass of the general i l idil itdg gpublic, which is only indirectly interested in aviation, that the science of aerial navigation is something of very recent birth. It is a very natural impression, too, when the history of the past 10 years is viewed in perspective. A decade ago the man who had the temerity to discuss the question of human flight at all in a serious vein was voted a fit candidate for entrance to an asylum for the insane. The comparatively few who made a hobby of balloon- ing were regarded as being of the variety of the harmless lunatic, with more money than brains. Aeronautics was not, by reason of its very nature, a science that gripped the popular imagination. It was the pursuit of the very small minority, which in truth had so very little to show for its expenditure of money and of energy that it did not proclaim its doings from the housetops. Thus the discussion of matters aerial was left to the scientific societies, and the light of aviation was hidden under the bushel until the sudden developments of the early years of the present century brought flight into prominence. It will possibly, therefore, come as something of a shock to the casual visitor to the Grosvenor Galleries, intent upon seeing the exhibition of pictures and models organised by the Countess of Drogheda, to realise that the record covered by the exhibits extends over more than five hundred years of aerial history. Comprehensive though the array of exhibits is, and wide as is the period covered, even they cannot take us back to the time when the desire to emulate the birds first took shape in the minds of men. For that we should have to go back, in all probability, to the beginnings of the human race. But Lady Drogheda's exhibition does take us back in concrete form to a time long anterior to the first ascent by man into the upper air—a mere 232 years ago—and brings us down to the present time through all the crude devices and attempts to conquer the air until we reach the relative perfection of toTday as demonstrated in the Zeppelin and the Fokker. Let us interpolate that we do not regard the last as the summit of present- day perfection—we mention the name simply for the reason that the actual machine itself is present in the exhibition. The exhibition is of the utmost historical interest, and is withal wonderfully complete as a record of aerial progress. It has far outrun the initial inten- tion, which was based on something much more modest than the present achievement. Apart alto- gether from its surpassing interest, we would once more emphasise the fact that it has been conceived in a most worthy cause, the whole of the proceeds going to the Flying Services Fund and the Irish Hospitals Supply Dep6ts. 54
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