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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 1289.PDF
DECEMBER 6, 1917. I can imagine a legislator winning a round of applausefrom the inane vulgus by driving a hard bargain with the wretched trader, who, in the.face of starvation, might acceptany regulations, however hampering, in exchaage for the means to live. I can imagine the imposition^ of tests ofairworthiness, strength tests, the enforcement of hobbies such as multiple engines, silencers, special alighting gears,the carrying of parachutes, fire extinguishers, wireless equip- ment for calling for aid, and countless other things, whichmay, no doubt, come in their own time, but which would clog the versatility of the engineer, and for years condemn tounproductiveness the nascent industry of air travel. The payment of an army of inspectors would be put down asencouragement money, and would be a charge against the aeronautical vote. A landowner would ask for the power' to capture the flyer who has most reluctantly alighted on his ground. He might ask for a law allowing him to impoundthe aeroplane, on the chance of his registered number being inauthentic, and so secure payment of the damages which hewishes to claim. Let us rest assured that the amount of civil aircraft will forsome years be so much less than the amount of military aircraft now existing, that the total of damage to propertyand inconvenience to the public, which we at present know to be small, will be much further reduced in proportion to thelesser numbers, the future technical advances, and the less strenuous conditions of manoeuvring imposed on peaceaeroplanes. Labour,—Among the expectations based on aerial transport. and travel, are those of employment for individuals through- out the whole social scale as well as officers and men fromthe Army and Navy. Our producers, and therefore their employment of labour, depend on the bodies which employaircraft, viz. : (a) Primarily the Air Force ; (b) foreign buyers, nations and colonies ; and (c) companies institutedfor transport and travel, including postal duties. All these bodies need labour, and all are interested in continuingharmonious relations between those who direct the work and those who manually carry it out. It has been suggested that since the aircraft industry isa new industry, an exceptional opportunity exists of intro- ducing a totally new atmosphere of harmony unembitteredby the old trade quarrels. This is most desirable, but the novelty of the technics of aircraft has not in fact eliminatedthe old trades at all ; on the contrary, it has developed the demand for these " tradesmen." The aircraft industry isnot a new trade in the sense in which that word is used by the world of labour in the phrase " Trades Union." Theaircraft industrry includes members of almost all the engineer- ing trades, as well as important additional trades, such aswoodworkers, carpenters, organ builders, cabinet makers, fabric workers, &c, and it is necessary for that harmoniousrelationship to be established between employer and employee, in spite of the fact that the history of all the old trade differ-ences will unavoidably bs also the history of the persons and corporate bodies imported into the new industry, with thisaddition, that a trade quarrel on the subject of organ pipes or on the piece-work price of chairs, may mean a stoppageof aeroplane work, owing to the newly imported craftsmen holding on to the old unions. Again, it would be unintelligent to pretend that aircraftmaking can be developed under a compact between employees and managers which shall guarantee continuity of employ-ment for all the manual workers in exchange for a continuity of labour supply to the other. The difficulty is a funda-mental one, and perhaps is a worse difficulty in the aircraft industry than in most others. It is this. The technicaldevelopments of the art, the unf oreseeableshortages of material, and the unavoidable changes of methods and materials,tend, let us say, at one time to the employment in an air- craft factory of 50 per cent, of wood workers and 30 per cent,of steel workers, and there is no human authority who can with sanity pretend to say that in some brief time theseproportions will, or will not, be widely changed. If steel or aluminium were to form a greater part of the structurethan they do now, because of safety, or diminished fire risk, or what not, any agreement with the wood workers' union forcontinuity of their employment would install them as a paid but non-working body of pensioners on the industry. Alter-natively, British aircraft, hampered by such an agreement, would remain locked in its old technical groove and bedebarred from adopting* the devices and inventions which throughout the rest of the world would be improving themachine. Surely a hopeless prospect for a technical service required for war!It is clear, then, that the agreements between manual and brain workers on aircraft must be part of the generalagreement on which our new millennium is to be based. Accidents.—It is unfortunate that the chief contact whichthe public of England makes with aeronautics is in relation to accidents and casualties. The achievements appear, itis true, but it is almost impossible to visualise them save perhaps in the case of an occasional flight of unusual distance,such as the recent 3,000-mile flight from London to Con- stantinople, or between London and Turin, and these thingsappear to be disconnected items giving no impression of the hundreds and thousands of miles of continual flying whichis taking place. These show flights are few, not because they cannot be frequently achieved, but because war does 'notprovide for show and reclame. The public cannot by a mere lecture be brought to the point of view which is standardwith those who have been really familiar with aircraft; we are so imbued with its utility and versatility, that we are nomore discountenanced by occasional breakages than we are deflected from hiring a taxi by seeing a sideslip against thekerb. Those actually engaged in design, who naturally need to use every element of experience which accidents maybring to enable them to perfect their work, are anxious to study and analyse these occurrences. Air accidents can be divided into groups for the purposeof their study, and when we proceed so to divide them we find that by far the largest category includes those which aredue to the two following circumstances : (1) The absence of landing-grounds distributed in easy stages to which a flyercan turn for refuge, if his engine should stop ; (2) the in- experience of flyers themselves, since the majority of theexperienced have been drawn off to the war. If we remove from the records of accidents, other than tuitional, all thosewhich could have been avoided were these causes non-existent, the residue would be less significant in fact, and vastly lesssignificant than is the impression abroad. Beyond this it is still reasonable and advantageous to sub-divide the causesof this residue of accidents into classes, so that attention should be drawn to that which may be eliminated, be it in designor in handling. Of the remainder, the most important is what is commonlycalled " Pilot's error." This does not imply that he is blame- worthy. In war, manoeuvres which are definitely hazardousare necessary ; people may be surprised to hear that to loop the loop is a useful war manoeuvre which may greatly puzzlean antagonist in the air, since the looped path takes the place of the expected forward movement, and therefore falsifiesthe aim of the adversary, or throws out all his estimate of the direction in which to fly for purposes of intercepting him.Another manoeuvre, known as " spiralling," or " spinning," if contrived to give the impression that the aeroplane has in factbeen thrown out of control, is one of many ruses for breaking off a fight. The learning of these manoeuvres must beachieved before they can be used in war, and tends to swell the number of broken machines. Rapid diving, such as mightbe made in an attack on observation balloons, may -similarly be a cause of accident until judgment is acquired in themethod of " flattening " out of the dive. Even to describe a very small circle in a horizontal plane implies unusualstress on an aeroplane, if accomplished at high speed. None of these manoeuvres are called for in trader work, while, toadd to the comparative safety of the peace aircraft, we can appreciate the effect of removing the war demand for highperformance and speed. Under fire and pursuit safety comes from lightness and manoeuvrability, as much as and more thanit does from strength and solidity : in trader work the con- ditions are largely changed if not reversed. Aircraft travel and transport therefore will, if landing-grounds are provided, not be exposed to any of the risks abovfe named, and accordingly from the list of accidents whichoccur to-day we must eliminate almost all these in any prog- nostication as to the future safety of flying. Much need not be made of the fire dangers on aircraft,for when the matter is regarded dispassionately, the fire risk by actual experience is small. Of the fires which haveoccurred since thousands of aeroplanes have been turned out per month, the large majority have arisen when the aeroplanehas struck the ground and the petrol vapour from the broken- up tanks has come into contact with a spark. Now thisbreaking-up of a machine on the occasion of a forced landing again becomes a rare occurrence if the line of landing-groundssuggested for aerial routes is provided. Most of these smashes, some fraction of which have resulted in fires, haveoccurred by reason of the flyer holding up his machine unduly long in his search for a suitable place to alight in a countrywhere no provision for alighting exists. Of the mechanical precautions taken to avoid fire, we know I289
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