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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 1369.PDF
DECEMBER 5, 1918 THE TWO FUTURES FOR FLIGHT By H. MASSAC BUIST (Concluded from page 1354) The Inestimable Value of the Private AirmanALL facilities under this head should be granted also to those sportsmen who will now be availing themselves of oppor-tunities of flying their own machines about the country. That hobby must be made as cheap as possible and encouragedin every way ; it must never be restricted unnecessarily. and, indeed, anything personal needed urgently, to be sentby aerial transport linking up two centres following receipt of a telegram or a telephone message ? Assuredly, thereis much more in the prospects of this sort than is yet realised either by the public or by those concerned with aircraftpublic service schemes. The matter might be elaborated It is a mode of travel that does not put the community to by citing a hundred and one examples did space allow. Toany charges. Not even a road is the worse for wear and tear, possess a facility new is speedily to develop a variety of As for any damage done by involuntary landings, and so -' -'- forth, that,.of course, is always paid by way of insurance.It is the interest of a community of seafaring people iswho find themselves no longer an island nation to develop by any and every means their inborn aptitude for navigationby exploiting the new and enormously swifter phase of it that has come so suddenly with the dawn of the twentiethcentury. The importance of aviation alike in the matter of national defence and of civilian inter-ccmmunication issuch as to ensure that at an early date after the proclamation of peace the question of laws governing the air will be dealtwith not, happily, in the prejudicial spirit in which motoring was mishandled in these islands. In the case of flight thenation has realised that this new facility is no Juggernaut or selfish form of sport, but something that in time of warcan save the lives of infantrymen by the million. As hunting is to the cavalryman, so is civilian flying to the Air Services.Consequently, not even a half-educated and deliberately misled democracy has in mind any form of legislation thatwill prejudice the freest possible development of aircraft and the use of them; the danger threatened is from bureaucracy,not democracy. The gradual perfection of mechanism from the point of view of reliability, increased radius of action,standardisation of achievement, multiplicity of experience, the gain of the necessary skill in production on the pait ofthousands, vast increases in productive capacity and the willing support of the public are among the great advancesachieved during a war for civilisation. Indeed, it is probable that in no phase have we made strides as a result of thisworld conflict equally useful compared with those achieved in the matter of flight. There is no gainsaying that, but forthis War, to-day we should merely be at the stage of re- garding it as a very costly and dangerous form of sport ;whereas the campaign has taught the man in the street that the maintenance of our aerial efficiency is a matter of vitaland growing importance. We cannot write of anything in the guise of aerial supremacy, since no nation possessesthat, and probably no one nation ever will. We must not see to it merely that nothing occurs to prejudice the freestpossible development of flight ; we must, besides, take steps deliberately to encourage its growth and establishment. The Initial Scope for Goods Carriage by AirBy means of Government postal services, doubtless the necessary number of pilots will always be available fornational defence work. The development of what we trust will always be individual enterprise, though it be mainlyof the collective sort, in the matters of passenger and even transport services, will enormously supplement such re-sources. When one writes of transport service apart from passenger work, it must be had in mind that many com-modities are of small compass and light relative to their money value, and that sometimes such things are neededspeedily. Hence there is much more opportunity than many might imagine for goods carriage in retail by air. Thus,if parcel prices for aerial delivery were charged at the same rate per lb. of a man's weight as is represented by the farefor a passage by air from a given point to another, there would develop speedily a notable amount of profitable conveyancebusiness, particularly as the maintenance of schedule aeiial passenger services will involve such necessary accessoriesas car services to and from the main aerodromes. You cannot alight in the centre of Birmingham, Manchester, orGlasgow, far less of London. Nor is it likely that fliers will be able to do so for a matter of years. That the thing willbecome practicable in the fullness of time is as certain as that night follows day. In the mean season the road vehiclesthat will be available, let us say, at Hendon for London, at Sydenham for the south, and so on, will be equally capableof transporting such parcels as are sent by the given flying machine in the room of passengers for speedy transport atrates which we propose to be worked out at the equivalent of passenger fares where urgency of delivery is everything,as in the matter of medical equipment, articles of special diet, and so forth. Why should one not order clothes, ways of using'it. Grounds where Land is hast Valuable But we know that if satisfactory arrangements are to bemade we must have, besides, intermediate depots at distances certainly not exceeding ten miles apart as far as main routeaerial journeys are concerned. This is easier than might appear in that, by contrast with every other form of traveldevelopment, a feature of the aerial proposition at the moment is that you must choose your ground precisely where it isleast valuable. Thus you must have it well away from towns and even villages—in other words thoroughly in the open ;the efore relatively little capital is needed since spaces suit- able for military aerodromes will seldom be those most fitfor public flying services. It is not even necessary that such grounds should beGovernment property, or the property of the companies actually running any given aerial service. On the contrary,the Government would find it best to arrange subsidies in such centres as may be used on occasion by aircraft engagedon Government business either in peace or war. If every ground were the property of one aerial transport corrpany,as the use of public aerial transport developed there would be all sorts of restrictions, troubles and waste of money overendeavouring to arrange terms by which rival companies might use other companies' grounds. In the issue there wouldbe wastage and overlapping through each company having to set up a separate seiies of landing grounds. It is, there-fore, in the interest alike of the public travelling by air and of the aircraft industry that any tendency of this sortshould be nipped in the bud. That one is not merely imagin- ing a problem is sufficiently clear to anyone who will go tothe pains of studying how pur railways came into being, and how money was wasted in connection with their establish-ment, alike at the inception of the movement and for generations after it had come to a great development. The Initial and the Ultimate Means of Power Irrespective of what arrangements are made in the matter of setting up aircraft centres—the outgoing Government has certain ideas that will be discussed anon—it should be had in mind that, in an age when the problem of creating fresh sources of employment is a very urgent one, here is an opportunity the value of which can scarcely be estimated. We know that in the immediately preceding development, the motoring movement, scores of thousands earned a liveli- hood in peace time in local garages, repair shops, and such like establishments. So in connection with the coming of aircrait. We want aircraft used daily by the thousand in these islands ; in other words, in much greater numbers than British machines have been used in the War. That, incidentally, is a reminder of the vast additional demands that are bound to be made on the world's supplies of motor fuels in the next few years. It will be long before we shall come to the real solution of the flying machine problem by being able to dispense with the liquid fuel internal combustion engine, or other form of power plant carried on board the machine, and, instead, draw electric current by wireless through short, rigid antenna. Undoubtedly, that will be done in the end, thereby solving at a stroke the great problem of having both to lift the power plant and to carry luel and lubricant supplies for it, representing by far the greater proportion of the total load of the given machine and calling, besides, for the construction of much more cosily and bigger machines than would be necessary for the useful loads carried. In the mean season there-is no occasion to be disheartened, as one may appreciate from a glance at the situation in regard to aerial navigation before the War and as it is to-day. Briefly, apart from having gained much experience resulting in the widespread entertainment of confidence and competence in the maintenance and handling of aircraft, the big difference is that before the War we had barely enough power for our machines to do their normal flying, whereas the power plant now available—individual aircraft engines can be and are built to-day of 800 and more h.p., nor is that near the limit I37O
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