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Aviation History
1920
1920 - 0817.PDF
JULY 22, 1920 war broke out for Britain to overtake, and eventually surpass, our more ready and better prepared enemy, and to gain finally the wonderful air supremacy we possessed at the time of the armistice, and which I trust we will never lose. I feel we, as a nation, owe these men and women a very large meed of thanks for the pioneer work they carried out in a matter of such national importance at such a heavy personal risk, and I am proud to have the privilege of meeting them and glad to have the opportunity of paying them a small part of the great honour due to them. Once more I say I thank you." A silent toast was dedicated to " the glorious memory of those who laid down their lives to give the Empire her place in the air." Lord Desborough in proposing " The Pioneers of British Aviation," recalled some of the efforts made by himself and others before the War to attract public attention to the importance of flying. He also referred to the work of the Imperial Air Fleet Committee, which set out with the idea of giving to each self-governing British Dominion the nucleus of an Air Fleet. Capt. Wedgwood Benn, D.S.O., D.F.C., M.P., supported the toast in a very witty speech, in the course of which he said : " There is great romance in the early history of the air. Just as Leander swam the Hellespont to reach Hero's caresses, Bleriot flew the Channel to gain a kiss from his own wife. Lebaudy from an airship became Emperor of the Sahara. It is to be recorded that in the early stages the nomenclature of aviation somewhat lacked precision. Many who saw4 Nulli Secundus ' enquired in a puzzled way after the ' Nulli Primus,' and confidently and vainly anticipated the advent of the 'Nulli Tertius.' Then the terminology of the early pilots was, to say the least of it, sloppy. They would talk of bumps and pitching when, of course, they merely meant ana- batics or katabatics, or peradventure nothing more serious than a phugoid oscillation. When they talked of gadgets they really referred peradventure to an ombrometer or a paranthe- lion. There is no small importance, after all, in a dignified terminology. The poor widow woman whose man had been hanged was accustomed to refer to the incident in these words : ' Yes, my pore 'usband fell through a trap-door whilst talking to a clergyman.' Philosophers have often pointed out how great a part chance has played in the history of the world. John Hampden nearly emigrated to the States. The painter, Whistler, would have entered Sandhurst if he had not failed in chemistry, and said on enquiry, ' If silicon had been a gas, madam, I should have been a soldier.' The toss of a coin actually decided who was to be the first human being to fly, and so it was that Orville and not Wilbur Wright left the ground at Dayton nearly seventeen years ago. But the lead secured by America was soon hotly contested by our French allies and ourselves, and now we hope to hold it unchallenged. Some of those who gave us this great gift are here to-night, but many we can only honour in remembrance. Those pioneers of twelve years ago builded better than they knew. They worked without the stimulus of battle. No doubt incredible things were achieved under the urgent spur and the flagrant incentive of war, when life and treasure were held cheap and honour very dear. Nor can we forget that we are not an island unless we can maintain the freedom of the air. All this is undoubtedly true, but I think we should utterly lack perspective if we regarded the work of the pioneers of aviation merely as preparation for that or for any war. To what can we compare their success ? Steam or the compass ? They merely directed and facilitated locomotion in the element which was man's own. Flying launched him into a new element. To match it we must go back into the mists of the world's infancy to find the man who first floated on the surface of water or invented the wheel or gave fire to the children of men. Flying is the greatest civilising agent that has ever been known. Civilisation is merely the assimilation of differences. The greatest cause of differences is space. Architecture, language, manners and morals are all founded on geography. Flying annihilates space, and in doing so will ultimately make the world one family. The men who fought the early battles needed patience and faith. Patience to front official neglect and the ridicule of the mob, and Faith, which is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. .: •:.-... '! Let us now praise famous men. " Some are living ; some have left a name behind them,that their praises might be reported, and some there be which have no memorial. . .•••••• " Their name liveth for evermore." - Lieut.-Col. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, M.P., who holds the Royal Aero Club's pilot certificate numbered 1, said he had some difficulty in replying to the toast because he was speaking for others. He knew he would be expected to say they were all aware what splendid people the authorities were, but he was going to put the soft pedal on that and say nothing of the sort. Before he came there he had looked through a list to see what rewards had been given to aviators, and except for their friend. General Sykes, who was a General in the war and got honours for pioneer work and in the war zone, he thought they could justifiably complain at the treatment in general that had been meted out to the pioneers of this great science. However, he knew he was speaking for them all when he said they were not discontented ; but it was a dis- couragement to pioneers in other work when they looked at what had been done for the pioneers in aviation. He wanted to get back in his remarks into the atmosphere of some thirteen years ago. The difficulty and incredulity one met with at the time was hard to visualise at the present time. It was only thirteen years ago that his friend Mr. Short, who was present this evening, built an aeroplane for him. He and his friend Mr. Roe went down to Brooklands, which was not open even as a racecourse then. One might think they were looked upon with enthusiasm by some people, but nothing of the sort; people came long distances to see a couple of aerial lunatics ; and although their machines had a small chance of ever leaving the ground, he remembered Mr. Roe's chief worry was not how he was going to get his machine off the ground, but how he was going to find his way to Manchester. While Mr. Roe was under the impression that the people came to see his machine, he always suspected that they came to see them, and that they thought they were very curious people. Optimism in those days was wanted more than any other trait. He wanted to draw attention to one or two of those who worked in the early days whose names were not so well known as they ought to be. One man ought to be known and honoured by everybody, not only because he was a pioneer, but also a great patron of the art. That was Frank McClean. If it had not been for him the Aero Club would not have had the early aerodrome which had helped them so much. It would not have been forgotten by the Board of Admiralty how McClean at his own expense, and helped by Cockburn, instructed the first four naval aviators. He felt he should remind the Army Council that members of the Aero Club offered the Army Council two aeroplanes, and were met by the reply that the Army Council saw no future in aviationfrom a military point of view. That should be written in letters of gold in the room of the Air Council, lest they should ever suffer from Red Tape. When he read of wonderful nights today—and he honoured those who did them—and looked back on those of earlier days, he could not believe the later achievements were more remarkable than that done by Tommy Sopwith from the East Coast to the middle of Belgium ten years ago ; or Mr. Grahame-White's glorious failure at Manchester. LTnless one knew the difficulties of those days, one could not appreciate the magnitude of the task they took on. He would pass to one of the lesser lights. Probably few of those present had heard his name. He wondered if they knew the name of Jezzi ? He arrived at Eastchurch with a bundle of calico under one arm and an old packing-case under the other, and an old motor-bicycle engine on his back, and in a few months he had built a machine that was flying round the aerodrome, and got its licence. Nothing was ' more creditable than the performance of that man. He felt that he was speaking for all the pioneers when he said they would not exchange their experience for anybody else's in aviation. They had no regret, except the friends they had lost for ever. In those old days they had nothing to guide them, no N.P.L., no experience. He remembered having a long discussion with Gabriel Voisin as to whether a side control was necessary or not, but when he turned a somersault and arrived on his back that convinced him a little. In those days there was such a narrow margin of lift that one went without breakfast to save weight. What would a modern pilot think if put into a machine with no side control, no stabilising planes, the rudder in front, and shot off a rail like a shuttle-cock ? That was the way they lost their aeroplanes in those days. He maintained that pioneer work had only just started, and that there was more to do today than they thought possible ten years ago. Aviation stood apart from the life of the ordinary man in the street, and they had to see that it played more part in his life, and that when he thought of going from place to place he must naturally think of the aeroplane as one of the alternative' means of transit. He did not believe the future of aviation depended entirely on the military side. He thought it had an enormous future on the commercial side. Mr. Churchill said in the House of Commons recently, " Civil aviation will fly by itself." He had no doubt of that, but when would it start flying by itself ? He did not want it to be like the albatross, which could no 817
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