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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0021.PDF
J-Li •41 a ' At the instant the motor stops you must descend in vol plane the elevator about level with your feet." Learning to Fly in 1911 : The Bogy of the Right-haMJarn : The Dare-devil "Vol P ane" ytCCORDING to the/-\ Editor, pupils who *- -*• to-day are qualifyingfor their wings may be in- terested to hear what learningto fly was like 29 or 30 years ago; and certainly it wasvery different. If any one of the R.A.F. men who is to-dayripe for the final passing-out tests could be transported inthe Time dimension to 1911, and could display his skill and knowledge at Brooklands, Hendon, or on Lark Hill, hewould be regarded as a magician, perhaps worshipped as a god. AT the present time, when thousands of young men are learning to fly at the schools of the Royal Air Force, we have thought that en account of how men learned to fly thirty years ago would interest and amuse them. The author of this article was probably the first Pressman to "get his ticket," and for thirty years he has written of flying as air corres- pondent of The Daily Telegraph. Before he took up flying he was a keen balloonist, and at one time held the world's long-distance record for balloons. In the last war he was in the kite balloon section of the Royal Naval Air Service. f >n January 16th, 1911, Mr.Horatio Barber, designer and constructor of the amazingValkyrie tail-first monoplane, gave me my second flight.This was my duration record at that time, for it lastedeight minutes. The only comment I have now to makeon that adventure is that 1 did not realise the risk. On the following day I wasagain at Brooklands, and M. Maurice Ducrocq gave me a flight in a Henry Farman.This, from the duration point of view, was a retrograde step, for it lasted ynly seven minutes. If, by the way, this to"*-** *• - j - J — — —» —j -•—j , On November 4th, 1910, I had my first flight as a should chance £<rmeet the eye of Maurice Ducrocq I hopepassenger. The pilot was Lieut. Hugh Watkins, who either on the previous day or the day before that had made hisfirst solo straight hop. The machine was a Howard Wright biplane, the scene Brooklands ; and my predecessor in thepassenger's place, almost literally pick-a-back with the pilot, was the late Air Commodore Edward M. Maitland,then a Captain in one of the battalions of the Essex Regi- ment. He was still very lame, owing to a flying accident inwhich both his ankles had been broken. After our flights he and I set out for Weybridge station. We had no cab, and inorder to catch a train I must have carried Maitland on my back for the last quarter of a mile. My flight with Watkins lasted six minutes, and I sup-pose the machine travelled about 3J miles, making a couple of circuits of the aerodrome. I do not remember muchabout it, and my impressions were not very clear at the time, but I was not unused to the sensations of air travel,for I had done a bit of ballooning. I did not like the noise of the engine, and I was very uncomfortable. But neitherthe discomfort nor the nervousness was expressed in my features or voice as I carefully separated myself from theaeroplane after landing, and thanked the smiling pilot. he will enable me to renew our acquaintance. I have notseen him since the outbreak of war in 1914. On the 2nd of February, 1911, I visited Lark Hill inconnection with the opening of the Bristol Aeroplane Com- pany's flying school, the first of the kind to be started by agreat business concern in this country. Mr. Archibald Low, then on the staff of the Bristol company, and who, at alater period, bpcame principal librarian at the Air Ministry, gave me alight on a Bristol biplane for ten minutes overStonehenge and the cursus, where Romans used to race chariots. This was inspiring, and Low, who, besides beinga nice-handed pilot, was a scientist who could with ease read Lanchester's " Aerodonetics," or crowd a blackboardin a few seconds with the most abstruse formulae and sym- bols, was richly entertained by thep delight I expressed.In speaking he had a dry, even drawl, and seemed to be the very antithesis of what the stylists of Fleet Street werethen, with wearisome unanimity, describing as "intrepid airmen." S During that month of February I became a pupil at theBristol flying school on Lark Hill, and this is how it went. My lessons began in the middle of February, and windy,
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