First Flight Ordeals
Recently there was a case at a large school of a Major of marines, concerning whose courage there could be not the slightest doubt, and who possessed, among other decorations, the much coveted D.S.O. After a first trip above, the Major remained in his seat of the landed aeroplane for fully a quarter of an hour, ashen of countenance, and too terrified to speak. It was not cowardice, but simply that he was temperamentally unsuited. At length, when he had composed himself sufficiently to clamber out, he vowed that never again would he go up in an aeroplane.
Following the first flights there are numerous trips in dual-control machines, that is to say, with the ordinary pilot’s control-stick and steering-bar duplicated, and both couples working under the same control. Thus, gradually, the “quirk” becomes used to the handling of the craft and accustomed to the sudden drop in an air bank, or to an outward slip in a gust of wind, until eventually, without his knowledge, the instructor allows him to fly the machine himself.
Sufficient progress made, he is allowed to make flights alone, and when he has learnt to bank left and right, and land the machine in a safe and seemly manner, permission is given him to attempt the Royal Aero Club’s certificate; for which an altitude flight, a distance flight, and a landing on a given spot are the only tests that are necessary. This, let it be said, is but the starting-point of the flying education. Flying fast machines, wireless operating, machine-gun firing, bomb-dropping, navigation and map-reading are still to be mastered. Only one who has been in the air and seen that queer panorama of jumbled green, gray and blue, stretching away for miles on either hand behind him, can appreciate the difficulties of an air pilot endeavoring to make a true course from a mist-bound earth; or when one’s hands are frozen to the bone, and the ice-cold wind whistles by one’s ears, the extreme difficulty of maneuvering the control-stick and working the machine-gun at one and the same time.