Work of the Seaplane
The work of the seaplane may be placed in two categories: first, work from the shore, when a landing-station, bordering on the sea, is used as a base; and, secondly, flying at sea, when the craft is taken out on board a parent vessel, and flights are commenced from the middle of the ocean. With regard to the former, the work is for the most part of a defensive nature, as that of driving off invading enemy craft, and patroling the coasts for enemy submarines. The work at sea is principally scouting for fleets, for a seaplane observer, at an altitude of 5000 feet, has a range of view ten times greater than the look-out man of any battleship or cruiser.
In this latter case, flights are usually terminated and commenced from the sea surface, alongside the parent ship; and when the craft are no longer in use they are lifted on board by means of a large crane and stowed away on a specially constructed deck.
From the point of view of interest, aeroplane work is preferable to that of the seaplane. Nothing more boring and dreary can be imagined than a long flight over an interminable stretch of blue water; the aeroplane pilot does, at least, have an everchanging contour of hills and valleys, rivers and woods, towns and villages beneath him, whereas the seaplane man’s view is confined to sea, sky and horizon, with perhaps an occasional passing ship.
One seaplane pilot of my acquaintance, in order to relieve the monotony, always took his dog, a staid and wise-looking Scotch terrier, with him. That dog can lay claim to holding the record among dogs of the world, for he has now flown considerably over 2000 miles. His method of aviation is peculiarly his own, for, once the machine has started and got under way, he curls himself up in the body of the fuselage and goes into a sound sleep, from which he does not wake until the engine stops again.
Seaplane flying in these days is beset with dangers of many kinds.
As an example, I will attempt to portray the average day’s work of a seaplane pilot on active service, somewhere in the North Sea.
A scene of unusual activity is revealed by the breaking dawn, lat. “X,” long. “Y.” The sea is calm, the rising sun giving it that peculiar grayish-green tint, over which the early morning mist hangs like a pall. Through the mist can be seen the hazy, blurred outlines of the Fleet: squat, lumpy monitors, slim and graceful cruisers, sharp-nosed destroyers, submarines that hang, as it were, on to the surface of the water. Great towering battleships, dignified and stately, look down upon the smaller fry with apparent disdain. Far in the rear there is what at first appears to be an ordinary smug-funneled tramp steamer; but a glimpse of the huge crane and queer, elongated shapes along her decks reveals the seaplane carrier.
Four o’clock in the morning. Though it is summer, the weather is cold and raw, the chilly breeze bites knife-like through one’s clothes, fingers are all thumbs—rather a disillusion of the joys of flying. The engine stops, and coughs and splutters as if in protest at this extraordinary behavior. Compass, maps, instruments are missing; the petrol tanks are unfilled, or the oil has been forgotten.
At last, creaking and groaning, the crane is lowered, and fixed to the craft. A few hoarse commands, and she is swung off the deck and dropped gently on to the sea, and off she goes, bound on a reconnaissance trip or target-registering. First taxi-ing far across the open sea, clear of the Fleet. What a delightful sensation this is, skimming the water like a seagull, dipping and bowing gracefully; but it is quite another story when the sea is rough, and the swell threatens every moment to break up the floats and submerge the craft. At last up into the air, 200, 300, 500, 1000 feet, circling round the now, seemingly, stationary Fleet; how still and quiet they appear down below there!
The seaplane is usually a much slower craft to climb than the aeroplane, and some time elapses before a decent altitude is reached. The observer busies himself plotting out the course, testing the wireless gear, and preparing his report.
Scouting is the object of the flight, and scouting implies, for the most part, keeping a weather eye open for suspicious craft, enemy battleships, cruisers, destroyers and enemy submarines, the latter more easily distinguishable from a height, when the bed of the sea in the more shallow portions can be read like an open book, sandbanks standing out most prominently from the surrounding azure blue.
Target-registering, on the other hand, consists of following, or rather attempting to follow, a damnably perverse raft, on which a large target is lashed, at which the heavy guns of the Fleet are firing from a distance of from fifteen to twenty miles, and the observer wirelessing back the results of their attempts, also entering the same in his report.
To the uninitiated this report would at first sight appear slightly less understandable than a Chinese love letter or a Greek play. It is divided into columns; first there is the time of the entry, next the height at which the machine was flying, the approximate position, and, last, the nature of the observation. For example: 11.55 a.m. 6000 feet. Lat. 90, long. 70:6. Large two-funneled steamers, apparently merchantmen, observed proceeding in a south-westerly direction.
If the matter is of an urgent nature it is sent back to the Fleet immediately by wireless, surely the most valuable asset to aviation that exists, and without which aerial scouting and reconnaissance work would be almost useless. The apparatus is light and extremely compact, consisting of one or two Morse keys and an aerial. The range of action—that is to say, the distance that a message can be either sent or received—is not very great, but such as it is, is invaluable. In a word, wireless in the Navy is as near perfection as it is possible for a new science to be.
The observer makes a sudden movement with his hand in a south-westerly direction. Far down on the distant horizon is the long black sleuth-like form of an enemy destroyer. The wireless is soon busy ticking the gladsome news to the Fleet, now far in the rear. More and yet more black shapes appear, and then our own destroyers come up, dashing through the sea, at well over thirty knots an hour, leaving a line of churning white foam in their track. The enemy catch sight of them and then turn north at full pelt, our own in hot pursuit, until for fear of floating mines—it is a favorite trick of the Hun sportsman, when pursued to drop mines behind him, in the hope that they will strike the enemy ships—our own destroyers come back crestfallen and downhearted.
En passant it may be said that a seaplane battle is very similar to a fight between two aeroplanes, though usually more slowly fought out, and hence longer in duration. Such feats as “looping” or sudden nose-dives are generally impossible.
The morning’s work is now completed, the recall signal is received via the wireless, and the great bird turns for home, not, however, without sighting several merchantmen and something which appears to be the periscope of a German submarine, but which, however, proves on closer inspection to be floating wreckage.
The British Fleet comes nearer into view, first the different shapes and sizes of the varying craft, then the funnels, then the masts, the rigging and the crew aboard. Throttling down his engine, the pilot sinks gradually lower and lower, and lands on the smooth surface of the water—strange to say a more difficult and more tricky feat than to come down on the solid earth for reasons too numerous to mention in this short chapter.
Another long “taxi” across the water to the side of the seaplane carrier, the creaking crane comes sliding out again, is fixed to the craft, which is hauled aboard, and stowed away until further required.
[CHAPTER VII]
A ZEPPELIN CHASE
“X or Y airships participated in the attack on Great Britain last night; Z raiders were brought down.” Hard official words these, that, read in the cold black and white of print, fail entirely to bring to the reader’s mind a true sense of the danger and the nerve-racking conditions under which this novel form of warfare is fought out.
Let us imagine, if we can, the difficulties the aeroplane pilot has to face. It is dark—pitch dark—sky and earth are alike indistinguishable. Flying at the best of times contains a more than comfortable element of danger, and in the darkness this danger is accentuated. The darkness deprives the air pilot of all sense of direction and of locality, greatly hampers him in the maneuvering of his craft, and renders unpleasantly possible a collision with another aeroplane on similar errand bent.
Starting out, there are a hundred and one small details to be attended to, as the testing of the engine, the trying of elevators and ailerons, and the examination of the petrol and oil tanks, in order to ascertain if there is a sufficiency of both to last a two or three hour trip. All this to be performed in the dark, with the engine screeching loud, so that a man may not hear a word, and the attendant mechanics indistinguishable in the gloom.
Fortunately for the pilot, a small dry-cell electric lighting set is installed in the body of every machine, and by this means the pilot is able to distinguish his instruments—a most necessary adjunct to safe flying—the altimeter, which records the height, “revmeter,” which indicates the speed of the engine and the compass, more necessary than any other instrument for night flying.
Getting off from the ground is by no means a pleasant sensation. There are hangars, high roofs, and chimney-stacks waiting to be collided with, patches of thin and rarefied air, which will bump the machine down as much as thirty feet at a time; the ever present danger of engine failure, necessitating a descent to the darkened earth beneath, always so full of death-traps for the airman and his craft.
Clear of the earth, at about 1000 feet, there are, here and there, faint patches of light of dark gray and the subdued reddish glow of the distant metropolis; the locomotive of a passing passenger train, bright as a searchlight for a brief moment, then passing away into the outer darkness. Higher and yet higher; and the sensation! The mind of a Jules Verne or of an H. G. Wells could not imagine a feeling more eerie, more strange than this. Noise and darkness, the incessant deafening purr of the engine, the pitch blackness on all sides, relieved by the one tiny light inside the fuselage, as welcome and cheery to the airman as a distant lighthouse to a sailor in a storm.
Then the searchlights begin to blaze, creeping up across the sky in ribbons of shining brightness. One plays for a moment on the machine, the pilot is almost blinded before it passes on its strange search across the heavens. But a stringent search reveals—nothing! For an encounter with the raiding airship is not at all probable at an altitude of below 6000 ft., and from that height up to 15,000 ft.; the only likely encounter is with the observation car of a Zepp. This car is usually suspended hundreds of feet beneath the mother-craft by means of a stout aluminum cable or cables, is about 7 ft. by 5 ft., composed entirely of aluminum, and contains sufficient space for one observer, who is in telephonic communication with the commander.
At last the pilot of the aeroplane has an instinctive feeling that a Zeppelin is somewhere near him. He cannot hear because of the noise of his own engine, and he cannot see because of the intensity of the darkness all around him.
The combat between the aeroplane and the Zeppelin might be compared to that between the British destroyers and the German Dreadnoughts in the recent Jutland battle. Dashing in with great rapidity and skill, the tiny one-gunned aeroplane fires its broadside, then makes off as fast as possible to get out of range of the comparatively heavy-armed airship. From thence onwards it develops into a fight for the upper position, for once above the Zeppelin the aeroplane pilot can use his bombs, which are considerably more effective than a machine-gun, and the broad back of the gasbag offers a target which can hardly be missed.
In maneuvering, the aeroplane has the great advantage of being remarkably quick, both in turning, climbing, and coming down, whereas the Zeppelin again is a slow and clumsy beast at the best of times. The Zeppelin is very susceptible to flame and explosion of any kind; the gas in the envelope, a mixture of hydrogen and air, forms an extremely explosive mixture. The aeroplane, owing to the fabric of which it is composed, and the petrol needed for propulsion, is to a certain degree inflammable, but not nearly to the same extent as the airship. On the other hand, the airship possesses a distinct advantage in that it is able to shut off its engines, and to hover, which it is impossible for an aeroplane to do.
Again, in the matter of speed in a forward direction, and, for that matter, backwards also—for the Zeppelin engines are reversible—the aeroplane holds the palm with an average speed of sixty miles per hour, while that of the airship is only fifty.
The combat finished, the aeroplane pilot has yet to make a landing, surely the most dangerous and tricky maneuver of the whole flight. The difficulties and dangers thus encountered are too obvious to need explanation further than to say that the landing has to be effected in the dark, with only a blinding, dazzling, electric ground-light for guidance.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE COMPLETE AIRMAN
The British Air Service is now a great army, 80 per cent. of whom, before the war, had never even seen an aeroplane, much less been up in one,—bank clerks, young merchants, undergrads, doctors, lawyers, journalists, all endowed with two sterling qualities required by the pilot of the air, courage and level-headedness. And how has this great miracle been accomplished? August 1914, found us lamentably short of both personnel and material, but what little there was of the very best. The already experienced pilots set to work with a will upon the more than generous quantity of raw material that came to hand. Within a few months their influence made itself felt. They taught the “quirk”—the airman’s pet name for the novice—in their own simple and undemonstrative manner, that the air is to be respected, but never feared, the aeroplane treated as a being of life and animation, with quaint humors peculiarly its own, and not as a lifeless mass of metal and woodwork. Within six months the number of fully trained British pilots had trebled itself; within one year the number had grown beyond all proportion, and still it goes on.
The usual method of training a new hand is to get him used to the air, which, though apparently harmless and void, is as tricky and treacherous as the sea. The beginner is taken up for several flights as a passenger. In the initial flight the pilot will perform the most daring maneuvers and precipitate turns, watching his passenger closely the whole time for any signs of nervousness or fear. It is a most trying ordeal that first trip up aloft, and the bravest hearts have been known to quail.