CHAPTER XI
A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS
Harry’s First Loops—Flying to Manchester—Harry is Taken Ill in the Air—He Returns and Lands Safely—And Collapses—An Extraordinary Accident—A Very Narrow Escape.
CHAPTER XI
Harry got back to England on Saturday night, June 6th, 1914, and on the Sunday afternoon was at Brooklands, flying both the two-seater Sopwith and the Tweenie. He won an impromptu race with Sippé, who flew a Bristol. “Aeolus,” commenting in Flight on June 12th, said: “Place Hawker anywhere where he can get his hands on a machine, and you simply can’t keep him on the ground.”
On Tuesday, June 16th, ten days after his return from Australia, Harry looped-the-loop for the first time, both with engine on and off. He was flying the 100 h.p. machine. On the Wednesday he did twelve loops in succession. These displays were the forerunners of the looping exhibitions which Harry arranged to give at Brooklands every Sunday afternoon during the summer on the 100 h.p. Sopwith Scout.
Harry flew to Hendon on the 100 h.p. machine on Saturday, June 20th, and on returning to Brooklands in the afternoon he gave another looping display. On Sunday, too, he was looping again.
While the Hendon-Manchester-Hendon race was in progress on Saturday, June 20th, Harry had the misfortune to be taken ill in the air. In this race he was the scratch man, and, being favourite on the 100 h.p. Gnome-engined Sopwith, it was a great pity he had to give up.
He left the aerodrome at a high speed, about 25 minutes after the previous starter, Lord Carbery. No news of his progress was received, but an hour later he was seen approaching Hendon again. He made a perfect landing, but was in a state of collapse, from which he failed to recover for several minutes. Actually he had been as far as Coventry, and had had a fairly rough passage. This affected his stomach, and, after getting into dense fog and feeling he would be overcome if he continued, he decided to return. His action in not having landed at once may be criticised, but the fact that he got back safely, if almost prostrate, is the best evidence that he knew what he could do. Moreover, he had not experienced a forced landing with this fast machine, therefore he could hardly be expected to know its capabilities in this respect.
Dr. Leakey, who attended Harry on this occasion, expressed the opinion that he was suffering slightly from concussion due to partial rarefaction of the air about the pilot’s seat of this fast machine. This would tend, he said, to cause tympanum of the ear while the roar of the motor compressed the air.
On Saturday, June 27th, an Aeroplane Handicap was held at Brooklands over a nine-mile course. Of the twelve machines entered, the slowest had a flying speed of 35 miles per hour, while the fastest, the latest Sopwith piloted by Harry, was capable of 111 miles per hour. But he was too heavily handicapped, and the race went to Mahl, who was flying the 80 h.p. two-seater Sopwith.
The same evening Harry had a very narrow escape. About 7 o’clock he took up the 100 h.p. (monosoupape) Gnome Scout, and at 1,200 feet looped-the-loop with the engine shut off. The loop was effected properly, but when he had got the machine back on what seemed to be an even keel, it got into a spinning nose-dive. Seen from the paddock, the machine first dived vertically and then began to spin round and round about its line of descent, descending comparatively slowly. After a while—only a few seconds that seemed ages—the tail swung out and the dive resolved itself into a spiral form. Finally the machine crashed on its right wing in a coppice. The whole flight was described as ‘looking like a leaf falling,’ and the fact that Harry landed on the wing undoubtedly broke the fall and saved his life. As it was, he was found, standing by the machine, in the thick undergrowth, none the worse for the shaking.
The following account of the accident was given by Mr. C. G. Grey, in the Aeroplane, July 1st, 1914.
“One of the most extraordinary accidents in the history of aviation, and a still more extraordinary escape from death, occurred to Mr. Harry Hawker at Brooklands on Saturday evening last. Mr. Hawker went up about 7 p.m. on the Sopwith Scout (100 h.p. monosoupape Gnome), and at about 1,200 feet he made one of his famous loops with the engine cut off, by diving steeply and then pulling back. He made the loop perfectly, but over the Byfleet road, and as he came out of it, he started a vertical dive with a spin in it.
“When I first caught sight of him from the paddock he was doing a perfect ‘tourbillon’ spin, à la Chanteloup—that is to say, the wings were revolving round the centre-line of the fuselage, and the machine was standing vertically on its nose. It was coming down quite slowly for such a fast machine, the pace being nothing like its ordinary diving speed. Then the tail seemed to swing out and the vertical path became an irregular spiral to the right, till finally the machine seemed to be doing a banked turn with the body nearly horizontal and the left wing up. The dropping speed had by then decreased noticeably, but it was obvious that the machine was not under proper control, for it seemed to ‘slash’ or ‘flutter’ round like a falling leaf. At this point it disappeared behind the trees on St. George’s Hill.
“As quickly as possible a number of people from Brooklands got to the spot, and after considerable difficulty found the machine on the ground in a thick coppice, with Mr. Hawker standing alongside it absolutely unhurt. A few minutes afterwards he went off back to Brooklands, sitting on the carrier of a motor-bicycle, leaving the machine in charge of the Sopwith machine crew.
“Apparently the machine had struck partly sideways and partly nose on into the top of a tall tree, into which it had flown rather than fallen. It had then fallen vertically, bringing several big boughs of the tree with it, and had finally sat down right side up, flat on its chassis, on top of sundry saplings and undergrowth. The wings had folded up neatly as it fell through the trees, and had come down like a lid on the cockpit—how Mr. Hawker got out is a mystery. The chassis had telescoped into the front of the fuselage. The cowl was dented and bent, but not torn off. Two or three valve tappets had been wiped off the engine, which was evidently revolving when it struck the trees. The propeller was broken at the ends, but not at the boss. The fuselage aft of the tank, with the elevator and rudder, were absolutely untouched.
“The first thing we did was to test the controls, and then found the elevator and rudder working perfectly. The warp wires were also uninjured, so there can be no question of controls going wrong. What, then, was the cause of the accident?
“For some time previously Mr. Hawker had been proving the extraordinary stability of this machine. He used to take her up to 1,000 feet or so, switch off his engine, and let the machine glide. Then he would pull his elevator slowly back to stall her. With the elevator hard back she would neither tail-slide nor dive nor side-slip. She would simply descend on an even keel like a parachute, but moving gently forward and rolling slowly first on to one wing and then back to the other. Occasionally, in a gust, she would slide to one side, descending sideways at about 45 degrees, which is hardly a side-slip. On pushing the lever forward she would pick up her gliding angle promptly. In fact, she seemed absolutely stable in every direction. She recovered promptly also from a straight-dive which was almost vertical.
“Now comes this smash, and it is worth studying, for according to the rules of the game the machine should have come up when the elevator was pulled back. During the afternoon Mr. Hawker had been arguing with an officer of the Naval Air Service about the need for more vertical surface aft on these small high-speed Scouts. The officer in question held that, owing to the short tail, if a Scout started to spin round its own nose it would never come into control again.
“When Mr. Hawker disappeared behind the trees he undoubtedly had his elevator lever hard back, and, as he was then banked well over to the right, his elevators were acting, if they were acting at all, as rudders, and so were forcing his tail round and increasing the spin. In this position the rudder should act as an elevator and throw the nose of the machine down, so causing a straight nose-dive from which it should be easy to recover. Mr. Hawker tells me that he tried to do this, but could not get it round against the air pressure, and he ascribes this to the rudder being of the unbalanced type. He thinks that with a balanced rudder and no fin he could have done it.
“Also, he admits that if he had pushed the elevator forward as soon as he found the spin developing, and had made a straight dive, he could have pulled up straight, but he thought he was too near the ground to risk doing so.
It must be remembered that the Caudron on which Chanteloup does his ‘tourbillon’ dive has a tail that warps in unison with the wings and that it has two big balanced rudders, so that it really has more control than the Scout class, and as it is a much slower machine it changes its attitude in a much shorter distance even if it takes the same length of time to do so. Still, it looked to me as if Mr. Hawker was getting the machine under control just as she disappeared, and I believe that if he tries the experiment again at 3,000 feet (no one should try experiments lower than that), instead of about 1,000, he will have come into control at 1,000 or so.
“Anyhow, he is very lucky to be alive, and only for that opportune clump of trees he would not have been. Still, to please the Navy it might be worth while trying one of the Scouts with a bigger rudder and fin—and a proportionately strong rudder tube, just to avoid B.E. habits—so as to see how it affects their normal flying. If it does not slow the machine appreciably, it might be well to adopt a larger size simply to give extra directional stability and control, and simplify the flying of the type by less clever pilots.
“Has it struck anybody that there may be a very good reason for the old Antoinette system of having vertical fins and rudders exactly equal to the tail fins and elevators? An arrow with its vertical feathers differing in area from its horizontal feathers would probably steer curiously, so why not try a symmetrical ‘empennage’ on aeroplanes?—C.G.G.”
On the Sunday, the day after his so remarkable escape, Harry was giving exhibition flights at Brooklands on the 80 h.p. Scout.