The United States Forest Service has made considerable use of Army aeroplanes and aviators in patrolling the great forests of the West, where a constant lookout for fires must be kept throughout the summer. There are about 28,000 forest fires in this country every year, and the average area burned over amounts to more than 8,000,000 acres, entailing an average annual loss of $10,000,000 worth of timber. Observations are maintained on mountain peaks and towers, but the aerial watchman commands a much greater range of vision and can readily detect fires in places such as deep canyons where they are, in many cases, hidden from the existing lookout points. When a big fire is in progress, the aviator can quickly ascertain its extent and report the information by wireless to the fire-fighting forces. In case the fire is difficult of access on account of the absence of roads, the fire fighters can be transported to the spot in aeroplanes. It has even been proposed to fight forest fires by dropping bombs filled with fire-extinguishing chemicals. At one time it was thought that aeroplanes might largely replace fixed lookout stations, but experience shows that both systems of observation are desirable. Many foresters favor the use of small dirigible airships in place of aeroplanes, owing to their ability to fly very low, when desired, land in any small clearing, discharge passengers by rope-ladder while hovering over a selected spot, and transport relatively large loads of men and supplies.
Such are a few of the valuable peace-time uses that have already been found for the aerial vehicles that owed their production chiefly to the late war and for the host of pilots trained during the same conflict. Undoubtedly the immediate future holds far more interesting developments in store.
One important practical aspect of aeronautics remains to be mentioned, and that is the question of safety. In their early days the steamboat and the steam railway were both risky contrivances. It is recorded that at one time steamboats were barred from the Thames on account of their dangers. Undoubtedly the tradition of frequent boiler explosions lingered in people’s minds long after it had ceased to be a substantial fact. Aerial navigation—and particularly aviation—has now passed beyond the pioneer stage, but it still bears the dubious reputation that it acquired when it was in its infancy. Aerial travel, under standardized conditions, is no longer unsafe. There are good reasons for regarding it already as safer than automobiling. According to a report of the British Department of Civil Aviation, there were 21,000 commercial flights in Great Britain during the six months from May 1 to October 31, 1919, and 52,000 passengers were carried. The total mileage covered was 303,000. Not a single passenger was killed during this period, and only ten were injured. There were two fatalities among pilots and six pilots were injured.
Commander Read, who made the first transatlantic flight, writes on this subject:
“There are some pilots with whom I would refuse to risk my life. But, given a modern machine with the proper attention paid it, and a skillful but conservative flyer, it is as safe a means of rapid transit as an automobile traveling at less than half the speed. Nowadays there is scarcely ever an accident in an aeroplane of standard type due to the fault of material; they are all due to the inexperience or to the dare-devil stunting proclivities of the pilot—the pilot who ‘takes chances.’”
Aeronautics is now more than an art. It is a rapidly expanding branch of applied science. Aeronautical engineering has become one of the recognized professions. Some of the leading government laboratories of the world, including the National Physical Laboratory in Great Britain and the United States Bureau of Standards, are devoting their attention to aeronautical research. There are also many unofficial “aerodynamical” laboratories for studying, with the aid of wind tunnels and other apparatus, the many problems pertaining to the physics of flight and the principles of aeroplane designing.
Aeronautical questions have begun to figure conspicuously in jurisprudence. Legislators, as somebody has said, are busy making vertical laws to supplement the old-fashioned horizontal ones. In international law, especially, aerial navigation has given rise to thorny problems and it is already the subject of elaborate international agreements.
The physiological effects of flight and altitude have added a new chapter to the science of medicine. Seasickness has been the crux of the ship’s doctor; will “air sickness” prove equally baffling? What are the therapeutic possibilities of flying? Will physicians advise their patients to seek a “change of air” vertically instead of horizontally?
The atmosphere, once monopolized by the birds, has become the abode of man. That is one excellent reason why everybody should acquire a knowledge of meteorology—the science of the air.