Learning to Fly: A Practical Manual for Beginners

by Claude Grahame-White; Harry Harper

Of the risk attached to engine failure, when he is piloting a craft fitted with only one motor, an airman is reminded frequently, not only from his own experience, but from that of other flyers. With the aeroplane engine, even with types that have gained a high average of reliability, there are many possibilities of a slight mishap—each of them sufficient, for the moment, to put an engine out of action—that the pilot who is flying across country must, all the time he is in the air, have at the back of his mind the thought that at any moment, and perhaps without any warning, he may find that his motive power has gone. A magneto may fail temporarily; an ignition wire or a valve spring break. The aeroplane engine of to-day is, of course, an infinitely more reliable piece of apparatus than it was in those early days when Henry Farman, working with extraordinary patience at Issy-les-Moulineaux, was endeavouring—and for a long time without success—to make the motor in his Voisin biplane run for five consecutive minutes without breakdown. The war has shown us, and under working conditions which have been exceptionally trying, how reliable the aero-motor has become. But until duplicate plants have been perfected, and more than one motor is fitted to aircraft as a matter of course, there must always be this risk of failure.

In the mere stoppage of a motor no great danger is implied. The pilot must descend; that is all. His power gone, he must glide earthward. But where the risk does lie, in engine failure, is that it may occur at a moment when the airman is in such a position, either above dangerous country or while over the sea, that he cannot during his glide reach a place of safety. A study of flying will show how awkward, and how perilous on many occasions, has been the stoppage of a motor while a machine is in the air. Two historic instances, though they did not, fortunately, end in a loss of the pilot's life, were the compulsory descents into the Channel made by the late Mr. Hubert Latham, during his attempts, in 1909, to fly from Calais to Dover. In both these cases—once when only a few miles from the French shore, and on the second occasion when the aeroplane was quite near its destination—the motor of the Antoinette monoplane failed suddenly, and the aviator could do nothing but plane down into the water. On the first occasion he alighted neatly, suffering no injury, and being rescued by a torpedo boat; but in the second descent, striking the water hard, he was thrown forward in his seat and his head injured by a strut.

Less fortunate, in a case of presumed engine failure that will become historic, was Mr. Gustave Hamel. Eager to reach Hendon, so as to take part in the Aerial Derby on May 23rd, 1914, his great experience of Channel flying induced him to risk the crossing with a motor which, on his flight from Paris to the coast, had not been running well. His monoplane was a fast machine, and the flight across Channel would have taken him less than half an hour. But at some point during the crossing, it seems obvious, his engine failed him, and he was unable to prolong his glide either to gain the shore, or the vicinity of a passing ship. His monoplane was never recovered; but the body of the aviator—whose loss was mourned throughout the flying world and by the general public as well—was discovered by some fishermen while cruising off the French coast, and identified by means of a map, clothing, and an inflated motor-cycle tyre; the last-named being carried by the airman round his body to act as an improvised life-belt.

Engine failure, though a fruitful cause of minor accidents, and of the breakage of machines, has led to few fatalities; and this has been due very largely to the fact that, though machines have descended under dangerous circumstances, and have been wrecked in a manner that would appear almost certain to kill their occupants, the pilots and passengers have, as a matter of fact, escaped often with no more than a shock or bruises. An aeroplane does not strike the ground with the impact of a hard, unyielding structure. It is essentially frail in its construction; and this frailness, though it spells destruction for the machine in a bad descent, provides at the same time an element of safety for its crew. Take the case for instance of a machine falling sideways, and striking the ground with one plane or planes. These planes, built of nothing stronger as a rule than wood, crumple under the impact. But in their collapse, which is telescopic and to a certain extent gradual, a large part of the shock is absorbed. By the time the fusilage which contains the pilot touches ground, the full force of the impact is gone. And it is the same, often, if a machine makes a bad landing, say on awkward ground, and strikes heavily bow-first. Granted that the occupants of the machine are well-placed, and prevented by retaining belts from being flung from the machine, they should escape injury from the fact that there is so much to be broken, in the way of landing-gear and other parts, before the shock of the impact can reach them in their seats.

Had it not been for the capacity of the aeroplane to alight in awkward places without injury to its pilot, many lives might have been lost through descents in which motors have failed. Aviators have been obliged to land in most unsuitable places: on the roofs of houses, for instance, in small gardens, and frequently on the tops of trees. If he finds his engine fail him when he is over a wood or forest, and there is no chance save to descend upon the trees, a skilled pilot may save himself as a rule from injury. Planing down, till he is just above the tree-tops, he will then check suddenly, by a movement of his elevator, the forward speed of his machine. The craft will come to a standstill in the air; then, the support gone from its planes owing to the loss of forward speed, it will sink down almost vertically, and with very little violence, on to the tops of the trees. The machine itself will naturally be damaged, seeing that boughs will pierce its wings in many places, and that one or more of its planes may possibly collapse. But the net result of such a landing—and this is the point which is important for the pilot—is that the machine will be caught up and suspended on the trees, making a comparatively light and gradual contact, instead of there being any risk of its driving through the trees and making a heavy impact with the ground.

Humour, sometimes, may be extracted from such a predicament as engine failure, though it needs an aviator with a very deeply ingrained sense of humour to do so. The story is told, however, of a pilot who, flying across difficult country with a passenger, found that his motor failed—as they often will—just at a moment when there seemed no possible landing-point below. Looking over the side of his machine, and glancing quickly here and there, the aviator saw no alternative but to bring his craft down in an orchard that lay below. Pointing downward, to acquaint his passenger with their unpleasant situation, and to call his attention also to the orchard, the pilot said with a smile:

"I hope you're fond of apples!"

There is a risk in engine failure which has been emphasised more than once; and it is that which may attend the pilot who, while prolonging a glide in order to reach some landing-point, may be struck by a gust, or enter some area of disturbed wind, just before he reaches the ground and while his machine, moving slowly, is not in a position to respond effectually to its controls. In one case an aviator, struggling back towards the aerodrome with a motor which was not giving its power, found that it stopped suddenly when he was not far from a wood. Beyond the wood, which stood on a ridge, there was a stretch of grassland. Endeavouring to reach this promised landing-point, and holding his machine on a long glide, the airman came across above the trees. He had almost reached his goal when his machine entered a sudden down-current of wind—occasioned, no doubt, by the proximity of the trees and ridge. Caught by this eddy, with no motive power to help him and very little speed on his machine, the pilot could not check its sudden dive; and the craft struck ground so heavily that both he and his passenger were killed.

We have mentioned previously, as a fruitful cause of accident, that structural weakness of machines which has led, when conditions have been unfavourable, to a sudden collapse in the air. But apart from weakness in construction, and notably in accidents with early-type machines, there was the risk attached to mistakes in design, which produced machines which were unstable under certain conditions—and the dangers also which were due to inefficient controlling surfaces. It was no uncommon thing, in pioneer days, for a machine to be built which would not respond adequately to its elevator or rudder; though this unpleasant fact might not be discovered by the pilot until he was actually in flight, and perhaps at some distance from the earth. In one case, which is authenticated, a two-seated monoplane of a new type was tested at first in a series of straight flights, and found to be promising in its behaviour. A skilled pilot then took charge of it, and, carrying a passenger, proceeded to some more ambitious flights. Steering the machine away across the aerodrome, and flying at a low elevation, he approached a belt of woods. The machine was too near the ground to pass over the tops of the trees; so the aviator decided to make a turn, and fly parallel with the wood. But when he put his rudder over, so as to bring the machine round in a half-circle, he found to his dismay that there was no response. In the design of the machine, as it was found afterwards, the rudder had been made too small: it would not steer the machine at all. In the little space that was left him, and to avoid crashing into the trees, the pilot had to bring his craft to earth in such an abrupt dive that it was wrecked completely. He and the passenger, though, escaped unhurt.

Carelessness has, fairly frequently, played its part in aeroplane disasters. Sometimes a pilot has been careless, or perhaps in a hurry, and has failed to locate some defect which, had it been seen and attended to, would have saved a disaster when a machine was in flight. Such inattention, which is sufficiently dangerous in the handling of any piece of mechanism, is deadly in its peril when those who are guilty of it navigate the air. A man who brings out a machine time after time, and ascends without examining it carefully, is adding vastly to the risks that may attend his flight; and the same remark will apply to the carelessness of mechanics; though as a class, in view of the arduous nature of their work, and of the long hours they have frequently to be on duty, with no more than hasty intervals for rest, their average of care and accuracy is very high. But there have been cases—mostly in the past though—in which a machine has developed a structural defect, or some defect say in its control gear, which ought to have been observed by its mechanics, but which has not been so detected, and has led to a catastrophe in flight. With machines built lightly, and subjected to heavy strains when at high speeds, it is vital that the inspection of such craft, that the examination of every detail of them, should be carried out in a spirit of the greatest care. The fraying through of a control wire, unnoticed by those in charge of a machine, has been sufficient to cause a disaster; while carelessness in overhauling a motor, a task of supreme importance, seeing that its engine is the heart of an aeroplane, has been another cause of accident. It is vital that, when an airman ascends, both his machine and his motor should be in perfect working trim. He himself, before he flies, and after his aeroplane has been wheeled from its shed, should make it a habit to look over the machine, so as to impose his own personal check upon the work his mechanics have done.