A khaki balaclava helmet, a wool-lined aviation cap fitting closely round the skull, and costing approximately half-a-guinea. A pair of triplex glass goggles, price 12s. 6d.—cheaper ones of ordinary glass can be obtained as cheap as 3s. 6d.—but it is always advisable to get triplex, as in the event of a smash-up ordinary glass would splinter, fly into the eyes and possibly blind one for life.
A good pair of leather gauntlets, large enough in size to permit the wearing of a warmer pair of woolen gloves beneath, and a gray sweater to wear underneath the leather coat are all that are required, bringing the total cost to about £6.
As in other professions and walks in life, a certain slang has sprung into being in flying circles, and this the new hand will discover will take him a considerable time to pick up—at least, with any degree of satisfaction or success.
First he will discover that a “quirk” or a “hun” is no less a person than a youngster who aspires to flying honors, and who has not yet taken his ticket. Even the aeroplanes themselves have nicknames, as the “Bristol Bullet,” so called because of its peculiar shape.
Airships and balloons are always referred to—and somewhat contemptuously, it must be admitted—by aeroplane pilots as “gasbags.” The small, silver-colored airships that are to be seen occasionally floating over a certain western suburb of London are known in the Service as “Babies,” on account of their diminutive size; on the other hand as “Blimps,” and again as “S.S.’s”—submarine seekers—that being their principal duty when on active service.
Various parts of the machine have their own particular nickname, as the “fuselage,” or body which contains the engine, pilot and observer’s seats, and the petrol tanks. That wonderful control lever which is placed immediately before the pilot’s seat in the fuselage, and which maneuvers the machine both upwards and downwards, and to the left and to the right, or, in the terms used by R.N.A.S., to port and to starboard, is known as the “joy-stick.” No self-respecting pilot will ever refer to a trip in the air as such, but rather as a “joy-ride.” A bomb-dropping expedition or a raid he speaks of as a “stunt.”
To “nose-dive” is for the front portion of the machine to plunge suddenly downwards at an angle of approximately ninety degrees with the earth. To “pancake,” the aeroplane must fall flat to the earth. It is possible sometimes to recover from a “nose-dive,” but never from a “pancake.” Sometimes in banking—turning in mid-air—a pilot will overdo the angle at which he turns; the result is that the machine commences to rotate, and whirls round like a humming-top; this, again, invariably develops into a “nose-dive,” and is known as a “spin.”
The majority of pilots, when first starting off, run their machines some distance across the aerodrome, then rise gradually at an angle of about fifteen degrees with the earth; others, on the other hand, prefer to run their machine a considerably greater distance across the ground, and, thus attaining a much greater speed, to rise almost vertically for about two hundred feet, then to flatten out and bring the machine level: this trick is known as “zumming.”
To “switchback” is to fly up and down, up and down, as the name implies.
Immediately after leaving the ground the aeroplane invariably commences to plunge and to dive like a ship in a stormy sea—this is when it enters a patch of rarefied air known as a “bump”; this latter often causes the machine to drop suddenly, and drops of as much as two hundred feet at a time have been recorded.