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.