From the time of the first flight of the Wright brothers in 1903 to the breaking out of the Great War in July, 1914, the art of flying an aeroplane was not taught systematically either in private or military schools, primarily because flying in a heavier-than-air machine was regarded by civilians as a very dangerous sport and by military authorities as hardly more than a dubious scout for locating troop or train movements. For that reason very few civilians were induced to take up aviation except a few of the more daring sportsmen. Consequently, civilian flying on a large scale did not flourish.
It is true, however, that several small schools attached to manufacturing plants did attempt to teach the rudiments of flight and aircraft construction. These schools did not prosper because only a few pupils who wished to give exhibition flights attended, and the art of flying and aircraft development suffered.
In England several schools were started with indifferent success for the same reason as obtained in America, and in France and Germany, aside from a few aviators who were striving for new world’s records, most of the flying training was in the army. Therefore most of the great fliers, like the Wrights, Beachy, Martin, Curtiss, Farman, Bleriot, Garros, Vedrines, Graham-White, Sopwith, A. V. Roe—to mention only a very few—learned to fly themselves. For that reason the toll of lives taken in flying was high. Nevertheless, that did not stop these daring fliers from stunting and exploring all the aerial manœuvres possible with a heavier-than-air machine. As a result Pegout looped the loop; Ruth Law flew at night; Bleriot crossed the channel; Garros the Mediterranean Sea; Vedrines flew from Paris via Constantinople to Cairo; and in July, 1914, Heinrich Oelerich climbed to 26,246 feet altitude in Germany, and in the same month another German flew for twenty-four hours one minute, without stopping.
Meanwhile France had trained several hundred aviators for her army and Germany had five or six hundred trained fliers, including those in the Zeppelin service. The United States army had hardly more than fifty fliers when the Mexican trouble broke out, and only half a dozen aeroplanes to use on the Mexican border.
As soon as the war began and aircraft demonstrated that the side which got control of the air could put out the eyes of the opposing army and that the great struggle might be decided in the air, all the belligerent nations began to train aviators for the war in the air.
France was the first to develop a school of flying, and the French method, with slight variations, was adopted by England and the United States. A description of their method will give a comprehensive conception of the training necessary for a military flier in the war.
Early in the war most of the army, navy, and private aviation schools of the United States adopted the penguin system of learning to fly. That method, invented by the French, consisted of using as a training-machine an aeroplane that had so small a wing spread or so weak a motor that it merely hopped five or six feet off the ground when the motor was wide open. The small wing spread caused it to zigzag along the ground like a drunken man. For those reasons, perhaps, it was named after the penguin, which does not remain long on the ground or in the air and which has an irregular gait.
The first step in learning to fly consists in studying the structure of the aeroplane and of the aeronautical engine, and aerodynamics, or the science of the forces that aid or hinder the flight of heavier-than-air machines. During the last half-dozen years many of the manufacturers of aircraft maintained schools in order to encourage men to learn the art of flying, and have given their pupils the chance to study at first hand the designing, the building, and the assembling of aeroplanes and hydroplanes. That has given the pupils a thorough knowledge of every detail of the aircraft—an invaluable asset to an aviator who has been compelled to make a forced landing far from a repair-shop. In the “ground” schools conducted by the United States Government for instructing aviation officers at the various institutions, like Cornell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton, a great deal of time was devoted to assembling aeroplanes.
Most of the manufacturers of aircraft in this country do not make the motors used to propel their aeroplanes. The aeronautical motor is one of the most difficult machines to build successfully. A motor that runs as smoothly as a watch on the ground may hesitate and sputter at an altitude of a thousand feet, and at three thousand feet may stop altogether. Engineers say that that is because the change in temperature and in atmospheric pressure causes a difference in carburization. All these things the prospective flier had to learn as well as the reasons for the same.
Contrary to the general notion, the construction of the aeronautical motor differs radically from that of the automobile engine. In point of weight the difference is marked. Seldom is any stipulation made that limits the weight of the automobile motor in proportion to the amount of horse-power; a few pounds more or less is not an important consideration in a pleasure-car or a motor-truck. But in an aeroplane every ounce of superfluous weight must be eliminated from the engine, which must nevertheless be strong enough to withstand the most violent strain.