Interior view of the Graham White twenty-four-seater aeroplane in flight.
The sound of the motors is shut out by padding. The room is electrically heated.
In the war zone the aeroplane has been put to the most astonishing uses. It has spied out the most hidden secrets of the enemy; it has dropped spies behind his lines; it has photographed thousands of square miles of European and Asiatic terrain; it has directed the fire of artillery and the march of hundreds of thousands of troops; it has scattered cigarettes over advancing soldiers; it has dropped cans of tomatoes to thirsty and hungry men in isolated stretches of the desert; it has carried food to besieged camps; it has bombed trains, concentrations of soldiers, ammunition-dumps and ammunition-factories, gas-plants, and innumerable other military and manufacturing objectives. It has performed more manœuvres in the air than the tumbler pigeon. It has fought the most extraordinary battles. It has descended so low as to rake soldiers in the trenches, transports on the highways, trains on the railroads, and even officers in their automobiles. Indeed, by bombing manufacturing cities over a belt of a hundred miles along the Rhine it has done more to break down the morale of the German people than any other factor. Truly this new engine of man has developed, under the intense necessity of war, farther in this short space of time than any other mechanical device—not excepting the automobile—which man has ever invented or fostered.
But with all the wonderful things the aeroplane has accomplished and with all the stupendous advance it has made as a carrier of man and his chattels, even though it does travel the shortest distance between any two points on this planet with the greatest speed, nevertheless, much must yet be done to make the aeroplane a safe, comfortable, popular, and inexpensive means of aerial transportation. Therefore, before we attempt to demonstrate how this fastest engine of flight can be made to do man’s will as easily and comfortably as the powerful steam-engine, the mysterious electric dynamo, and the subtle gasoline motor, let us first examine in detail what has already been accomplished in aeroplane transportation. Then, with our feet firmly planted on the ground but with our heads up in the clouds so that we may see over the highest mountains, let us look down the corridors of the ages and discern through the mists of time some of the transportation feats which this new invention of man will most certainly perform.
From the time of the first flight of the Wright brothers till the beginning of the Great War, owing to the lack of commercial incentive, the development in aviation was similar to that of any other science that involved some physical dangers. It is true that M. Bleriot had flown across the English Channel on July 25, 1909; that Jules Vedrines had been carried in an aeroplane from Paris via Vienna, Sofia, and Constantinople to Cairo, Egypt; and that Roland Garros had flown 500 miles across the Mediterranean Sea from St. Raphael, France, to Tunis, Africa; but these facts were regarded as sporting events or stunts that could not be regularly performed by aeroplanes without great loss of life. For that reason practically no commercial interest was taken in aviation, and very little military—except by Germany, which was ready to seize upon and develop anything that would help her to realize Der Tag when she would be conqueror of the world.
Indeed, few people outside of those connected with aeronautics know that one of the chief reasons why the Potsdam gang made the Sarajevo murders a pretext for hurling the whole world into war was the firm belief that Germany had at that time the complete supremacy of the air. She had constructed a fleet of twoscore Zeppelins, some measuring 710 feet in length and being buoyed up by over 2,000,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas, driven by six Maybach gas-engines, each developing 250 horse-power, and carrying a crew of forty-eight men and a useful load of four tons.
What destruction those fleets of lighter-than-air machines wrought upon the open villages, towns, and cities of England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Rumania, and Russia—not to mention the part they played in the naval battle of Jutland—constitutes another chapter in the history of German aerial preparedness and sky-line transportation that is told in the chapter on the commercial Zeppelin. But just as Germany seized on the submarine and developed it for polemic purposes, so she saw the possibilities of the aeroplane as a scout, fighter, and bombing subsidiary to the Zeppelin. With the object of developing the aeronautic branch of the service beyond any other country the German Government gave every encouragement to aviation. In 1914 the Huns offered the sum of $55,000 to be awarded for the best water-cooled and air-cooled aeromotor of 80 to 200 horse-power. Among the points to be avoided in its construction was the “use of material from any other country than Germany.” Under the auspices of the Aerial League of Germany the Kaiser also put up fifty thousand marks in prizes for the best altitude, cross-country, and non-stop records made by standardized aeroplanes taken from stock. Subsidized as the German aero manufacturers were by their government, it was not difficult for their flyers to carry off all the prizes at this meet, so that before the end of July, 1914, they had made the following new world’s records:
Otto Linnekogel on July 9 climbed to 21,654 feet, breaking Roland Garros’s record of 19,032; on July 14 Heinrich Oelrich reached 26,246 feet; and Reinhold Boehm flew for twenty-four hours and two minutes without stopping his engine!
Those who realize how much time, money, and energy have been expended by this country during the time we were in the war in getting quantity production of aeroplanes and aeromotors will appreciate what it meant to Germany in July, 1914, when she declared war on the world, to have all her experimentation done and her aeronautical factories tuned up and nearly a thousand standardized planes equipped with standardized Benz, Mercedes, and Maybach motors while England had barely 250 planes of almost as many different types, and France was in a similar condition with about 300 aeroplanes and engines!
With command of the land and the air Germany felt she could neutralize or overcome Britain’s command of the sea by overrunning France, seizing the Channel ports, and by flying over the British fleet land an army in England and conquer the “tight little isle.” Indeed, for three years after the first battle of the Marne the fear of just such a contingency compelled England to keep a large standing army at home while Germany with her Zeppelins and aeroplanes, even from distant Belgium, terrorized Scotland and England with almost daily bombing air raids.